Ghostssssssss

So, Mrs. Matthews read a "Kentucky" ghost story today in class. It was a stereotypical "hitchhiker" story--you know, it was raining/storming, it was night, and it was a guy. Why are all these stories at night, when it's storming? I think it'd be scarier during the day, when it's really sunny. I think that scary movies being at night is so overdone and cliche. Of course it's scary, because you can't see 2 feet in front of your face and it's dark and you don't know what's there. Still, I think a scary movie (or book, or story) set during the day would be scarier, because you can see exactly what's there and don't have the almost comforting cover of darkness. If you can't see the serial killer following you, you can pretend that maybe it's only your long-lost Uncle Joe who wants to give you a big hug. Yeah.

Ah, the unending joy that is Fall Break

Not. I get to spend my fall break holed up in the 'boro, which is totally cool because there's so much stuff to do here. (Haha, see how I did that? I took an obviously untrue statement and made it look like it was true! And it's funny because it's all sarcastic! Oh, am I not a constant source of comedic genius?) Well, it is rather nice to be up at 11:18 on a Sunday night not worrying about school the next morning or berating myself for not going to bed earlier. I did do something (vaguely) useful today; I finally read two of the books that I got from the library ages upon ages ago. Yeah, I read TWO books. In one day. And I'm not talking little kid's picture books, either! These are legit 300 page books! TAKE THAT, librarian from elementary school who wouldn't let me check out Black Beauty because it was "past my grade level". Yeah.

Anyway, for fall break I get to stay home and sleep. Maybe. If my parents can be bothered to recognize my requirements for sleep as a teenager and not force me to get up at ungodly hours, like my dad likes to do some Saturdays. He'll send up a little brother to slam open the door as loudly as possible, scream in a high, shrill, little-kid-voice "GET UP, KAFRIN!! GET UP!!!!" and if I'm lucky and it's Ian, he'll start clapping loudly and obnoxiously if I don't spring out of bed immediately. And then my dad will start to yell up the stairs for me to come down and make breakfast for my little brothers, or worse, help him make breakfast or some other menial chore.

Well...they said something this morning on the way home from church about maybe ending up going somewhere. But I really doubt we'll actually go anywhere besides Evansville, maybe, and the only reason I'd get to go is to keep my mom company while she plays SAG wagon for my dad and brothers while they're on a bike ride. Don't ask what a SAG wagon is, because I don't know what the letters stand for. But it's basically a person who drives around after the cyclists, with energy bars and extra water bottles and such in the car and picks them up if they get a flat or it's too hot or they're just whiny little brats, like my 13 year old brother. I really loathe it, but we might get to stop off for an hour or two at the mall while they're having fun terrorizing the town with the sight of their spandex-clad legs. Buuuuut I doubt it.

It is so boring not being able to afford a vacation. I've long since learned to stop whining about not going to Florida for every break like pretty much everyone else in Owensboro does, but we haven't even been to St. Louis in forever. My dad has some friends near there, and we visit a few times a year, but not lately. Well, I'd be bored the whole time anyway because all they ever do is sit around and talk about the old days or people they met in Europe before my parents were even married. Sorry, mom and dad, but I really don't find it interesting. And the worst part is that we never even go into the city and do anything. We've gone to the zoo a couple of times, and I like that, but that's it. I always want to go to the City Museum, or to actually go do something--woah.

I've been listening to music I have on my laptop, and it was on a playlist, and I just realized what song was playing. I totally listened to "Hide and Seek" without even realizing it. I love when I do that--when I zone out about something and then don't realize I was zoned out until a little bit later. It's like going to sleep, but getting something done in the process. Sometimes I'll do that while playing the Star Spangled Banner before a football game. It's probably disrespectful, but I've played it so. Many. Times. It just gets tedious, so I kind of zone out and think about what I'm going to do after the football game. (Which usually involves going home and sleeping, unlike most of my friends who hang out together for hours after. But their parents aren't super-strict parents who yell at you for actually hanging out with friends. I'm going to go through a LOT of therapy because of them.) But then I kind of wake up and notice that we're playing the last note and I'm like "...Cool, that's over with."

Well, this was definitely one of my more random posts. And it took me exactly 40 minutes to write. 'Cos it's 11:48 now.

Words cannot express how much I want the canopy for that bed. Like, if I was to get one present this year for Christmas...well, ok, I'd still ask for a magical wallet or superpowers (but I'd get to pick) or a unicorn, BUT I really love this thing. It's so cool...I mean, it's got STARS on it. At least, I think that's what they are. Anyway, I stumbled on it while procrastinating my biology vocab words. But they're done now! Promise!
So I'm a huge Glee fan, and tonight I watched the latest episode online. And now I'm obsessed with Lea Michele's version of "Papa, Can You Hear Me?" Barbra Streisand (of course) originally sang it in Yentl, which is just a cool name for a movie. I've never seen it but if it's a musical, I really want to.
I have absolutely no reason to love musicals, because they're completely unrealistic. Five hundred people breaking into perfectly choreographed dance, all while perfectly singing the words to a song they've NEVER heard before? Goodbye, reality! But nevertheless, I'm a sucker for them. And Glee is my biggest weakness. It's my sort-of-guilty-pleasure-but-not-really. ANYHOO.
The song she(Rachel) sings is really beautiful. I'm not particularly religious--I go to church because my parents make me and I call myself Catholic for lack of a better option--but I still love the song. Interestingly enough, though, this time it's not just the music that I like. I actually like the lyrics, too--the imagery is beautiful. But see, if these words were just written out on a page and called poetry, I'd hate it. It has to be set to music for me to get it/appreciate it. I absolutely loathe most poetry--it's much too...oh, I can't even find the word. It's too left for interpretation, and too deep. It's just so pretentious, with its funny line breaks and conventional unconventional-ism. Like, "I'm poetry. You can't judge me because I'm art." But it's exactly what everyone else does! It's not unique.
I do like haikus, though. And Shel Silverstein-type poetry. But I'll pass on the red wheelbarrow, ok?
Yay, long post. I love when I go on semi-rants and they actually kind of make sense.
Edit: the picture's from IKEA, by the way.

Procrastination & Doodling

I think that this year especially has been hard on me as a student, and having a full honors load certainly doesn't help. I have AP US History, Honors English, Honors Biology,  and Honors Algebra II. Well...actually, it doesn't look like much, but the workload is ridiculous. I've spent the past few minutes looking at my agenda from the past 5 weeks, and I love reading the little blurbs and trying to decipher the tiny doodles I draw during a boring class. I almost always draw the same thing, which is a girl with an angular face and huge eyes, huge hair, and some elaborate dress or other costume. She's all over my papers, my agenda, random bits of paper I tear from graded worksheets, everything. I don't know why she's the only thing I ever doodle. Well, not really. I do try to doodle other things, but they end up looking scribbley and messy and not cool doodle-y like you'll see if you're watching a commercial about school supplies or something. My doodles are either totally awesome drawings that I then cut out and tape to my wall by my bed, or useless, scratchy splotches on paper that is immediately discarded.

After this year

It's almost October, and everyone already is ready for school to be over. It seems like the teachers are worried that something's gonna come along and make the year end early, so they have to get ALL of their work in now. I have been slammed with a ton of work this week and last week, and it's stressing me out so badly. I barely get any sleep because I'm doing so much homework, not to mention academic team, band, and oh, I don't know, friends? Ugh. I guess I need to get used to it, though, because I think it'll be like this until I graduate. College, that is.

In other news, this is my puppy, Beau! This picture is a couple of months old, so he's much bigger now, but he's still just as cute. His full name is Beauregard, but we just call him Beau because Beauregard is a bit of a mouthful.
He's the first dog I've had, because my parents were always busy with something or other and didn't want a pet. We finally got him in April, when he was about 4 months old.
I really like animals, and having a dog has helped me realize that. I mean, I don't want to be a vet or anything, but I definitely want to have pets later in life. Maybe a couple of dogs. I do know that I'm a dog person, though. It's not that I don't like cats, it's just that I'd rather have an animal that is affectionate and whatnot. Cats are usually aloof and ignoring and whatnot, and a dog is all "I LOVE YOU I LOVE YOU". Haha, especially Beau.

Random life

So, we got our new class shirts today. I like the front, but the back is a off. It's got the "V-I-C-T-O-R-Y, that's our [INSERT CLASS HERE] battle cry! Yay, rah-rah, [INSERT CLASS HERE]!!!!" Whatever, it's a free t-shirt.
Last night I watched the first episode of the new season of Glee, and it. Was. AMAZING. I know a lot of people don't like it because it's cheesy, or it's unrealistic (or maybe too realistic, in some cases) or whatever, but I like it.

Band

After school today, I have to go to band practice from 3:30 to 5:30. I really do like band, and  I think it's a lot of fun, but sometimes it gets tiring. Well, obviously it's tiring, because you're running around for 2 hours on the blacktop holding up a heavy horn and trying to keep the form and making sure your feet are in the beat and looking around at the form to make sure you're in the right spot and watching the field commander to make sure you're playing in time and then there's the whole business of playing your music. So, if anyone ever tells you that band is easy, they are lying to you. But it is fun. We have our first contest a week from Saturday, and I'm really nervous. We did a bunch of chopping up the show--we ditched the third movement entirely and used the back half of the opener as the closer. Our ballad this season is actually Scheherazade by Rimsy-Korsikov, which is really pretty. If you've never heard it, you should go listen to it on Youtube right now.  It's actually a story about this king whose first wife is unfaithful to him, so he is now convinced that all women are nasty cheaters, so every day he marries a new girl, and then at night he chops her head off. All this goes on for a long time before this chick Scheherezade, who starts telling him a story that's so intriguing that he doesn't kill her, because he wants to hear the rest of the story. She keeps spinning it out, telling story after story for a thousand and one nights. Finally, after she tells the last story, the king has fallen in love with her, so he doesn't kill her. And all of those stories make up the Thousand and One Nights. And so that's our second movement!

Antediluvian

That was a word on our vocab quiz today--antediluvian. It means "before the flood", like before Noah's flood, i.e., very very old. I think it's a cool word. It just kind of flows- antediluuuuuuuvian. I like it.

 On another note, I found these hand-painted Converses online. They have peacocks on them! They look super cool and I really want a pair, but they're kind of expensive.


http://www.etsy.com/listing/52604216/hand-painted-peacock-converse

Ooer, I've never put a picture on a post before. This should be interesting. 

Being Tired

If you ask a teenager how they are today, 9 out of 10 will probably say "Tired." I think it's pretty ironic that adults tell us that this is the best time of our lives; that this is when we'll feel our best and have the most energy. Being a teenager, I have no idea what they're talking about. I wake up every morning feeling as tired as I did the night before. I don't wake up refreshed and ready to start the day, instead I wake up groggy and irritated. No matter what time I go to bed, if I wake up I want to go back to sleep. It's not that I'd rather sleep than anything else, it's just that I feel that I don't get nearly as much as I should. Part of it is my fault--I procrastinate on homework ALL the time. But I think part of it is my daily schedule. I have a LOT of things going on.

Dreams

In my Psychology class, we had to keep a dream journal for a week and write down all the dreams we had in a week. I had only two that I remember. 
In the first one, my dad was the new principal at Apollo. As a welcome present, he got a giant blue swordfish that was really a boat. We went out the the river (except not the Ohio or the Green, some random river. But it was like tropical--all blue and clear and pretty.) And then he let me drive/ride it. It was fun.

And then, in the other dream, I was a secret agent in Russia or something and I was trying to escape from the good guys (I was a bad guy) and I got caught. But then I was living at my house with a family of talking elephants. I don't think I liked the mother elephant that much. They decided to go to try and live at the Africa-themed Busch Gardens, so they could live a more "natural" life. They were also scared because there had been terrible storms and flooding around our area so they wanted to get out before it got worse. When they left, though, they left their newborn baby. It was so sad, just standing there looking at its mom and dad, and so I got really mad at the mother elephant for leaving her baby. (Side note: I often have super-long, epic dreams where the different parts totally don't relate to each other.) And THEN, I was a student at a spy academy, where you would go to learn how to be a spy, and I was about to graduate, when the school was taken over by some bad guys or something. And the part I was most upset about was that when students graduated from this academy, they got these huge blocks of candy that were like giant, square lollipops without a stick. But the school was destroyed before I got mine, which made me mad.

I don't know if I think that dreams mean something or not. I mean, I could see how some people would get meaning out of the dreams. Like, I drove the Suburban the other day with my dad so that could relate to the giant swordfish. But other than that, it just seems like random stuff.

I have weird dreams.

Blogging

I don't have much to write about. Well, that's not true. As a high school junior, there's certainly plenty of writing fodder that goes around, but I can't express it. And there are so many things to write about, I don't know what to pick. Not being able to identify people is weird, too. I mean, are we supposed to use false names or say "my friend" and "my other friend" five hundred times? That would get tedious after a very short while.
This year I'm a junior. It's...interesting, to say the least. The year has barely started and already there is drama flying around like hummingbirds on caffeine. I really hate that term, though. Drama? It's so broad. It could mean theater, like acting, or it could mean "Ohmygosh, did you hear that Cindy's boyfriend cheated on her with Nancy? Oh, and Ellen is SUPER mad at you for not saying hello back in the hallway. And Brenda is OBVIOUSLY trying to steal Valerie's boyfriend."  Just stupid things that are escalated until everybody forgets what they were about in the first place. Most of the time it's just a misunderstanding that could have been easily resolved if both parties had acted somewhat mature about the incident.

Not that I have any experience with that or anything.

First Post

So, this is my first post. I need to work on my APUSH homework, but I can't figure it out. We're supoposed to "create" this man from the contents of an imaginary wallet. I have a scenario all set up, but I don't know if it's right or not. I'm tired, though, so I'll probably finish it in a few minutes and work on it tomorrow morning in study hall. Junior year has barely started and already I'm being absolutely SWAMPED with homework. Hopefully this year will be a good year, although, judging by the amount of work I'm getting, it's going to be rather tedious.