Thanksgiving Break

Alright, I was going to start writing this yesterday... But Amanda was very adamant about my getting a tumblr so that the two of us could spam each other all day every day. We figured it would be the best way to keep the internet entertaining because Facebook doesn't hold the same value anymore. Anyway, I promised a  Thanksgiving post... so a thanksgiving post I will provide.

My mom decided that we would have Thanksgiving at our house this year, which hasn't happened for a VERY long time. So we spent a very long time cleaning the house on Wednesday and even Thursday morning trying to get everything ready for when everyone arrived. Now you have to understand that Thanksgiving in my family is with a bunch of family friends that are from different areas of Scandinavia (mainly Norway, and we are the only Swedish group in the mix).  And we have the normal Thanksgiving food but we also have a few "abnormal" traditions regarding food and such. Anyway, part of our group wasn't going to be there because they were in Norway... or Texas, no one really had much of a clue. But that wasn't the worst of it, my grandmothers best friend's husband, Leif, has been suffering from Alzheimers for about 10 years.. and he passed away at about 3 on Thursday  So not only was our group significantly smaller than it usually is... it was also a lot more depressing than normal. We still had fun, but everything was quite a bit less conversational at times. At least we know that he isn't suffering anymore.
On another less depressing note, the food was absolutely amazing.
Every year on Black Friday, my family has the tradition of going up to a small town called Sonora and spending the day there. We always get up there and go to the movies, ( This year we saw Wreck-it- Ralph, which was absolutely adorable) and then around 2 we go over across the street to Wal-Mart and laugh at everything that is absolutely ridiculous in there. I take a picture of the funniest thing I see every year. The past two years have involved some sort of Christmas decoration that has Santa sitting in a bathtub. After we are done there we find our usual spot for their town Christmas parade and wrap ourselves up in blankets and eat cookies. Then we go to all the little shops, specifically to this Ornament store called Dorthea's that has the best Christmas ornaments every year. Then we get dinner and go home.
On Saturday morning I went to Pete's Coffee with Quinn because she was back from college and we wanted to hangout before she left again the next morning. We filled each other in with all of our stories. It was great, I've missed her a lot. Then I finished my UC application, and by the time we were done.. we got ready to leave to go to the Dickens Fair, which I have basically been excitedly waiting for since we went last year. I want one of the costumes so bad its ridiculous. After we were done we went to the other side of the building and saw a San Francisco Bull's hockey game, and they won! Which was great because last time I went they didn't do so well. Still not as amazing as a Shark's game.. but it will have to do for now.
Sunday I spend ALL day working on college apps and got all but 1 of them done. That and I have an interview for the Sequoia Awards on December 4th. Everything is getting super exciting!!!

Alright... I have to get going to ceramics soon. Hopefully this post will be ok until I can find something else to write about. I know it's not the most entertaining thing but if you are anything like Amanda, then apparently you all like reading about my boring daily life.

This made my day

Okay, so I have been really bored and just surfing the Internet when I stumbled upon this beautiful thing. I would post the letter it generated for me, but I would like to keep that to myself... and a couple of my closest friends ( they know who they are). But, I figured that I would leave the link for all of you to enjoy ( http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1ixqeC/www.breakupemail.com/dump.php/). Honestly, I think its brilliant and it totally helps to stop any anger you might have against someone.
My favorite part? This option that they gave you as a sendoff line: "I hope maggots devour your testicles."
I thought it was beautiful.

Thanksgiving post to come in a couple days! In the meantime... I'll just be fasting and preparing myself to be utterly starving for my favorite meal of the whole year. Only the best holiday's involve gorging yourself with food.

Returning to Normality

I want to sincerely apologize. I have been absolutely terrible lately... I haven't posted in a week. The boredom must have been killing you, and I agree with the fact that I have been super lame about it. But, I have some really good news to go along with the fact that I haven't been blogging for a while. So hopefully I can redeem myself with the fact that my absence does not go without reason. And to make it up to you, I will try to make this post as lengthy as possible to recap all of the exciting things that I have done recently. So... here goes!
I'll begin with my explanation for why I haven't been blogging. To be perfectly honest, it because I couldn't find anything interesting to talk about. Nothing that has been going on has been interesting enough to write about, and (here comes the news...  you ready for it!?!) I no longer have any emotional rants to go on about because I am pretty much completely over that kid whose name shall never be mentioned on this blog. That's right, I have finally been able to shift away from all that nonsense and free myself. So you can all rejoice because you will never again have to deal with the hopeless rants of this once heartbroken 17 year old girl. I'm not exactly sure what caused this change of mind-set, it sort of just happened. I'm glad though, it makes things a lot easier, even if I do still have to deal with all of his friends being super obnoxious about it all. Anyway, I'm done with this topic for good, so let's move on to much more fun stuff. Awesome :)
So last Friday was the Sequoia vs. Carlmont football game. I went, didn't have as much fun as I had hoped for 3 reasons: 1) It was absolutely freezing and since I had been sitting outside in the cold since 3:30 that afternoon with no jacket, I was beginning to develop a slight concern that I could be contracting some sort of sickness. 2) Most of my friends didn't go, so I felt like a third wheel the entire time to one of my friends and his girlfriend who were huddled together next to me and 3) I couldn't even get into the game because we were so far ahead and they weren't even putting up much of a fight that I couldn't even find entertainment in watching it anymore. But we are going to the playoffs, our first game being tomorrow against M.A. Crossing my fingers that we do really well again!
On Saturday morning I was volunteering at the local Second Harvest food bank for Jr. Fair Board. I was put on duty for sorting through all of the donated items to make sure they were ok and safe for consumption. I had no idea that people donate so much JUNK. It was almost sad how much food we had to throw away because it had either expired, been pre-opened, was perishable, or the container had been damaged. And you have to understand, the expiration dates on most things aren't exactly accurate and you can still use them up to 3 years after the date on the container, and even with that criteria there were a significant amount of items that had expired as early as 2002 that we had found. It became really entertaining to see who could find the weirdest things. Some of my favorites, both good and bad were the expired pre-cooked canned snails that were imported from France, the multitudes of Spam, a stack of opened adult diapers that had turned grey, funnel cake batter and a pouring spout to go with it, luxury olive oils, opened jars of peanut butter, and a rotten banana. I think I sorted through a couple thousand cans at the table I was at alone... it was the craziest 3 hours of my life and I would do it again in a heartbeat. Later that night my family and I went up to the Cow Palace for a SF Bulls hockey game. It was nice to be able to go and watch hockey again since the NHL is on lockout right now (I'm super depressed about that) but given the fact that they are a brand new team and thus aren't doing so well... the energy just isn't anywhere near what I'm used to. Plus I miss my San Jose Sharks </3, my school year just isn't the same without them. I did have a lot of fun though, and will most definitely go to more games this year.
On Sunday, I spent the day in San Fransisco with my family to celebrate the long weekend. We decided to do all of the touristy things since that's not normally something we do. We went to pier 39, I got a Left-Handed notebook at the Lefty's store (I can't even begin to describe how wonderful it is to not have to write over that stupid spiral spring wire thing anymore.) and we got clam chowder in a bread bowl at our favorite restaurant down there. We also went to both the Wax Museum and Ripley's Believe it or Not. We then walked down to Fisherman's wharf and went to go see the Balclutha (its an old sailing ship) so my dad and I could relive some old memories from when we went on a historical field trip thing on it when I was in 4th grade. And of course, we had to stop at Ghirardelli Square. So much chocolate, it was wonderful. And we got home early enough that we decided to watch Beetlejuice and relax. It was great, I was super happy and full of sourdough and chocolate.
Finally, the last super cool thing that I did this week happened yesterday. So my friend Dani has been inviting me to go to her church's Youth Group meetings for a while now and they either get cancelled or I'm not able to go. But last night I was finally able to and had so much fun. I met so many new people and they were all super friendly, it was super great. I would talk about it more but a lot of what happened was really personal and prayer oriented, but in just one night I got so much closer to Dani and I can't even begin to explain how perfect that night was and how much I needed that. I'd go into it more, but since I know some people get uncomfortable with it and I want to respect that, I'm trying to leave all the spiritual aspects out. But I am most definitely going to be going a lot more in the future.

So yeah, that's what I have been doing the past week in a nutshell. Hope it wasn't to sporadic or anything. And I'll try to get back to my normal schedule and blog a lot more again. Thanks for holding out for me!

Today's Google Doodle

Sorry I really haven't been blogging much, I would but honestly... I really don't have anything to talk about anymore. My life is becoming increasingly less interesting. I am not exactly sure if this is a good or a bad thing yet...
Anyway, I went onto google today to look something up and pretty much screamed. Apparently today is Bram Stoker's birthday, so they made the google doodle all Dracula themed. I was so excited because not only was I in that show 3 years ago, but the doodle depicted every single one of the characters in the story. It brought back so many memories and I think I smiled so hard my face cracked.
So for those of you who haven't seen it, here is what it looks like:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/1108/breaking22.html

More posts to come soon, I promise.

weekend catchup

This week has been so exhausting. It was really fun don't get me wrong, I thoroughly enjoyed it... but oh my god this weekend has not been even close to being long enough so that I can recover from everything.
I'm very sorry about the fact that I have been so inconsistent the past week or so, I just haven't been able to just sit down and work. I promise that as soon as things start to calm down that this will all change. It might be a few weeks considering college apps are due very soon, but it will happen.
Despite the fact that this week was homecoming week, and considering that usually entails a lot of excitement of some sort... it was fairly dull. Sure, the Giants won the World Series and everyone was pretty hyped up about that, but since I have been at Sequoia, this was by far the least spirited homecoming week. Of course, I tried to be just as spirited as always, regardless of what everyone else was doing.
My two highlights of the week were Halloween and hall decorating...which I guess were in some ways the same thing this year since they fell on the same day. Halloween was amazing because of my friends. A group of 8 of us dressed up as the different characters from Alice in Wonderland and had a tea party at lunch. We were absolutely adorable and had the most creative group costume in school by far. And then hall decorating has always been my favorite thing to begin with, but we managed to make our hallway absolutely amazing this year, to the point where we topped our spongebob hallways last year. But, apparently, the judges didn't agree on that... so we tied for 2nd... with the Sophomores, who had a horrible hallway... and the Freshman won. So we will forever be known as the first senior class to ever lose to freshman.. I cried. It was not only embarrassing but ridiculous, we had put so much more time and effort into everything.. only to have that happen. I don't even want to think about it anymore... it just makes me depressed.

Also... there was a bit of a surprise for me by the end of the week that I wasn't expecting. So Lorenzo had invited his friend who is a German Exchange student at a school in Petaluma to our homecoming dance... and my friends took this opportunity to decide that this kid... whether he liked it or not, would become my date for homecoming. I met him the night before at the football game. His name is Luca, and he is very, very attractive (not to mention about 3 inches taller than me)!  I have t o admit, I honestly didn't feel like I deserved to be set up with someone like that so I was nervous to talk to him at first... only to find that he was either incredibly boring or incredibly shy. Honestly, after two days I couldn't tell.. he was very difficult to read. I had a lot of fun with everyone though, even though there were a few rough spots, the past 2 nights were so much fun it feels like its happened over a span of like half a week and not merely 24 hours.

So yeah, that's a very brief and positive summation of everything that happened. I'll bring everything back to normal soon.

Homecoming week

So today marked the start of Homecoming week. It was pajama day today, so no one was really over the top crazy... the craziest thing that people wore was wearing onesies. I tend to be really fond of people that go over the top with spirit days, I try to most of the time but somethings are really difficult to do. So that caused me to end up running into some internal problems. I was pretty much fighting between memory and reality... again. I really wish that I could just get rid of all of those memories so that none of this would even matter. Unfortunately that isn't possible. My hope is that my stupid emotions won't get in the way of having fun the rest of homecoming like its seemed to have put a damper on pretty much everything else at school this year. At least tomorrow I can feel comfortable tomorrow since its miss-matched day... which is pretty much what I wear every day. They need to rename it after me. No, I'm not that special. I'm getting super excited for Halloween though. It's going to be perfect. Just you wait.

...

I was thinking about how I was feeling about life this summer as compared to now. Understandably, with that I thought was going on this summer, I was in a good mood, and really excited fro school to start back up again. I kept telling everyone how this year was going to be different. Yeah, we were going to start out senior year and everything but the entire time I only had one person on my mind. In a way, I was right, about pretty much everything. This year is different, really different, and it is all because of that one person. I just never saw the deception and ambiguity of it all. I have no idea how everything changed so fast, and I'm pretty sure that I will never know. I can't tell you how many times I have played through the past three years in my mind thinking about all of the things I could have done differently so that none of this would have happened. Yeah, it's been painful (which I've made blatantly obvious) and it will continue to be for what I'm assuming will be quite a while, but I have learned a lot. I'm not saying I took that ... whatever we had... for granted, I didn't, but I was foolish to think that there was no risk of ever losing that. Deep down I knew the risks of that for a really long time, but I chose to ignore that. And now that everything has ended, I can't even take the time to appreciate it for what it was. And I have no idea what the future holds, but it breaks my heart to think about any of it at the moment. I used to imagine how we would keep in contact in college and still be friends after high school ended. I guess that was just another foolish thought.
What makes me feel even more foolish is the fact that none of anything seems to matter to him. So while I'm sitting around constantly thinking of old inside jokes or conversations, and how there are so many things that I won't be able to watch or listen to or anything for a long time because of the association, he doesn't care about any of it. Not even the fact that I'm the reason he was able to pass about 4 of his classes....
I wish I knew why things like this happen, I know we need to grow and learn and make mistakes, but sometimes the troubles we go through seem ridiculous and unnecessary. He really is a good person, and I hope he goes far in life and is happy, if not, that would probably break my heart more than it is now.

I'm starting to crumble

I'm really stressed out right now so I need to take a break from everything. I've been working on college apps, scholarship apps, a conference app, and my homework all at the same time. It's only slightly crazy.
And I feel bad because all of this stress has prevented me from being able to blog at all. So I'm really sorry that I've been MIA recently, I've been trying to find time to write, but all attempts have availed me.
I'm also having problems with just thinking right now. I seem to have this need to torture myself at the moment. I don't really know whats going on, but i think it's because of the fact that I'm having such an incredibly hard time letting go. I feel like I'm suck inside a rubber band, every time I get close... I snap back harder than before. I'm desperately trying to get out of this, I'm sick of this aching pain that I get with every memory.
That's the other problem, as much as I'm angry and hurt and everything... I find it impossible to hate him. Part of it is the fact that everything that we had gone through in the past has kept me from it. And I keep defending him, like that's going to do me any good. I mean, this is freaking insane... the things he said and did were terrible but I feel the need to defend the fact that he is a good person, even now. I'm starting to see the fault in my inability to see the bad in everyone expect myself.

I also finally bought Taylor Swift's new album. Half of the songs on there are pretty much a compilation of what is going on in my head. Hence the reason why I am torturing myself. I've been listening to it on repeat and have been on the verge of tears at least 6 times. I'm 80% sure this unhealthy. The only things that are keeping me together at the moment are Amanda, my grades (they are amazing at the moment, so it's a major confidence boost), and my mom. All of my friends have been great, and I'm super thankful for them for putting up with me... I know it's exhausting, and I'm trying to keep as much of it to myself as possible so that they don't get sick of me.

And there... it happened, I wrote yet another obnoxious post that I have been trying so hard to avoid. I'm surprised people don't stop reading my blog because of all of this. I'm being quite the stereotypical whiny teenager. Thanks for putting up with me.


"Hey you called me up again just to break me like a promise
So casually cruel in the name of being honest
I'm a crumbled up piece of paper lying here
Cause I remember it all too well..."