Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Blehhh.

I’m completely aware that my posting is more sporadic than shooting stars, but I swear nothing happened that made me think, “Oh my gosh, this HAS to go on my blog.” Literally, what I’m about to post about has been the most interesting thing to have happen since the last post.

1) There is an electrical problem with the truck, so sometimes you can’t turn the radio on at all or hear the beeping of the turn signal. Everything still works fine and its only every now and then. Well I was headed home one day and the weather wasn’t exactly cool, so I head out of the school parking lot. I’m driving along, sweating profusely, thinking, “Man, it’s really hot in here.” I drive into the driveway and get out. The air outside was much more forgiving. I burst into the air conditioned house and announce, “The truck is like an oven.”

I relay my story to my father, who afterwards just stares at me and says, “Why didn’t you just roll down the windows?”

Fail.

2) The same day, after I realized how common sense sometimes escapes me, I heard Jo (our puppy who is a girl) whimpering upstairs. At this point, she could go up the stairs, but not down the stairs so she would look over the edge, back away, cry, look over the edge, back away, cry, until someone went up there and got her. I climbed the stairs then lay down on them in front and below her. You know those cartoons where the dog grows, or the character shrinks and the dog is about to crush the town or people with its huge paws? I guess she looked over the edge just a little too far and I swear that’s exactly what it looked like when her paw landed right on my eye.

3) I went to go see Perks of Being A Wallflower, and I was right. It made a better movie than it did a book. I went with two of my friends and we ate nachos before then went to the movie, the night before the SAT. I got home at 11:45pm and didn’t get to sleep until 12:30am. But it was so worth it. I had such a great time and the movie was phenomenal. At one point in the movie, Sam (Emma Watson) was fiddling with a Red Solo Cup at a party and Charlie (Logan Lerman) sat next to her and asked her what was wrong. “Oh, SAT results. Oops.”

I turned to my friend, “That’s what I’m gonna be like tomorrow.”

“Well, if you want, I can help you study,” says Charlie/Logan Lerman.

“Help me study!!!” I whisper.

I’m really bad at not talking in movies.

Especially when I’m excited. Which makes no sense, because you’d think I’d want them to be quiet because I’ve been waiting for this movie for forever, but I couldn’t shut up in random parts.

Also, Perks of Being a Wallflower has some amazing quotes, which I will share with you.

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”

“I would die for you. But I won’t live for you.”

“This moment will just be another story someday.”

“So, I guess we are who we are for a lot of reasons. And maybe we'll never know most of them. But even if we don't have the power to choose where we come from, we can still choose where we go from there.”

And there are many more, but those are my favorite.

So now I leave you with the fact that I now have to clean the kitchen. Yay. Dishes.

Thursday, September 20, 2012

SENIOR YEAR

Oh yes. Tis my time to be the ruler of the school. If only they’d give me a crown. Not like a Prom Queen or anything like that, but just Queen in general. I think I’d like that. I’d like that very much.

Anyways, it started off pretty rocky, some person gave this other person my parking tag and parking spot by accident. So then there was this huge  ordeal about whose parking spot it was. At the climax of the situation, I had parked in my spot, because the other person wasn’t there and I  thought they had fixed the problem. It wasn’t fixed. When I got to my truck that afternoon, I got a ticket (which I didn’t read incidentally) and a note from the other person saying, “Quit parking in my spot!” It was fair, because the person really did think that it was their spot. But I thought I had gotten a ticket for parking in my own spot and I was really angry and frustrated that they had done something about his complaint, but from the first and second day of school they had done nothing about mine. So I marched, no stormed back in the school (It was about 4 in the afternoon) and pounded on the Grade Level Office door. When nobody answered it, I hit a wall (I was that angry) and started crying. Normally, I don’t cry in school, unless I have an entire bathroom to myself and it was a particularly horrid day. But no, this was out in the open. I had lost it. But then the door opened. By this very small child might I add. I said, “Hi,” I tried to wipe the water off of my cheeks.

I walked into the office and this lady meets me and she says, “Can I help you? Are you okay?”

“I got this ticket for parking in my spot, I think it might be a misunderstanding. Maybe they gave them the wrong tag or spot or maybe they gave the spot to both of us. But I got a ticket for it.” I was still trying to collect myself, “I’m sorry, I really am sorry.”

“It’s okay, I’d be upset, too. Now why don’t you email Mr. Meezler about this?” I nod as she writes the email on the back of the ticket and I head out, much slower than I had headed up.

It’s going to be okay, everything will work out. It’ll be fine. I told myself.

I walk outside towards my car and a guy who lives in my neighborhood is sitting on a bench. I say hi, because we do know each other and it’s weird not to acknowledge people you know. Unless you’ve never talked to them before in your life, but you know who they are. Then it’s okay to pass by silently. Anyway, just as I pass him he calls out, “Are you headed home?” I say yes, “Can you give me a ride?”

“Sure, but I should let you know  that you haven’t caught me at my best,” and I continue to tell him what happened with my parking. “So how’s your senior year so far?”

“Well, Coach isn’t very happy with me, I skipped practice on Saturday so I don’t think I’ll see the field this week,” he explained.

“Well, I’m very sorry to hear that.” We made small talk all the way to his house, talking about the future, too. I said I wanted to pursue something in music and he said that he was enrolling in the military in a month. He wants to be a Navy Seal. I mean, woah. I know that a lot of people go into the military, I just don’t picture people my age going into the military. In fact, it kind of freaks me out a little.

Anyways, when I got home I actually looked at the ticket and it was just a warning for not having my parking tag. So it was all fixed. And lately I’ve been learning what can only be summed up in a fortune cookie I got at Pei Wei last weekend:

Endurance and persistence will be rewarded.

So persistence I am learning. And actually taking notes and observing my sister, who does this very well.

I’ve also had some other driving experiences that were, well, experiences that I won’t go into for obvious reasons. Or maybe they aren’t obvious. But they certainly are reasons that I’m not going to tell you. Be mystified.

So we arrive on today. I wake up, not ready to be awake, but I awoke none the less. I got ready and my sister got ready early and we headed off. I dropped her off early (“Early? Why early? No one is here early! … Hey! Look! There’s Ana!”) and headed to Starbucks. Pumpkin Spiced Lattes are the best when its crisp and cool outside and deep blue skies. It really felt like fall. I got to school, ate my breakfast and headed to Economics, where I just watched this movie about the Browser Wars. Woo-hoo. They really portrayed Bill Gates as this horrid person that was consumed by greed and didn’t care what it took to shut down other competition. I mean I guess Bill Gates wasn’t all that innocent, but he still treated people better than Steve Jobs. I guess innovators have this “all or nothing” way of thinking, which is probably what made them so successful. Again, persistence.

Advisory was particularly cold. I was wearing long sleeves and I was still shaking. At first I really was opposed to advisory, because come on, who wants 10 minutes more of school for a 15 minutes of doing absolutely nothing? And I really don’t like my homeroom, at least the people in it. So I was really prepared to hate advisory. But it’s not too bad, because I’m with other people and I have my friend Will in the class, who I was supposed to write a song with last year, but it never worked out. 

Skip to Music Theory, which is the last class of the day and we had this assignment where we had to go over the scales on the piano then make this rhythm with our names. Sort of like the Harry Potter Puppet Pals do in “The Mysterious Ticking Noise” which is a classic YouTube video. Here it is for your enjoyment:

So we split into our groups. My group consisted of Megan, Azira, Dan, Peyton (guy, I know this name goes both ways), Andrew and me. We all sat in a circle and decided that Dan should keep the beat, since his name is just one syllable. Eventually, we  got Azira’s and my name decided. Then they brought out the “Amber, Bamber, FoFamber, Banana Famber Fofamber, Amber” actually using my name. Peyton said, “I don’t think Fofamber is a word. I don’t think it’s allowed to be said.” So Fofamber is off limits apparently. Then we ended up  talking about Miley Cyrus’ bad choice in hair and that Liam Hemsworth will have this freak wife and will live old and continue making good movies. Five minutes before we were supposed to share our rhythmic name thing, we decided we should probably work. So everyone pretty much just winged it. At one point, we decided to add pitches to it, which did sound pretty cool, but I was laughing too much to make it work.

So we were the first group to go. It sounded something like this:

Dan.

Dan.

Dan.

Dan.

AhZIIIIIIra

Dan

AhZIIIIIIra

Dan

AhZZIIIIIra

Dan

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam

AhZIIIra

Dan'

Ber

Dan

AhZIIra

Dan

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaam

Dan

Megan Tramlin

AZIIIIIIra

Dan

Ber

P-p-p-p-peyton

P-p-p-p-peyton  (he even added pitch to his voice, so it started really low then went really high falsetto, which made me laugh and the whole class laugh)

Andrewww

Dan

It really was awful, but I was laughing and enjoying it too much to care. 

Other than that, at home all I’ve been doing is cleaning, which included finding a teeny lizard in my room and catching it. It wasn’t even the size of my pinkie.

Until next time when I have more to share :)

Thursday, July 26, 2012

Summer

So I understand my posting has been nonexistent. I’m here to remedy this.

Well Summer is almost over and I’ve realized that I have basically done nothing in the past few weeks. But I haven’t spent all of my time in vain. For instance, one week I read The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, which is a very good, very controversial book that I think (personally) will make a better movie. (The movie comes out in September starring Logan Lerman,  Emma Watson, and Paul Rudd just to name a few)  Here is the trailer:

Then I read a completely different book called Between the Lines by Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha Van Leer, which is about a fairy tale and is very cute.

Lately however, I’ve taken to the Today Show. Tuesday morning I woke up and couldn’t fall back asleep so I camped on the couch and turned on the TV. Nothing was on so I settled for the Today Show. They started talking about the Olympics and I love the Olympics. Plus, half of them were in London, talking about London so I was interested. Then what hooked me even more was their presentation of Clotted Cream Ice Cream. The recipe for the basic is here. This is a recipe for Raspberry Clotted Cream Ice Cream, which sounds like it would be divine. I’m not sure where I could get any clotted cream around here but I can dream, can’t I? Or just do a really good, thorough look.

MOVIE PICK OF THE WEEK:

Today I watched (500) Days of Summer for the first time. I can’t believe I hadn’t seen it before! It’s just wonderful. The camera work and editing is amazing. The music is amazing. The actors are amazing. The movie is fantastic. The emotions that are expressed are contagious and infectious and had me smiling for no reason, sad, angry and heartbroken. For those of you like me, who have been under a rock and haven’t seen this movie, I definitely recommend you go watch it now.

LOVE IT!

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Movie Quote

So to liven up this blog a little since the last post was quite depressing, here's a movie quote from a movie with so many good movie quotes it was hard to pick one.

"My regards to Mark Twain."

And if you can't guess it from that, here's another:

"We've had nine classes together since Kindergarten... ten if you count Religion of Other Cultures, which you didn't because you called it science fiction and refused to go."

Wednesday, April 11, 2012

If I Die Young...

It feels like death is all around me. Choking me with its skeletal hands. Except I'm not the one dying. Everyone else is.

I know it never goes away. I know death never rests, never leaves, follows you around, stalking you, haunting your dreams, reading your mind. Death is imminent, inevitable and yet, now, it surrounds me. Reminding me that death is a dear friend, a neighbor a few doors away. Showing me that it can take my life away from me in mere seconds, or drain me of my life over years, slowly, painfully.

And yet it's not the dying that scares me the most. It's what I'm leaving behind. My parents, my sister, my friends, my grandparents. I couldn't live without any of them, what will they do without me? People move on, go on with their lives. What else can you do? But I can't imagine having to hold your baby, even if he or she is 17, dead and bloody in your lap, hugging them one last time, hoping they'll awake and hug you back. Your tears fall onto their cold forehead and you wish that they were at home or with you. Then cursing yourself for letting them out of your sight. They were yours and you were theirs and now they're gone. I couldn't stand to see my parents like that, holding me, telling people that my future was so bright. If only, if only I hadn't been there that night, I might have been here today.

Yes, death has infiltrated my mind.

But how can it not when in the past week my great uncle has died, my grandmother's favorite artist died and Jesus died and rose again. Death had already settled in my brain but today death has consumed my mind.

I woke up today happy. Happy that I had no fever, my sore throat was gone and the cough, the ear fluid that dulled the sound on my left side and my back pain was minor compared to what I'd been feeling the past two days. I looked at the clock again, "Ten minutes!" I scrambled to get to the bus on time and I knew I was better.

I settled into my seat for 1a, ready to run errands and grade papers for the teacher I office aide for. I got started. Fifteen minutes in, the intercom comes on all scratchy and then the sound of a heartbeat lub dubs. A beeping begins and then it flatlines, echoing death throughout the school. A policeman walks through the door, "___ ______ is now dead." (Unfortunately, I dont remember her name. Come to think about it, I dont know any of their names in that class) A girl I've never heard talk before turns around and grabs her backpack, which coincidentally is the same as mine. A camera follows a policewoman and a Grim reaper with the words "Shattered Life" on his weapon, in and the policeman takes her backpack as she follows the reaper to the front of the room. The policewoman reads a biography about the girl and takes her out of the class, leaving all of us speechless. Except for my teacher, who talks about the consequences of drinking and driving for another fifteen minutes, when the next lub dub and flatline echoes around the whole school. Another dead.

In 1b, it happens again. Then again while everyone is in the hall getting to their next class.

In second period they order for the juniors and seniors to proceed to the cafeteria parking lot. I try to find anyone I know, and I find a girl in my musical theatre class who's always been friendly and I stand by her.

The scene is multiple car crashes. Some kids are in the car, bloody and gruesome, while others hold onto a white cross, their faces painted white, like ghosts. Police arrive along with two ambulances and a fire truck. They pull kids out of the cars and the dead are counted. Six. They are laid out for everyone to see. Cameras are documenting everything.

I'm so far back, I can't see a thing. When a person moves just so, I see a girl, a gash across her cheek sitting in the drivers seat and a boy in the passenger. Neither are moving. Then my sight is concealed behind a head. Then to my right I hear a policeman yell in a girls face, "WHO DID YOU KILL?"

"My brother," she says loud enough so I can hear.

"WHO DID YOU KILL?" he repeats, getting closer.

"MY BROTHER!" she shouts back, "Garrett." she says softer. He continues to give her a sobriety test.

She fails. "You are charged with intoxication manslaughter," the policeman says and her hands are clasped behind her by a pair of silver handcuffs and she is accompanied by other police to the car.

I start coughing and I can't stop. Something tickles my throat and it won't go away. Cough after cough and soon it feels like I'm retching. And it doesn't stop. I want to stop but I can't. Then I'm crying from coughing so hard and for so long. Then finally it ends.

Then I hear a guy in my English class yell, "Grab her legs" and they carry a girl who had fainted out of the crowd. Her eyes open but dazed.
The communication the ambulance sends is projected out to us and a helicopter lands. Three are in critical condition. One is taken in the helicopter and two are taken in ambulances, another goes to jail (actually I was Facebook friends with him for a while there). Then they allow us to walk through the scene. On the way there, I see another girl has fainted.

One is smashed, one totally obliterated and one is flipped. The girl taken out of my first period class was sitting with a white face and a cross. I don't get to inspect the scene as I'd like because you have to walk fairly fast and I'm already behind. I see another ghost girl who is the girl, Lisa, from my algebra two class who I supplied calculators for out of my laziness. Others lay with their bloody make up on the ground. The makeup was impeccable. It was just as gruesome as it would really be. Bones stuck out and it looked as if their skin had literally been torn open. Then I see a guy sprawled out on the ground like the others with glass through his forehead. The student body president - who was also in my English class, Garett. Apparently his parents came onto the scene and held him and cried like I'd described above. I didn't see it and even though it's not real, it breaks my heart.

I go back to class and I'm the first one in the room. I sit and summarize what I'd seen to my dad through text, because I had to talk to someone. The flatline goes off every fifteen minutes - another dead and then another.

In Spanish, Will was really quiet, really reserved. "Work in pairs!" my teacher calls out.

"Come up here," he says halfheartedly pointing to the desk next to him.

I move and open the book to the correct page. "Are you okay?" he doesn't answer.

We continue on with the exercise.

"Did you go to the Shattered Life thing?" he asks afterwards.

"Yeah."

"I mean it's so pertinent (can't remember the actual word he said) to my life. I mean I do that sort of thing every weekend. I mean, if I died my parents would have nothing to live for."

"The only thing I thought about was that your life can be gone in a blink of an eye," of course, I thought of other stuff but this was the most bothersome. It happens so fast. I don't know if this will convince him to make better choices or not. It's up to only him. It was a quiet day.
In musical theatre, we did improv sketches and it was pretty fun. Then I watched The Cell Block Tango performed by a Gay Mens Chorus with a sign language translator to the side. Made us all smile.

A total of fifty students were pronounced "dead" and it echoed flatlines every fifteen minutes throughout the whole day.

Death is all around. Suffocating me with its skeletal hands. Except I'm not the one dying. It's everyone else.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

“Look At Me, I’m Sandra Dee”

I feel like Sandy from Grease. Just sayin’

I feel like I’m living in Grease, except not in the fifties and I’m not Australian, or in love with a guy (I know that’s a big one). But everything else, pretty much.

And it sucks. Perhaps my school will put on the show next year, and I’ll be Sandy. Wouldn’t have to dig too deep for that role.

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Twitch

Last weekend I started writing my book, Flames, of which I am only on chapter 3. So not very far in, but I hope to change that soon. Anyways, I was writing when the muscle beneath my eye started to pulse, it was weird but I didn’t think anything of it.  Later on in the afternoon, I was in the bathroom examining myself in the mirror as girls my age do and I saw it.  The muscle beneath my eye was freaking out and I saw it pulsing.  Of course the next thing I did was let out a small scream and back into a closet door. I ran downstairs, yelling, “Look at my eye! Look! Look what it’s doing!”

“It’s just a twitch,” my dad said casually.

“Just a twitch?” to me this meant a tic, I don’t want to twitch the rest of my life!

“Yeah, don’t worry about it,” my mom joined in.  I looked at them, exasperated. They obviously didn’t feel my fear.

Today I was in Spanish when it started up again.  We were in groups: I was paired with Wyatt and Will.  About half an hour after class has started Wyatt goes, “Woah, your eye! It’s like freaking out.”

“Wait, let me see,” Will said and I turned to face him, “Woah! That’s happened to me before. I’d never actually seen it. Its freaky.” At least its not just my eye.

Then after school, there was a parent meeting for Tarzan and then an actual rehearsal. We were sitting there when the muscle spasm started again and Alexa caught it. “Ohmygosh, Amber! Your eye!”

“I know.”

“Eughh, it’s weird,” she spent the rest of the time closely watching my eye to see if it would pulse again.

It stops every now and then, but geez its annoying.

I know this isn’t much of a story, but I felt like telling you anyways.