I'm Hungry

I'm hungry. My church started at one o'clock today(for the first time in my life) and it was fast Sunday. I almost died. Why did I almost die? What's the deal with food? Sometimes eating food feels great and sometimes it's painful. Sometimes we just can't stop eating and other times we don't eat a thing. I'm probably the kind of person who likes to snack all the time. That's right, I'm that annoying girl in the back of a dead silent room, feudally trying to open a bag of chips without anyone noticing. And I even carry around a back up supply of food just in case. But then again sometimes I forget to eat. It's kind of weird. A couple days ago I had to go to school early so I didn't have time for breakfast. I was in the middle of my second class(which was French where you can't eat) and realized,"Wait a minute I haven't eaten yet!" So I thought,"Oh well, I'll eat between classes." But then I forgot to eat between classes and after that I had a meeting at lunch and forgot to eat again. I got home from school and went straight to practicing the piano cuz I had piano lessons that day. Then I went to my lesson and came back excited to practice my new music. Anyway it went on and on like that. Finally I realized it was 6:30 at night and I still hadn't eaten a thing all day. I felt fine. I wasn't really hungry, but I thought I probably should eat something to satisfy my mom, so I finally did. But then why do I have such a hard time with fast Sundays? Sometimes I almost faint on fast Sundays. Yet, I die when I eat out too much. I wonder what it is? Some people see eating just as a necessity. Others do it for pure joy. Which one am I?Which one are you? Well I don't care anymore!All I know is that it's fast Sunday and I'm hungry! But ya know, I met this lady in France who was a baptist or something and she would fast for weeks at a time. When we asked her how she did it she simply said,"Faith." Maybe I just need more faith to survive fast Sundays.

A Nostalgic Blog

Well the other day my family held our traditional Christmas Party at my cousin's house. Like every year, it was really boring, but this year I noticed that it was exceptionally boring and I couldn't figure out why. Then I realized what it was. My fiancee was missing. Usually at boring family parties like these we'd hold hands together on a love seat and dreamily say to everyone,"We have an announcement to make." But he's gone now. This will be my first Christmas without him. I think I've been getting along pretty well since he left, but now that Christmas time is coming around, he's supposed to be here...but he's not. I think it's finally starting to hit me. Today I was out shoveling snow by myself. I was worried for some reason that I was going to get hit in the face with a snow ball, but it never happened. Today was the first day in my life that I've shoveled snow without a snow ball fight breaking out. Last year we started playing baseball in the snow. I wasn't very good at making the broom(bat) contact the snowball. When I finally did though the pitcher had "mistakenly" thrown two snowballs to me. One hit my broom and the other hit me smack in the face. Sigh life's getting to be depressing without my fiancee around. It's like watching a Shakespearean play without the comedy relief. But nevertheless the play must go on. I probably miss my fiancee a ton I guess, I just try not to think too much about it. My cousin just returned from his mission on Friday so I'm probably just jealous. Anyway as long as I don't ruin Christmas for myself. I just need to remember that we're still engaged.

The Great Dictator

Well I've selfishly been watching a whole bunch of movies lately from the library ( I get free ones without over-due fines) so I thought maybe I'd start analyzing some of them when I have the time. Last night I watched,"The Great Dictator," with Charlie Chaplin(and it wasn't a silent movie surprisingly). It was pretty good I guess. It was basically just Charlie ridiculing Hitler. He plays both Hitler(Hinkel) and a Jewish barber and combines them creatively for a good ending. But even with all the jokes and slapstick comedy thrown in, the WW2 and holocaust things still hit me like they always do. I just can't imagine such barbaric things going on. How lucky we are to live in such a sheltered environment. Last year I interviewed a lady who lived in Europe during WW2 and her experiences seemed so real and personal. Her dad was a Jew, but he didn't look like one and he hid all his records. German soldiers used to come into their houses and take all their butter and good clothes. She and her sister used to hide English pilots in their barn. It was so fascinating, yet so intense and astonishing. How did it all happen? After I finished watching the Great Dictator I thought,"They for sure most have made this movie after the war or else they would have been in trouble." But then I learned that it was made in 1939, during the war. It was Charlie Chaplin's own fight against inhumanity and showed his views on what he thought a good government should be. After seeing Normandy and the American Memorial in France I was even more flabbergasted at the hardships people went through during this time. I guess all this WW2 toughness stuff just came back to me after watching this movie. It's pretty good and strangely funny, yet powerful. You should see this sometime. Well I spent too much time on this so now I need to make corn and frosting, do the dishes, vacuum, get ready for choir and practice the piano all in 8 minutes. Think I can do it? Me neither but I have to so bye.

What Now?

Now that girls tennis season is officially over, my life has ended. What do I do now? Everything has become extremely boring and I don't have anywhere to release my energy so I get restless and can't focus on anything at school. My once overloaded calendar now seems almost empty and I can feel myself getting fat. My reflexes are dieing and I really miss the drug-like rejuvenation I got from playing tennis. I guess we sure had a fun year though. We took 2nd in region and lost in the second round at State in close games(not sets) to the State champions. Both Elena and I lettered and got All-Region academic honors and I got All-region sportsmanship for Mountain View. Who could've asked for a better season(besides losing to Timpanogus!!)? I'm just going to miss panting after running down balls at the base line and the confidence earned from hitting a "stick it" volley at the net. I never talked too much about tennis at school cuz I can easily get carried away with it(obviously) and I didn't want to bother everybody, so now I'm finally writing about it instead. But what to write now? What to do? It's over! Sigh, it was just intense and exciting. I need to write something though so I don't forget it all... so I guess I'll write down some of my favorite moments and things I've learned from tennis. Probably my favorite match we played in tennis this year was the one against Lone Peak @ the region Semi-finals. Lone Peak is always huge for me cuz Lone Peak was the only match I lost in seasonal play last year. Elena was dominating as usual and I was playing so hard and split-stepping so much that my socks were falling off my feet and getting stuck at the bottom of my shoes. Both teams were playing their best and we had to win it in a tie breaker. It was so awesome! We worked so hard to win and it payed off, even with their not so perfect calls. I miss tennis! I know this might sound bad but it just goes to show you how well temptation works. I miss my uniform! Yes! I miss wearing a tank-top out in the sun and getting tan beautiful shoulders and legs! Now I don't have an excuse to wear more skimpy things and I'm forever going to have to struggle with a farmer's tan on my arms for the rest of my life. I guess tennis and modesty and I have had somewhat of a struggle. But you know what? I honestly enjoyed it! Okay I'll repent now. I'm also going to miss my tennis snacks. Fruit snacks, Croutons, Pickles, gatoraide, Bananas just to name a few. They just won't taste the same without the rest of the MV tennis team. Also I don't have any reason to do intimidating things like wearing a Lone Peak shirt to school, pointing at people, and practicing my grunting. Plus anytime my knee hurts it all comes back to me. Well Anyway I'm just going through post tennis season depression so you can ignore all this. I just don't know what to do anymore. I even find myself not remembering what to say when I'm talking with people. I need to find something to get busy with so I can distract myself. Have any suggestions? Well thank you tennis. Thank you Elena. Thank you Coach Robert. Thank you "towel girl."

Have a tolerable day( I hope I'm allowed to say that).

PS Please ignore the funky tan line in the picture. I did not put it there. And we weren't too excited about having our pictures taken during the suspensefullness of State either.

My first attempt at putting up a picture

Well I'm actually putting up a picture for once and seeing what I think of it. Well? What do I think? I think I have some dang cute nieces!

Sacking the Buck

I just had the craving to say that I sacked a buck today. No I did not bag one I sacked one. Did you sack a buck today?

Why You Shouldn't Be Late For Church

So I confess I was late for church this morning. I'm just an idiot when it comes to sleep and it's not my fault church starts at nine. So I took my own car instead of going with my parents. That was a problem. On the way home my car wouldn't start. So my dad got this cable thingy out and attached my car to his. I had to steer my car in neutral and make sure the cable was tight while he pulled me. It was one of the worst experiences of my life! The trust I had in my dad was tested at the expense of my life!(And I don't trust people that much) On our way out of the parking lot the cable unhooked. The breaks were so insensitive and I felt helpless! Luckily the car didn't roll into anybody. We hooked everything up again and someohow we made it home without the cable unhooking and I survived. But gosh! I like to think that I'm a pretty calm person in most scary situations and don't let things get to me too much, but this I guess was too much! I was shaking like the whole time and I almost died! The bottom line is I should probably trust my dad more. Etither way I'm never going to be late for church again!

The Hand

The other day I was working at the library(pretty much all of UEA I've been at the library!Cheap!). It's a pretty slow boring job if you think about it. You do the same thing constantly as fast as you can, but everyonce in a while something interesting happens. There's a place in the library called the back room where all the books come. I was there unloading books from the book drop to check them in and suddenly I hear,"Gasp! I see a hand!!... Oh!There it is again! Mommy! I can see a hand down there!" Ofcourse the hand was my hand. I'd stop unloading books and start again and this little kid would freak out every time he saw my hand. It probably sounds really dumb but I get so bored at the library that it totally made my day. One girl who worked at the library used to make hairy gloves and stick them up through the book drop. Can you imagine seeing that? People do lots of weird things with the book drop. Sometimes they send in candy or have conversations with you or their books("bye bye books, bye bye cinderella, bye bye movies,")through the book drop. Today I was in the backroom by myself and someone came up to the outside drop and just shook it for a few seconds. It was kinda scary. Strange stuff happens at the library. One time I found a toothbrush sitting on one of the shelves. Just sitting there... Then sometimes people send in the nastiest books. One time someone sent one in that was covered in onion powder or oil or something. Anyway it smoked and sneezed everyone out so we had to bring in fans. Some people thought it was a terrorist act. You can always tell when someone smokes who burrowed a book. Awk! It's disgusting. Ofcourse only slightly more disgusting than the books from people who wear way too much colone. Then there are the books with teethmarks, and toliet paper, and hair and ... um never mind just yucky books. Plus when it rains everything comes in sticky.Anyway the library's a weird place to work. You never know (or want to know in)what you'll get. But it's fun enough and makes money. Except it pretty much ruined my UEA vacation. But hey I get free movies.

Disgustingness

Well I'm finally home and what time is it? 9:51!! As usual. It's not fair! When did all this junk get mixed up with my life?! I probably shouldn't be talking, cuz lots of people are much busier than I am, but for me, being at least somewhat busy is huge so I have to complain about it. It's cheap! Today wasn't even my busy day of the week and I still got shafted! On Mondays I go to school, hurry home and go straight to scary piano lessons at 2, than straight from there to tennis which goes from 3 to 5 than flute lessons from 5:30-6:30, but now since I have this stupid prep class I go to that in provo from 5:30 to sometimes 9 instead. Then when I get home from that at like 9:30 I need to practice the piano(she requires 5 1/2 hrs a week and you get double credit if you practice the day of your lesson, so practicing on Mondays is essential). By then it's about 10:30 and I haven't eaten dinner or done my homework and my parents still want to have "family" night. It's not fair! I love tennis and other stuff that makes my life exciting, but I love sleeping and eating everyonce in a while too. Sometimes I like to write my schedule down on our calendar on our fridge just to keep track of everything... it's not a very beautiful fridge right now. The other day my flute teacher wanted to reschedule my lessons and there wasn't a single free spot left on my calendar for the next two weeks! I'm an idiot! The past couple of days I've been so exhausted, I've just come home and gone straight to bed without changing my clothes or brushing my teeth(or taking out my contacts...Ouch!). I don't know though maybe I'm exaggerating. I like to keep myself busy. Otherwise I'll think. When I think nothing works right(thanks a lot cerebellum!). Tomorrow is the region tennis tournament. We're seeded 2nd and we have a buy first round which means we're automatically going to state!Isn't that exciting? But I think I'll be really depressed when it's all over. My life will just...end. I was looking forward to doing pit orchestra this year so I could just transfer my busy-ness over to that, but thanks to me I'm not. It's really quite depressing. A little break might be good for me though. Ever since France last summer I haven't quite been able to catch up to everything.But I don't like being caught up. But I don't like having a neglected dog who needs a bath either.Well now I'm supposed to go start my homework and eat dinner. I don't want to. I really like writing down my complaints(I'm sure you haven't noticed). But I'm probably really starting to annoy someone if they've actually read this so I should stop. Hey! Conference weekend! I get the whole house to myself and the chocolate icecream! I'm pumped! Or I will be if I don't lose tomorrow... I'm not losing!!! I hate losing like nothingelse!! Hymph! G'night.

Don't read this! Your life will never be the same

Well I'm finally writing a blog again after so many months. Why? Don't ask me, but I'm writing this now so deal with it. Jk. I guess I'm just feeling like a sinner for not writing a blog. It's been so long. So here goes...if I can think of anything to write...Well let's see, I just watched Suspicion with Carey Grant and Joan Fontain. Ever seen it? It's not your typical Hitchcock movie. I wasn't all too impressed with the plot and nothing amazingly intense ever happened. But the music was funny. Hmm it's raining. No wait a second that's my dog walking. We need to cut her nails. She hates that. I don't like seeing her cry. Well... Oh! I'll give my thoughts on rain. I love rain! It reminds me Fred and Ted and the spring and smells, "sooo good." Rain makes everything seem more jubilant and fresh. It's only scary when your windshield wipers on your car don't work and you're driving on the freeway(my mom was driving, otherwise we would have died). It rained pretty hard today and yesterday and the day before that. What's the deal? It's September! How deceiving rain can be. Oh speaking of the rain last Thursday, it was so awesome! We had a match against Lone Peak(that's huge!!) in the rain. We won the first set 6-2 and lost the second 2-6 and were up 5-3 (!)in the third set before they called us in because of the rain. Talk about frustrating! But holy cow it was fun! You'd toss the ball to serve and it would swoop out of reach because of the wind. And then you could just slam things and they wouldn't go anywhere. I've never been so drenched in my life, well that is without standing underneath a gutter. I guess hair can be a problem in windy, rainy circumstances. Like in our match against Lone Peak. Man I wanted to eat my hair it was so annoying! Ofcourse the Lone Peak people had perfect hair the whole time. Hymph. But their calls weren't so perfect. Communists! Seriously there was this one time when my partner was serving (I'll give them some credit cuz she has a really fast and strong serve, but this call was just disgusting) and she serves the ball(it was pretty obviously in) and the LP girl returning the serve goes for it and totally misses and says,"nice serve." So I say,"beautiful serve Elena!" and start walking to the other side of the court. But then the other Lp girl who's call it is says,"It was out." ...Isn't that just terrible? I mean her partner went for it and said nice serve and than we were changing posisitions and then she says it's out? Ridiculous! If there's any doubt in your mind it's in, plus you can't wait that long and then make your call.Argh! They had too many of those for me. Maybe they were sincere honest calls, but I highly doubt it. I notice lots of the time Elena and I call balls in that are out just because we're not completely 100% sure. It was so frustrating! Every point really does make a difference. You only need 4 points to win a game and momentum has a huge role. I'm convinced we would've won the second set or finished the 3rd before they stopped us if they had just been more honest! Gosh I'm being pretty negative huh. I just feel like I need to complain to somebody. I don't have anyone to complain to anymore now that my bro is gone. I guess I haven't been so lively and excited this year have I? Well it's cuz I don't have anyone to annoy. I need that! So sorry whoever is reading this blog. You're a victim. Just accept it now. I guess the Lone Peak match was pretty fun too though. Last time we played em this girl kept hitting down the line shots on us, but this time we were ready. She didn't get a single down the line shot off us when we were up at the net. Ha! If you make bad calls you pay! And we noticed that she wasn't so good at returning down the line shots herself so we got revenge. Yes! Sorry if you read all this tennis junky stuff, but Man I love sports! You can be mean to people and blame it on competition. JK, no they're just so fun. You're actually doing something. I hate just sitting around and talking to people. I mean we all just say the same things over and over again, that is if we say anything at all. Seriously sometimes you can sit and watch a conversation with people you know and almost predict what the next person will say and who will say it. I prefer not to talk so much. I don't like people knowing every detail of my life. It's a lot easier tolerating other peoples sometimes monotonous conversations than feeling stupid saying the wrong things constantly. Plus it's fun to practice looking like you're actually listening sometimes. Sometimes. There you go. Look at that I'm analyzing things now. Rain, Tennis, Sports, Conversation. I should be a Junior again! Oh and speaking of tennis and conversation, I think who you're around really does effect what kind of language you use. When I play tennis I used to say,"do you have a ball," then it turned into," you gotta ball?" and now sometimes I'll find myself saying,"you gots a ball?" It's pretty sad. It's everywhere. My family has attendancy to talk very formally. It's kind of gross. One of my brothers hit it right when he said we all talk like the Hardy Boys. For example if you're somewhere and you want to ask someone if you can help, most people would say,"you need some help?" ect. But people in my family would say,"can I be of assistance?" It's pretty depressing. My sister in laws make fun of us all the time. I don't know if formal speaking is a good thing or bad thing. My sister did her thesis on that I think. Well I'm still writing and it's almost one. I just don't want to go to bed. I took a nap today. That was a problem. You're my hero if you read this blog this far. Why do I keep writing. Stop! Stop!! I think this blog counts as my journal cuz I haven't written in it forever. It's much easier to type. Oh word processing teachers are communists !I almost type faster than the teacher, yet I get a 5.5 out of 10 because I haven't improved by so many points in 5 days?! I don't have anywhere to improve from! Communists Pigs! Well I probably need to stop writing now. Maybe I will. No! I won't! Fine I'll go eat something and try to sleep. What should I eat? I really want A&W rootbeer right now. No maybe some corn on the cob. Dang! We don't have either of those! Well g'night.

France Junk

Well this'll probably be a pretty lame blog and somewhat self-centered(fred!) but if any of you actually care, and I'm sure you don't, some guy that went to France with me took 3,000 pictures and made a website for everybody. So if you're sick of me not knowing what to say about my trip(which was like a month and a half ago! Wow the summer goes fast!) you can look at these pictures and stuff. By the way I'll have you know I was part of the "fun group" from Utah.Just in case you were worried about that. Well anyways here's the site:
france.lifemontage.com

It has a bunch of pictures of a bunch of stuff that I'm sure you could probably care less about. But if you ever get extremly board feel free to look at these. Oh and I'll also have you know that I've seen all this stuff, but I'm not very good at talking if you haven't noticed so you'll probably like things better if you just don't ask.Unless you want to be thrown down by my annoying voice and lack of vocabulary.I also promise that no communists have seen this site yet. And I won't allow any of you to blackmail me with the few pictures I'm in. Well sorry you had to endure this blog. I just felt obligated to do something about the hugest chunk of my summer and this seemed to be the easiest way. I hope it doesn't bother you too much. Well have a tolerable day.

Fred Stinko:"Everybodies boyfriend?"

Fred Stinko

Who is he?!

We've narrowed it down.

1)He is known for saying,"Go Katrina!"

2) He is short and has brown hair

3) He's somewhat shy yet kind of arrogant at the same time

4) He may or may not speak French

5) He can be very flirtatious at times

6)He tries to play tennis

7) He'll be a senior at MV next year

8)Natalie knows him from a PE class

9) He wears regular shoes

10) An awkard situation is bound to occur

If you have any information regarding the true Fred Stinko, please notify The Last Popsicle Stand at 1-888-9000-TEMPERATURE-LIGHT-IS-ON.

Hello summer!

HI! I'm actually writing a blog...and I don't have too!!!! Wow! Well that's about all I have to say. Is anyone who actually has the guts to read my blogs feeling old. I sure am. And the summer is almost gone! It just barely started! Argh! Well hope everyone's having a nice summer, even though...it's almost gone(!). I'm so optimistic huh?

Avoidance

Hello! Look at me! I'm writing my blog on a Monday! What an amazing person I am! I've come so far! Sniff sniff. Sigh. Well, I'm writing this because I don't have anything else to do right now and I've already thought of a topic for once and I'm going to be in San Francisco this weekend, so let's get to the point. Last Saturday afternoon I was shopping at Costco with my mom. It was really crowded so I should have been on my guard, looking for people I knew, but I had just finished working at the library so my mind was elsewhere and my ability to focus was at its weekly low. We were just walking along the main isle by the food section when I heard this, "Hey Kathryn!" and I about jumped out of my pants cuz I wasn't ready for it. It was some people from my ward. So I grudgingly said hi to them and continued on my way, scolding myself for not being more alert. So we kept walking and I just started staring blankly straight ahead at some random girl a little ways in front of me because I was in shock that I had just seen someone in Orem whom I should only see in Provo(my ward is in Provo). But then I realized that I was staring at someone and then I thought, "wait a second! That girl's face looks familiar! Oh my gosh! That's ___( name edited out for protection of the avoider)!!"Some friend of my brother's from high school that I must avoid at all costs( I avoid everyone at all costs but especially my brother's friends because they're old and scary and intimidating and talk too much). So I immediately veered off into the frozen foods section and ran for my life. I look back on it now and I think it was kind of mean...but I really don't care...but ....well it was mean. I'm pretty sure she saw me cuz I was staring blankly at her for a couple of seconds in shock, but... well it's over now and I saved my life probably by avoiding her. So why in the world do I avoid people? I seriously always avoid anyone that I see at stores and stuff whether they're from school, work, church or even if they're like my best friends. What's wrong with me? I'm so scared of people!! Well I guess you could just end this blog by saying....um... Avoidance is necessary. It saves us from awkward situations... Sure...but it also makes us feel a little guilty...but oh well I'd rather feel guilty then be scared to death by seeing someone I know somewhere. I guess I'm just weird like that.

Tubes of Toothpaste

Happy mother's day! Mom's are really amazing! It's too bad we only celebrate mother's day once a year, because mom's deserve a lot more credit more often than we give them. I spoke in church today (or at least tried to speak...I talk extremly fast when I'm nervous and I sounded like a bumble bee) about the influence of mothers, so for once I actually had to make myself think about the importance of mothers. I got blown away by how awesome they are and how much they do for us. I'm so ignorant and self-centered that I never realized just how great they are. All that stuff you hear about the roll of mother being the greatest and divinest calling...soo true! Sometimes I find myself being a little selfish and not so appreciative of my mom. What an idiot I am. My mom has raised eight great kids, no wait seven great kids, (the last one of them isn't so great) I think she probably knows what she's doing. Well...um... now I've lost my bus(why do we always say train) of thought... oh!...Um... I read this saying in church that I'm not so sure was appropriate for sacrament meeting, you can tell me what you think, but I liked it so I said it anyway,"A mother's patience is like a tube of toothpaste. It never quite runs out."It's a good thing my mom's patient otherwise I'd never get up in the mornings...um.. (why did I say that?)... Uh... so yeah mother's are amazing.... Well, I was going to say somethingelse but I got too carried away thinking about my own mom and I forgot it so... I guess I'll just end with that...Mothers are amazing!

Pin-striped Suits

I don't really want to write this blog because it's almost summer and it's starting, did I say starting? Ending to get on my nerves. So today I will answer that all too famous question of,"How do you feel about pin-stripped suits?"
Now I don't want to offend any one because I know this can be a very sensitive topic for some people, but me? I feel that pin-striped suits are, well, pin-striped and very sharp looking. Wether I perfer them to plain suits? I'd probably say yes I like them better than plain suits, but tuxs are probably better than both because they're so formal. I also think pin-striped suits go well with alligator shoes. Why? Because... well maybe I like that zoot-suit sort of looking thing. Yes pin-striped suits are amazing.

My Therapy

Two weeks ago I mowed the lawn for the first time in my life (I know I'm kind of old, but this is the first time in my life I haven't had any brothers to mow the lawn for me. I'm stepping it up). It was pretty intense. My front yard is almost impossible to mow because there's all these weird hills and you actually need muscles. By the way I don't have any muscles .So I didn't do the greatest job, but it was very full-filling. Then I mowed the lawn again yesterday and the 8ft tall part of the lawn in my backyard where my dog lives(that was really hard because the lawn mower didn't like the tall grass so I had to go really slow and keep restarting it. My right arm has never been more soar in my life). Anyways so yes, I'll admit that I actually like mowing the lawn. When my brother left on his mission, I was trying to prepare myself for change. Any time anyone would ask me what was going to be different in my life, I'd tell them that I would be mowing the lawn. I thought if I could just focus on that I wouldn't get carried away with all the missionary almost leaving and youngest child worries. Well I think it worked. My brothers gone. I'm mowing the lawn. I think I'm doing a pretty good job. Yep so if you every need any special therapy for being an only child, try mowing the lawn. It works.

UGH

I pretty much feel disgusting right now so I'll analyze feeling sick. Feeling sick does not feel good. Nothing is satisfying and you just can't do anything. The worst part of being sick is when people start feeling sorry for you. When people feel sorry for you, you feel like a wimp(you pretty much are a wimp when you're sick though) and I hate being wimpy. You also feel bad because you feel like you're ruining everyone else's day(sorry you had to see me almost throw up Natalie). Anyways this is a pretty gross blog. I'm sorry you read this if you did. At least I tried to analyize something. Being sick is terrible.

Too Old for Easter

Happy Easter!
The Easter bunny forgot to come to my house today. I kind of knew he wasn't coming, but my 29 year old sister didn't. She woke up this morning and went upstairs to look for her Easter basket and there was no basket to be found. She was a little confused because," he had always come before," but just not this year. The Easter bunny was very well supplied with Easter candy at my house, so why didn't he come?
Well ya see the Easter bunny (we'll call him the EB) can get very busy at times. There were so many other houses to go to that for some reason he thought it would be okay to just skip mine.
Since my brother left on his mission, there's only been me to supply..oh and my big sister. The EB thought we were too old to still be thinking of him. Maybe the Easter bunny was just planning on coming later in the day(he was...we've been waiting for my brother and his wife to come and have dinner and Easter with us, but that's no excuse for not coming this morning...somehow...this is a blog remember). Well the true reason the Easter bunny didn't come to my house and fooled my sister is the communists! They're trying to take over Easter now! But I don't care! Just like they tried to frame me at the library and poison my food at Thanksgiving! I shall...We shall overcome! They must be stopped! I hope all of you guys got visited by the Easter bunny this year and the communists didn't get to you first. Anyways, this whole Easter thing has made me feel old. My Birthday is in a couple of days, and the other day I got a letter in the mail about retirement. I have 57$ in my retirement account for work! I'm OLD! Well anyways, hope ya'll had a good Easter.

"She Had a Strange Resemblence to a Cat Named Frankenstein"

"It's another Saturday night," and I'm enjoying myself thoroughly. Yet what is there to enjoy? I'm just sitting here by myself. It probably sounds really weird, but I love being alone most of the time. I relish in solitude. I'm not just trying to get attention,I'm dead serious. There's just some weird thing in me that enjoys my own company. Maybe this is why I talk to myself so much. But anyways, so yeah I love being isolated from other people. Often times I'll find myself making concious efforts to try and isolate myself. I'll be at a store and see someone I know, even one of my good friends and instead of walking over to them and saying, "hi!" like most other people would, I'll yell"Hide!"Because "I can't let them see me and ruin my shopping experience!" Sometimes it's hard to isolate myself because other people start thinking I'm a lone-er and try making projects out of me. By the way I don't like being a project. Anyways I love going outside into my back yard and just sitting there listening. I enjoy silence. I also love driving in the car by myself and singing to the radio when no one can hear me. Being alone is so unstressful. You don't have to worry about anyone except yourself and you can do whatever you want. I wonder why I like being by myself? Maybe it's peaceful and I need peace.Maybe I'm so shy, the only person who can be in my true comfort zone is myself. Maybe I'm in love with myself (jk). Maybe I can't stand anyone(not true). Maybe I'm just too good for anyone else(not true again). Maybe I just... like being by myself. Well anyways the only good reason I can come up with is that I'm a nationalist (I can't call myself a communist). Communism makes everyone interact and share. I hate sharing and interacting so I'm left with myself as a nationalist. And I love it.
Oh Ps I hope I'm not sounding mean or something... I'm just analyzing something I've always felt my whole life. Anyone else enjoy being by themselves?

The Piano

The other day I found a tape of a recording of me playing the piano a while ago. I was impressed with some of the songs I used to be able to play and now I can't :) But ofcourse I bet I play songs now that I wouldn't have been able to learn then. Anyways, I'm not the greatest at the piano, but I just love playing it! So...um...well...Oh! So you ask why I love playing the piano? There are many reasons for this. First and foremost, I'm named after someone who plays the piano. My mom always used to love to open her basement window and listen to the girl next door playing the piano. Well that girl's name was Kathryn and so is mine(I guess it's a good thing I wasn't named Rebecca huh? Anybody else almost named Rebbecca? Oh and that also goes to show just how much your name really can do for you. If you want to motivate your kids to do something you'd like them to and enjoy it, name them after someone who did that thing and they'll feel obligated to like it). So yeah one reason I like playing the piano is it's sort of my way of living up to my name. Another reason I love playing the piano is it relieves stress. It's so nice when I'm having a bad day to just come home and sit at the piano and play whatever I want. It's great. I think I'd be living in some insane asylum if it weren't for the piano. Another more selfish reason for my liking the piano is that... well being the youngest of a competitive family of 8, everyone is always better than me at everything because they're older and not to mention a foot or two taller. Now ofcourse I always want to be better than other people at stuff if you haven't noticed, so this drives me crazy .Playing the piano is my secrert way of revenge. Everyone in my family plays the piano, but this time I'm better than all of them for once. It sounds stupid, but really it's actually very full-filling. Yeah so I guess the piano nurtures my pride :) which I have a lot of and you can probably tell that from just reading this. Okay well, uh the last reason I'm going to mention for liking the piano is it gets me out of stuff like doing the dishes. However, I guess it also get's me into stuff like accompanying the ward choir etc. which is scary, but secretly I like that too.
Yep so I like playing the piano. It's one of the few things in life that I'll actually admit to always enjoy doing no matter what.

Combating Questions

There's this question some girl keeps bothering me with that I don't want to answer, or else I'll try to answer it and answer in the way she doesn't want me to so she keeps bugging me. It's kind of frustrating and annoying. I can't think of anything to do about it, so today I have been seeking out some advice on how to avoid answering questions. From the few people I talked to, here's some stuff we came up with. First you can just try changing the subject . For example:
-Bob: So Joe, you're going to the popsicle stand with me tonight right?
-Joe(who has no intention of going to the popsicle stand): Wow look at that pin-stripped suit over there! Don't you just love pin-stripped suits Bob?
Various ways of changing the subject may include, commenting on the weather, suddenly noticing something "different" in your surroundings, or just starting up a crazy new conversation on any random thing, which sometimes takes focus. Another way to combat questions is to re-direct the question at the questioner. We all know that everyone's favorite topic of conversation is themselves. The movie Catch Me If You Can has many good examples of using this tactic effectively (Ps it would be a perfect movie without Leonardo De Caprio. I can't stand any of the movies he's in! Terrible acting, terrible looks and terribly annoying! Sorry I sound mean, but it's just that he's probably my least favorite actor ever and I had to say something). People can become so anxious to talk about themselves that they'll forget what they were asking you.
Excessive sneezing and coughing or laughing can often throw off questions and in dire circumstances running away is an option. Oh and you can always fall back on your constitutional rights. Anyways there are many more ways of avoiding conversations that I won't get into right now(Lol I'm avoiding a conversation!), but altogether the best way I've found to avoiding questions is to assume the other person is a communist(they probably are) . This way you won't feel obligated in any way to talk to them or answer their questions. It works . I'm serious. Well yep so why we should avoid conversations, I never elaborated on, but the best ways to avoid them are now clearer to you I hope.

Sister Susy Sitting on a Sistle

My two nieces and nephew have been visting this week. On Monday their parents came and left them here while they went on some honey moon thing or something. It's been pretty exciting. The two girls are really into being doctors, so my poor old dog has had to tolerate being their favorite patient. My nephew is at the stage where if you say,"I'll time you," he'll do anything. Today we made play-dough and "wrote letters" to my brother in the MTC. Anyways it's been fun. However, I think it's a really good thing I'm the youngest in my family. I probably wouldn't survive too well with little siblings. I'm so self-indulgent, I just wouldn't last. I even find myself now with the grand kids, sneaking around the house trying to hide candy or selfishly putting chocolate syrup into my milk when I think no one's looking. I'd be so stuck on myself like I am now that I'd never have any time for little brothers or sisters and I'd never be able to share my stuff. I also don't think I have the mental capability for younger siblings .My closest brother and I have noticed that we have a hard time focusing when little babies cry because we never grew up with crying babies. I look at my little nephew with his two younger sisters, and he can put up with anything. It's amazing! Being an older sibiling also requires a little responsibility which I have absolutely nothing of. I would make a horrible big sister. But then again, sometimes I wish I had a little brother or something. When you're the youngest you don't have any sidekicks or people to boss around, tease, or train. Then when everyone leaves you get stuck at home, all lonely with your parents. It would be so nice if I could always have someone to fall back on and brush my parents off onto. Not to mention for once I'd be able to beat someone in one of those,"look what I can do arguments." ... Um...Yeah well anyways I can't really think of any conclusions right now because I'm kind of undecided as to whether I'd like being and older or younger sister better, so I'll just say being the youngest is the best because you can almost always get what you want...if you know what you want that is.

The Forgotten Tree

I look over to the left of this computer I'm typing on and see a medium sized, chunky old Christmas tree that can't even stand up by itself. Suddenly a thought strikes me. What in the world is that Christmas tree doing still up in March?! Who in their right mind leaves Christmas decorations out that long?! What's this world coming too?! But now, after deeper contemplation I've changed my mind. WHY NOT?! Why am I feeling so idiotic because my family has neglected to take down one little piece of Christmas cheer? Why do I laugh when people still have their Christmas lights out? Why do we even put our Christmas stuff away in the first place?(Why am I writing this blog?!!!) Christmas is so wonderful. Everyone's happy and all smells nice. Lights flash and make you feel warm in the cold weather. Nobody is complaining about school, instead they're singing jolly Christmas carols. Food is everywhere, but you're never hungry because you're always full of it. Little kids are pelting each other with snowballs. Life can't get any better. So if Christmas is so great, what's wrong with keeping a reminder of it up longer. Why not just have those reminders up all year? What is the world coming to? Now I look over at the crummy old Christmas tree next to the computer and think," what a gorgeous Christmas tree. You go tree! Show the world how elegant and beautiful you are! Even if it is March."

Eating Your Vegetables

Well I can't think of anything to write about, but I'm determined to write this blog. So maybe I'll write about determination :) What is determination? Determination is what brings us together to day. Ahh! Gosh! I can't remember the rest and I've only seen that movie once so sorry. Anyway so determination is pretty important. Determination is writing a blog every week for some unknown reason(!). Determination is carrying something out to it's greatest extent. Determination is eating the smelly purple sour crout that may or may not have hair or bugs in it. Determination is getting out of bed in the morning. Determination is standing up for something you believe in. Determination is going against the odds. Determination is fighting on no matter what. Determination is my life time goal. (?)Determination is domination. Determination is huge. Without it there would be no use in putting any effort in all we do. Everyone would just sit back and watch everyone else sitting back and watching. Determination can change everything. You never know what could have happen if you were more determined that time you gave up. Today at Sunday dinner I was determined to eat my vegetables. If I wasn't determined to eat them, I don't think they ever would have been eaten. (?)You know the reason I think the MV girls basketball team lost in the State Championship a while ago wasn't just because Michelle Harrison fouled out early because of bad calls,(!) but because the other team was more determined to win. Determination makes a difference. Determination allows us to "reach the unreachable star," and, "dream the impossible dream." I firmly believe that if we are determined in every aspect of our lives, we can accomplish the inconceivable.

Beef vs. Cheese an Analysis

Right now I'm eating a bean and cheese burito. My family has one of those huge beef/bean and bean/cheese combo bags from costco and I just happened to reach in and take out a bean and cheese burito. However, I kind of wish that I had grabbed a beef and bean. I'm a very picky eater. Being the youngest of a big family, it seems that the role of picky eater is my job(although don't get me wrong, I have many other more logical reasons for being a picker eater that I won't go into for your benefit). Anyways, so I used to really enjoy bean and cheese buritos and refuse to eat beef and beans because they were "gross" even though I had never tried them before. But then one day one of my brothers secretly gave me a beef and bean and didn't tell me what it was. I ate it and I truly enjoyed it (as much as you can enjoy buritos...I really don't like them all that much but I can't think of anything else to write about). Ofcourse when I found out it was a beef and bean my opinion immediately changed, but I never really got over that actually delicious beef and bean burito. So gradually( so that no one would notice and tear down my credibility that I really don't have in food tastes) I started eating beef and bean buritos and now I'll admit that I like them better than bean and cheese. So you know we can never really trust our first instincts about food until we actually try it (wow this sounds really strange coming from me...I get teased and made fun of all the time for the things I don't eat). Yeah so don't think before you eat...eat then think (wait a minute who actually thinks about what they're eating?..Oh never mind I do).

I'm the Biggest Competition

The other day at one of my flute group lessons, we were all performing for and critiquing each other on the pieces we're all playing for flute federation (that's this weird kind of messed up competition thingy up in Salt Lake that I'm not excited about). Anyway, one of the problems I had with my performance was that I appeared to be a little nervous. So my flute teacher says to all of us, "there is no one to be afraid of. You're biggest competition is yourself." These words really rang strong to me. It's so true! It's not really how good you did compared to other people, but how good you felt you did compared to how good you thought you could have done. With this in mind it's much easier to control nerves and focus. If you truly think about it, the only person you're competing with is yourself. I've always told myself this when I'm playing sports and I've always been able to focus because of it, but I've never really thought of applying it to nerves in general. Whenever you're not feeling good enough or are nervous about something, all you have to do is tell yourself,"I'm gonna show myself how good I am and have fun," and you'll survive.
PS this was cheesy, but at least I'm starting to write shorter blogs.

Nessun Dorma

I just watched the olympic games opening and it was pretty intense. Everything was pretty amazing, although some of the more modern types of dance thingys sort of confused me. I was pretty excited at the end when some guy sang "Nessun Droma" by Puccini which is an opera song I actually know(since when do I know opera songs? Well...um I guess since piano lessons). Anyways its a very beautiful song up until the ending which is just awful! It does this sequential kind of thing and you think,"oh my gosh! This song is actually going to go somewhere else! And I thought it couldn't get any better!" But then to your dismay it just ends right there. It's terrible! Way too deciving! I just can't stand it! So this has brought me to the conclusion that endings are huge. You can have a wonderful piece of music, but without a good ending it's nothing.
Ps speaking of messed up ednings, I just can't get over Alfred Hitchcock's (who died on my birthday by the way) Birds ending! It just ends! I don't understand! Let me know if you do.

Smelly Dogs

My dog smells horrible. When she was younger we used to always put her outside on a chain, but now that she's older, she's developed some trust and we let her run outside by herself in the mornings and evenings. She'll always come back, but not always clean. For some reason dogs like to smell bad. Sometimes my dog will even sneak into our laundry room and steal dirty clothes and then roll all over them. It's only funny until I have to give her a bath. Then once she's had a bath she realizes that she smells good and tries to get dirty all over again. It's a never ending cycle. Dogs have better noses than humans. Maybe the bad smells actually smell nicer than the good smells. Maybe dogs need to wear a distinct perfume to show themselves off to other dogs and well, bad smells certainly are distinct and noticeable. Also maybe they know humans don't like bad smells so they wear them just to spite us. After all if we're their masters, aren't they our slaves? It's pretty baffling. The only conclusion I can come up with is there's communism somehow involved here. Anyways whatever it is, it's not very nice because now I have to go give my dog a bath .

Thoughts on a pretty boring life I guess (read at your own risk)

In my last blog I told you that this week I'd write about being alone with my parents now that my closest brother has left for the MTC. A couple weeks ago I thought I was probably going to die, but well...I guess I haven't yet. My extended family only left yesterday so maybe the reality of being alone just hasn't quite kicked in. So I guess today I'll analyze why I haven't started feeling completely alone after my brother has left on his mission.

I've had five brothers before this one leave on missions, and none of them ever really phased me (ofcourse they were all at least seven or more years older than me, not just two). Possibly I don't feel too abandonded because I'm so used to having brothers leave on missions.

Also like I said before, my extended family only left yesterday so maybe I just haven't noticed that I'm by myself yet.

Now that my brother is gone, I get all of his stuff. His car, his phone, his palm pilot, his hamster etc. Maybe all of his stuff has replaced him.

Maybe I'm too unemotional to care that my brother has left me with my parents. Probably not, but there could be some evidence to prove this though. At the MTC when they said," missionaries this way, families that way," my other brother and I were kind of chuckling because our family was the only family not crying. My family is extremly unemotional and I'm part of it.

I think the true reason I'm not feeling too much withdrawl is that I just haven't realized he's gone yet. I'll hear the door close downstairs or something and I'll still think,"oh Greg's home," or I'll see something dumb happen at school and I'll think, "Greg will get a kick out of this." Even at this very moment I'm subconsciously waiting for him to come home from his single's ward so I can tell him about this stupid thing I did at church today. Well anyways so that's why I'm not feeling too alone yet. But probably it'll hit me sometime next week that I don't have anyone to play football with or to rub my parents off onto. So don't be surprised if I'm suddenly really insensitive and mean or something next week. jk

Toothpaste Predictions

Well, I'm pretty much depressed because my brother Greg is leaving on a mission in three days and I'm going to be stuck home alone with my parents for two years. However you've probably already heard me complaining about this way too much so to put you in a better mood I'll try to write about somethingelse and give you a depressing report on what happened after he has left next week. Now ofcourse I'm probably going to give you a wonderful personal experience and then analyze it .

So here goes... maybe... um...Oh! Okay so the other day I had a really weird dream. I hardly ever have dreams, and I usually can't rember them, but this one was just weird. So first I was just at Mountain View, walking down the fine arts hall to some after school class or something, thinking how busy my life is and how dumb it is that I keep having to stay after (which is weird for me to be thinking because my life is actually pretty dull at times). So I get to my class and it's in the band room and Mr. Bowman is teaching. It was supposed to be some kind of choir class, which is weird becuase I don't sing. We were practicing singing intervals except nothing was happening because there were so many distractions .Suddenly the chamber choir or something is sitting behind me and they'd keep showing off singing the same interval over and over again. It was really annoying and I remember thinking,"Gosh what are you doing?! We're in the middle of a class." Then some girl starts playing the piano out of nowhere and I was thinking, "Ya konw if you're gonna play the piano, it had better sound good, and what are you doing? Show some respect!" Then suddenly the band room evolves into the Provo library and we're all on the second floor with these two big windows on either side of the classroom. Everyone rushes over to the windows and we see these two black guys with gold hair, dressed identically and both walking white dogs. Then we all realize," Oh no! They're going to rob the school and fake out the security cameras." So Mr. Bowman yells," hold the doors!" which doesn't make sense because the bad guys, or whatever they were had already come inside and were on the floor underneath us. So then I start thinking,"Ya know somebody mayve aought to call the police." So I run outside (somehow from the second floor ) and run over to the Mountain View seminary buliding(from the Provo Library). I get to the door and then I realize, school ended hours ago and doors are probably locked! But I try them anyways and amzingly they were left open and I was thinking, "Wow this is just ment to be!" So I run through the seminary building and finally find a phone which was in sombodie's kitchen(it's a really familiar kitchen and it's really bugging because I can't figure out who's kitchen it is!). I'm about to pick up the phone and call 911 but then I think,"Wait! I need to brush my teeth first!" So I get some toothpaste and just rub it all over my mouth with my fingers. Then I called 911 , but I couldn't understand the operator and I wasn't sure what kind of situation I was in so I hung up, but then I realized that now the 911 people would come to the seminary building instead of Mountain View. So I picked up the phone to try again but then a doorbell rings from somewhere and so ofcourse I think, "I need to brush my teeth!" So I run upstairs (suddenly I'm at my house) to brush my teeth, but someone had left the cap off the toothpaste and there was toothpaste all over the place! So I ran back downstairs to answer the door with toothpaste all over my shirt and face. I open the door and there's some guy standing there smiling, acting like he's a friend of the family or something, but I don't recognize him . So ofcourse I smile too thinking, "Oh geeze! I'm being such a nice person!" Then the guy steps into my house and hands me this brown glove, and I'm just like," Um, what are you doing?"and he says, "Oh this is a decoy, I'm just kidnapping you" and then he tries to grab me and I'm like, "Not if I can help it!" and I start fighting him and then my dream ended.

Okay. Sorry if you had to read all but here's my analysis. So I guess think that dreams can predict the future. I was working at the library (Provo Library almost) the other day after I had had this dream and as I was reshelving some books, I found this toothbrush just sitting there on one of the shelves. See there's some evidence for you. The toothpaste in my dream was telling me something. Also I usually have to play piano for my ward choir on Sundays, but this sunday I didn't have to (singing intervals with the chamber choir). However the parts in my dream with the robber guys and the kidnapper haven't quite come to pass yet. But since dreams do predict the future (I showed you some evidence) don't be surprised if I show up on the news for being kidnapped some time soon.
Ps I would usually spell check this but for some reason the button isn't working and I don't want to take time to reread this all over again so forgive my grammer errors and mispellings.

Forgetfullness

Well, I pretty much forgot to write this blog so I think I'll write it on forgetfulness. So then here's my lovely analytical question for you. Why are we forgetful? (Pretty profound huh?)

Maybe we're too busy to keep up with ourselves. We get so caught up in all of our activities that some things just get overlooked.

It could also be our personalities. I have a friend for example who always forgets to write her name on school assignments. It's just how she is. Whenever there's a paper with no name on it, you can almost automatically assume it's hers. Some people are extremely forgetful, others just aren't.

Yes, being busy and having a careless personality are definite factors in being forgetful, but we all know who's truly responsible for forgetfulness. That's right, you guessed it, the communist. Who else would tell that you it's okay to be too busy to ever remember anything, it's okay to forget your name on your homework, and it's okay to forget to write your blogs? (It's obviously not okay, seeing that it is 1:30am as I'm writing this blog and my writing, um, well you could hardly call it writing, and I can't even remember how to properly use parenthesis or spell parenthesis for that matter) The communist are slowly trying to make us forget ourselves and be corrupted into thinking only of them. This must not happen! Capitalist unite! Destroy those cunning pigs who are taking away our lives and our ability to remember to write blogs! (Wow, that sounded pretty lame.) Well yeah anyways it's the communist's fault that we forget, so since there's so many of them around I guess it's pretty much inevitable that we are going to forget stuff... so um, don't you forget it!

It's a Terrible Life

Well now that the holidays are pretty much over I guess it's time for me to complain about them :D . Actually there's not that much to complain about, being out of school and all, so if you haven't guessed this blog hasn't been very well thought out so don't read this if you're already feeling depressed or get offended easily. So here goes. With all the wonderful Holiday cheer around, presents, food, and family etc. ,you'd think that everyone would be having a "Wonderful Life." Well I'm not if that movie is playing all the time. Sure It's a Wonderful Life has great intentions and was a good movie about the first eight times, but after the two-hundred and twenty-second time you've seen it, it starts to get a little old. For some reason everyone just has to see this old movie every Christmas year after year. It's ridiculous! I'm sick of it! Sure Jimmy Stewart is an amazing actor and all, but how many times do I have to watch him almost commit suicide and then change his mind and run around yelling "Merry Christmas!"? I used to love It's a Wonderful life, but now I just hate it after seeing it so many times. I would much rather watch It's a Beautiful Life or listen to the song " It's a Beautiful Life" than put up with seeing It's a Wonderful Life again, because obviously watching it doesn't make my life wonderful after seeing it one thousand times before. Another thing I don't like about it, besides its repetitive-ness, is the way Jimmy Stewart breathes (by the way this is the only complaint I'll ever make about Jimmy Stewart because he's actually one of my favorite actors). "Mary (WHEEZE, GASP, MICROPHONE MESSES UP, GASP , OBNOXIOUS BREATH) Oh Mary."(MORE WHEEZES AND ANNOYINGLY LOUD BREATHING) I just can't stand how loud he breathes! Sure I guess maybe he's trying to get into his character and be dramatic and all, but ugh! It's SSOOO ANOYING! Well there! I've explained why I hate It's a Wonderful Life. Now I'll probably get a bunch of hate mail from all of you because most everyone likes It's a Wonderful Life but me. Hey maybe that's another reason I don't like that movie is because everyone else does. But no, I think I'd probably still hate it anyways after seeing it so many times and listening to Jimmy Stewart breath. Well now you've heard my complaints. I'm actually really not that against It's a Wonderful Life, I'm just dead tired of seeing it over and over again and I don't have anything else to write about. Sorry if I depressed you.

My Encounter with some Communists at the Library

Since it's New Years today and all, I was planning to write about the New Year and last years failures ect., but yesterday I had a traumatic, historic, intense, amazing, insane, disastrous, special and explosive experience. Actually it really wasn't that huge at all, but it got me speculating about a lot of stuff so here it goes... I hope...I'm a little low on sleep so read this at your own risk.
Yesterday I was working at the Orem library. One of the main things I do at the library is unload the book drops and check in books. Now it was New Year's Eve ofcourse so it was a pretty slow day, infact it was so slow even, that the girl who usually works with me in the "back room"(the place where the book drops lead to) left me alone and went out to shelve books. So there I was, pacing around, just waiting for someone to give me a single book to check in or just anything to do because I was dying of the slowness of the dragging day. Well, be careful what you wish for, because that's when the communists start appearing. Suddenly, out of the middle of the rainy street, a small silver car came up to the book drop(ps it's terrible when it's raining outside, because all of the books come in cold and sticky and it's disgusting!). Then a rather large older lady got out of the car with a maybe nine to eleven year old boy. They started unloading what I thought would be a few books from their car. "Oh good," I thought looking at the empty book drop, "something to do." But the problem was, they had a little more than a few books. First they unloaded the entire back seat of the car. By then the book drop was already overflowing and I was rushing back and forth trying to move books so there'd be more room in the overloaded book drop. The books just wouldn't stop coming! I was just baffled that anyone in the world could check out so many books for themselves and return them all in at the same time. After what seemed like years of futily attempting to clear just inches of space in the book drop, the books seem to stop for a little. I raised my hands in the air and almost shouted. But then, I noticed that I hadn't heard their car drive away. I jumped to get a better view out the window of the car and the obviously insane (at least to me they were) people. To my dismay they were only opening the back of their trunk to reveal what appeared to be yet another eight year supply of books! By now they were literally stuffing and forcing the books through the completely overflowed book drop and I was desperately trying to save all the books that were helplessly being crushed and jammed in the exploding book drop to no avail (wow that was a long sentence) . Finally, just as I thought the end was near, they stopped and drove away. I gave a sigh of relief and stepped back to gaze at the endless supply of books that were now my job to check in. What was once a slow day, had now turned into a frivolous torture. It was just ridiculous! How could anyone possibly have that many books?! The book drop and entire back room was completely empty until one tiny car just happened to drive up and unload more than 90 truck fulls of books! I just couldn't believe it!
Well, now you've heard my experience, so here's my analysis I guess. Considering that it was the last day of the year, it is quite possible that these people have some kind of ritual of going to the library and unloading their whole year supply of over due library books to start a fresh record at the library for the New Year. Another possibility could be that they knew I was in the back room by myself and so they gathered all the library books together from everyone they knew and shoved them all into the book drop at once because they have some sort of prejudice against library pages like myself. All of these possibilities are possibilities I guess, but the only conclusion that I can peacefully rest my case on is that these ridiculous people were communist. For years they've been chasing me around trying to make me one of them. They thought that my working at the library promoted capitalist propaganda so they were trying to sabotage it. Obviously they failed, because ofcourse I'm just an amazing person, but they did make me realize that there is never a slow day at the Orem Public Library.
Ps I work on Saturdays. Come visit me sometime and I can introduce you to some communist. ;)

Why I'm against karaoke machines

Well yes it's Christmas today so since I don't have anything to write about and only 20 minutes until this thing is due, I'll write about it. Christmas should be a quiet special day full of gratitude and joy and stuff that maybe I shouldn't talk about in a blog (Yes Happy holidays to you... no more Merry Christmas...Sigh, what's the world coming to?). But well, this year wasn't too quiet for my family because we got a new karaoke machine. It was awful listening to my siblings attempts to sing songs they didn't know and almost being pulled in to the torture of singing with them. Not that all the people in my family are bad singers, in fact for a lot of them it's the complete opposite of that, I guess I just wasn't so excited about the karaoke machine maybe because of all the loudness. People are loud. Karaoke machines are loud. Whatever happened to the wonderful Christmas afternoon naps? Yes Christmas morning with little kids opening presents ect. can be loud, but everyone knows that the afternoon must be quiet for underslept people like myself. Christmas without quiet afternoon is like a car without a horn (sorry that analogy doesn't make much sense it was just off the top of my head). Even though Christmas afternoon should be quiet, it wasn't for my family this year, so the bottom line is, if you need to catch up on sleep and are loyal to quiet Christmas afternoons, don't ever buy a karaoke machine for your family.

PS sorry if I sounded really bitter in this blog, the karaoke machine and everything else about Christmas was great this year, I just needed something I could complain and write about.

It usually pays to be prepared

Well it's blog time again, but this time I almost know what I'm going to write about... well almost.
Okay fine! I don't know what to write about. But you don't have to rub it in, gosh! Um... Well, so yesterday (there you go I'll tell you what I learned from a past personal experience) I had my very first ever flute recital. I've had thousands of piano recitals in the past but never before a flute recital. It was pretty intense. I'd say I played pretty ugh but not extremely terribly. So probably the reason I played ugh instead of good was because I was feeling unprepared.

A scout is always prepared, but some of us aren't always scouts. Now judging from the past, when I'm prepared for something, or I'm a scout so to speak, I usually do much better than when I'm not. I was definitely a scout last week when I was accompaning a singing quartet on the piano, but quite often in my procrastinating world, I am very far from being a scout (like my flute recital yesterday). However, not being prepared doesn't always mean that you're going to die. Just the other day we had a huge test in one of my classes at school. I didn't study or prepare for it or anything, in fact I had completely forgotten all about it, but I took the test anyways and I did just fine. Yet, if I would have been prepared I would have felt much more confident in myself and probably had done better on the test.

Even though preparedness doesn't always have the greatest influence on the outcome of certain events, in the end it's much safer to be prepared. Trust me I should know by now(or at least I hope I know by now. Arrgh! I only wish I had taken this advice before my flute recital).

Freedom accomplishes more

My parents left yesterday morning for Arizona and they won't be back for another four days. The freedom is wonderful! Yet every time my parents leave my brother and I home alone there's just one thing I can't understand. When they're gone, the house is amazingly clean all the time and everything seems to get done faster and run more smoothly. You'd think that when my parents weren't home, we'd just slack off and party, but actually it's the opposite. Everyone becomes much more responsible and does the stuff they're supposed to, and at the same time we're all more relaxed and life is easier. My brother doesn't neglect to take out the garbage like he usually does and I kind of take over the kitchen and keep it cleaner (I can't stand dirty kitchens!!(Ps when my mom is home I see it as her job to take care of the kitchen so I let the cleaner kitchen ambitions slip)). Anyways it's just weird that we're more productive when my parents aren't home, so to me it proves one of General George S. Patton's quotes:"Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity." Or maybe one of Abe Lincoln's too:"No man can govern another without the others consent." You see when my parents are at home telling me what to eat and when to got to bed, I'm going to rebel and eat what I want and go to bed late just in spite of them, even though I probably had the intention of eating and going to bed on time. But when they're not there nagging at me I'm free to do what I want or feel like I need to and that's usually something they would have been telling me to do. I guess the same thing can be said about piano lessons. A lot of the stuff my piano teacher assigns me becomes boring and burdensome, not because they're hard pieces or stuff I don't enjoy playing, but because they're things she assigned me, not that I assigned myself, so I don't want to practice as much and the pieces suffer. However, the pieces I like to play for fun and assign myself are often much more difficult then what she assigns, yet sound much nicer because I enjoy practicing something that I'm solely responsible for. Anyways I guess the bottom line is whether it be keeping the house clean or practicing the piano, a person is much more likely to get things done on their own accord then they are with someone else there constantly telling them what to do.
Ps even though everyone is more responsible when my parents leave, no one can get up as early as they do to turn on the heater, so you should be amazed at how long I've left my hands freezing hands out in the cold to type this blog.

Deprived

Yes, I the spoiled youngest daughter of eight kids, most of whom have left the house, am feeling deprived. Not from food, money or possesions, but from quite possibly the most vital thing our busy world has to offer. Sleep. I slept for 17 hours straight a few days ago, and even that wasn't enough to settle my undying need. Then why am I still sleepy?!! I could pin it on the communist like I usally do, but since this is supposed to be an analitcal blog I will enlighten you further.

School. Five out of the seven days of the week, millions of other students and I, are forced to stagger off to a disguised jail house and stay imprisoned there for 6 or more hours. We then sit through what seems like decades of monotnous lecutres and busy work. And if this torment isn't enough, after those six or more hours are finally over, we are un-lawfully given more busy work to take home with us. Isn't 6 hours enough? I'm already taking 6 whole hours out of my already sleep deprived day to only be given even less time to sleep? What is this world coming to?!

Work. I definetly shouldn't be the one talking when it comes to complaining about work,but I am anyway. My job at the library is great, especially compared to most other teenagers', but nevertheless I do work, and I still condsider it a crucial factor to my sleep loss. Every Saturday instead of trying to catch up on sleep, I have to force myself out of bed and go to my repetitve book job early in the morning. I wouldn't mind this so much if I weren't already feeling dead from my non-sleeping school week, but I have no control over that. Saturday is pretty much the only day that I could sleep, but instead it has gone down the drain to that wicked sleep stealing work monster.

Parents. My parents have absolutely no mercy when in comes to sleep deprived children. No matter how hard I try, there's just no use fighting against my parents' nagging in the mornings. Every day my mom comes into my room at unreal hours and tries to make me feel like a terrible person for sleeping. Pretty much now I've learned to ignore her because it's always the same: I haven't gotten out of bed yet, and I could have done so much, and I could have vacuumed the basement, and I made her take the dog out and the whole day is gone, and I could have finished putting up the Christmas decorations(wait! Seriously, who puts up Christmas decorations at 6 AM in the morning?) . Anyways she just goes on forever with these totally irrational things I "missed out" on for sleeping 15 minutes longer. It's ridiculus! But if I don't get up somewhat promptly she's in a bad mood for the rest of the day. Yet it's not fair because when my sleep deprived self gets up that early, I'm in a bad mood for the rest of the day. It's hopeless. Next week my parents are going to be gone for four days which could be sad for some people, but as for me, man! Am I looking foward to the sleep( which, however, by now I don't think is possible to cath up to ) .

Yes, we are all sleep deprived from time to time. It would be nice if the need for sleep would just go away, but then again maybe not because sleep is great. All I can say is, with this holiday season coming up, I know exactly what I want for Christmas. SLEEP!

Is it the food?

Well I just about died a few hours ago. Seriously, it was a very scary life threatening experience. You should be happy I'm still alive right now...or maybe you're not, but anyways. I ate two whole spoon fulls of my grandma's lettuce, raspberry, cranberry, pineapple, mayonnaise, jello and who knows what else concoction. Yes that's right two whole spoon fulls. But that was more than enough for me. I survived this same concoction on thanksgiving by casually handing the plate of whatever it was over to my mom, but today was different. When I tried to make my mom eat the stuff she mumbled to me in French, "Il faut que tu manger. Si tu peux manges un peu je vais finir." or something like that, I don't care much for proper French grammar, but it roughly means: "You have to eat. If you can eat a little, I will finish." So I ate some and it was terrible. I'm still gagging right now. I've decided that if there is one true reason as to why we celebrate Thanksgiving, it's not to give thanks, or gather with families, it's to deliberately try out disgusting food recipes on our relatives who can't complain and bring back the same disgusting foods year after year to torture them.

Now I'll admit, not all food at Thanksgiving is disgusting, especially foods like French silk pie (mmmm), but the small portion of Thanksgiving dinner that isn't so tasty out-does the other foods. It's like that one Mormon add with the delicious looking ice cream cone on it, but when you look closer at it, you see a bug sitting in the middle of the ice cream. Then at the bottom it says something like,"it's all good except for." Well that's the same way I feel about thanksgiving dinner. It's all good except for the stuff that isn't.

And why is it that after thanksgiving dinner you always feel as though you're about to explode? No, it's not because you've been eating too much food for too long like everyone says, it's because of the food you've been eating that shouldn't be considered food. I mean who ever heard of food making you full? Is it really the food that makes you full? Or is it... something else.

Well anyways you're probably sick of my talking about gross food. I guess we all just need to be thankful for the food we have on Thanksgiving, not how it tastes. But nevertheless, I will say that I'm extremely thankful that my grandma didn't bring her purple sour crout to Thanksgiving, but then again she usually brings that closer to around Christmas time so I should probably hold my tongue.

Hark! The Harold Angels Bring!

Okay, it's late and I've forgotten to write my blog so I'll write about the first thing I see which is a newspaper.
Newspaper deliverers are never given enough credit. Could you picture what life would be like if you opened your door every day to find your porch bare save that unwelcome welcome mat that you've had out since spring and need to replace with a Christmas mat soon? (Yes indeed, I'm excited for Christmas!)Horrible! News is a huge and vital part to our society and without it we would be extremely misinformed let alone informed at all. So who is the savior of our society, the angels of the harold? The Deseret in the Deseret news?(Or I guess it's Deseret Morning News now) That's correct the newspaper deliveres. I was once one myself for six years and boy was it an excellent experience. Even though I hated it like nothingelse most of the time, it was a once in a life time opritunity that I would never take back.

Imagine every day, no matter what the weather or special occasion, folding numerous papers with hands bleeding ink, making trips to billions of houses and giving the gift of intelligence. Its a tough job but somebodies got to do it. Most newspaper boys today (I'm going to say boys because its shorter than delivers and less confusing than carriers) drive wimpily around in cars. This is still pretty brutal, but back in my day, my brothers and I had to carry these huge newspaper bag thingys on our shoulders and walk from house to house. It was pretty rough, but at least I can say I got a pretty strong upper body from it, or at least I hope I did. Anyways, whether you're driving, walking, biking or scootering, delivering newspapers is harsh, yet extremly essential.

There's no slaking off when you have a newspaper out. I can rember every Christmas day and thanksgiving, dreading going out in the cold delivering papers and missing out on all the holiday fun. I have an older brother who once tried dumping all his newspapers into the canal that used to run by the side of our yard. Well it wasn't worth it, because they just reprinted more papers and expected him to deliver them, not to mention he got chewed out pretty well by my mom. Even when you try to go on vacation, there's no escaping your paper route. You have to find a dependable substitute and pay them way more than you would have gotten payed for delivering newspapers for a week or however long it was.

You'd probably expect me to say now that being a newspaper carrier is not worth it like I always say in my blogs, but no, newspaper people are amazing. They're like the pit orchestra in a play . :) Barely recognized yet so important.Jk, we're recognized but I hope you see what I'm saying. Newspaper carriers work hard and deserve much more than what they get. I expect all of you when you read this to wake up really early tomorrow and tell your newspaper boy how much you love him. No jk, you don't have to... unless you want to. But I hope you get my point, LONG LIVE THE NEWSPAPER PEOPLES!!

My Biggest Fear

There's a poster in the band room that says something like " nothing is boring." However, in that same band room there's another poster with my hero Yoda on it saying, "Adventure, heh! Excitement, heh! A jedi craves not these things." So which do I believe? Neither!Everything is boring! That's why a jedi like myself craves adventure and excitement. Seriously, probably the most exciting thing that happened to me this week, was... well I can't think of anything, so my week was obviously not that exciting. Why was it boring? I don't know I guess it was my own fault. I'm too shy and wimpy to ever do anything spontaneous. At the beginning of the school year I told myself I wasn't going to be annoyingly shy this year and actually talk and say hi to people in the halls ect. Well if you haven't noticed already I've completely failed. So I've got to thinking more about being shy lately. Why are people shy and what is shyness anyway? I've come to believe that shyness truly isn't bashfulness or embarrassment, but fear. Yes the fear of people. I can attest to this myself. I'd say my biggest fear in life is people and if I didn't have that fear, I'm sure I wouldn't be shy. So then why does a shy person fear people? Well who wouldn't? People can do such a variety things and be so scary, mean and powerful. There's no escape from them.
" They're everywhere!" It's not worth being a shy person, because the thing you fear the most is all around you. So if you're shy you're going to constantly be scared for the rest of your life. I'll remind you, "fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering" and all this is enough to make anyone bored with their lives. So if you're shy, now is the time not to be! Don't just try not to be shy, be not shy("Do or do not, there is no try")! I'm going to try (again) to take this challenge on myself, so if you start noticing how weird I am more often, you'll know that it is "A Change in Me"(lol pit orchestra). Now if you're still reading this, don't think you're bored because you're too shy, it's because you've put up with reading too many Yoda quotes, oh and one lord of the rings quote and a song from beauty and the beast... I think. Well anyways Happy not school day ( or maybe it is a school day when you're reading this, then in that case you're out of luck).

Yourself

The other day I was talking with(or at least she was talking to me) a friend. For some reasons she could not stop talking about herself. She just kept going on and on about how bad of a day she was having, and how tired she was, and oh my gosh she just tripped a second ago and it was embarrassing and how she must have done so bad on her math test etc. Well, I did what was asked of me and nodded every once in a while and tired to seem interested, but did she really think I cared? Now I'll admit, I'm not a very emotional or sympathetic person, especially for a girl, but this, as well as many other experiences of talking with people has made me realize that it's always a losing deal when you talk about yourself. All the good things you say about yourself, no one will believe, and all the bad things you say, people believe too much of. I myself am considered to be a fairly quiet, and un-talkative person. Part of the reason I don't talk so much is from experiences I've had of being annoyed with how much other people ramble on about themselves and being determined not to be like them. Sure maybe sometimes it's good to share a little bit about yourself, but when you share too much , it just turns into a discourteously to others. Talking about yourself can also be dangerous. I have a cousin who, whenever I say one little thing like,"I love chocolate ice cream," she'll immediately respond with a come back like," well so do I, and I this, and this" and suddenly it has turned into a competitive conversation, when all I said was that I liked ice cream. However it is pretty hard not to talk about yourself sometimes. We all know that everyone's favorite topic of conversation is themselves, but if you can refrain from this and just put up with listening to other people, I can guarantee you your life will be better. People will respect you for thinking that you're actually listening to them and you'll seem more humble. The question really isn't who actually likes listening to other people talk about themselves, but who likes being listened to?

Peter Pan was right about growing up

I once talked about how being the youngest of a big family is the best. I take that back, it isn't the best... it's the worst! Why? Well just the other day, my older brother Greg recived his mission call to the Vantura (spelling?) California spanish speaking mission (lol after 5 years of French) and just then when he received his call it hit me: what in the world am I supposed to do for two years while being cooped up in my house with my parents? Who's going to play football with me? Who's going to tell me what to do with my life? Who's going to make me almost good at tennis? Who's going to mow the lawn? The answer? Me! Being the youngest is great when the rest of your family is there, but when they leave, you're screwed. You know there's a reason I'm writing this blog right now. So I can practice speech writing for when I have to speak at all of my brother's and sister's funerals! However, I should also probably be practicing my hospitality and old people friendliness because I'm going to be the spry younger person who will have to take care of all the dying old people in my family. Yes being the youngest is great when you're young, but you're not young forever.

Concerning Color Guard

If there is one thing I just can't comprehend at any half time show or parade, its the flag twirlers in the marching band. I have nothing against the people themselves, infact I have many friends who are flag twirlers, but I just don't understand their purpose. Seriously, who actually knows what those gun-like baton thingys they have are supposed to be? Recently, I attended a football game and for the half-time show, out came the marching band with the color guard. The band was playing a tune in a minor key and the color guard came running out with these ridiculous black wings attached to their arms. At seemingly random parts of the piece, the flag twilers would flip in the air and flap their wings. Then when the music changed, they'd quickly run off the field, take off their wings, and pick up purple colored flags. Finally to top it all off, at the end of the song, one of them runs out all dressed all in black onto center field and begins frantically waving this tall black flag. As you can imagine, I was just completely baffled after watching all this .I can see the reason for the marching band being out there, playing entertaining music for people's ears, but why in the world do they have the color guard!? Once again, no offense to the color guard people themselves, but seeing that everyone I've asked this question to has yet to come up with an answer, I'm quite sure now that there is really no purpose to color guard, if not just to confuse me. PS If you have a legitimate reason for what color guard is there for, please email me or let me know. This question is very agitating.

You win, you win. You lose, you don't win.

Last Tuesday I played in a regional tennis tournament. I couldn't have asked for a better draw than the one I got. In my first round, the girl I was supposed to play was sick, so I got a buy. In the second round I had the opportunity to play someone who usually played 2nd doubles. Finally in the championship I was playing an old friend of mine from a summer league that I could easily beat. Then why did I lose!? When I was warming up, I was playing my best tennis. Then in the second round I was playing terribly, but luckily I still won. In the championship I was playing awful and so ofcourse I lost. After watching other people play tennis, and seeing myself winning all my region games and losing in the tournament, I've come to the conclusion that tennis requires more mental game than any other sport.
Tennis is the only sport in which it's just you against them. When you mess up, the only person there to blame is yourself. Other sports are never quite as individual and direct as tennis. In track, swimming, and golf, sure you're competing by yourself, but your opponent isn't right there in front of you immediately responding to all you do. And then to top that off, after every point you always have time to think about your mistakes or accomplishments.
Intimidation is another factor that heightens the mental game of tennis. Some people on my team who played doubles, once had the opportunity to play against this extremely intimidating girl. She was very tall ,muscular and blonde and she would wear a sweat towel on her head while she entered the court. Our team won , but it took a lot of mental ability for them to beat the "towel girl."I've even tried a little bit of intimidation on other people myself, and boy does it work. I used to play doubles over the summer and my partner and I would stand on the other side of the court and act like we were discussing the other teams strategies. Then we'd point at random places on their court as if they were weak spots or something. It worked. The other team would be focusing on those spots that we were pointing out and they would forget to focus on the game. We would also try grunting for each other, but I'm not sure that had the same effect. Also, mental game is such a big factor in tennis that on the video game Topspin, they've even included a button you can press after ever point called the "attitude now" button that raises your players mental ability. If you press it a lot, your player plays better and makes harder shots, just like you'd play in a real game with a good mental game.
The mental game of tennis is huger than any other sport's mental game. You can be physical and athletic, but you could never survive in tennis without a good mental game.

How Batman Began (not really, just a good title)

This past week, two of my little nieces and my nephew came to visit. They had a great time being at "grandma's house" and playing with all the old toys my parents had accumulated after having eight children. There are six boys in my family, so we have a monsterous supply of cars, army men, GI joes and all the other cool stuff that little boys like to play with. However, our supply of dolls and girly toys is limited because there's only me and my sister who ever played with little girl's things, and we actually tended to like boys things more when we were little because of our brothers. After watching my nieces and nephew play with my old stuff, I came to notice how different girl toys are from boy toys and it made me think that maybe toys and the way we treat children have more to do with the way they turn out when they're older than we think.
Little boys always get to play with the army men, the GI joes and the re-mote controlled cars, outside in the mud, whereas little girls are inside playing with soft, baby Sue and gentlely feeding her from a plastic bottle. When a little girl falls off her bike what do we do? We rush over to her and say, "Ohhh, you poor little thing. Are you okay? Do you want a band-aid? Do you want me to get you some ice cream?" But when a little boy falls off his bike people say, "you're okay buddy. Walk it off, you're tough." From the start boys are subconciously taught to be macho men and girls princesses. However in some famililes, like mine, there is sometimes a shortage of girl or boy toys, or maternal or faternal care. These tend to be families that bring forth the variety of tom-boys and tom-girls into our society. Some kids are raised thinking they're the best at everything, and they will be. Others are raised thinking they're worth nothing and don't deserved to be loved and boy, will they struggle. Ofcourse there are always exceptions to this, but generally the way you're brought up tends to be the way you turn out. I've seen it in my own life and many other's lives. But the real question is, who started this treatment? Why do we do the things we do?... I guess I'll end this with a quote from "Man of La Mancha" or maybe its "Cameolot?"Anyways some lady sings,"Why does he do the things he does?" ( sorry this ending probably doesn't make too much sense, but that song always comes into my head whenever someone says why and its a good song...don't you think?)

Ice Cream, Joy of Man's Desiring

As I'm sitting here writing this blog, I am being EDIFIED by a thick bowl of Superman ice cream. If there is one thing this world could not go on without, I'm sure it would be ice cream. In all circumstances, ice cream prevails. Every time anyone is feeling bad, what do they eat? Ice cream. After a great accomplishment in one's life, what does he/she eat? Ice cream. When someone is about to die in the hospital, what does he/she eat? Ice cream. If we truly analyze our lives, we will find that all things rotate around our intake of ice cream. We would all be dead without it. I beg to differ with Sarah McLachlan's hit song, " Your love is better than ice cream." She was obviously high on something, drunk, or just plain stupid when she wrote this song. Nothing in the world could possibly come close to being better than ice cream. I'm serious! Not even your love. Your love will fall like rain on the mountain, whereas ice cream has and always will stand tall in deliciousness. Just thinking of the cold, cool, cream and the smooth taste makes one not want to throw up, like one would when one thinks of your love, but live forever just to die another day. Ice cream is by far the greatest substance on the planet. It does not cease to brighten our lives daily. Greater love hath no man this, but to eat ice cream . Thank you.