Walkin In a Winter Wonderland

Today, on our way to Keene, we saw this. No one had a camera, so we ended up going back to take pictures! I can't believe how beautiful it is. This is what that freezing rain did yesterday. It totally missed most of my town, but this is just outside it.

Tomorrow is my birthday! While in Keene we set up an appointment for next Saturday so I can get my tattoo. Tomorrow we are going to my Aunt's house so my cousin and I can bake a cake. The really good part is the home made frosting. We have a family recipe for it, and it is awesome! I wish I didn't have to wait for tomorrow. xD

Poem & WTJ

I traced my hands today for my Wreck This Journal. They didn't turn out as good as I wanted, but it was still fun.


We read Snow by Louis Macneice a few days ago in class. With our sort of snow day today I decided to share it. No one in my class could quite decide what the last line of the poem meant.

Snow

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes–

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of your hands–

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

Yule Themed Dreamboard

Snow Day With No Snow

We have our snow day! Unfortunately, there's no snow. All we have is freezing rain. It doesn't make the world look beautiful, but it did get me a three day weekend. I'm still calling it a snow day because "freezing rain day" just doesn't sound as good. I am celebrating this snow day by sitting around in my PJ's all morning and then cleaning all afternoon. I didn't actually go off and clean the house like I said I would yesterday, because my mom came home and I got caught up in other things. Then I watched The Science of Sleep with my sister. It is the strangest movie I have ever seen. I liked it, and I would watch it again, but it confused me.

I said I would share the paper I wrote for my mythology class when I got it back. I got it back yesterday and made the corrections- so here it is! We were asked to write about our favorite myth or mythological being.

Dionysus, God of Wine

Dionysus, also called Bacchus, is a very complex god. It begins with his birth. He is the only god to have a mortal parent. He is also called “twice-born” because he was born from Zeus’ thigh after his mother, Semele, demanded that Zeus reveal himself to her and consequently died. Zeus gave the infant Dionysus to a group of nymphs to be raised.

He became the god of wine. This seems appropriate, as it makes him even more complex. Wine can be both good and bad. Wine cheers people, but it also makes them drunk. Thus, Dionysus is a joyful, but also savage god. His double nature makes him beneficent and malevolent. At one time, he can make men merry and free; in another, drunk and brutal.

When people worship him, they do not go to a temple or to the wilderness, they go to a theatre. Beautiful poetry and plays have been written for Dionysus. The performances are considered sacred, and everyone involved in them engaged in an act of worship. He is a god of inspiration. Some comedies, and many tragedies, were written in honor of Dionysus.

Though his worshippers do not gather in wilderness to honor Dionysus, he is connected to the land in a way only a few others can relate to. As the god of the vine, he suffers with it. In winter, he dies and is reborn with the warmer weather. It is not surprising that Dionysus became a symbol for the strange cycles of death and rebirth.

His complexity and double nature made me pick Dionysus as my favorite mythological being. People can connect to him. No one is completely good or bad. We all bring happiness and tragedy to the world. I think of him as a hopeful and inspirational god, and a tragic brutal force.

Things Are Looking Up!

Early release today! Because the weather was getting bad (freezing rain) we got released from school a little early today. Not too much earlier for my whole bus, because some idiot had to throw things. The vice principal came onto the bus and wouldn't let us leave until someone confessed. So we waited for 15 minutes. No one was confessing. Finally, someone (I don't even think it was the person who did it) confessed to throwing the stupid toy and we got to go home.

So I've been home for over and hour and what have I accomplished- reading and commenting on blogs, and making my dreamboard. Tomorrow is the full moon and Sacred Suzie is doing her monthly dreamboard launching. It's a Gemini full moon, Suzie talked about it a bit on her blog.

We're all anticipating bad weather tonight, so I am keeping my fingers crossed for a snow day! A three day weekend on my birthday weekend, how perfect would that be? The only homework I have isn't due until the end of next week, so I doubt I'm even going to think about that. I am overall in a good mood. Time to go clean the house while listening to my music.

5 A Day

Jamie tagged me for this meme called "five-a-day". It was started to encourage keeping mentally healthy.

Here are my top five things to do every day (or every week) to stay mentally healthy:

• Blogging/ Journaling- Some people would put these as separate things, but for me they do the same. They allow me to release my thoughts and just write about whatever I want or need to write about. I find this really helpful when I am stressed or worrying. Lately I have felt that there aren't many people I can actually talk to about things, so blogging is important to me.
• Indulging- I allow myself to eat a few unhealthy things a day during the school week. On the weekends I give myself more room to interpret what is 'healthy'. If I am constantly worrying about my food I can't get other things done. If I didn't try to control it though, I would pig out on junk food all the time like I did as a kid. I think of this as a happy medium for myself.
• Listening to music/reading/watching TV- These are necessary! They let me relax and lose myself for a while. I can't imagine what I would be like if I didn't get to relax for even just a little while. I'd be a mess.
• Cooking- I love cooking. At least once a week I like to be able to make a real meal. It makes me feel... I don't know how to describe it. Accomplished? Looking at a meal I have just put together makes me feel wonderful.
• Making a mental list- I don't know if this is exactly good for me, but I always like to have a mental checklist of the things I need/want to do. If it gets overloaded, an alarm goes off and I start to feel like I did just a little while ago. That is when I need to take another look at the list and remind myself that it's all doable, and I'll be okay. If I didn't have this mental list I know I would be lost.

5 people I would like to tag for this-

1. Mrs. B.
2. Suzie
3. Robyn
4. Genie
5. I am leaving this 5th spot open for whoever wishes to do this. I found it helpful to step back and look at what I actually do to help myself. I realized that I do most of those 5 things without even thinking about why.

Rant & WTJ

I feel myself reaching that point where I am about to start screaming and throwing things like a two-year-old. I am feeling so overwhelmed again. The house needs to be picked up before my dad wakes up or he’s going to yell, dinner needs to be made, homework, scholarships, blogging, preparing for this weekend, I just want to relax! My head is going to explode. I was just sitting trying to clear my head and not worry about the things I need to do, but they won’t go away! I keep thinking I’m forgetting something.

Last night I finally gave my Aunt the papers she needs to help me with for a scholarship. That is one weight off my shoulders, replaced with two more. I now need to worry about actually getting the letters of recommendation for another scholarship, and I feel bad for giving my Aunt more things to do when she’s already busy to the point where she should be pulling her hair out. I came home late because I was at her house, and I had to come home to doing AP English homework and writing a paper for my mythology class. (I think it came out pretty good, I’ll share it when I get the corrections back from my teacher.) Quick dinner, more working on the paper, quick shower, House! I got to relax for an hour and watch the new episode of House last night.

To be honest I love blogging, but I’m afraid it might get lost somehow once I finally get my license (I had to go and remind myself about that, didn’t I…) and get a job. I want to bang my head against a wall already, and I’m wondering how I’m going to balance everything later! Sorry for this long rant about nothing. It has sort of helped me, though.

Here is what I got to do to wreck my journal today! During study hall I just randomly picked a word and wrote it over and over. That is also where I borrowed Eric's awesome double sided pen. After deciding I was a little too stressed, I found the page in the third picture and unleashed all of it.

Poem

Today in class we read a beautiful poem by a woman named Joy Harjo. It was called Eagle Poem. It's about connecting with nature, and I really loved it. It is one of those poems that just speaks it's meaning loudly and clearly to me. Of course almost everyone in the class, teacher included, felt the need to poke fun at it for being so "hippyish".

Eagle Poem

To pray you open your whole self

To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon

To one whole voice that is you.

And know there is more

That you can't see, can't hear

Can't know except in moments

Steadily growing, and in languages

That aren't always sound but other

Circles of motion.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River.

Circles in blue sky

In wind, swept our hearts clean

With sacred wings.

We see you, see ourselves and know

That we must take the utmost care

And kindness in all things.

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this, and breathe, knowing

We are truly blessed because we

Were born, and die soon, within a

True circle of motion,

Like eagle rounding out the morning

Inside us.

We pray that it will be done

In beauty.

In beauty.

Wrecking My Journal

I had a lot of fun with these pages. I think the rubbings with a pencil came out looking awesome. Scribbling wildly and violently with reckelss abandon... now there is something everyone should do! I love this book more and more every day. It's really helping me to be more creative.

Wreck This Journal

Today I did a few of the messier pages in Wreck This Journal! Two involved paint, and one required me setting the page on fire. I like fire, but it scared me a bit. I had a glass of water next to me that I used to make the page stop smoldering. I had fun doing these pages, though. In the second picture I used a twist tie and both ends of a fork to make the lines. I still have some paint on my fingers and desk from the third picture.

Decorations

Yesterday while babysitting we pulled out all of our Christmas decorations and decorated the house! It was so much fun to have Keagan (the little boy I babysit) help us put everything up. I went and took a few pictures of my favorite things today. 90% of the decorations are the same ones we have had since I was little. Christmas is very much about being together as a family for us, so it's nice that we can still use all the old decorations.

The first picture is of our tree. We have a fake one because it's less of a problem to put up, maintain, and take down. I would prefer a real one, I love the smell they give the whole house, but I'm not going to complain that there are no needles to clean up. A lot of the stuff on the tree is home made, or gifts from people.

These are the stocking my sister and I were given at birth. The hospital we were born at gives them to all babies born in December. They are HUGE. Mine is the one on the left with the white ribbon, my sister's is on the right and has a green ribbon.

This is LEON! We've had this for so long. It's a joke in our family. It's supposed to spell NOEL, but we always put it backwards.

There's the little tour of our holiday decorating. We don't put things out in the yard (who wants to take them down in the snow?), we don't have tons of garland everywhere, we don't have a wreath either. I've always wanted a wreath, but we forget to buy one every year. It isn't much, but I love what we do for our house.