i get overwhelmed easily

Today was a good day. I did mainly nothing all day until it was time to go to the Convocation. I hung out with Megan and Shmimmy until lunch, then with Liles and Erika until I had to go shower. We watched old Laguna Beach and it was fun. Then I connected my own cable and showered and met McKenzie and Dusty at the convocation. It was semi-boring, but also interesting. It was like a reverse graduation. It was kinda cool. I met up with Kaila and Christian, and then hung out with Kaila until Fall Fest.

Fall Fest, while amazingly fun, turned out to be totally overwhelming in the end. I saw so many clubs and got so many free things... it was crazy! I was getting kind of wigged out towards the end, and found Julie from Cheerio and we both went to find Anna down at the field. There, we watched the Carolina Basketball players play volleyball. It was weird seeing them up close, because I will be seeing them in the Dean Dome (hopefully!!) later this year! Anna got a picture with Dean Smith. Craziness. I didn't see Dean. But it was still fun. Then I wandered around for a bit, saw Nan, and then decided to take the P2P so I wouldn't get raped. I wish I'd have just walked.

I forgot my Nalgene in the bus stop hut thingy. This is the 5th Nalgene I've lost. I'm cursed! I wanted to cry. I did let my eyes water, because I was overwhelmed and letting my contacts be re-hydrated (which they badly needed.) But, yeah. I am so sad. I asked Megan if she would look to see if it is still where I left it, but my hopes are not high.

I get so overwhelmed when there are so many people I don't know and I just moved here so there aren't a lot of people I know well, and everywhere I go I meet new people, and I am not in any clubs yet, and I just want to be in YL because I know what to expect. So I am going to go to bed. I made it past midnight-- that's a good sign. I went to bed at 10:30 last night- on my first night of college. It's probably not a good sign, but I was tired! Sheesh.

So, I'm having fun, but I'm ready to have more of a routine.

the end.

I just moved in here to college, and it feels so natural. I'm all moved in, chillin on my computer while listening to Paul Simon just like I've been doing it forever.

I think this whole college thing is going to be great. I can feel it.

don't sweat the technique

I procrastinate a lot. This is not good these days because I really need to be preparing for college. I need to pack and I need to read Blood Done Sign My Name. Instead of doing these things, however, I watch TV and movies and waste time on my computer and sleep. None of which are productive. I mean, I do have a whole week to pack, and I'm not bringing too much stuff. I need some boxes and stuff. Whatever. I'll get on the ball... later.

In other news, I like hip-hop/rap. I really do! It's actually quite good. Kanye West and The Game are two of my favorites. That new Kanye West song- "Gold Digger" is so catchy. I thought it was too much at first, but now I can't get it out of my head! I am also a fan of "Hate it or Love it" by Fiddy and The Game. It's so cool. Oh yeah! I almost forgot-- I like Ludacris, too. Good ol' Luda. I just like that they all rap with different beats. Kanye uses the beat in ways I wouldn't normally expect. So I like to listen to it. I sat in Wal-Mart and listened to the new Nickel Creek album (which I really want to get) as well as the new Mike Jones album. "Mike Jones, Mike Jones!" "Back then they didn't want me. Now I'm hot-- they all on me." It's good stuff. I don't like purchasing the music, but I like to listen to it. So now you know my guilty pleasure. Rap music. Craziness!

i'm not a gymnast.

While trying to showcase my amazing handstand skills to my campers this week, I made a fatal flaw. According to Lindsay, the globe-trotting 11-year-old in the cabin, I went up in a good handstand but tipped a bit too far over before returning to the ground in the correct manner. This slight hyperextension stressed my back muscles in a way that would haunt me for the rest of 5c, even to this very moment. After the handstand, I immediately knew something was wrong. I tried to stretch it out during the inital pain onslaught, but to no avail. Within 5 seconds, I had turned into an old man. I struggled to get down to the floor, where my sympathetic campers tried to massage the pain away. Liles also tried to help by shooing away the campers while my eyes were closed so that she could trick me into thinking it was still them, being creepy. Oh, Liles. I got some Ibuprofen that night, along with an ice pack to "numb" the pain that left me in a slightly bent position while walking and hindered my ability to sit and stand with ease. It did nothing, basically. The most comfortable position was lying on my back that night, but I can't fall asleep that way. I can only sleep on my side, which was the least comfortable way possible. This happened on Sunday, and I was feeling a little bit better by Monday night, for Spy Hunter. I took the slow group (as usual) and we chilled out until we decided to be a little bit hardcore. In the midst of cheating to gain the backpack of Meredith Bryson's group with the youngest girls, I saw the opportunity to have fun and look silly/intense all at the same time. I ran down the hallway of Millis and jumped the wall and hit the ground running to maintain the 15 feet within my camper as she squirted her water gun with all the fury she could muster. This was not a good idea. It was like pushing the Restart button on my pain. That night I went to bed all ice-packed and ibuprofened and prepared for another uncomfortable night. Tuesday wasn't so bad because the pain was easing up. I still had my old man moments when I had to bend down to reach something, or if I sat down for too long. Also, the nurse added two Aleve's (or something non-ibuprofen-y) to my regimen, making the pain less and less intense. I'm just nervous now that the pain will linger until moving-in day, where it will refresh itself and rear its ugly head again. I'm praying that won't happen. So, yeah. There's my 5c story. The moral of this story? Don't do handstands all the time when you know you're not that good at them. One day it will backfire.

p.s.- 5c = awesome!

yttup yllis

You know what I love? Silly Putty. It's awesome. I heard someone made it as a rubber substitute during WW2, since there was a shortage. Turns out it is the best toy ever (beside Slinky's). It has many properties. It can stretch, but it can also break if you pull it really fast. If you stretch it out and put it on newspaper or pencil writing, it will copy a mirror image onto the silly putty. I suppose if there is enough ink there, you could re-stamp it somewhere else. I would always do that. They have color changing silly putty which changes colors as you play with it. It is heat activated, which makes sense. It happens with any kind of Silly Putty-- the more you play with it, the easier it gets to stretch and the warmer it gets. Sometimes it gets kinda hot and you have to put it down. That's not that much fun. I just found some Silly Putty and it was actually kind of stale. I have to warm it up. I think a good warming up session, with the addition of some of the natural oils from my hand, will make my Silly Putty as good as new. Maybe. I like that Silly Putty comes in eggs. I don't like it when silly putty gets stuck in the carpet. It's gross, because it doesn't come out easily. I like that Silly Putty isn't as sticky as gum. I like that you can break it apart and put it back together like it's as good as new. I don't like it when the Silly Putty people falsely advertise. I got some Silly Putty in a purple, sparkly egg. The putty inside was not purple or sparkly. It was normal colored and not sparkly. I was looking forward to purple putty. I was disappointed. It was a sad day. But now I'm over the fact that it wasn't what I originally wanted, and it's still good Silly Putty. If you will excuse me, I'm going to go play with my Silly Putty some more. The end.

i love my hair

When I was little, I used to gaze in amazement at the teenage girls in church as they ran their fingers through their long, silky hair and put it up in a ponytail without a brush and made it look so great. At the time, I would never have believed my hair could do that. I was at the shoulder-length, kid, "i'm outside all the time and don't have time to brush or condition my hair" stage. There's no way I could run my fingers through my hair, let alone put it up-- with or without a brush. My mom could put pigtails in it, but that was the extent of my hair styles. I went through a time in my later-kid/pre-teen years when I would brush it back into a ponytail almost every day. Always. I couldn't stand to have it down. I always go through stages like that with my hair-- when I either wear it solely up or solely down or solely in a half-ponytail or something. If I went to school with my hair down, it usually ended up in a ponytail or bun by the end of the day. As I've grown older, I've gotten better at dealing with my hair. I've found the way to put just enough hair in the half-ponytail so it won't hurt my head and won't look weird and won't accent my flyaways or frizziness. I've found a way to put up my hair in a ponytail without a brush and make it look loose and the ponytail part curl in just right. I've found the exact right way to work the hair band so the bun has a good messy-to-functional ratio. (So it looks cute but also stays in for a while.) Most recently, I've found how to make my hair look cute-ly sloppy (if that makes sense.) At least I think it looks cute. It's my favorite kind of hairdo. I'm wearing a sloppy side-bun right now. It's comfy and matches my long shorts and t-shirt look. So I am indeed like the girls I used to look up to at church.

I've always gotten compliments on the color of my hair. People always comment on the fact that it is such a pretty red, and that nobody else in my family has it and how weird that is. I used to get so mad when people called me strawberry blonde, because that would mean my hair is mostly blonde, which it is not. I'd correct them, saying that it was of an Oak-colored variety. It truly is Oak colored most of the time. In the winter, my hair looks auburn/brown most of the time. I worry if it's going to change forever and I will have lost my only claim to fame. (I like to be dramatic sometimes.) But then summer comes around, and I spend all my time in the sun and my hair does start to turn blonde. Especially the hair in my bangs-- my mom once asked if I had gotten it highlighted. It becomes very vibrant and alive in the summer, and that's when I like it the best.

I feel weird talking about how much I like my hair, but it's not like I have anything to do with it. It's there, and I happen to like it. I think the reason I haven't been turned off by my red hair like most redheads tend to do is because I didn't get the entire package. I don't have the skin of a redhead in the summer. Sure I get really pale in the winter, but I don't get sunburned and tons of freckles in the summer. I actually get a little bit tan. Sure, I have my share of freckles, but not nearly as much as would be expected.

So, the moral of the story today is that I enjoy being a redhead.

this is a haiku
today instead of a post
nothing else to write.

holy cow. i'm going to college.

I am getting minorly stressed out, mainly because I have to seriously downsize my posessions and buy new things for my dorm room. I have to move completely out of my room now and into the basement, I have to sort out which clothes I actually wear and which can be given away to Goodwill (or something), and I have to throw away all the crap that has been piling up over the past four years. It's gonna be crazy. But not too crazy. I know once I get settled in at college I'll be fine, and I know that I will never have not enough stuff for college, so I'll be good. I'm just a little nervous. I think the fact that my room is like a clothes-explosion makes it harder for me to focus. I haven't unpacked or done a load of laundry since I got back from Tahoe, and I'm running critically low on clothes. I'm pulling out the backup wardrobe.

But I have like 4 weeks to do this, so it won't be too bad. And I have more Cheerio time ahead of me (5c, anyone?) so that will be a relief. I can escape the stress there for a little bit.

I don't really have anything great to say.

Oh yeah, I need to shower. Badly.

sad face.

Okay. You guys know me pretty well. And if you don't, just look in the archives and I'm sure there's a post about what makes me cry. Two in particular that I want to concentrate on today in this post are: 1) when other people cry; and 2) when animals are in distress (i.e. the turtle commercial). That said, here's my post.

I cried a lot today when watching Whale Rider (the movie with Keshia Castle-Hughes). My mom was leaving to go somewhere and needed to tell me something, but the timing couldn't have been worse. Keshia had just given a tear-filled speech, so you know my eyes were tear-brimmed, and all the whales just got beached, and I paused it while one was dying. When mom asked what I was watching, I answered (in a shaky voice) "Whale Rider..." and then she said "Are you alright?" and then I burst out in a sobby cry "All the whales are dying!" I couldn't handle it. It was too much. It was like the volvo turtle commercial to the n-th degree. I just cried and cried and couldn't stop. I was a mess. It all ended up okay and I felt like it was a good cry. My mom has decided that I need to be an animal rescuer when I grow up. I might cry to much to have that job.

I was worried when I randomly bought Whale Rider that it wouldn't be good. I think Emmy told me it was good, and I saw it at Blockbuster when I was making a random, mass, pre-college DVD purchase so I thought why not? So I kept asking my family if they'd seen it or heard about it or wanted to watch it, but they had no feedback so I just took the chance and watched it. I'm glad I bought it now. It's one of those good movies that doesn't have a typical storyline or stereotypical characters or anything. It was really good. So even though it made me cry, it also made me happy. I felt restored or something randomly cheezy like that.

So the moral of this story is that I thought Whale Rider was good and I'm glad that it is a part of my College DVD collection. the end.

welcome to august

as well as some sort of summary of the summer. (haha. summary, summer, summer-y)

This was pretty much the most jam-packed of any of my previous summers. (I've only been home for 2 out of the 10 weeks of summer so far!) Each activity was different and great in its own way. I had a chance to interact with my different types of friends on all levels. Lets start from the very beginning (a very good place to start) :

Cheerio. What can I say? I love those people so so much. Spending six weeks with them was better than I could've asked for. I was sad to leave them, but my Cheerio family is one that will last for a long time. I will see these people again, and I am sure of it. And I wasn't as sad leaving Cheerio this particular year because I have to get ready to have fun in college, and I can't be sitting there being sad to leave these good friends when I know I'll meet more fun friends and a ton of them are going to be there anyway.

Week after Cheerio (at home). I spent practically every day with my MA friends, which was so much fun. We all know we'll be leaving each other for college, but we know we'll visit each other and keep in touch, and that those are not just empty promises. This hanging out for a week helped me get over Cheerio, too, because I wasn't going from being with fun people 24/7 to being completely void of their presence.

Hawaii. So beautiful and so wonderful to spend it with my extended family. We haven't had a get-together like that in a while, and Hawaii was the perfect setting for such an occasion. Going from such structured and non-stop action at Cheerio for so long to the complete antithesis at Hawaii with no responsibilities at all was a little weird to get used to. As was seeing the entire family there together again. Reestablishing our family dynamic with everybody there at the same time (almost) and all a lot older was a little bit odd for me. I was in a weird mood at the beginning of the trip randomly, but once I got over that mood, that silly reestablishing thing didn't really make sense anymore. But you guys have been with me long enough to know how much I overanalyze things. To a fault. So, yeah. Can I just tell you how beautiful Hawaii was? Our condos were in such a chill environment... you stepped outside of our door to the pool and then a few feet away was a small beach. We didn't have to pack up and make a big trip to the beach all together, we could just wake up whenever we wanted and lie around all day. (lay? lie? who knows.) SCUBA was fun, but I expected to see more sea life than I did. Turtle Town? Come on. I think I heard someone call it Turtle Ghost Town. Eh, whatever. It was fun being under the sea for a while. It just so happened that the dives that us kids decided to opt out of were the best ones. Hawaii was awesome.

Mountain Lodge (Tahoe). I like to make this analogy to people who are familiar with Cheerio-- Cheerio : Cheerio Adventures :: Young Life Camps : Mountain Lodge. They took away our watches and waited until the last possible minute to tell us our activity for the day. I ended up with some sort of minor injury from each day (if you count sunburn as a minor injury). After an obstacle course (kinda) at Donner Lake, we went kayaking on the Truckee. Jill and I managed to stay in our Kayaks the whole time until we reached the second half of the very last rapids. I ended up with three scrape/bruise combinations on one half of my body, one of which made it hard to sit down (if you catch my drift). The second day, hiking, left my feet a bit achey and my muscles a bit sore. But the view from Castle Peak was definitely worth it. The third day, on Tahoe, I don't really count as an injury. My elbows and arm muscles hurt from tubing, but we all know how that goes. The fourth day was definitely the most injury-prone, what with Mountain Biking and Boarding. Just general soreness came from Biking- a result of my low cardiac fitness, I'm sure. Boarding produced minor scrapes all over my body as well as a seemingly bruised tailbone. It definitely hurt a lot that night. The last day, Friday, was the most fun, I think. We jumped off a little cliff into freeeeezing cold water and then walked up the river to this gorgeous natural pool where we jumped off the cliffs some more and tried to dam up the river (which was cold and was probably snow a few days before). We managed to blow the record out of the water. I was so sad to leave Mountain Lodge. I only knew 10 other people (boys, no less) going in, but I became close friends with all of the people by the end. Bonding with the people on such a deep and spiritual level left me so sad when I left. I mean, honestly, what are the chances I'll see these particular people from Arizona and California again? Slim to none. Except for Joe, who's going to App. So. I said I'd summarize Tahoe but it's proving harder and harder to leave things out. It was amazing. I wish I were still there. But I'm excited to keep going with my life, because I know I'll meet cool people like that at more YL things I do in the future. The end of this part of the story.

And now I'm home. I have to unpack and do laundry and weed out all of the clothes I never wear before and move my stuff to the basement and pack for college and all that fun stuff. But it's going to be fun because I'll be in college. Yayy!!

Ok. The end.