I finally remembered to post this two weeks later. Well anyways, this is my sisters Alice and Wonderland themed birthday cake from July
Wow, this blog is WAYYYY overdue. I was planning on blogging about my Story Studio experience when it ended, which was in June, but I have been caught up in... Well.. Summer. My summer has been a whirlwind of dance(I made it into a junior company!!!), early morning cross country practices(I have achieved 4 miles!.. But almost got killed by a car doing so), orthodontist appointments(I only have to wear my retainer at night now), graduation parties(including my own), a choir "tour" to Minneapolis, a mission trip to Joplin Mossouri for tornado relief(literally the best week of my summer and possibly my life),concerts(Jason Aldean & Kelly Clarckson at Wrigley, One Republic at Rivinia, and this Saturday Taylor swift!!! At Soldier Field which I will be attending with Clare H.), and few breaks in between. So a lot has been going on and a lot has changed, but I still feel like I've done nothing. I forgot everything, literally EVERYTHING that has to do with math. I'm being dead serious right now, I forgot how to multiply and divide negatives. I am Mrs. P's living nightmare. I only broke my clarinet out of its case three times max this whole summer, and band camp starts this week. Yes, band camp with psyco Mr. matter, and did I mention that it is FOUR HOURS LONG EVERY. SINGLE. DAY?!?! It makes me want to cry just thinking about it. I also have only been to the pool only 3 times, the beach zero times, and I've only been on one bike ride. And there are three weeks until school starts. Not to mention that I am starting high school. I don't think that will really set in until the first day. I'm half expecting to walk straight to Mr. Miller's awesome homeroom, where Mr. miller himself will tell the class some random fact he learned or something he saw on the news last night. But sadly, this is not the case. Instead I will be thrust into a big scary fish tank which holds schools of big scary fish, and big scary sharks, and then there will be me: a mere minnow just trying to make it to my next class alive. Add my inability to keep calm on top of all of this and you have one certifiably insane person. Ok so I'm exaggerating a tad bit, but in my defense I am a writer and I have been told that it is good to exaggerate numerous times. So I guess I wouldn't call myself certifiably insane, but just... Insane. And that is not an exaggeration. So on a happier note: Story Studio. It's downtown somewhere. It was only a five day long writing class, but they supplied us with a month of knowledge. The two teachers themselves are writers, and they were very sweet and helpful. They covered everything from building a character, to parts of a story, to writing and analyzing poetry(which of course I had already learned from the wonderful education I had in eigth grade language arts:) ) All in all it was a great experience and I would definitely do it again.... Except for one little problem. I have a gargantuan fear of public speaking. So on the last day when we were told to present something that we'd wrote during the class to all of our "parents, siblings, grandparents, the hobo on the street" as one of the teachers had said, I was more than nervous. I won't go in to the details, but I'm happy to say that I held it together... until the car ride where I cried the whole way home. It's not that I wasn't happy with my short story, I was very proud of it actually, but I'm not the type who shows off the things they're proud of in front of large audiences. But aside from that last day, the camp was a blast, and if I miraculously overcome my fear of public speaking by next summer, I'll definitely do it again. Lately, with it being the very end of the year, I have been thinking a lot about what I want to be when I grow up. Not that i've had to think about it often, I've pretty much known deep down what I've wanted to be my whole life.
Back in the day, when I was about 4 years old, I saw an episode of Caillou that changed my life. I don't remember the details, just that someones house was on fire and there was a cat stuck inside, and the firemen and women drove in, squirted the windows with their hoses a few times, and what do you know, the fire was put out and the cats were safe and sound. After watching this, I marched over to my mom and declared: "Mommy, I want to be a fireman." My mom just laughed and told me that It's impossible for a girl to be a fireman, and that I meant to say fire woman. I figured that would do. So it was decided. I would be a fire woman. And that was that. But then, one average day in first grade, I was exposed to the world of Hannah Montana, and my ambitions of being a fire woman were abandoned. I decided I would be a singer. No matter that I couldn't sing, I would find a way. My friends and I would have mini concerts for our parents every day and we all assumed that there wasn't any possibility that the music industry wouldn't accept us, I mean how could they not? We were fabulous. Then came the day that we wrote our very first essay in second grade with indentations, paragraphs, and the whole nine yards (the concept of indentation was one that took awhile to understand, but it was very thrilling). I had a really... interesting second grade teacher. Her name is Mrs. Mullvihill. Sometimes she could be really sweet, but she was not happy that day. We were lined up at her desk while she graded our essays in front of us. Red marks covered everyone's papers. "Your work is all crap!" She shouted at us. And one thought was running through all of our innocent second grade brains: "Oh my god she just said the c word." I was next in line to get my essay graded. I was shaking. What if she yelled at me? Her red pen hovered over my paper but as she read, she never used it. When she was done she smiled at me. Now, I've always been a big goody-goody (shocker, right?) so when she said "Emily, read your essay to the class, I want everyone's essays to be like this." every inch of me was filled with pride. From that moment on, I knew I wanted to be a writer. Even while I was undergoing my fire woman and rock star stages, I still had a love for reading and writing. I learned to read at a pretty young age, but even before I did, I would make up my own stories based on the pictures in the books. As soon as I could write, I started to write books. They obviously weren't best-selling novels, but to me they were works of art. They were four pages of printer paper tied together with string with about a sentence on each page. My first was titled Aliens and featured a different colored alien on each page. It went something like this: "Green aliens, blue aliens, purple aliens, fat aliens, tall aliens, pink aliens. The end." I was so proud. There is something very rewarding about having an idea to do something, whether it be climbing a mountain, painting a bedroom, or mastering the art of Kung Fu, starting that thing, and then finishing it. Finishing is always the best part. Sure, the process is OK, but if you think about it, we never would have started the project in the first place if we weren't already dreaming of the finished product. I still love writing today. There is never really a time when I say "Ew, gross, writing." probably because if I ever am not in the mood to write, I tell myself that it could be worse. This could be math. And that helps me love it. But truthfully, there are always stories and poems running through my head. It's a little freaky. I'll just be walking home from school and my brain will say something like "It was a cloudy day, and Emily was walking home from school..." and by the time I get home, I'll have just read an entire book about how I walked home from school. Sometimes it makes me feel crazy. I also write poems in my head, but those are on purpose. My brain doesn't just start reading poems to me like it does books (I'm not psycho I promise). If I really like the poem I've come up with, I write it down or type it, and then elaborate on it. I try to do that with the stories that go through my brain too, but I'm really bad at writing long things without an assigned topic, so I usually end up with a bunch of first paragraphs of stories, without a plot. I am hoping I will overcome this thinking-of-something-to-write-about barrier, so I can write a best-selling novel one day (or at least try), but if not, I'll still pursue my writing dreams. I could be a poet. Or a newspaper writer. Or a magazine writer. There are so many types of writers, which I also love: endless possibilities. This also poses a problem for me though, because I can never make up my mind. But I do know I want to be some kind of writer. Which probably explains why this blog was extremely long (sorry about that). So on that note, I would like to say goodbye to everyone, because this is our last assigned blog. I am going to try to blog in the summer, but... just in case: bye everyone!! Yes, it is true. I still can't even believe it. After three years(which seemed to really fly by) of conformation classes clogging up my Tuesday nights, I am now free! Oh yeah, and I made my conformation, but that's not nearly as exciting as a free Tuesday night. (Just kidding!). So I made my conformation yesterday, on Sunday but we had to go to church on Saturday to make our stoles(these things that pastors wear that we got to wear too but we had to glue stuff on them), practice for conformation day, and make cookies for a dinner at another church. That was from 3:00 until 6:00, so my Saturday was pretty booked. I also had to make two batches of cookie dough cheesecake bars for a bake sale for my choir concert. On Saturday in the evening, I made my science video with Stacey and Marisa (It's quite hilarious, it includes Marisa's voice being really high-pitched and funny because we fed her some helium, some classic element jokes, and we even smelled a tree or two.) The following morning, I had my pre-conformation breakfast at church. The breakfast was from Jason's Deli, and it was things like mufffins, cinnamon rolls, and cheese danishes. It was very delicious! Then we had to go to the "Narthex" (the back part of the church) and walk out while the chancel choir sung hymns. I want to give some of you an idea of how small my church is, because I know that a lot of you had to attend two hour conformation ceremonies with hundreds of kids getting confirmed. This year, my church had eight confirmants: Me, Maggie, Mark, Teddy, Meghan, Marti, Michael, and Kyle. We sat in the first pew, stood up and said "I do" when the pastor asked us questions. Then each of us with our family was called up to the altar. My family and my two pastors placed their hands on my heads while one of my pastors blessed me. Then I had to turn around and face the congregation while my small-group leader read a verse from the bible that she had picked out especially for me, and said some nice things about me. It was very sweet and made me very happy, but I must say it was quite awkward just standing there while Mrs. Nelson talked about how proud she is of me. All in all it was a very nice service and I'm glad to be confirmed and I'm really tired right now so i'm going to bed. The end.
Last Friday I went to hot yoga at Corepower Yoga for the first time. Many of my friends, including Marisa, had reccomended it and said it was a great experience. So I was like Why not?! It was great. I went with my friends Anna and Maria. We went to the level one class because it was our first class, and that just means that it's a little toasty in there but not scorching hot. I'm pretty sure the hottest it got was 85 degrees so it wasn't that bad. It was soooo fun though! I've been to yoga several times before at a different place, but I really liked how it was a little more fast paced and rythemic than the other classes I've been to. By rythemic I mean that we did the same moves over and over and over, which I liked because by the 5th set of moves I had it pretty down pat and didn't really have to think about it much. It was also just soothing. At the end we did this thing with some name in another language that I don't remember, but we laid down on our mats with lemon- lavender scented cold wash clothes over our eyes, the music was dialed down to a barely audible sound, and the lights were dimmed. We just laid there and breathed for awhile. It was so nice. The instructor told us to not think about anything; to just clear our minds. I think I succeeded in doing that, because I have no idea how much time past when the gong was rung. So I was either in a deep meditational trance, or I fell asleep. Same difference.
We walked out of the class in a daze, feeling peaceful and one with the earth, until I got home and realized how much homework I had to do over the weekend. Just like that, the stress magically reappeared. But: whether you are looking for a temporary relief from the stress in your life, you are like me and have nothing to do on a Friday night except hang out with your cats, or you just enjoy being in a warm room surrounded by sweaty people, than this is definitely the class for you. I highly recommend it to everyone. I know I post a lot about food. But I just thought I'd share that I've been expanding my horizons. I am now not only the family baker, I have now decided to not lead my family to obeisity and take on the role of family chef instead(at least on the weekends). I specialize in breakfast foods, but that doesn't limit me of dinner foods. I have made over easy eggs, hard boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, bacon, a vegetable frittata, the classic grilled cheese, crepes, deviled eggs, chopped salad, and dessert of yogurt parfaits. They have all worked out wonderfully, except that the frittata took 2 hours because we only had an extremely large skillet, and because of the skillet size it came out very thin. I also can't shape crepes for my life, so they came out as oblong ovals. The cheese to bread ratio was a little off on the grilled cheese. The bacon could have been cooked a little longer. I forgot the granola in the parfaits and they came out very yogurt- heavy. (Its hard to mess up eggs, so those were fine) But nonetheless they all turned out delicious and my family has been very happy with me lately. Which is why I choose meal times to ask them about going on a tropical vacation this summer. As I'm blogging, I'm waiting for my corn chowder to simmer. Let's hope this turns out ok because my grandma's eating with us tonight.
This past Saturday, Marisa came to my church to help me babysit little children in the nursery. These children happened to be Mr. Hammond's 2 kids, Fiona(5) and Callie(2), and their cousin Ewan(1) which is pronounced you-in. They were all very adorable. Fionna was telling us about how she saw the play legally blonde at Maine south and she said "the girl who played Elle died her hair" and Callie said
"Yeah, you die your hair when you're dying." Which I thought was adorable. Another really cute thing is that Fionna was an excellent reader for her age so she would say "Story time!" And we'd all gather around her for a story about Pete the cat, or a different favorite book of hers. Callie, who is only 2 years old, was counting well past 20. I mean go figure, she's a math teacher's daughter. They were also amazing chefs, Marisa and I were served some delicious plastic ice cream on a plastic banana for a snack. But, since the plastic food didn't really do it for me, Marisa and I headed over to Einstein's afterwords where we got some scrumptious bagels(I had asiago) that left us speechless. Which is a big first for us. So I had a pretty great Saturday filled with fire truck puzzles and bagels. It was a great way to spend my weekend. This is the Taylor Swift song I Knew You Were Trouble by an A Capella group. They are SO SO good and they have a bunch of other covers of songs and stuff on their YouTube channel. Summer for me is like the light at the end of the tunnel. The tunnel itself repesents the school year. Every day in our metaphorical tunnels, we take a step closer to the light, or to summer. Now that we are getting really close, and really fast, to the opening at the end of the tunnel, there is so much stuff going on that seems to just blow right past me in a whorlwind that makes me do a double take and say "wait what? we took that test already?" There are projects that I don't even remember the topics of, tests coming up even though it feels like we just learned the material yesterday, finished dances in dance class even though it seems like I'm still excited to start learning them, 14th birthdays of friends who, it seems just last week, were playing dolls and learning addition with me. To be honest, all of this makes me very confused. I'm not even sure if I want to get to the end of the tunnel anymore, even though when I took my first step into it I was already imagining what the next summer would be like. I really want a break, warm weather, the ability to wear shorts without freezing like an ice cube, and all of the other luxuries that come with summer, but I have a feeling that once I'm outside the tunnel, I'll be pounding on the door, begging someone to let me back in.
Yesterday I went to my friend Anna's house. I had some homemade lasagna and kale soup (courtesy if Mrs. Ebacher who is a really good cook) but after we ate we were really bored and had no Idea what to do. In these situations of boredom, tiu can never go wrong with some homemade brownies or chocolate chip cookies, so I suggested that we bake something. We were too lazy to go all out and make something from scratch, so we decided to see what kind of box-mixes she had in her pantry. Our choices were: dark chocolate brownies(we hate dark chocolate), chewy fudge brownies(we weren't feeling it) or individual molten chocolate lava cakes. The picture on the box looked delicious, neither of us had made this kind of cake before, it had been sitting in Anna's pantry for four years(!!!!) taking up space, so we figured we'd give it a shot. The recipe was easy to make and the batter was delicious. Before we ate them we sent Mr. Ebacher out for ice cream to go along with the cakes. He came back with only medicine. Anna said "Dad, where's the ice cream?!" And he said "oh man. I can't believe I forgot." Anna was so furious. She was just about to start screaming when he went to get the ice cream from the trunk of the car and said "When have I ever forgotten ice cream?" I just thought that was funny. So anyways, the cakes were DELICIOUS!!!!! Especially with the ice cream melted on the top. Mmm mmm. So I will leave you with these mouth-watering pictures that might make you go buy a box of this cake mix.
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me: aka an awesome personHello i'm Emily. Some things I do often are dancing, running, playing clarinet and tripping over things... I hope you enjoy reading about my super-exciting life! Archives
October 2013
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