Day 10:

Don't think of it as, Sam can't think of a title for her blog post today. Instead think of it as, Sam is letting you create your own adventure.
Minus a tiny teeny itty bit (in comparison to the colossal overhaul today) of touching up to do tomorrow, my room is clean. Excluding the closet that I will most likely tackle tomorrow also. Cleaning gives me something to be occupied with. It helps me not focus on facebook all day and how much I want to get out of Delaware or just drive, or have someone to picnic with.
Mostly because I have hardly anything to say, and because I'm a dork. Here are some goofy pictures I found in the webcam files on my computer; enjoy. Yes, some people call me vain. I know. Thanks.

Ummm ok..
Well, about my day. I woke up, again later than planned, but whatever it's Spring Break. And my mom and I went to Tractor Supply, Big Lots, and Chik-fil-a for lunch. That was nice, mainly because I got to drive. After coming home, I cleaned for a few hours, and made an excel spreadsheet file of all the books that I own. 236+ if you wanted to know. I worked on that until about 7 pm. Then I had an egg salad sandwich, went to DQ with my parents and got a Banana Split Blizzard (yummmy) and now it is 9:45. What a day.....

Tomorrow I am supposed to have an interview for Girls State, which I have decided to skip, because I don't want to spend part of my summer being bored out of my mind by politicians and strange people. I only really signed up to help my school look good. But it's about time, I take to doing things for MYSELF and not other people. Meaning not that I won't continue to be extra involved with clubs and things, but that I should spend less time stressing and more time being selfish so I don't end up ripping my hair out. I feel crappy when I'm not able to do all of the things people want me to. But they should realize how impossible it is to get a summer job, attend college open houses, attend "important" conferences, be in summer extra curriculars, and do AP summer reading all at once. I'm beyond grateful for the opportunities, but these days I think I'll be making the decisions on which are most important TO ME.

Day 9: Hurdles

So I have noticed that I start a lot of blogs with the word so. and also, the point of that last sentence was going to be about how my titles usually don't fit very well with more than one sentence of my blog, before my lack of originality stumped me.
Well then.
I'm sleepy.
This is probably really boring. so you should go entertain yourself with Hayley's blog....where she in turn will refer you to Kristina's blog. (You should know by now that I'm a fan girl. It's true.)
Before I went to bed last night I took 2 Benadryl and proceeded to sleep until noon today. So that's what being drugged feels like...I don't even remember my mom saying goodbye to me this morning. But it did get me through the night without sneezing or coughing or itching my eyes. As of right now, the allergy monster inside of my head has not vacated and has found some cottonballs to metaphysically stuff into my ear canals. I can barely hear anything.
I called the Covenant College admissions rep today and had a wonderful conversation. I think I have almost finally conquered my phone phobia. I'll definitely be applying there in June. That's one hurdle jumped. More to come.
I got one of my first Donegal recommendation, now I just have to get the other two and put the packet in the mail, on some sort of speed trip. I didn't think I was going to be able to work there, but now I am almost positive that it's where I need to be. I feel so stupid for taking that long to figure things out. I can't miss out on Donegal, I just can't! Ugh dumb me and my inability to make grandiose decisions.
My parents and I went Friendly's for dinner and then drove them over to my PopPop's house so I could fix his DirectTV. We're home now, with the pup, sans the brother, watching How It's Made.....railroad tracks are fascinating items to watch be made. Now they are desalinating water. Cool. :)
Today was the last weekday of my break. I still need to finish reading One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest for English class, but that's a project for tomorrow. I've been too infatuated with Ayn Rand's descriptions of architects in The Fountainhead, to worry too much about Chief, McMurphy and their 'insane' friends. I need to write some letters, for the first time in months. Sorry :(, and finish cleaning my room before school starts again. It seems there aren't enough hours in the day (or hours that I am awake).

Day 8: No Shoes and Boys

Well I actually woke up at a sort of decent hour today, hung out with my puppy and lounged around. Quite barefoot. Yay. I finished an anklet that I have been working on for days and wore it to Zach's house. Robert picked me up around 3 and we went to his doctor's appointment, and then drove to the party. It was fun. Boys like to do boy things, like fill air soft guns with propane and eat lots of pizza. Pizza slices count: 4. Soda count: 3 (Orange Crush, Diet Mt. Dew, Orange Crush). I have the worst sugar headache now. We spent most of the time driving to Walmart and all over Delaware. Sheesh. I wish I was a guy so that I could spend the night and get Taco Bell 4th meal at 2 o'clock in the morning. That is something none of my girlfriends would do at a sleep over. I had my first taste of air soft.....sitting in a pricker bush in the darkening twilight, with a mask that prohibits scope use, and people surrounding me. James shot me on the wrist, and I definitely saw it coming, but it didn't hurt as much as I thought it would. Just a small bruising welt as my battlescar.
There is a supposed 1,000 mile wide storm hitting Delaware tonight. It's POURING cats and dogs if you don't mind the idiom so much. It may hail and there is a tornado warning, but I am so excited because I love love love love thunderstorms. They're such a brilliant display of God's power and beauty and grace and fury. All wrapped into one phenomenon.
I worked on more job applications today, am working on my Donegal application (waiting for recommendations). Now as my puppy bolts back and forth with the form of a prancing gazelle but profoundly less gracefulness, I am typing away and watching AFV.
Until tommorow dear....the dog just brought ME the slobbery tennis ball.
Fitting for the day:

Day 7: Wednesday feels like the weekend

This is basically the only productive thing I did today:

and I like this picture of me, because it truly is me. No makeup, no fake smile. Just pure joy in the simplest sense.

Other things I did today include:
-Carry a free desk (my old one) to the curb
-watch Lizzie McGuire
-watch Superstar (lol)
-send in more job applications
-slack off
-Listen to lots of music and watch iCarly
-paint my nails the most ADORABLE raspberry color. (NYC In a New York Color Minute 'Downtown')

Tomorrow I will be going the day without shoes, watching my idiot guy friends pelt each other with airsoft pellets, and spending the afternoon with them, maybe visiting with Alicia again and going somewhere barefoot, like Rita's.

Day 6: When the waves are flooding the shore

...and I can't find my way home anymore. That's when I look at you.
Now you must be asking yourself, did she really just quote Miley Cyrus? Well yes, yes I did indeed.
I was going to write this long entry of Dear "John" letters as today's post. But something stopped me. I think the force that kept me from whining and crying and letting those boys defeat me, is a personal sense of maturity. For me, something inside has changed. and this is just coming from the heart of a unique individual. Yeah, it crushes me everytime I give in and say hi to the crickety noise of no response in Facebook-land. But I feel like today I am so much better than that.
It's spring break and I keep wasting the beautiful mornings away by sleeping in past 10. What I really needed to do today was clean my room the rest of the way...but alas that has yet to be done and it is 9:10 pm. Well what did I do today? I watched some iCarly, and went to lunch at California Tortilla where I burned my tongue to the point of numbness on Dave's Insanity hot sauce, and walked around Main St. with my twin creating flip flop blisters on my feet, and then I sat in the car and witnessed someone doing cocaine in the car next to me and was thoroughly freaked out. I went to the movies with my best friend Alicia....we went to see The Last Song, and as cliche as it may be, we bawled our eyes out. I applied for some jobs babysitting and maybe being a museum tour guide/greeter. I ate a gyro from Pita Pit. I realized how terribly much I MISS my violin....but I can't even try and play since out of 2 violins I have 6 broken strings. I realized how close summer is, and how much I just want to work away from the dull life I am leading these days.
I want to fall in love. But I'm content in knowing that I have friends who love me, a family that would do anything for me, and Jesus to wash away my sins. I've surely missed writing. and I have surely missed freedom of spirit. I think in my own way, I broke the spell. and even if I don't feel it or look it most days, that makes me beautiful.
On 04/08/10 I am going without shoes.....will you?

Day 5: Defiance

I spent all day long cleaning my room. Well, that is after I woke up at 10 am, ate some lasagna healthy microwave stuff, watched some 18 Kids and Counting, etc. I organized everything and rearranged my furniture. Now it looks very dormy and comfortable, though there is still a lot of stuff to go through. I watched Luke Conard videos and swooned over Mike Lombardo's blogging. Then we finally had our "forgotten" Easter ham for dinner and homemade mac and cheese. yum. The family and I watched Defiance, an amazing movie about the Bielskis and World War II. Now the dog is conked out in his kennel and the NCAA Basketball championship game is on. Come on Butler!!(Gordon Hayward is cute.)
Oh and I found out that the ROFLCOPTOUR is coming to Morgantown, WV which makes me and Robert beyond happy. Hopefully I have a car or a ride by then.
I hope your day was fabulous. I love you. You're gorgeous/handsome, and people should tell you that more often.

Day 4: Easter

 My family and I went to church this morning. I guess it was alright, but in all actuality churches aren't really something that I have warmed to in the past months, for understandable reasons. We had brunch at Waffle House after dropping Robert off at Bob's house. Smothered, Covered, Chunked, Diced, two over medium eggs and cinnamon raisin toast. yumm. Hashbrowns are to die for. Then we came home and I slept. My allergies have really kicked in this week and I can't stop sneezing, have major migraines at all hours of the day, and itch my watery eyes constantly. I love daffodils, but I am pretty sure I'm allergic to them. Mom and I hit the recycling place and the Dollar Store where I got some new sunglasses seeing as mine broke this morning. We rented a Redbox dvd for later tonight, but ended up not watching it for various reasons. Dinner was egg salad sandwiches and chips. After that my mom and I visited Grammy at Singerly and had a lovely time talking to her and PopPop on the porch in the warm Spring air. We joked and laughed as he pulled out prunes and other random things from his bag, what I'd like to refer to as a satchel. He asked about my "athletic prowess" and I told him I wasn't sure I had much. He then went on to say I must keep it in the garage. (haha Prius/Prowess....adorable) He wondered if I had a boyfriend and I told him I keep that in the garage too, it was the best come back I have had in quite a while. PopPop took out some pictures to show us including some from when he was in the air force flying reconnaissance missions over ChiwoJima (sp?) and spending time with the Geishas in Japan ("I couldn't help it.") One picture features 4 very unhappy looking Japanese Geishas standing with him in his uniform. I love how cute my grandpa is. Grammy seemed alright tonight...anxious as always, but a little happier with the world. Robert came home around 8. I watched bits and pieces of The Sound of Music to the disdain of others, and am thinking about going to bed shortly. I realized sadly but TERRIFICALLY that I will not be able to blog for the last few days of the month because I will be in Daytona Beach, FL on a school trip. But I will Attempt to write by hand and then photograph those and post them. I do plan to write everyday this month. Hold me to it.

Day 3: Pipe Dreams and Fluctuating Plans

Needless to say I was very frustrated last night when my huge post got deleted, but I refuse to give up. So let's start at the beginning of the trip. We left Newark around 5:30 on Thursday night and drove for 2 1/2 hours to Shepherdstown, WV which is right over the MD state line across the Potomac river. On our drive my mom and I kept a running punch buggy tally that I taped to the dash board. (we used this the entire trip) The world order of punch buggies is as follows: 1. Silver punch buggies are negative points. 2. Purple or pink are double. 3. Convertibles WITH the top down are double. 3. Buggies with Christian bumper stickers are triple. 4. Punch buggies travel in packs. 4. More sightings can be found in college towns than highways and in blue states rather than red states. 5. To call one, both/all players must be in the car. We obviously go hardcore. I can't remember who won, but I'll update that later. At one point we even began tallying the deer that we saw. That was short lived.
We checked in at the Bavarian Inn (recommended by Shepherd, but not by me anymore) and then went looking for dinner in downtown Shepherdstown. It was the night life here that showed us the first glimpses of how confused that community is. Being lovers of Thai food, we stopped at Kazu for delicious Chicken Pad Thai and Steamed Dumplings...ohmygoodness do I love Thai. It was here that I explained to my momma my theory on personality archetypes. You see, there is really only 1 story with an infinite number of variations. Therefore it is understandable to assume that there are only certain types of people with little variation. Have you ever run into someone new and immediately think of someone else? It happens to me all the time. Well Thursday night I swear to you that I found the clone of Chris Knight (as played by Val Kilmer) from Real Genius. His mannerisms were exactly the same. Our waiter even reminded me of that brooding English teacher type that has something to mask. On the way back to our car we almost ran into a very drunk hippy woman with a tupperware container of food trying to get back to her pickup truck who's bed was full of hay and rubbermaid containers.

After being too full for green tea ice cream we headed to the Sheetz (a store that always baffles me) for some snacks thinking we might find a movie to watch at the hotel. (too bad the TV only had 35 channels). We bought some water and candy and a delicious Golden Grahams S'mores bar. In the parking lot were the WV boys with no teeth and muscle shirts covered in mud. Inside were a group of gays in tight purple shirts and sporting bleach blonde mohawks. I was freaked out. The Sheetz continued to attract oddball attention throughout our stay.
Back at the Bavarian we called the front desk to get the internet wifi code, which Frau Ilkna (I can't really remember her name so I made it up) told us in a VERY German voice was Blueberry. Bluuuuueeberrrrry. The really ridiculous thing about having a password is that no one would ever try and steal their weak signaled wifi anyway. The even more incredibly ridiculous thing is that the pages time out after 15 minutes of inactivity (which ends up being more like 5 minutes) and that's how I lost my entire blog. We tossed and turned in the giant bed all night, hot and then cold, though it was fairly comfortable.
On Friday we woke up early and walked to the Shepherdstown Sweetshop Bakery for coffee and danishes. Along the way we also picked up the student newspaper, to learn a little more about real student life. It was a glorious approx 1 1/2 mile walk on a beautiful day. I befriended the town cat, Jack.

Then we headed over the Potomac to Antietam Battlefield, home to the single bloodiest battle of U.S. history. 23,000 people died there. It was a very interesting driving tour and crazy scary high observation tower, and we bought some interesting t-shirts at the gift shop. Our next stop was Harper's Ferry, which was indeed very busy with people enjoying the weather. We ate lunch at the Anvil restaurant and had some AHMAzing hot crab dip and a really great wrap. It was a truly small town atmosphere. Driving down the road we stopped at the main drag and explored a bit; old bookstore here, fair trade shop there. Then we went to my favorite part of the entire trip. The Appalachian Trail Conservancy Office. I have a new pipe dream. Simple as this: I AM GOING TO THRU-HIKE ALL 2,000 MILES OF THE APPALACHIAN TRAIL. Now realistically this will not happen until I graduate college and raise the money and get in shape. But mark my words, I will do it before I die. It takes about 6 moths and only 25% of the people that attempt it actually make it. I would start at Springer Mountain in GA in mid April and end at Katahdin in Maine around the beginning of October. I got a map and I am tacking it to the wall.

After all the fun in Harper's Ferry, we drove back to the hotel to relax and get ready for a nice dinner. I took a bath in the whirlpool bathtub with the jets on and then watched a movie called Temple Grandin about a truly amazing woman. It was inspirational. We got all dressed up purty for dinner at The Press Room and headed back into Shepherdstown. Their linguine was excellent, their ambience divine. Yet again we got too full and missed out on Lavender Creme Brulee... :( but the dinner was too good. I even took leftovers which I ended up throwing out because I wasn't hungry before bed and there was no fridge. We drove to Martinsburg and finally found the commercial areas. There was another Sheetz visit where we met LeeLee and the people in front of us talked about being together for 23 years and graduating high school together while debating over tobacco-less cigars.
Today was the actual open house for the University.

We went and were bored, but at least my shoes(haha really mom's) were cute. I'll probably apply there just because they do have the program I want, but it is not a school particularly for people like me seeing as average GPA is 3.2 and SAT's are in the 1200s. But there were definitely pros and cons to take into consideration. We didn't stay for lunch in the dining hall because honestly, some of the people were just plain annoying. We stopped at the farm market behind the library and enjoyed the music of a guy in a fuzzy pink hat and his friend playing a washtub, bought a colored My Little Pony picture from some smart and cute little girls named Cynthia and Annabella, and basked in our Yankee-ness.

After leaving and getting a little turned around in Hagerstown, MD we ate at the Cracker Barrel and headed home. I fell asleep despite trying very hard to stay awake. I came home, said hi to my boys and went to bed. After a few hours long nap and not eating dinner I woke up, watched Butler beat Michigan State in basketball and finally had dessert: cheesecake. Now I have an allergy headache (I've been sneezing all weekend) and am too tired to sleep. Tomorrow is Easter. I don't really want to go to church, but I will to make my family happy.
hahahaha THE END.

Day 2: Well, well

I just spent 45 minutes typing a 2 page blog entry and then the internet timed out. Never again will I forget to copy before hitting publish. But I have to wake up in the morning way early and I feel sick to tears right now that I wrote and epic blog and lost it, so I'm going to bed. And I will type a new one on the way home tomorrow. So much for that.

BEDA

Today is the first day of Blog.Every.Day.In.April. (also known as BEDA). I'm going to try this. I failed at NaNoWriMo and that crushed my writing spasms into squashed cantaloupes (see what I mean?) so now I need to regain my confidence with the keyboard, sharpie marker, quill and ink, typewriter, etc. (But most preferrably my Space Pen; yeah).
Currently I am packing for a mommy and Sammy roadtrip to Shepherdstown, WV to look at Shepherd University and tour Antietam Battlefield, so this will come in sporadic, I need to change the song on my playlist, am tired of folding socks bullet points. Try to keep up:
-I'll start with the easy stuff. Summaries. Today was our NJROTC Annual Inspection Pass and Review. That just means we stand on a muddy parade field marching in circles for four hours, in black long sleeve shirts, and the sun's rays roasting us like sitting ducks. I got to drill with a rifle, and slide all around through a muddy walkway as people watched. Despite how miserable it sounds, I think it's pretty neat that I have the cadets from my school to experience it with and to add a jovial atmosphere. (I've been using the word jovial a LOT lately).
-I got out of the hour I was supposed to be in homeroom by helping my favorite history teacher Mr. G organize reenacting uniforms and watching Disney WW2 propaganda. Now if only we watched these clips while learning about Hitler in my actual US History class, I might be a little more fascinated with Scar's lectures. Although, Ken Burns is just as cool.
-Junior year has been by far the most difficult relationship wise and academic wise that I have ever seen. I've failed a lot of people. and done a lot right too. As much as I hate the term "depressed". I have been for most of the winter. I only recently recovered from this comatose situation. Friend drama keeps rearing its ugly head, but I'm learning that at 17, it's always better to move on with life than wait around for apologies that you are never going to get. I get angry, and it goes to my head creating intense paranoia. I'll keep this an ongoing discussion throughout BEDA because everything that I have realized is too much to sit down and bullet point all at once. I have this whole analogy about chocolate in a sock drawer, and towers falling, and stock market bubbles that I'll throw in the ringer sometime later over break. (Oh yeah, spring break has officially started.)
-Another lighter note: Ke$ha won't get her trailertrash out of my head. But I don't so much mind. My music taste is quite eclectic these days. I fall asleep every night (and it's been this way for a month) to either Regina Spektor's Far cd or Jack Johnson's album Sleep Through the Static. I sing Your Love is My Drug and Tik Tok in the middle of chemistry class, and quote Simon&Garfunkel's The Dangling Conversation a lot. Taylor Swift is pretty. and I'm on a boat. In case you were wondering. But I'll never turn down jazz classics or some Scottish fiddling. :) It's Easier Said than Done (The Essex)
-After the parade today, I dropped my mom off at work and then drove Rob home with me. We had the windows down and were fist pumping out them. Don't worry, I was safely on my neighborhood road. (We were fistpumping to a techno version of a Lady Antebellum song) wow.
- It's gorgeous now. and I can see the teenyweeny pinecones forming on the pine branch right outside my bedroom window.
Well, until tomorrow my dears. I'll explain a lot more then, but for now I NEED to finish packing. :) <3