Flying and Falling

Today I learned that I was now the same weight as my mom. "Wheels" by Jamie Cullum was playing from the speakers at the gym as I got on and off the scale, stood in front of the mirror.

I decided not to be sad. Instead I went home and drew this picture.




Upside down, it looks like this:

See what it says in the background? :)

I'm listening to "Wheels" now. And "F**kin' Perfect" by Pink. My songs of the week.

"The wheels are falling off the world...

The wheels are fallign off the world...

This is something that I never,

Something that I never had..."

...

"We are taking on our different roads before our goal,

It'll bring you back around to the one you know."

Busy-ness!

Semester is thankfully finally over.

But...

The next three months are going to be worse. Dear self, expect Hell.

But you know what?

I'm actually really excited!!! When you've got 10 things going on, if one of them fails, hey you've still got 9 more that can still succeed. :) And a lot of the stuff I'm doing this year isn't for myself alone, especially Sadies! I'm really hoping my masquerade idea gets passed (for security reasons).

As for TRTP, I jotted down rough page counts for the remaining scenes and ended up with 200 more pages. I'm at 240 pages right now. My reaction looked something like this: :O "Oh dear."

That puts the story at 108,000 words, which is 10,000 words over what I'd been hoping for. I guess it's too early to freak out about word count though.

Finishing is more important.

I've been cruising along at average 15 pages a week. If I quadruple that to 60 during the February break, then finish time can be sped up to March 28, which is STILL very late. But it's better than nothing. Maybe if I'm really lucky, I'll finish on my birthday--3/16.

We'll see. :)

Back from London

Today at the gym everybody was wearing green. I'm not sure why. They just were. I happened to be one of those people wearing green. I talked to some other people wearing green, and apparently it was just a random coincidence. Funny but cool.

So...London.

I cheered/danced in the Parade--which was a once in a lifetime experience. You can probably find this on YouTube under "London Parade All-American Cheerleaders 2011" or any combination of those words. I'm pretty sure it'll be all over Facebook very soon as well.

Favorite touring moment:
I'd have to say Windsor Castle. There's a guard that keeps watch with a bayonet and a VERY TALL furry black hat and marches along this line every 5 minutes or so. Some of the girls on my bus were part of a scavenger hunt that included taking a picture of the guard pretending to kiss his cheek. I didn't know whether I should feel sorry for the guard or extremely happy for all the girl attention he was getting. Literally, he was being swarmed by girls who wanted to take pictures with him. It reminded me a little bit of an animal at the zoo, everybody crowding and pointing while he's not allowed to talk or smile. He was fairly young, maybe one or two years older than me, and he was pretty cute! I personally felt bad for him so I held back, although once I met his eye and he just very slightly smiled, probably as a "thank you for not getting in my face like everyone else." But then I tried to take a picture with him and two friends and time came for him to march along the line again. He stomped and cocked the bayonet, just before the cameras clicked. I think I leapt three feet into the air.

Favorite food moment:
I have to say I have three. Everything in America is too sweet. In London, it's just right, although it's pretty bland. The desserts rocked though. I primarily hung out at a pub called Wetherspoons. Their sticky toffee pudding with hot custard is to die for. So is their warm fudge chocolate cake with vanilla ice cream (apparently they served over 8 million of those since 2000) and the jam roly poly with hot custard. Walking into there, I had no idea what a jam roly poly was. It's like a Cinnabon except instead of cinnamon, there's jam instead. Compact that with the hot custard and it's heaven. I miss it already...

Favorite accent moment:
The subway--"Mind the gap." Here we say "Watch your step" or "Please don't fall in the space between the train and the platform." In London, they mind everything. In the elevator, "Mind the door." On the top of St. Paul's Cathedral "Mind your head." For some reason, "Mind the gap" just seemed so funny (but you have to have been there to get it) that I bought a souvenir keychain that said "Mind the gap." :) Also, a subway in London is actually just an underground passage, while the subway is called the underground. Biscuits are cookies and cookies are biscuits. Fries are chips and chips are crisps. I was in line in GAP (yes they have GAP!) to buy a white polo that was missing from my uniform, and a guy asked me, "Are you in the qeue?" in his awesome British accent. Luckily I remembered hearing about this somewhere before. (I think in a Harry Potter movie?)He meant "are you in the checkout line." Even better--instead of "For Rent," buildings for rent in London are labeled "to let." Now, I'd heard that in England, the bathroom was referred to as the toilet. When I saw the sign that said "to let," I thought it was toilet mispelled. (Maybe someone scratched off the "i"?) So I went to look for the restroom, and it was not a restroom at all. :)

Favorite architectural moment:
All the buildings look like they could belong in Peter Pan. The houseboats in Chelsea rocked. Apparently at low tide, which happens twice a day, the boats tip sideways and are stuck like that for up to 4 hours. In that space, if you set a cup of tea on the table, it would slide right off. Fun, right?

Favorite laws in London:
Mince pies were outlawed by Oliver Cromwell in the late 1700s. Apparently nobody bothered to lift that rule, so mince pies are still illegal in England. But people still eat them. I always learned in school that England had no death penalty, but they do: for traitors and for pirates. Apparently nobody really follows that either, just nobody bothered to nullify that law.

Yup, that's London in a nutshell. :)
Tomorrow I'll talk about the awesome movies/books I encountered while staying up all night before my flight. (That rhymed!) I hate plane rides and will do anything to sleep the whole time without waking up. Even if it means pulling an allnighter the evening before.

Beautiful Things

The search for a friend, who exists in your heart.



The search for beauty...



...although you are already beautiful.

The clipped wings of an angel,



mounted on the wall.

These are some of those beautiful things.

Ballerinas, Nutella, and Belly Flops

My school is one of those places where if you walk through the cafeteria carrying, say, a grilled reuben sandwich, some girl will stop you and say, "Animals are gross! They make you fat!"

It makes me sad--not because this actually happened to me a few weeks back (It did.) but because a lot of the younger generation these days believe that your figure needs to resemble beef jerky before you can have respect.

Take my girl friends at school. I love them. They're awesome friends. But I've been eating lunch with the guys instead for 3 months now.

I mean, I can take it if someone says "That nutella sandwich will make you fat" once. But if they do it every day for a year and going? Eventually, you crack--kind of like a nutcracker, which serves as my segue into the article I want to share.

You can find it here. This brave, beautiful NYC ballerina would not let critics get to her. Jenifer Ringer is my hero of the day. She is gorgeous, stunning, she knows it, and she won't let a critic tell her otherwise. Heck, she doesn't even need his apology. She's that good.

It's like how the other day at my school, we were having a belly flop contest. One of the contestants from the sophomore class was overweight. When he stepped onto the diving board in shorts, my friends targeted him instantly. "He has no self control. He's a total loser. He's so fat. Do his parents do anything about it?"

I listened for about five minutes, after which I turned to my friends and told them, "At least he's proud of it."

And that shut everybody up.

They gave me a disbelieving, WHAT-ARE-YOU-ON look. I shrugged and added, "I think he's kind of cool. He's not ashamed of the way he looks. He's proud. I wish more people thought like that."

There was more awkward silence, before one of my friends finally piped up, "Yeah, you're kind of right."

I smiled and gave her a high five.

But she's 1 out of 9.

What sucks is that although I'm now recovered, I started the eating disorder trend among my friends 3 years ago, and within my school, it has now spread to affect 3 grades, countless girls, and too many bright, shining lives.

Right now, I want to fix it, one little bit at a time through subtle gestures like making my Facebook status, "I love you all just the way you are" or "Friends are like snowflakes, beautiful but different" (The Window of Starbucks, Thanksgiving day)<--Look! Proper MLA citation!!! (I'm still jaded from finals). Anyways, I read somewhere out there that 50% of women want to lose weight, and I guess what I'm really trying to say is: You are beautiful. You are strong. You are wise. You don't need to change.

This New Years, resolve to love yourself! Love who you are and everything that makes you who you are! Love nutella and banana sandwiches, which are an alternate heaven!

Totie Fields once said, "I've been on a diet for two weeks, and all I've lost is two weeks."

Once upon a time, I was on a crash diet for 2 years, and honestly, all I can say is that I've lost 2 years. And more, if you count all the dinners with Mom that I vetoed in favor of eating one bowl of cheerios, a banana, and some strawberries. I've never regretted anything more in my life. Those two years were the prime of my high school, that I should've spent having fun with friends and doing crazy stuff, not penned up in my room dreaming nightmares that involved eating chocolate cake.

If I could save anyone in the world, it would be all the girls out there who stand victim to body image criticism.

Everyone out there, please stay strong!!!

On Grandmas and Girl Assassins

I have 3 hours left until my 2nd (out of 4) midterms.

And as we all know, Finals= Crazy Dreams.

Two nights ago, I dreamed of an epic battle/war that could've come straight out of TRTP. That, of course, was in the background. I stood at the front of the dark field, eating a french fry. I know, right? Hello, self, there are people being gutted behind you and you're nibbling a french fry??? (Note: I have finally conquered my fear of french fries being unhealthy and had a few on Saturday.)

The dream dictionary says:

"To see or eat French Fries in your dream, suggests that you should not overlook the frivolous and seemingly minute things in life."

Frivolus or seemingly minute things aka the battle going on in the background? :P

BUT in a reality sense, I think I know exactly what this dream is trying to tell me... ;)

Yesterday night, I fell asleep at 9:13 while studying Chapter 3.4: Trigonometric Derivatives and slept all the way to 7:57 this morning. I'm not sure how that happened.

I had a really intense dream though. My grandma, who's a brain cancer survivor, was being paraded through Westfield Valley Fair Mall in a grand prossession. Meanwhile, a group of assassins were plotting to take her down somewhere around Arden B (which in my dream was upstairs although in reality it's downstairs) ala JFK.

And then there's this super girl assassin who owns Arden B who also happens to be a god-daughter of my grandma. And she hates me. Her boyfriend as well as many of her friends are in the assassination plot, although she's unaware of it. Her boyfriend finds out I know his secret and banishes me from Valley Fair. If he or the assassins (or the girl assassin from Arden B--of course, she doesn' t know why I'm being banished. She just wants a reason to get rid of me) sees me, they're allowed to kill me.

BUT I've already seen how their plot works. They intend to push my Grandma (in her wheelchair) in front of Arden B, where they'll shoot her through the open doors with AK-47s. So I, in my love for Grandma, decide to stop them. Unfortunately, that entails hiding out until the procession begins.

So I'm sitting at a bench by the foodcourt by the Jamba Juice dressed in some ugly black dress that's totally not my style (in disguise) when the girl from Arden B walks by. I bend down like I'm tying my shoelaces to hide my face. She stops behind the bench and peers under it where she can see my face.

I freak out and sit straight, but she's already seen me. She keeps making subtle moves to see my face, and I can't stand it anymore because my heart's beating so hard I feel like it's going to explode.

So I whip around and admit, "Okay, it's me."

She pulls an AK-47 from behind her back, but I beg her to let me explain. So she sits down next to me on the bench and I tell her about how her boyfriend and his friends are going to assassinate my grandmother/her godmother.

What does she do? She pulls two pairs of pumps from behind her back--one sequined red and one sequined black. Now, these shoes had four in heels. (Note: probably because yesterday in dance class, I was practicing my strut, which I think I've gotten down pretty well)

She tells me to put them on because they'll be a better disguise if I dress exactly like her. And we go into Arden B and she gives me the black sequined spaghetti strap dress that in real life, I happened to have bought from Arden B during their Black Friday "Buy One Get One Free" sale. So I go into the backroom and put it on.

And I look hot.

And now she wants me to go through the foodcourt to wash my hands in the bathroom. And I say "Are you crazy? If your boyfriend sees me, I'm dead." And she says I won't have to worry because there are so many people in the foodcourt her boyfriend won't see me.

She's right. Instead of assassins waiting to take me out, I see a lot of my classmates (which I do on all mall trips). And they wave at me and ask me what's up, COMPLETELY oblivious to the murder plot about to happen in two hours.

So, okay, great.

I go back to Arden B and the girl assassin gives me an AK-47 and tells me that we need to take down her boyfriend/whoever tries to kill my Grandma before they can get to their posts inside Arden B. So we have our rifles ready and we're sitting in the display window waiting for the assassin boyfriend and his friends to walk in--

--and I woke up.

I know, right? LAME. I was dying to know what happened, but it was alrady 7:57 which meant I had 3 hours to study 11 more sections of math. In fact, I'm going to go and do that now.

First of all, dream interpretation:

"To dream that you are a witness to an assassin, indicates that you need to pay more attention to some small detail. Do not overlook the seemingly insignificant things in life."

Wow, ties right in to the french fry business, huh?

"To dream that you are a hero, signifies your inner strength and weaknesses. The dream refers to your ability, determination and level of confidence. You have the power to bravely face the secrets of your unconscious and confront life's challenges."

"To dream that you are a spy, indicates your mistrust of others and your tendency to be in everyone's business and affairs. Perhaps you have recently stumbled upon some information that was not meant for your eyes."

"To see or wear a dress in your dream, represents a feminine outlook or feminine perspective on a situation. You are freely expressing your femininity. If you are a man and dream that you are wearing a dress, suggests that others are questioning your sexuality. Or that you are feeling sexually insecure."

"To see or wear stilettos in your dream, signify female sexuality and domination."

"To see a gun in your dream, symbolizes aggression, anger, and potential danger. You may be dealing with issues of passiveness/aggressiveness and authority/dependence."

I have one hour left to finish studying for this freaking Calculus final. Wish me luck!

Owls!!!

Okay--this is the cutest thing ever.

So I walked into Urban Outfitters the other day, and I found this little basket that was full of owls. The cutest owls ever. They weren't outrageously expensive, and it's almost Christmas. I owe my friends gifts that are cute (just like them) that'll make them smile and think of me whenever they see them. These owls were perfect.

So I decided to buy all of them.

Bear in mind--everyone else is here for the designer dresses or boots/scarves, some of the coolest winter fashion ever. Imagine the cashier's face when I piled 11 little pastel-colored stuffed owls up at register. Shopping lines are deadly this close to Christmas, and my arms were getting sore from hugging all those owls without dropping them. I kind of just...let them spill on the desk. And they rolled around a bit. So freaking unbelievably CUTE.

I think the guy working at the desk just stared for a second, and then he said something like, "That's a lot of owls." To which I replied cheerfully, "Yup." So I took home 11 owls.

And then I realized they were too cute to give up. So I'm keeping 5 of them. I got my other friends (who aren't getting owls) scarves.

The green owls are my favorite. The tag on it says "Harley+Boss" (that's the brand I assume) and then "This is not a toy, it's for adult collectors." And then this is what gets me. At the bottom it says "Made in China" but at the top it says "ToyTokyo." So it's not a toy but it's made by a company called ToyTokyo. And It's ToyTokyo but it's made in China. Hmm...

The three different colors. There was only 1 yellow left.

Everyone tumbling out of the bag.

Group photo.

Awwwwww!

And then I looked at the bag again and realized that I forgot one!!!

Everybody.


Yeah, I know. I'm totally crazy to get so excited over a bunch of stuffed owls and snap a million photos of them on my phone. But I'm so excited about them!!! Partly because of the sheer randomness. The five I'm keeping are sitting on my desk right now against the tissue box and the calendar. One of them is tangled in my AC adapter cord. They are so unbelievably cute!!! I don't think I've been this excited over stuffed animals since I was three...

On the subject of randomness and photos, I also need to share my anglerfish experience.

I had this totally whacked conversation with Michelle last night. I'm not sure what made me so hyper, but we were webcamming. And then we split off (with the webcam still on). I worked on TRTP while Mich IMed guys on GChat while we shared music through the Yahoo! Messenger box (That's what I love about YIM. You can watch videos together).

And then randomly, I decided to become an anglerfish! (Which means, I tied a small lock hair up and attached a tea light to it--an electronic tea light. For a second, Mich thought I lit my hair on fire.) I can only tell you one thing: Being an anglerfish is awesome.

Today, when I was driving down Highway 280 (I think), I saw the sign that said "Adopt a Highway: A Random Act of Kindness." I went home and searched up what A Random Act of Kindness was. I discovered RAK. It's awesome. Check it out.

Hmm. I think from now until Christmas, I'm going to try one of those out every day. The only one I don't agree with is "Clean up graffiti." I know graffiti is wrong and it's a form of vandalism, but I'm an urban decay girl and to me, graffiti is pretty and artistic.

RAK also has inspirational quotes. Here's one:
"Remember that you are needed. There is at least one important work to be done that will not be done unless you do it." -Charles L. Allen

And on that note, time for me to finish studying Calculus. Tomorrow is the last day of formal school for 2010. And then four finals and I'm FREE.

Yay.