It's Time For Me To Curl Up With A Good Book

It's eight on a Monday evening and I'm ready to fall asleep at my desk. Thanksgiving break was glorious but all good things must come to an end. Rehearsals start up again and finals are next week. I'm not worried or stressed out, I just am having a slower start before kicking back into high gear.

I got an A+ on my film critique. My very first college essay and I got an A! I'm very excited.

Thankful

I'm thankful for my family. Thankful for my Mom who takes care of us on her own. Thankful for my Dad who lives without his family so that he can support us. I'm thankful for five siblings that offer companionship and smiles, at least on most days.


I'm thankful for my friends, Oregon, Cali and Washington ones. My life keeps changing and I'm very blessed to be constantly surrounded by people who change with me and also allow me to branch out in new ways.


I'm thankful for Alex who has brought a ray of sunshine into my bumpy life. I never realized how well my mirror opposite could smooth the edges of my fiery personaity.


I'm thankful for my car and for all the days it continues to run. I'm thankful for my family on all the days it doesn't run and they bail me out of unpleasant situations.

I'm thankful for college, which I've been looking forward to for many years. I'm so excited to unlock my potential and dive down into an academic discipline, as soon as I pick one out.

I'm thankful for my passions and my imagination which always keep me wanting more and motivate me to follow my dreams.

Performed in 2 Nutcracker Preview Shows Today

I have two comments for this evening.

First, nothing ages you faster then an injured back.

Second, The Reader, starring Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, is a very sad movie. It starts off very hot with the affair between Hanna and Michael which involved plenty of sex and nudity as you can imagine, before progressing to the trial. Hanna is on trial because a Jewish women wrote a book about her experiences in the concentration camps where Hanna served as a guard. Michael, a law student, at the time, helplessly watches the trial with his class.

The film is so depressing in the end because of unfulfilled emotional needs in the characters. In the end, they both must pay the consequences for not being honest and not taking the steps to make it right between them. I can't imagine why two people in love would reject their feelings only to have them control and monopolize their lives.

Does fate come into play here? I've never truly believed in fate, yet in the context of this film I can find no other explanation. Perhaps this ending is to show what might happen if you try to defy fate. When two people belong together but choose to close themselves up, they live a life of pent up misery.

Or perhaps the director just wants to torment us.

Too Tired To Study

I procrastinate too much. Biology and math tests are staring me down right now. [Math test is placement retake so I'll place into the right class.] I need to study, but I feel tired. My back hurts, even though I've had the heating pad out for the past two hours, and I took a bath earlier this afternoon. [Stretched, stretched, stretched too]

Tomorrow is my last day of school until Thanksgiving break. At least the recession gives me three extra days of school off lol. That should be all the time I need to catch up on psychology work and prepare for oral presentation for History. Maybe I won't fail my classes after all? Lol

I keep thinking it can't be Thanksgiving next week! I love how close the holidays are. Nutcracker doesn't even feel like Christmas yet so it keeps surprising me when I think of how close we are getting!

Well, I have another long night ahead of me.

14

I am the big sister of the house. I always have been. I'm the bossy one who tells them what to do all the time.

Joe and Will are my closest (in age) brothers. Joe and I were very close when we were little. Will and I were too much alike to get along with each other. We both had a fiery passion for always being right, and we frequently physically fought each other. To this day Joe is the odd one out, trading his peace making ways for hopes of becoming a soldier. The lovable, social boy has turned out to be extremely introverted. But lately I've noticed Will is very similar to me.

It's weird to look back and see myself in Will, at the age of 14. He's more popular than I ever was, dresses completely different and has different hobbies, but at the core, he's still that same 14 year old trying to establish himself as a teen and put distance between his childhood. He's trying new things, challenging old beliefs, changing his mind every day. He constantly pushes the boundaries of his freedoms, frustrated by numerous restrictions. He challenges authority and causes arguments. He stays up until 1 in the morning talking on his cell phone, goes to football games and dances.

I'm not 14 anymore and sometimes, that is a little bit weird.

Bing Kicks Googles Butt

Emily's word of the day is...numen.

divine power or spirit; a deity, esp. one presiding locally or believed to inhabit a particular object.

I took an IQ test for fun today and I scored a 122. I can live with that.

Today was my break from dancing. I have seventeen and a half hours of dancing from Monday until Sunday. I consider that to be a lot. This morning when I woke up my foot felt like it was injured so I iced it and brought crutches to church so I could stay off of my foot (more as a prevent any further injury and conserve strength for the next 17.5 hrs). I'm bringing them to school tomorrow as well. Better safe than sorry.

Pointe Shoe Pain

Tonight I had a taste of a tiny portion of the amount of pain a ballet dancer experiences. They spend 8 hours a day in pointe shoes.

I spent a mere hour and a half yesterday and today in pointe shoes and I can hardly walk. When I first rose up on my toes today I almost panicked when I felt the sharp ache. Can you imagine what its like to realize you have to spend the next hour and a half in agony?

Tomorrow I have two and a half hours of rehearsal. I'm not sure how many will be on pointe. I'm terrified.

I soaked my feet in cold water, and put a band aid and neosporin on my open blister, but I don't know how much it will help. Before school tomorrow I'll soak my poor feet again in cold water and then again before class with both cold and hot water. I need to buy some new wool pads too. I may even get gel pads...something so I can survive.

It's impossible for me to dance well under such pain. I just can't focus on anything else. How will I go on like this?

Catching Runaway Rats Gets Old Pretty Quick

I'm sorry I sound so negative all the time.

Alex took me to see a movie tonight. We saw the new A Christmas Carol. Jim Carrey is Alex's favorite. While some may think it's too early from Christmas time , I have been existing in Christmas time land thanks to nutcracker from the last several weeks.

My schedule is about to become even more busy and chaotic but I'm not worried. The hardest part of today's four hour rehearsal was that my toe pads shifted and my pinkie toes were shredded after the first hour and a half. Thankfully my mom texted me to let me know that I could wrap the open blisters in a damp paper towel as a sort of makeshift band aid.

Now I'm happy to have a band aid on my toe. I just wish I didn't have a mini migraine. It made watching the movie a little bit difficult.

Gag me with a spoon

I joined the I-kinda-had-a-breakdown-tonight club along with am-I-still-sane-cause-I'm-really-not-sure club.

According to my mom having a breakdown about how I'm a failure if I don't get a 4.0 is not worth it. That if missing a week of school will cause me to fail than that's a bad system and I need to change the system.

Yeah. wtf. She wants me to change the system know as COLLEGE?! Just saying.

Oh and she also said that crisis's happen to people who then go on to get into graduate school. Yeah I'm not buying this either.

My mom doesn't realize how much you can hurt for being gone a week. She has no clue.

My stress level in general has been through the roof lately. Surprisingly, funeral week was the least stressful thing I've had to deal with lately and my Grandma freaking died. (Though it didn't help that on the day that we left I both crashed my car [steep hill + bald tires+ rain + downhill = broken headlights] and lost my BC [hormones are off the map].

Not knowing if I'm going to get into the nursing assistant program is stressful. If I'm going to be homeless in January I need to have a working plan in place. [Well I have a plan I just don't know if it's going to happen or not]. My parents don't really get IT at all. They are too busy convincing their selves that I'm going to move again and getting pissed at me for insignificant things [such as my having alcohol on my breath Friday night. I took 2 sips off a beer. Oh.my.God. Gag me with a spoon].

I know that people talk about how we shouldn't be so focused on ourselves in this world, but don't you think it's kind of important that I prepare before being thrown to the clutches of the world?