Song of The Day: 8/22/11

Brilliant, inspiring song. Makes me think of those sweeping camera shots from Michael Bay's "Armageddon".

Keep marchin' on! Night. :)

The Girl Who Loved The Trees (Short Story)

Once upon a time, a young girl lived in a very small house by the sea. She did not like the sea. It was loud and always moving, surrounded by hot, gritty sand, and filled with things that terrified her: sharks, snakes, jellyfish, things that stung and bit and ate little girls hapless enough to swim into their paths.

She didn't like the sea, but she liked her house, and the life she lived by the sea she disliked. She liked her mother, her father, her sisters and brothers, and her cat, Charles Dickens.

No cat in the world has ever been as smart as Charles Dickens was. There was once a cat in another world who was mad and a hatter and twice as smart, who knew how to vanish into thin air, and I think Charles Dickens must have been distantly related to him. Charles could not talk, but he could speak with his eyes, and the things he said were always very wise, or funny, or sharp.

One day, as the girl and Charles Dickens were wandering aimlessly around the beach, letting the salt-water lick their toes, the girl looked down at her cat and said, "I like it here, Charles. I like my family. I have a good life. But I don't like the sea. It is big and cold and terrible. It tastes like over-salted chips."

Charles looked up at her and spoke with his eyes. "I don't like it, either. I'm a cat. We hate water."

The girl smiled. There was a silence, except for the irritating crashing of the waves that never ceased.

"I prefer trees, myself," continued the cat.

The girl stopped, surprised. "Trees? Like the palm trees here?"

"No, dear. Different kinds of trees. Pines. Birches. Oaks. Lovely, lovely oaks."

"I've never seen them."

"No, you haven't. You were born on this beach and have never left."

Another silence.

Slowly, the girl turned from the cat and stared out over the sea. Far out over the waves a little sailboat tumbled across the blue-green. A man who loves the sea, she thought. Like my father and mother. He is happy. Am I unhappy?

I am unhappy. I hate the sea. It's so cold.

"I'd like to sea the oaks."

Charles Dickens smiled to himself. A plan had already formed in his mind.

"We'll go see them, then."

**************************

The girl tip-toed across the floor, carefully stepping over the boards that creaked. It had taken all of Charles' brain power to convince her to leave her home, but eventually he had.

"After all," his eyes had said, "You hate the sea."

"But I love my family. My brothers and sisters, my parents."

"But you are old enough to leave them."

"They'll never let me."

"Better to ask forgiveness than permission."

And so that night, as soon as her parents had fallen asleep (she could hear her father's snores now), she had packed her bag with clothes, food, and some treats for Charles, and prepared herself to leave.

Now she stood on the threshold of her door, frightened, trembling, pale. One foot hovered over the stone pavement outside the house; her hands clutched the handles of her bag, her knuckles white, her fingers shaking. She looked out across the tall grass the grew near the sand. She glanced back inside. Her father's and oldest brother's snores called out to her, called her back.

An especially large wave crashed outside.

She slowly turned to face the sea, pivoting on her foot, her other leg still raised. There was the sea, cold, deep, dark, angry and frightening. The clouds which lined the sky shifted for a second, the moon shone through. Blinking, she saw the dark outline of the cat, squatting in the way cats do, staring at her, waiting; his eyes glittered in the moonlight.

With sudden courage, she put her foot down on the pavement.

"I'm ready," she whispered.

The dark outline nodded, the eyes blinked. For a moment Charles seemed to vanish, and then the green bulbs appeared again, closer.

The girl took a deep breath.

The clouds slipped over the moon again. When next the white rays shone down again, the girl and the cat were long, long gone.

***********************

For years the world worried. The family in the little house on the beach was like an ant pile that has been stepped on. They were terrified, running about, trying to keep busy to distract themselves from the pain and fear by doing everything they could to look for her.

But after a while, the world forgot about the little girl who hated the beach. They forgot about her genius cat whose eyes spoke. They forgot about her family. They never forgot the girl, but after a while, they knew it was time to give up hope. They stopped looking. They moved on with their lives.

The girl was in a forest, deep, deep in the uninhabited regions of Alaska. There it was always cold, and there was no sand -- only soft, powdery, snow. And trees. Warm, inviting, loving trees. So very different from the sea.

Charles Dickens lived with her. For years it was just the two of them, until one day a stray female cat wandered into their midst. She was a prim, proper little lady, despite her ragged fur. And she was smart. Not as smart as Charles, of course. But she was smart, and rather pretty. Charles and the girl happily accepted her, and in a few months, there were kittens.

And there were trees. And the girl loved the kittens, and Charles, and the lady-cat, and the trees. She loved them, and she was happy.

*********************

A young man wandered through the woods, his gun slung over his back. He whistled a cheery tune. He had had a great time hunting in these woods, though he hadn't caught anything.

Birds were chirping, leaves were rustling, the wind was singing...

Cats were meowing?

**********************

The young man and the girl (now a young woman) got married. After he convinced her to return to society, of course. Her family was there. They were really mad, at first, but then her parents realized that if they had ever been trapped in a forest (they hated trees) they would have left for the sea without a second thought.

They were a strange family. Full of love, happiness, and longing.

The man and the woman had ten children. Five of them moved to the sea. Three moved to the country in the southern United States to build ranches. Two stayed with their parents in the forests of Alaska.

They kept cats as long as they lived. After a while, Charles Dickens and his lady-cat got old and gray-furred, and they did die. To the last, though Charles' green eyes shone and the dark, and spoke as though they had a voice. And he was always the most intelligent cat in this world.

And the woman and the man and their two children still had one of Charles' kittens, and her name was Beatrix. She had green eyes, and they could speak.

And the woman always was the young girl inside. She spoke to cats and hated the sea. And to the very end, she loved trees with all her heart. She loved them.

**************************

A note from me: This story has no point, unless you want to find your own meaning in it. I had the sudden urge to write a story, and it needed to be of pure whimsy, and a cat needed to talk. As Mark Twain said, "Persons attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted; persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot."

Okay, so there's a plot... But whatever! :) I hope you enjoyed!

(Photo credit: Dan Heller his website here)

First Day of 10th Grade

So, in all technicality, I'm a 10th grader now.

School started today. Teddy started public school, so the house was relatively quiet so me and Anna could work. We homeschool, so we're home most of the time -- which means we do the chores. :P

And math and reading, of course.

Which is why I'm not completely a 10th grader yet. I'm kind of sort of waaayyyy behind on my math. As in, I've been working on this Algebra since 8th grade...

But I'm almost done!  I promise! Just 8 lessons and 9 tests left, as of today. And when I'm done with that, my parents will register me for online classes, which will get me caught up. Unfortunately, I'll probably be doing math till at least a year after I'm done with high school.

Anyway, besides the obvious, today was actually really good. We got a lot of work done, did some cleaning up around the house. We have friends coming over tonight, so we wanted the house to be really clean.

It's kind of sad to say goodbye to summer. The last two months have been so jam-packed that it's been the shortest summer of my life. So much has happened -- I've grown closer to God, closer to my friends, closer to my family. I've been to Joplin, I've been to camp, I've helped put on an absolutely fantastic play... It's been amazing. And now... It's over. Officially.

I'm sad. But not too sad. I needed a routine again, needed some work to do. I've felt really lazy since coming back from Joplin, so I've been wanting to get back into some sort of job. Now I have math, I have reading, I have chores. Soon I'll start science, grammar, Latin... In October Anna and I will have auditions for Sound of Music with JOY, and then all next spring we'll be working on that. So summer is fun. But it needed to end.

Plus, my birthday is in December, and I'll be 16, and old enough to drive.

December needs to get here FAST.

Outfit of The Day: 8/22/11

Today's outfit: Black cardigan, blue-patterned tank-top, pink-ruffled skirt. Barefoot! Hair: ponytail. Accessories: Fuhggettabowdit.

So yesterday I picked out this REALLY REALLY cute outfit that I LOVED, but we were busy all day and weren't able to go out and take pictures until the sun was just beginning to go down. And so, as I'm taking pictures of Danny's adorable little black-cardigan ensemble, guess what? The camera shuts down. Remind me to actually charge the battery tonight.

So today I made up my mind to pick out an adorable outfit to make up for yesterday. And I did.

Also, since today is the first day of school, and me being homeschooled and consequently not going anywhere, I also wanted it to be really comfortable, so no shoes, no accesories, something I can slouch around the house in and still feel pretty. It totally worked!

Danny was taking the pictures and told me to strike a pose... So I did.

I crack myself up with my hamminess.

I love this skirt...

... a lot.

Song of The Day 8/21/11

This is one of the best covers I've ever heard -- it's actually better than the original. :)

Curly Hair, Anyone?

Don't mind if I do!

Friday Danny and I got our hair professionally curled at our local Tony&Guy academy.

We were thrilled with the results.

Of course, we also got our hair cut...

In the morning before shower on Saturday...

After shower. I LOVE the haircut, I feel super-pretty. I had her thin out the bottom. I have really thick hair, it feels amazing not to have to have so much weight around my neck. I also got lots of layers and lots of bangs -- now my hair looks fabulous down or in a ponytail. That makes meh happy :)

It's weird to get back into the blogosphere, after having been off it for so long. I'll have to being back outfit-of-the-days and song-of-the-weeks, etc.

Last day of summer vacation -- I'm really sad, it was possibly the best summer vacation I've ever had (I got to blog about it, too!). But I'm also really happy. The more quickly time passes, the faster I get back to what I love: putting on plays with JOY.

A Glorious Day for A Wedding

Friday, I was able to attend the wedding of some close friends of my parents', Amber and Joseph.

It was the first wedding I've ever been to where I wasn't a flower-girl. It was a fun, quirky, totally non-traditional wedding -- no suits, no long dresses, no real flowers, but flowers made from newspaper pages -- very cool. It was also incredibly romantic. The couple is quite a cute one. :) Also, me being me, and me being a girl, I couldn't help imagining my wedding day. I'll never say who, but I have pretty much everything planned out, right down to the groom. Of course, that's the one most likely to change, but... whatevs! (For the record, I will NOT be having my wedding outside. It was beautiful, but there were ants, and it was hot. Air conditioned churches, anyone?) I seriously enjoyed myself.

Friday morning Danny and I went to our local Tony&Guy academy and got haircuts -- and not only haircuts, but we got it curled. And if I may say so myself (and I do) we looked adorable.

Of course the curl has washed out now, but we've both learned new ways to style our hair.

I got Taylor-Swift-style curls...




Like my cheeky little smirk, there? ;)



... and Danny got Shirley-Temple-ringlets. And aren't her new bangs absolutely adorable? x) She's so cute.




Slightly ironically, she got curls like the child-star from the 1930's/40's, while I got curls like the Disney pop star. She's the one who loves Taylor Swift, and I'm the one who loves Shirley Temple -- I guess we must be rubbing off on each other. We do kind of live together...



The wedding was short, sweet, and to-the-point. My mom and dad officiated, and we stayed to watch Joseph and Amber's first dance as a married couple. And then we quietly and gracefully bowed out, because it was late and we were in want of dinner.

This we took at a rather fabulous Tex-Mex restaurant called "Chuy's" (pronounced "chewy", as in chewy food, but the food isn't at all chewy, it's quite delicious), where they had loud, fun waiters and waitresses, loud, fun music, absolutely wonderful queso and bean burritos, and this... thing...

I'm not sure why anyone would even think about putting something so horribly creepy in a restaurant. The thing stared at me while I ate.
I think I may be the only person alive who is rather frightened at the idea of Elvis coming back. I like his music (sometimes, depending on my mood -- I prefer the Beatles), but Elvis can just stay where he is. His terrible busts sitting in restaurants are awful enough without the real thing.

Outfit 1: Blue camp t-shirt (isn't it adorable?), short pink patterned skirt (which I'd just finished hemming the night before). Black ballet flats! Hair: curly.

 

Outfit 2: Dark green patterned mini dress, black tank-top. Black ballet flats! Yellow statement-piece bracelet, copy of "Jane Eyre" -- I'm rather obsessed with it at the moment -- camera, and enormous black purse -- the latter three are not pictured, but I had them with me all day. Hair: Still curly! (Side note: I really like my knees. I didn't think I did, but I actually have really nice knees. Just one more thing to add to my slowly growing list of things I like about myself!)

I'd like to say my year-without-makeup is going off without a hitch -- unfortunately, I was sorely tempted to put on at least some foundation for the wedding. Earlier that day, as Danny and I were doing a quick photo-shoot of our hair, she got a really good close-up of my face. My expression was snarky, my hair was adorable, and my eyes looked nice and blue, but I hadn't realized that I'd broken out on my forehead, and it was the only thing I saw at first. Danny assured me that it was just the lighting, but I had to delete the picture. It just wasn't great for my self-esteem. I managed to beat temptation, though; I made it to the wedding without even a hint of foundation, and the next day I made myself walk with my shoulders a little higher. It worked! My confidence is back, and I'm seriously debating throwing out all my makeup -- I need to get rid of the option.

I was in a rather quiet mood on Friday. I unfortunately was unable to attend the cast party for "The Importance of Being Ernest" and was feeling pretty down about it. I enjoyed the day I had, but I still wish I'd been able to go to the party. I miss those guys!

I'll see them soon, though -- more on that with "There and Back Again; Part 2" later!