What an Awful Friend

I like telling stories. Like a lot. I like telling stories because you can tell them if you’re in any mood. So I tell stories all the time. I know my friends probably hate it. It must be so annoying to be always listening to Kirsten’s incessant voice talking about how she got lost on the city bus and had to walk back to Treasure Mountain (True story and yes, I referred to myself in the third person.) But I like to tell stories because it helps me laugh at myself and I like making people smile. And sometimes nobody laughs, which is embarrassing, but hey you keep trying. 

Courtesy of clairelasecretaire.wordpress.com

I think this blog has been like my own personal, yet public journal. I’ve been able to tell stories and talk about random things, like how I want to own a naked cat someday. I’ve learned about myself, but mostly just expressed myself. 

To understand my transformation throughout this year, we have to look back to my locker at the beginning of this year. At the beginning of this year my locker was clean, fresh, and relatively organized. It was very innocent. I had a folder or binder for every class, and enough pens to last me an eternity. When they tell you that you can be prepared for high school, it’s total crap. By the first week my pens were missing and I felt like a homeless person, because of how often I begged people for a pen. “Spare a pen for a unorganized train wreck, would ya sir?” Gradually, my locker became worse and worse. Piles of paper built up inside my locker. Unknown liquids spilled and stained my locker. The door became vandalized with drawings of dogs, courtesy of Aysia and “I love JB” courtesy of River. 

Yesterday, after a very random and unfortunate chain of events I ended up at school with quite a bit of free time. So I decided to get a bit of the cleaning of my locker over with. As I began to clean it out I realized exactly how much stuff had occurred so quickly this year. I found three silver spoons, papers from every class, a small yellow bowl, six unused highlighters, four binders, three folders, and a mug. 

Then I looked at the empty and organized locker, and thought to myself I made it. It may have been hard and it may have been messy but I made it through my first year of high school. Where my blog played in that, I’m not exactly sure. I think my blog has shaped me into the writer I am today and has sparked my creativity. It’s also caused much suffering. I’ve lost hours of sleep because of writers block. 

Overall, I don’t think my blog drastically changed me. But I do think it’s helped me. It’s given me a new place to share my thoughts, even if no one is reading. Although it’s cheesy, I like to think of my blog as a friend I made this year. So cheers to my friend, I hope to never see you again fourteen days from now!

I Forgot To Eat!

Here's a very unattractive image of me going
 hardcore on a slice of pizza. Courtesy of me. 

I love food. I usually scoff at people who just don't eat very much or don't like eating breakfast. But last Thursday, I basically forgot to eat. I had woken up in a panic, knowing that I hit the snooze button on my alarm. By the time I was in the kitchen to get breakfast, my mom was pulling the car around. So on my way out I grabbed some coffee and some cold coconut pancakes my mom ate the night before. In the car I rushed to shove my shoes on and sipped my barely warm coffee. I jumped out of the car to catch the bus without even taking a single bite of the pancakes.

I was hungry and tired for the whole morning. Reaching lunch felt like crossing the finish line of a marathon. At lunch, I realized that my mom had been in a rush, too, and she ended up packing me two coconut pancakes, one piece of bacon, and some syrup. Now, normally two pancakes would have been fine, but these coconut pancakes were about the size of my palm and were made of coconut milk, coconut flour, and coconut sugar. Add on the fact that I hadn't eaten breakfast, and this lunch was like the mini potato chip bags which are about sixty-five percent air.

I went along with my day, not caring too much that I hadn't eaten a lot. When I got home I went up to the barn and immediately rode my horse, Kiss, then came back to the house to change into my workout clothes for Athletic Republic. In case you don't know, Athletic Republic is a athlete training center that has personal trainers who give you a different workout each time you come. Unlike I usually do, I didn't grab a snack while I was at the house, but jumped in the car and went straight there without eating. That day I was with a bunch of boys that I didn't know and I was put on the treadmill with one other kid.

The treadmill at athletic republic is crazy. It vertical treadmill that increases it's steepness by the amount the trainer sets it to. During my first few sprints, I was fine, running as I normally do. But then I started to feel cold, like I do at the end of cross-country races. I walked in circles during my breaks. Suddenly, the whole room was spinning and I felt vomit rising in my throat. The trainer said I could go to the bathroom if I felt dizzy, and I nodded and went. Right when I reached the bathroom, I sat down on the floor next to the toilet and put my head between my knees. The whole room was blacking out and my mouth watered. I sat there for at least ten minutes before getting up. I held onto the wall to steady myself and went back to the weight room. The trainer asked me if I was okay and I said I was fine but he handed me a strawberry yogurt and a spoon. I really did not want to eat the yogurt, as I never liked super sweet yogurts, but he said I had to. So I ate tiny bites and swallowed it.

After waiting about half of an hour and deciding that I wouldn't be able to get back on the treadmill that day, he set up an exercise where I would just have to stand up and pull my knee up. But when I stood up the room spun again, my skin went cold, and my vision blurred. I ended up having to call my mom to come pick me up, but not before everyone there watched me sit on the floor and hold my head between my knees. All because I didn't eat. I was so embarrassed. I went home and crawled in bed at six thirty with an almond butter sandwich and slept for two hours before waking up. Then I ate a quesadilla and watched Grey's Anatomy with my mom for a little while before falling right back to sleep.

Yesterday, before I went to athletic republic I hate half of a chicken quesadilla and a banana. It's a myth that you shouldn't eat before a workout. I definitely learned my lesson...(That school is poorly affecting my health!)

4 Ways To Be Cooler, By Someone Uncool

We all want to be cool. And no matter how much we try to not care what everybody else thinks, we still do. But what is cool, really? Cool in the dictionary, is described as fairly cold temperature or fashionably attractive. I am definitely not cool, but from my experience as a teenager and after learning about the basic steps to being cool, I think I may be able to help you become just a little cooler.

1. Be confident and be yourself (Blah Blah Blah)

Yeah, right. Because that's easy. This is such a dumb thing to tell someone who is trying to be cool. It's like, If I thought I was cool by myself I wouldn't be trying to find out how to be cool. The truth is being yourself, only works half the time. Of course your family loves when you're yourself. But will everyone else? The real trick is to find people that you can be yourself with, and have stuff in common with. If you find people that think your cool even if you aren't. (WARNING: This often isn't cool.)

Courtesy of hdwallnpics.com

2. Always look adorable, but not like you're trying

This one is just impossible. I don't understand why I try really hard to look good somedays and some people are able to just look amazing in sweatpants. Like, when did that become a thing. I must admit though, other days I just put on jeans and a hoodie. The other thing I don't understand is why we all dress up for school. I mean we don't want to be here anyway, why are we trying to look good for it? I wasted 20 mins this morning to just put on a tee shirt and a sweater. I say we all just stop with the super high expectations and make it easier on everyone. 

Courtesy of zlucaz.deviantart.com

3. Go to cool parties

As we see in movies, all the cool kids go to parties. At these so called parties, teens live it up and have the best nights of their lives. And we all learned from Footloose, that dancing and parties may have some consequences, but in the end us teens really do need to party. The first problem with parties is that you usually have to be invited to parties. Which normally doesn't happen if you are uncool, like me. I guess you could just walk in but isn't that kinda creepy. The second problem with parties, is that unless you are going to a birthday party, most parties are lame as expressed by Alessia Cara. Why would I waste my time on that when Netflix and a box of Oreos are waiting for me at home.

Courtesy of sabotagetimes.com

4.  Always be funny

Okay, this may be easy for some people. But, unless you're Robin Williams, this one is really difficult. It's not that our jokes might not be funny but most of the time everyone has a different sense of humor. You also cannot be funny all the time. If we were funny all the time we would end up cracking jokes at funerals. (This may not always be true if you are attending an Irish wake.)

Basic Conclusion: It is impossible to be cool by everyone's standards. So my advice to you, if you really want to be cool, stop trying so hard and find some friends who don't care if you are cool or not.

Hold It Together, People

Many say that the most difficult quarter is quarter four. Most likely because quarter four consists of testing and is the countdown to freedom. You are so tired that you are ready to just quit school right there. But no matter what, we pull through and finish off the school year. And somehow we finish with grades that we can be relatively proud of. 

Courtesy of www.youtube.com

I believe that the fourth quarter of the school year isn’t the hardest at all. Instead, the third quarter is the most difficult. During the third quarter, we start to slowly give up. We’ve made it through more than half of the school year,  and most of us cannot do it anymore. It seems that school is the only thing there is, a never-ending painful prison. The days seem to drag on much longer than they ever had before.

Our grades deteriorate and we grasp at what little we have left. It’s like a steep ski slope on which we cannot find anything to grab onto. We get closer to finals and the tests that are really going to determine our futures. And we get closer to next year which will be even more difficult. Somehow, no matter the pain we are in, we push through and we cross the finish line to the fourth quarter. 

Each day, I think about spring break and summer. It feels as if spring break is just around the corner, and as if summer is only a few weeks away. But it’s not. We give ourselves false hope, attempting to distract ourselves from reality. Spring break isn’t for another two weeks, and summer not for another few months. All we have to do is pull ourselves together for one more quarter. Then we can be free. We can waste our days away watching Netflix, sleeping in, and disappointing our parents with our lack of activity. We will live stress-free. At least for the three months that we can. 

So as we are approaching the last week of the hardest quarter, I want to wish you all good luck. I hope that you all use what little strength you have left to finish this upcoming week. I hope your grades make you at least a little proud. And at the end, I hope the stress fades away and you can come to school with a clean slate. Then we can worry about the hour long tests we have to take, and how many days left we have until summer. Let the countdown begin.

15 SUCKS

On Monday it was my birthday. In the morning I decided to sleep through first period, but as it turns out, I have really awesome friends. As I was enjoying the extra sleep I heard my phone ring in my bed. I sat up and shuffled through the pillows and multiple blankets on my bed (I love blankets!). Finally, I found my phone lit up with a name across the top. I answered the phone with a groggy, eyes-closed hello. Apparently, all my friends were waiting around my locker with gifts and cards for me. Feeling bad about not going, but feeling good about sleeping, I apologized many times. Then I went right back to sleep.

2014: courtesy of Mom

When I got up, my sister had made me cinnamon sugar ebelskivers for breakfast, which started my day off extremely well. If you haven't had ebleskivers, you haven't lived. Ebelskivers are danish pancake balls, that you fill with anything you want (yes, nutella). I ate those and slowly packed my school bag. Then I was dropped off at school, where I went straight to second period.

I received the gifts my friends brought me including a thermos that looks like a camera lens and a set of card that I got to open at each hour of the day. Each one had something nice written about me inside, which I know was probably not true, but it made my day anyway. After school I went riding and met my family for dinner at Sushi Blue.  To end the night we ate vegan vanilla cake, opened gifts, and took the traditional cat and cake photo that happens every year. (I only posted the previous years because I couldn't get this year's off facebook).

2015: Courtesy of Dad

Fifteen years old means that you get to legally drive a car, you are three years away from being an adult, and that there is a whole lot more pressure on you. Fifteen seems great until you are actually there. The morning of my first day as a fifteen year-old I put on my Mom's light blue sweater, and ran out the door with a bowl of strawberry oatmeal.

At school, it was put to my attention by Aysia that I had oatmeal all over the elbow of my sweater and my sweater was see-through. Luckily, I had a tank top. We went to the bathroom, scrubbed it off the oatmeal and I put on the tank top. By this time the bell rang and I headed to Mrs. Payne's room for math.

I sat down next to Alex and pulled out my homework. As we were working, she asked me to taste her hot chocolate to see how hot it was. I took a cautious sip and told her that from a scale of one to ten, the hot chocolate was an eight. Cool enough to drink, but also slightly scalding. As we worked on our class work, I studied her flash cards for the English test we had the next day. Suddenly, I was jumping out of my chair, yelping and waving my arms. The hot chocolate was spilled all over me, in front of the entire class. (Don't worry Alex I forgive you!) I then spent the rest of the day with a hot chocolate stained sweater.

During PE, we went snowshoeing. We hiked up a torturous and steep hill. At the top, we were allowed to choose if we wanted to go trail blazing or if we wanted to go down the same trail. I convinced my friends to go trail blazing with me. As it turns out, Alex and Elise are extremely good at trail blazing, while I am not. I slid most of the way down on my butt and I fell multiple times. I didn't realize that the tail of my sweater had been dragging in the snow the entire time. So all throughout Biology I shivered in my soaked sweater.

Now, I am nearly a week into fifteen. Which hasn't been too bad. Yet.

Let's Talk Books

On average I enjoy reading three books per month. I love to read, but sometimes I need prompting on what books I should read and where to get them. It's hard to find a book that you absolutely know you will like because you haven't read it yet. So the best way to find a book you know you'll like is to find a book you love and look for books with the same genre. You can also try to find books that relate to you on a certain level. Now, I'm not saying you should go off and read every book from the same genre or every book with a strong female lead, because you are missing out on many other great books out there. I'm saying, often, to find a book that you'll like you have to relate a bit, and that does not mean you can't explore. Jump out of your comfort zones. I enjoy reading Michael Crichton and John Green. While totally different authors, they still appeal to me because their opposite style of writing captivates me. My favorite book is called Falling Into Place as seen below.

Falling Into Place

Falling Into Place follows Liz Emerson as she tries to kill herself and what lead up to it. The book is in perspective of an all-knowing character that is revealed at the end of the novel. The book sounds a lot like Thirteen Reasons Why but it isn't. The stories are very diverse as Liz is struggling throughout the novel to stay alive, whilst Hannah from Thirteen Reasons Why is already dead. The reason Falling Into Place is my favorite book is because it is shown through a surprising perspective. The book also follows several characters that affected or were affected by Liz. Another part of the book that I love is the use of physics. In the novel, the author relates real-life situations to different parts of physics. The author, Amy Zhang, was only eight-teen years old when she wrote the novel. I think it's incredible how someone so young can write such a creative and engaging book. I can barely write a five hundred words in a blog, let alone a well written book.

I have also recently read many other great books. One of which is Looking for Alaska. Which is currently a best-selling book. John Green has recently become an extremely popular author for all ages, as recently two of his books have been turned into movies. I have read both of his books that have been turned into movies, and loved them. But this book was different. Although it was a great book and I read it in a few days. I felt like it didn't have as much thought or meaning to it as his other books. The book was beautifully written, but in a way it copied Paper Towns (one of his novels that was turned into a movie). Both Paper Towns and Looking for Alaska are about a quirky, nerdy boy who falls in love with a crazy, fun, and bold girl who ends up leaving him in one way or another. In both novels, he finds out that this girl is not who he thought and in the process he ends up finding himself. While the words of John Green are compelling, inspiring, and everlasting, I found that I ended up reading the same book in different way.  I love John Green's books and he's hilarious, don't get me wrong, but I'm just waiting for him to do something new and inspire me with that.

Books to me are a way to escape the world you are in and be someone else for a while. Unlike movies, books require lots of imagination. Through imagination you can come up with your own story, and interpret it in a way that no one else can. Books are used as a way to read the same words but read a different story. And I think, that is what is most important, because each and everyone of us has our own story.

If Doug Was in High School

If Doug was in high school I don't think he would do better than most of us. He might have just learned how to climb up stairs, but that just proves that he's a quick learner. Doug would be the kind of student who would be sharing. The other day my Dad gave all the dogs a milk bone and Doug decided to set his own the ground for a moment. Before he could pick it up again, our golden retriever, Yogi, had inhaled it. Poor Doug, at least he's ok with sharing. Doug would also be the kind of student to not raise his hand. He enjoys lots of attention. But more importantly Doug would be a great student because of his willing attitude. Unlike Doug, I wake up many mornings just considering if it's really worth it to leave my bed. And any student that wakes up at six in the morning should understand the struggle. I wonder how a teeny tiny dog like him could have more excitement in his little body than most people do. Doug would make the best student because he would be excited about everything and anything, especially learning. 

A tradition for high school graduates is to have a quote under their senior year photo. Many students choose inspirational quote like "In response to those who say to stop dreaming and face reality, I say keep dreaming and make reality” - Kristian Kan, and others choose their own path. Often a comedic one, like Taylor Lautner’s “I hate shirts”. Man, that kid knew himself so well. 

So as I sat in awe of Lautner’s wonderful yearbook quote, I thought “If Doug were to go to school he would need a senior quote, too”. Therefor at dinner, I asked my family what they thought Doug’s yearbook quote would be. My little sister, keeper of Doug (it’s better that way, otherwise he sits in my room and barks at 5 in the morning until I take him outside) said that Doug’s serious senior quote would be “Forget the tennis balls, I want to be a hero” and her funny senior quote would be “I like chasing tennis balls more than I like chasing my dreams.” Ok, so slightly a double negative but it works. My mom said that Doug’s serious senior would be “Carpe Diem” while my Dad said that Doug’s senior quote would be “Life is like a box of dog treats you never know what you’re going to get”. He was completely serious. But if you asked me my personal opinion I would say that none of those would be his senior quote, because Doug is so hard to define in just one sentence. Although Doug is one of the funniest dogs I know, I would say that he would choose a serious quote, something to inspire people. As he inspires us all to be more free and live life to the fullest. To live life like Doug.              . 

Doug would have to wear clothes to school no matter how many times he would object. So here’s a picture of Doug wearing a sweater. 

Doug's Halloween Sweater