Whenever I'm bored, I wish I were here...

I loved it here, my favourite place we visited. This was on a small boardwalk jutting out from the Iguana Farm. (iguana farm, I'm not kidding.)

There must be something in the air...

(this pic has nothing to do with my post, but it needs a picture.)


Well....my birthday has come and gone. I feel no more wiser or older than I did a week ago, but still...yeah 15?

Anyway, I don't know what is wrong around here, especially at school. Its almost scary. Actually, its annoying, incredibly, blisteringly annoying. My annoyance is unfathomable. Especially the fact that the grievance that annoys me is so trivial. I hate these shallow things, and I hate how much hype goes into them, but I just can't escape them. They are a part of normal highschool, teenage life. However, for those abnormally clear-headed and logical few such as myself, these normalities hurt my intelligence. I mean, just look at this paragraph, how repetitive and boring it must seem; how many times did I use annoying or annoyace? Exactly. It stupidity-inducing, these trivial highschool formalities.

At risk of sounding pompous or school girl I've delayed the exact reason for the rant, but I see that I cannot let the mystery go on much longer. Its a Winter Formal. Military Ball, to be exact, since I am in JROTC. I would not pay much attention to this otherwise, of course I would go if only to dance, but all of these...bothersome rituals are--dare I say it again--annoying. And now that everyone has decided that I am to be "Freshman Attendent" for the girls, its a horrid nightmare. Its like being in homecoming court, for JROTC. But that isn't the worst problem, now every damn guy, freshman to senior, who has ever had a crush on me is asking me to go. Its maddening! I'm not the dating type, I have a serious commitment problem, yet I'm bombarded.

I've tried twice now to relinquish this "honor" to the runner-up. But she won't take it because, and I quote, "I don't take hand-me-downs from charity." Isn't that infuriating? Not only did I not even want to be in the running, she gets pissy because someone who didn't want it wins. Its not my fault! And to call me charity! Thats just plain rude. I even told her if she would stop being so stuck up and helped other people and not just herslef every now and again more people would like her. Apparently that was not a good thing to say. Which I don't understand; I was only being honest and she acts as if I had slapped her or insulted her mother.

I might have to chalk this insanity up to the weird air around here. Its like Tennessee can't decide whether or not it wants to have a really early Spring or a really cold Winter. Then there is the fact that everyone seems to be coupling. Its starting to freak me out. Does everyhting change in highschool? Do girls loose their pride and minds over boys like everyone is now? Do guys loose what little intelligence they had in the first place do be on the football team to get the girls? I find this rather confusing myself. It was getting stupid in middle school but now it is just plain idiotic.

I've always had a lot of guys that were friends, most of them older than me. Now in highschool you can't be firends with a guy without people thinking you're dating. Heaven forbid you are friends with multiple guys and guys with girlfriends. Then everything gets hairy. A mess, a mess, a mess. I hate this drama. And there seems to be no way to stop it. (if there are any pointers out there, I'd love to be clued in)

Well, enough of this mentally deteriating fluff. Its taken me a week, I believe, to write this post. I started forever ago and now re-reading it it feels like I'm an example of the very girls I laugh at. Sigh. Oh well, perhaps I've gotten this out of my system. Actually I'm pretty positive that I have; it seems even more frivoulous now then it did at the time....I think this post needs some pictures.

Snow Day

At 9am it was barely snowing, by 4pm it looked like a blizzard! Its amazing, I've never seen so much snow in my life! I also rarely use as many exclamation marks in my writings so this post is a first. But snow deserves exclamation points, I think, because it makes everything look new and bright! Its so strange and foreign, yet you immeadiatly accept it as something beautiul.

Snow seems to do something to a person. It makes people want to write poetry, snuggle up with a lover by the fire place, make children beg to go outside and play in the fairyland, and make elders reminisce. I wanted to take pictures. And I took many pictures. I found it very cold, and very annoying when my brothers started to chase me around with snowballs. I end up running around trying to protect my camera. Eventually I ended up sliding on icy concrete and landing on my butt. My camera, however got through the fall unscathed.

Afterwards I started chasing them back, two against one, but I believe the game was a tie. I'm faster than them even though they are both taller than me and only one is older. Its so sad, I was hoping to reach 5'8, but alas I had to stop growing two inches short. Anyway, back to snow. I'm not much of a poet but I did devise (to my own surprise) a short haiku.

Anticipation

As the world is enveloped

White blurring the land

It kinda sucks, but who cares? I like it. Something is in the air, I believe, because every school child is waiting to know if school will be closed tomorrow also. We all want this four day weekend and more snow to play in. Haha, snow makes everyone children. I should've been doing my biology project, but the lure of the pristine landscape got the best of me. And I had to be out there before it was disturbed to take pictures, of course.

Out there as it was snowing I watched it gather on everything it could, barely feeling the cold on my cheeks, and felt so at peace it almost frightened me. Is that strange? To be frightened by peace? To feel a slight panic that nothing was happening, therefore something is wrong? It was very strange, and it made me start wondering, "is this why we fight so much?" Now I am definitely not saying that this is the cause for wars and all the terrible things that are caused by human faults. But I do think that somewhere in the back of our minds we're afraid of peace. What would we do if we had no disputes to settle, no vengence to take, or no wars to fight for our country?

What would we do?

Its sad but I think its part of our nature. There will never be real peace until we become less human or there are no humans at all.

Wow, at the begining of this post I was using exclamation points and was practically overflowing with happiness, now it ends so soberly. How melancholy and pessimistic I am. Oh well.

Photographs

I like to watch people. (yeah that sounds strange..) Whenever I'm out where there are lots of people; at school, the mall, walking downtown etc. Its just a little quirk I picked up at an early age. I know we all, when children, learn by watching the people around us. We learn what face to make when we're angry, we mimic and we learn in the process. This is when we begin to understand that peoples actions and body language talk also.

I never got out of the habit of watching people, I like to see how different people interact and how they handle situations. I'm always analyzing and categorizing. I love the psychology of people and their emotions and reactions. I find it especially interesting to watch the interaction between parents and children.

You can tell the parents are fed up, especially the new parents, yet their children continue to act hyperactive and, like well, a child. What else can you expect them to do? The parents put on their patient voice and try their best to calm them and get them to act right without causing a scene. But the child doesn't understand, "I've been acting like this the whole day? What happened?" is what they think. So both the child and parent get frustrated, and the the parent believes the child to be misbehaving, the child is just confused, and onlookers chalk it up to bad parenting.

A vicious cycle.

When I was younger I saw so much, so I continued to look and watch. Then I discovered photography and I began to take pictures of everything I thought was interesting, or what I deemed beautiful. My family was confused and often angry that I was "wasting" pictures on people I didn't know, and "its sweet that you like nature so much...but really...this many pictures of our farm?" They didn't seem to comprehend (and still don't :P) that I refused to take fake pictures.

I hate when you see those photos of families smiling and posing on their vacations. I want to take pictures of my family smiling, but I want real smiles, not artificial "oh, here's a camera. I have to be happy" smiles. Because I know from personal experience that a family could have just been fighting, yet they put on those smiles for the camera. I want real pictures. I can't stand to see something, I know is false, being shown around to other people as if we are the perfect family.

Its all lies. I want reality. I know, however, that there are those that hold unto false memories to make them feel better. I guess we all desire the comfort of fantasies when we have no comfort of our own...but that still doesn't make it any less delusional.

So a lot of pictures are going to posted on my blog as part of my story. Some will be of my family like the two above, some will be of random people, and most will be of nature.

Nature and plants are the most honest things on Earth, and they give back as much as they recieve.

The Intro

Every good story, has an introduction-or preface if you like that better- and in the story of life it seems as if our Preface is the longest part. However, what I want to ask, is when can we say our story has finally begun? Or when has it finally concluded? Is the conclusion our death?

Or is it when we give up?

This blog is my own story, I can edit and fabricate as I go, (because honestly, TN can get quite boring at times) but mostly it will be truth. I tend to have a problem with lying. In fact, I've been told that I need to be a little less brutally honest. But with all the sugar-coating and "white" lies that turn out to hurt people...honesty doesn't sting as much.
I think.
But, then again, I am just a naive girl that still hopes for world peace.
And so-the intro to my intro-is concluded.