Junior Year

Yeah, I'm in 11th grade. I'm a little shocked that high school is going by this quickly. It seems like I'm still recovering from my freshman year. And now all of a sudden I'm a junior.

I guess we humans are so surprised at the passing of time that every single expression of the feeling is cliche. I can't say "wow, it's going by so fast" because that's what everyone says. "It seems like yesterday" is really accurate, but all the meaning is completely worn out of it. I guess something more original would be "I feel like I'm reading the book that Lucy found in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis, the one where you can't turn the pages back to look over what you just read". And even that's unoriginal, because I'm calling on Lewis to describe it for me. Man, I guess I'm just an unoriginal gal today.

So...today was my first official day in 11th grade. Technically, I started last week, but now I'm actually putting myself on a school schedule (i.e. I get up at 7:00 am instead of 8:00 am). As of now, just after lunch, I'm not as busy as I thought I would be. I wrote down the hours per week I would do school work and then divided it by 5, and I figured out I had 7-10 hours of school work a day, depending on whether or not I had papers due. Uh, I guess I over-calculated. Now that I'm actually in the thick of things, I'm not as overwhelmed as I had originally anticipated. Which is good. Very good.

I am very suspicious that once school really gets going I will have less and less time to blog. So I'm squeezing one post in today. Adios!

School Year Resolutions

To be honest, the school year's start seems to have more of a sense of change and beginning than the calendar year's start. I mean, on January 1st, the only thing that changes is the year. When school kicks in, your entire life kicks into a whole new mode. And that's why I tend to make School Year Resolutions. I actually have a lifestyle change with which I need to align myself (horrors of horrors...I almost wrote "a lifestyle change that I need to align myself with", but luckily I caught that preposition at the end. Winston Churchill would have been ashamed).

I love writing lists. Therefore, I am going to put my resolutions in a list, which is the commonly accepted format for resolutions.

1. Don't regularly stay up any later than 10:00 pm
2. Get into the habit of regular devotions
3. Get responsibilities done as soon as I can, not as late as I can
4. If I can't find time to study, then I also shouldn't find time to watch baseball or hockey
5. Perform some form of exercise every other day (yoga, running)
6. Prefer fruit to sugary snacks
7. If my schedule's too tight, I need to skimp on free-time, not schoolwork

A lot of those resolutions are more like reminders, and I think all of them were ones I needed to acknowledge last year.

I find my brain power is greatly reduced if I keep on getting to bed late. I actually found that out this summer in a debate mini-camp with my public speaking group. Let me tell you, I went to bed early that night because I didn't want a repeat of the bleariness and brain-fog (which, dare I add, does not help in debate).

I'm sure that by reading through my blog you have discovered I am a worrier, a stresser, and an anxiety-er. I find that regular devotions really help me get my focus back on the eternal. I'm a big-picture type of person, and I think best when I have a broad view, so when I'm busy pondering God rather than the messy details of my life I become less frustrated.

For #3 on the list, I'm actually not a huge procrastinator. However, I have become wonderfully talented at making excuses...

...such as, wasting a couple hours watching sports. 'Nuff said.

Ah, now here's an interesting topic. Exercise. I love running, but it takes so long to get ready, get out, run, come back, shower, and get my mind on track again. Yoga is much more do-able in a tight schedule, I find. I can do it for fifteen minutes in jeans and a t-shirt and then go back to my work.

Um...I was going to offer more commentary/footnotes/long-windedness on my list, but it's about time to get a-move on in the real world. Oh well. Be happy I actually posted something.

What on Earth is Wrong With Nyjer Morgan?

Good grief. Did you hear about what Nyjer Morgan did? (For any of you non-sportsy people, he's a baseball player on the Nationals team) He used to be my favorite player just because of his awesome attitude. Now he's called baseball's newest villain. All in the course of one week!

*Sigh*. I just can't understand it. From such a great guy to starting a brawl and throwing a baseball at a fan. Sheesh...now I have to pick a new favorite baseball player. Okay...how about Adam Dunn?

One Looong Night (Adventures with Tash) And A Huge Thank You!

Yesterday I had a fever of 102.something F after our church picnic. I was really disappointed, because I needed to study badly for the TOG. Man. That sounds like 'badly' modifies 'study', but it really modifies 'needed'. Grammar freak, I know.

Dad gave me some Motrin, which lowered my temperature a lot, but in the middle of the night I had an awful dream. It was pretty long and complicated, but it involved a fire that was growing hotter (probably my rising temperature) and the Telmarine god Tash from the Chronicles of Narnia. It ended well, but Tash was super scary. I've always been afraid of him.

That dream was one of the only nightmares I have had in about three years. All of my dreams are scary, but in it I do really cool things, like fighting a battle as Pippin. And it was really vivid and realistic too. Probably brought on by my fever.

Anyway, because I was feeling super hot, I went into the bathroom to check my temperature and got a reading of 104.3 F. That is the highest temperature I can ever remember having. Maybe I had one like it when I was 3 and had the flu, but I wouldn't remember it, of course.

I decided to get some Motrin from downstairs. But wait. That meant walking down the stairwell with darkness on one side, and a dark opening on the other. Usually I'm not afraid of the dark, but with a temp of 104 F I really didn't feel like fighting Tash. Er, that is, I thought Tash would jump out at me.

I successfully navigated all the way downstairs on my fever-wobbly legs and carefully flicked the kitchen light on. Then I went to the medicine cabinet.

The 'medicine cabinet' is a term in our house that means 'jumbled mess mostly related to helping various illnesses'. I had hoped that the Motrin would be right up front, but I could immediately see that it wasn't. I started digging through the boxes of pills and children's medicine.

While taking a break, I happened to glance over into the dark living room. There, close to the floor, we're two glowing white eyes and a beak. AAAAAHHHHH! TASH!

And then I remembered that it was Galdor's playpen. Whew. However, a blanket on a chair looked a lot like a jellyfish, and that reminded me I desperately needed to find some Motrin.

This was about the time when I realized I was narrating all of this to myself like it was a blog-post, which made me feel a bit desperate. And I still couldn't find the Motrin!

Then I happened to glance down a little and saw a big bottle of ibuprofen tablets. It wasn't until the next day that I learned that ibuprofen and Motrin are two names for the same thing, but when I saw fever reducer on the side of the bottle, I was about ready to dance. =)

So I took the tablet and went up to bed. End of story, right?

Well, I was still kind of obsessing over Tash. It might have been about 3 AM when I heard a noise from downstairs. It may have been something falling, or it could have been our AC, or a bunch of things. But, of course, being the sleepy, ill, crazy person I am, I locked my door, turned on my lamp, and grabbed a metal curtain rod for protection. I must have sat in my rocking chair staring at the doorknob for fifteen minutes before I got tired and crawled into bed and finally fell asleep.

Until 5:40 AM, when Mom knocked on my door (still locked) and asked me why I still had my lamp on. Of course, I probably made no sense at all when I told her I was afraid of Tash. :)

I'm a lot better today, but I'm probably still contagious. Not delirious though, thank goodness!

Next, a BIG THANK YOU to AWEL PRINCE!! She's the person behind this lovely new design! It's gorgeous, and so Elven! Head over to her two blogs: her DESIGNER BLOG and her PERSONAL BLOG.

Catching Up

I'm-a back! Thank you all for your comments! Even though I haven't gotten a chance to answer them, I read them all and they make me smile. =) See? It's really encouraging to know that someone's actually reading my blog. Especially because it looks like I've lost some followers.

I arrived home from the beach at about 5 PM after closing in on 6-7 hours of being in the car. It's so nice to be home! I hadn't realized how much I missed Galdor and Mom and Dad. I have a tan =) and I believe I'm lactose intolerant. =( I found it out the hard way after having a large glass of milk, so now I feel kind of queasy and headache-y. But I don't care! I'm used to headaches, and it's great to be home!

Bad news, though...my TOG (Tapestry Of Grace) co-op is on Monday, meaning that I need to study Sunday. However, we're having a church picnic, which means we won't be back home until nearly 4 o'clock PM. Life is an adventure.

Hugs & Blessings,

Izori

Update on my NaNoWriMo progress!

Whew, I'm more busy then I thought I would be!

I started today a few thousand words behind...and now I'm slightly ahead! I've been plugging away at it ever since I finished school. But it's so hard to stare at the computer screen all day, and once I'm done posting this I'll get off the computer and do something outside.

The hardest thing about this is remembering that it's about quantity, not quality. I am a perfectionist, and if something isn't perfect, I tend to worry over it. So my story is horribly written, but I'm up to over 8,333 words.

I know a lot of you NaNo-ers are in the 10,000's already...but I'm not quite so good a writer as a lot of people.

And I am really tired.

[So that means I'm too tired to post my signature]

Izori