It Makes Me Feel Alive

It is so amazingly beautiful outside. The wind is blowing hard from every direction and a few lone clouds scuttle across the brilliant blue sky. The wind almost feels like an ocean wind. It whips my hair around and blows open my eyes. It makes the walk uphill hard, but it is all worth it when I see yellow daffodils that have survived the cold winter to face this glorious day.

I don't require swimsuit weather when days like this come along.

Everything looked a little brighter walking home after art. I love that I just spent an hour and a half painting with no plan and throwing sponges dripping with watery paint at a canvas. It makes me feel more alive. And my hands stay dirty as a reminder to me of this happiness I felt. That I get to feel every Tuesday morning.

***

We celebrated a very non-religious Easter on Sunday. I like it that way; it is more about the celebration of spring and new beginnings and chocolate eggs than it is about getting up early to get dressed up and go to church. (Let me make myself clear; I have nothing against the people who do go to church, or whatever their place of worship. I don't know enough about this holiday to say it more eloquently than that, but I am not trying to disrespect anyone's beliefs. This was not something I was brought up with, and so I have come to love our routine.)

My mom and I bought some chocolates and then spent our lunch outside in the sun filling brightly colored plastic eggs with treats. Everyone got a chance to hide, and we are all getting more devious. The most fun is when an egg is discovered weeks or months later. That is the mark of a true hiding spot. (Although it's not so good when the chocolate is not in an egg and has been stuffed down between couch cushions and slowly melted and oozed. That's not Easter-that's work.)

(The leg looking things on some of the eggs are actually suction cups. Cool idea-too bad they don't work.)

My dad and I did get into a....scuffle over a particular egg hiden in a lightbulb covering. I somehow ended up on the floor twice, and did not end up with the egg. (In my defense, he does have a good four inches on me and over 60 pounds.) A Starburst was small consolation for this terrible loss of an egg.

Happy Spring and I hope you are enjoying the weather.

Nothingness and Curly Hair

My hair is curly today. It actually had to be curled because it is normally really super straight. Although not completely straight and so I still feel the need to use my flat iron on it. A lot. I am paranoid that I am killing my hair and that by using a flat iron all my hair will fall out at a sad and unseemly age. Like 40.

So. I was talking about something. Yes, curly hair.

No, that isn't me. Because I am too lazy to get out the camera and take a picture of my own hair. Even though it would take about two minutes, tops.

It's really too bad the camera is working again and in the country because I can't even use those excuses anymore. Ah, well, you get to see my true colors. At last.

So, if you hadn't noticed already, this is a post about nothing. Or more specifically, the things that are floating through my head at the moment. Which is pretty much nothing. They are pretty short thoughts (if they can even be called thoughts) because that is about where I am today.

I filled out an application form for the National Honor Scoiety at my high school. I think they're going to let me in even though I am not involved in the community even a little bit. I'll have to figure something out that I can do at home that helps people. Or the environment. Just helping, in general. Ideas?

The clouds are really super pretty today; big fluffy things on a light teal blue sky. The kind you lay (lie?) on your back in the summer staring at. The ones that can look like anything if you squint the right way. Right now though, they just look like really fluffy pretty clouds.

Now my head is empty of all things, thoughts or otherwise. So now I am truly talking about nothing.

Enjoy your day. Oh, look, it's a turtle cloud!

Pictures in No Particular Order

My mom is back from her trip and so here are the promised pictures, and one from my walk around the house. It's very spring-like (despite the snow on the ground).

New haircut (this isn't a particularly good view of the actual hair, but you get the idea).

Smokey was not happy when I came at her with the camera. But the camera, and my fingers, are still intact.

I bought my first orchid a few days ago. Goal one: don't kill it.

The painting I described a while ago is done and hanging in our dining room.

And the spring-like picture.

50

I just have to say that the last post was my fiftieth post.

I am sort of shocked that it has been that many. I'm glad I've stuck with it. I've enjoyed it. I hope you have too.

The Days in No Particular Order

Last night I had all these amazing ideas coming through my head. They weren't just random ideas, either. They were fully formed, well thought-out ideas that were ready to be spell-checked and posted. However, seeing as it was ten at night and I was trying to sleep (sort of), the ideas continued floating around in my head until I fell asleep, at which point they promptly disappeared. Completely.

So here goes nothing, with no ideas, creative or otherwise, anywhere near my brain.

I'm on spring break. There are no capitalized letters on that for me. Last Friday there would have been. My tutor had just cancelled, giving me an extra day off, and I was pumped to play in the snow and watch Friends and not have to do anything all week. Nothing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

I am more tired and feel worse than I have in quite a while. I'm bored. I can't figure out the NCAA men's basketball schedule. And all my ideas have abandoned me to leave me sitting at the computer, typing random, complaining thoughts.

Last night was fun when I looked out the window before going to bed and was greeted by a sea of white. The news had been saying all night that the mountains were supposed to get two feet of snow, but I usually ignore those reports because we hardly get anything here. This, however, was certainly not nothing.

I am looking forward to going outside and making a snow angel and throwing a few snowballs and just reveling in the beauty of the world.

I'm in one of those moods where I listen to the same song over and over and over. At least it's a song that I like.

I am cruising through my Health course, and I just finished the fourth (out of five) exams. The only problem is the computer still says they haven't recieved any of the exams I've sent in. I am trying hard not to freak out and to give it more time, which was working okay until I realized I hadn't copied any of the tests, so if they are lost in the mail, they are really and truly lost.

(Just thought of a perfect Friends line to insert there, but I won't. I tend to find it annoying when people constantly quote their favorite TV shows. But you should know, I am laughing on the other side of your computer screen.)

I did the laundry. I ate breakfast. I watched New Moon. Eh, what can I say. I'm on Team This-Isn't-That-Great-A-Movie-Or-Book-So-Get-Over-It-(Yet-I-Still-Watch-The-Movies-And-Read-The-Books). I listen to the clock tick. I emptied the dishwasher. I researched colleges. I couldn't figure out spell-check.

Life.
We'll see where it takes me.
And where I take myself.

How Are You?

It's a funny phrase. It is one most people hear several times a day. Very rarely does it seem that people actually mean it and want to hear how you are really doing.

It can be a greeting to which you are not obliged to answer. It can be a question that people want a short, happy answer to. It can be a question that people ask with good intentions, but end up not caring about your answer. And then there are the few people who ask it as a genuine question, and listen to your answer to the end.

Then there is the trouble of how to answer, if at all. As noted in a travel guide, when used as a greeting in the United States, it is acceptable to not answer but to continue on with your life or jump directly into the conversation. It is also acceptable to answer with a quick, one word answer and then ask the same question of your companion.

If you feel that a person is asking in a genuine way, you can answer. You can answer with an abrigded version of your life, perhaps with the more unpleasant features left out. Or you can sit down and have a real conversation with the asker.

Being sick, I hear this question often, to the point of ad nauseum. Normally I answer with a small smile and an "okay". Some people (like neighbors) seem to accept this and move on, feeling that their duty to be friendly and concerned has been fulfilled. I don't begrudge them this small, everyday courtsey (or what they may consider a courtsey). I am sure I have been guilty of doing the same thing.

Some people seem more converned and give me a questioning look. I may go into more detail about how I'm doing, but I still leave out the gory details. I have found that no matter how caring a person may be, the vast majority of people just do not want to hear about the bad stuff.

If I do open up, it tends to be a really good conversation-ender. People may feel awkward around me, or not know what to say. They may not have wanted to know all this in the first place, merely because they are not interested, or because they don't want to hear about more pain besides their own. (Becuase everyone, after all, has their own pain.)

I have concluded that it is easier, and nicer, to keep my answers short and relatively upbeat. I do not lie, but I do not tell the whole truth, either.

The strange thing is, after coming to this conclusion, I still ask the question of many people I run into. It is a social custom, above everything else, more than a true desire to know about another person's life. I like to think, however, that I am more receptive to an honest response than I used to be, if that is what people want to give.

For myself, it is also easier to not answer this questin fully. It makes me think about my life and the amount of pain (physical and otherwise) that I carry around. I only give the full answer to people I trust completely, and the rest of the time, I hope that they understand. I don't like to dwell.

So there is a balance to strike: between asking too much and not caring about the answer and not asking at all because you don't want to hear or don't want to burden the other person.

Whatever the balance, I encourage you to ask this question only when you care about the truthful answer you may receive.

A Bit of This and That

Yesterday was a long, full day.

1) I got my hair cut. Short. Shorter than I've ever had it. I like it a lot, but it's going to take some getting used to. It barely fits in a ponytail, but the pigtails are awesome! Unfortunately, I can't post a picture because my mom took the camera with her. (See #2) To give you an idea, it isn't this short:

and it isn't this long:

2) My mom left for her trip. She is going to visit relatives and be a tourist in France and Spain. She will be gone for 10 days. It is just me, my dad, and Smokey. So far, we've been just fine.

3) I did other regular stuff, like my tutor came and I went to physical therapy. A long day, but good.

4) Today I was tired as expected, but I managed to sit down and crank out homework. I recieved my textbook and everything for my Health coure. I am doing it through a correspondence school. It should be interesting; they don't give the clearest instructions so I am hoping I will figure it out and get it right. I don't think it will be too hard. I just need a half credit and the chapters are really super short.

5) One of my fish died a few weeks ago and another one is still looking sick. Both went downhill after I cleaned the tank. Moral of the story: never, ever clean.

6) I finished a painting in art class (on Tuesday). Again, no pictures because the camera is taking a vacation. I will do my best to describe it, and hopefully, by the end, you will still want to see pictures. It is an abstract sort of thing. I got the idea from going through architecture magazines upside-down. (Artists are strange, aren't they? And the scary thing is, I might be becoming part of that group.) It is blue and green and some brown. And it's weird. Some days I love it and some days, well, some days it just looks like a bunch of random shapes that have nothing to do with each other. But really, that's what most paintings are.

7) I have recently discovered Rob Thomas and his music. I am now listening to his music quite a lot. It might be more along the lines of obsessively listening.

8) The computer was recently infected with something (I didn't do it) and so was reformatted and reconfigured and all sorts of things. So we now have the computer back, but all the files got all messed around and put in strange places and lost. Well, pretty much the only thing that was lost was my music. And it was partly my fault for not backing it up. (Does anyone know how to get music from an ipod to the computer? Don't ask me how I got the music on the ipod in the first place, because I don't know.) I was lazy and stupid and the CDs were only backing up 20 songs at a time! So I'm going through my music trying to find it and find out what can't be found. Wish me luck.