A rose bud in a garden of weeds

     In my journalism class, I am doing research for an article about irresponsible teen driving. The link that I have included (click this blog title to view it) with this blog post is a long synopsis of a study of teenage drivers. I read the majority of it and it was pretty... informative? I'm not sure if that's the word that I want to use but you should definately take a look at it. Then you can come to your own conclusion about it and maybe help me with the word I want to describe it.(: Anyhow, I came here today to talk to you about how the obvious things surprise me.

    I don't have a high opinion of myself really. I mean, I know that I'm pretty but it's I don't place myself at the top of the beauty scale. I imagine this is what it's like to be Summer Finn from (500) Days of Summer. It's just a natural thing that she doesn't really seem to notice, something simple. It's not as if beauty is radiating from my skin in such a way that I would know and use it to my advantage.
     What is happening is that I am coming to realization that people see more of me than I think about. I suppose that you can say that the way I interpret the way others see me is naive and innocent. Usually, I don't think anyone sees me as more than the quiet girl from Texas who is spending her senior year in a foreign land. The girl who is far shorter and skinnier than most people at her age and position. The girl who is pretty but who no one knows anything about. The girl that I will probably will never have a real conversation with.
     I never think that anyone would think anything but those simple, obvious thoughts about me. I don't realize that people are secretly probing beyond my quiet facade. It's interesting and shocking all the same. For instance, I can never comprehend the idea of anyone seeing me sexually. I know it happens all the time and it's so common but, with the way I present myself, being a sex icon is unimaginable.
     My mind was blown out of proportion by this discovery but it also made me curious. I asked two male friends about their first impressions of me and then what they thought of me now. One of them responded, "When I first met I thought you were fucking adorable. You're really cute. But now that I know you, it's different. You're still really cute and innocent-looking, but that's just it--It's at look." The other said that, "I remember first seeing you in that dress... you looked cute. No, no not cute, beautiful. And now," pauses and does fake gaging noises then laughs and resumes, "Just kidding. But seriously, it's the way you present yourself. You present yourself very well and it makes you just that much more likable." I've always hated that, the fact that I'm easily likable. I never noticed it before but it's obvious that I really am, at least to others. All I do is be me and I guess that goes over well with most people. I feel kind of late with all this, sort of as if I was the last person to find out that Pluto wasn't a planet.

I'm not trying to gain all this attention, I'm just being me.

<3

Like sand in an hour glass, these are the days of our lives

     It was far too lovely to spend the afternoon indoors even though it was supposed to be rainy and terrible out. The forecast lied and instead it was a very sunny, very windy day. Kasey and I went to the bridge and tunnel (also known as "said place") to bathe in its beauty and simplicity. Here are the photos that we took today:

The bridge.

The rail I like to run across,

knowing all too well that I can fall over,
into the water,

at any time.

Sitting on the rail,

letting the wind tangle me.

The tunnel,

my not-so-secret escape from reality,

transportation into another world.

Kasey:

Goddess of Tunnels

Tunnel perspective,

side opposite the bridge.

Same part of the tunnel as above photo,

just a different focus.

The Goddess;

basking in eternal light.

I'll give it up for you,

dear Goddess.

Wind kisses her cheeks

 when the sun is nowhere to be found.

Over the tunnel,

in another world entirely.

Kasey above and Passíon below.

The sheer fun and simplicity in living with sound.

<3

Engulfed in a land of fantasy

     Back in Novemeber, my friends and I skipped homecoming to have our own night out. We ate a fancy dinner at Olive Garden then wandered around Lynhaven mall until it was time to watch "It's Kind of a Funny Story". Overall the movie was okay but I can say that it wasn't my favorite.
     Fast foward to now--I was in the school library looking for a book called The Perks of Being a Wallflower. I couldn't find it, as Salem high school has a very limited selection of quality literature. What I found instead was a book with semi-colorful binding titled It's Kind of a Funny Story. "Strange," I thought to myself, "I didn't know that this was a book before it was a movie." So I checked it out.
     You know how most movies leave stuff out that happened in the book? Well the movie was quite the opposite. It actually fabricated a lot of events--the majority of the movie didn't happen in the book. The book was more in depth about the things that did happen, which made a lot more sense. It wasn't as sparatic as the movie but I think that's why I liked it.
     It was a major accomplishment because I read all four-hundred and forty-four pages in a time frame of less than twenty-four hours. My next mission is to read The Beautiful and Damned which is 449 pages. I checked it out a couple of days ago but I haven't began read it yet. I want to be able to read it without interruption--something that is near impossible. I might try tonight, maybe.
     Anyhow, I stopped writing the "Cartas de amor" at number seven, which was written in English. I know what I want to do with them but I need to wait for good weather.
    Which brings me to this random point: The older you get, the more frequently you look at the weather. I remember days when I would look outside and it would be sunny so I would go enjoy my day--just to hide under someone's porch because it started pouring. I guess it's because as you mature, you prepare yourself for the things to come. It kind sucks. Where is the spontaneity?
     I want sunflowers. I think I'm going to start reading. Goodbye.

Cartas de amor

     Today is the fifth day I have wrote a carta de amor, en español of course.(: I'm not sure what I am going to do with said letters yet. I may give them to the person of my admiration or I might keep them to myself for a while longer. I think I'm going to fill the envelope up so much that it can hardly remain closed, at which point I will give said person las cartas. But until then, we won't know. Changing subjects...

     El sábado, I purchased a sandwich for a hungry man. SDB, Chuck, Glenn, and I were walking to Starbucks from Greenbrier Mall in an effort to spend some time outside. We came across a man who held a sign that read "Hungry--anything helps." I decided that I was going to purchase some type of food item for him whilst at Starbucks. (Which SDB thought that we should as well.) I ended up getting a sausage, egg, and cheese biscuit for the kind sir.(: Quite and accomplishment and not to mention the good karma coming my way! Well, I just felt really good about my deed.

     The entire weekend from Friday to Sunday was great. I was never doing nothing. Thank you weather Gods! I feel like I accomplished a lot this past weekend. I drove Mr. Greg's truck, fed a hungry guy, increased Ligia's confidence, surprised her, made a new friend, solved a dispute, did the "right thing", started the release process, wrote five love letters in Spanish, and I am starting to change for the better.

I'm just waiting for adventure to sweep me off my feet!<3

Thirty-one minutes

Just so you know, this was all a dream. Or rather---a nightmare. It occured between 5:45 am and 6:16 am.


     I was driving around, not knowing where I was headed, and stumbled upon a small town. The first thing that caught my attention was this building that I thought was a mall. The building was large yet rather empty, I assumed that it was vacant because it was newly built or something of that nature. Interested, I decided to sneak a peek just to find that the place was open.
     I wandered around the empty building in awe, the beauty of the emptiness was indescrible. Finally I reached the back of the building which looked rather out of place as opposed to the rest. What I saw was what appeared to be the entrance or back door of someone's home. I entered this "home", curious as to why it was just sitting there at the back of the mall.
     As I entered the building, I realized that it was a home but the owner was nowhere to be found. I browsed the area in search for anything of interest and came across a tank with a lizard in it. The lizard was stuffed and the water in the tank was that clear stuff people use for fake flowers in vases. I crouched down to the level of the tank and noted that the lizard looked as though he was about to emerge from the water. All of a sudden, the lizard came out of the water and just as I screamed he returned to his original position. I was frightened and wanted to get as far away from this mall-house as I could; but when I found the door, a family of three walked in.
     A man, his wife, and thier 22-year-old son walked inside the front entrance of the house. The family was slightly starttled to see me, but we all started talking and things eased up. We discussed the history of the house and its owner which is how I learned the mystery behind the mall-house combination.
     "He was an old man," the wife said, "and the corporate monsters wanted his house. He refused to give up his property so the local government decreed it acceptable to combine and merge any buildings that could be valuable to the corporations--"
     "Mom, you know how I love your stories," the son interrupted, "but I think I'm going to go use the facilities."
     "You go ahead and do that dear. But the man ended up killing himself in this very house and to this day it is rumored to be haunted." I sighed, as if the lizard occurance didn't scare me enough, this news of the previous owner killing himself was kind of overwhelming.
     "Honey, I'm hungry," the husband stated, "I'm going to see what this old gesyer has to eat."
     Just then my cell phone rang. I glanced at the caller ID to see that it was Charmander. "Hello," I answered as I picked up the phone. There was no response on the other side, just the sound of hard sobbing. "What's wrong?"
     Right after I asked, a commercial started playing through our phones. The commercial was advertising the knife that the old man used to kill himself, which went something like this: "This is B.F. Knifes Company calling to tell you that B.F. Knifes are the way to go if you want to 'get the job done'... B.F. Knifes has been around for... A company you can trust with your life... Buy one today!"
     "What the fuck are you doing Passíon? Do you think that's funny?"
     "No Charmander, not at all! I'm not doing anything, I promise!"
     "Well stop it! It's not funny! Can't you see I'm having a tough enough time without you teasing me about killing myself!"
     "I'm not doing anything, I'm sorry!!!!"
     The phone call ended and I heard the wife mutter something about how her son is taking long in the restroom and she is worried. The husband comes in with two Ziploc containers of baked beans with a slice of cheese on top and says, "Don't worry baby, he's probably just taking a shit." He hands me a Ziploc container and I politely refuse, stating that I don't like baked beans. "Me either," he replied, "I was making spaghetti." Confused, I came to the conclusion that the former owner of this house ate nothing but baked beans toped with a slice of cheese.
     The wife panicked and ran to the bathroom to save her babyboy from whatever ailed him. "Nooo!" I screamed at the top of my lungs, "Don't open the bathroom door, it will just suck you in like your son..." She ignored me and flung the door open and tried to keep it there; but once she stepped inside the bathroom, the door slammed behind her. She was trapped and I figured that her husband and I were trapped too. I panicked and screamed so much that I bolted myself awake...