Only a bot...

...would send an email like this to someone who hasn't updated their website in ages:

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And the whole message was a link. I am pretty sure you were meaning to spam people. >.>

...I will now be open to even more spam comments... And possibly emails? But I'm pretty sure you can't find my email here, can you?

Hello!

I haven't posted in ages! I meant to make a new post a long time ago, but after I started the draft I had to get up and do something and somehow forgot to come back. I started by writing that I got a lovely stack of books for Christmas, that my grandmother had come and stayed for three weeks, and that it had in general been a lovely Chistmas. I was probably also going to mention that there was far too much snow. I may then have gone on to mention the party we had - first in a long time! - and how much fun it was. We invited a bunch of people over from Masterworks and the birthplace. I think there were about thirteen people in all. We had food and played card games and danced and it was wonderful! Was that really this year? It feels so long ago!

I was home for the Fourth of July this year, so I got to see our fireworks. Last year I was in Houston and I couldn't even hear any bangs! Terrible, just terrible. Then a friend invited me and Elai over to her house to swim! The very next week I left with my grandmother (who had come to bring home Elai and the boys, to see my senior piano recital, and to be there for littles brother's birthday) and my two little sisters to stay a few weeks and my grandmother's house. We were taken swimming very often by my grandmother's cousin. I hurt my shoulder, so my grandmother got me a massage. A friend of my aunt's took us out for supper, and other than the extreme heat we had lots of fun. Then right before we were about to leave my great grandmother, who is 102, had a stroke. Daddy and Xhavan drove to her house and stayed with her until she died, then stayed for the funeral. So our return was delayed another week, and I was extra glad to be home. I got to drive most of the way there, and part of the way back. Oh, and now I've jammed my elbow something awful and it hurts to use if I'm not veeery careful.

The computer wouldn't let me publish this yesterday, so here it is today. My elbow tells me it is fine, now. I took very good care of it so it would recover extra-fast.

Annnd, it has yesterday's date on it? Okay. That's nice, I guess.

Sooo...

Remember that cute little turtle my youngest brother found? The one I was planning on taking pictures of? Well, it turned out it was dead. So we buried it. And it's illegal to buy (or was that to sell?) baby turtles. So we couldn't get one to replace it. *sigh* But! We finally butchered the goat. Now we'll have more milk from Jemima in the mornings. And we were given a deer to butcher - but that turned out to be gamey. I suppose we'll have to feed all the meat to Rex and the cats. And... I got elected to be the sergeant at arms in our 4H group. o.o Did you see that coming?

I recently watched all of the three episodes of the new Sherlock TV show that is set in the 21st century, and it's pretty awesome. The Watson is not Awesome Watson, but he's not half bad, either. (Don't feel bad, you just can't beat Jude Law's Watson!) But, oooh, the Holmes! Benedict Cumberbatch makes a very good Holmes. His acting is amazing. So amazing that I've started looking for other (good, only good ones, please!) movies or TV series in which he is the main character or at least has a relatively important part. I found The Last Enemy... But I did not like it at all. Especially when I got to the end. What kind of ending was that, anyway? D:< So now I have to wait for Amazing Grace to come in from Netflix to see anything better.

So. Um. I realize that I sound very out-of-character, but it seems that I am a little fangirl of two things. The first thing is Gunnerkrigg Court, a web-comic by Tom Siddell, and the second thing is Sherlock. (I have to wait a whole year to see the cliffhanger the third episodes ended on resolved. I hate cliffhangers. I am not happy about this. But the year seems to be whizzing by at a fair speed, so I'm doing alright at the moment.)

Things are very exciting

Or they were, for a bit. I got to babysit a sweet little nine month old boy three times! He's my piano teacher's grandson, and he's absolutely adorable. I turned eighteen - and I babysat again on that day. Then we had visitors! Some old friends of ours were passing through because their youngest son had a football game about half an our away from, so they stopped and spent the night. We got to talk a lot. But now things are all mostly back to normal. I can't babysit again for a while because the baby had a cold and I caught it, and just when I was getting over it I went and babysat him again. It does seem like much of a problem, but they have two cats and two dogs in the house, which means lots of fur everywhere. And I am allergic to things that shed fur. AND I have asthma. I also think that while I was in Houston my immune system was weakened. Stupid Houston. So what with everything, my allergies and asthma got excited, and now I still have the cold - three weeks later. >.<

Yesterday my little brother found a tiny little baby turtle. I'm PRETTY sure it's a land turtle. Mama took little brother out today and bought a little thing like an aquarium to put the turtle in. He's so young that his shell is still soft, and I don't think he can retract into it yet. He's kind of cute. :3

Look who has a new template!

The one I had before got messed up when I was trying to fix a problem, and then I couldn't figure out how to fix it, so now I have this new pretty thing! Don't you like it? There was another one that I liked better, but Mama says this one is easier to read, and that is very important, so this is the one I have.

I'm going to be teaching my younger siblings to read. Mama bough a curriculum called The Bob Books for me to use. I'm also going to read Ruth Beechick's A Home Start in Reading. I've tried to teach reading before... And it turns out the way I was trying to teach was actually a lot closer to the way children are supposed to be taught than the way Mama taught me! Little sister1 was five or six, and she asked me to teach her, so I got a red crayon (I was eleven or twelve myself, mind) and wrote CAN PAT PET CAT? On one side of the white waste bin kept in our room, and YES, PAT CAN PET CAT on the other side. Two vowels, four consonants, if only I'd left off that YES. But there were a few problems. She was too young, and I too impatient. That didn't work too well. But now I get to try again - and this time it should be much more fun for the students.

I know I should have done it earlier

But really, there wasn't time. And now here I am, in the middle of the night, with a kitchen to clean and a page to write, and I'm trying to tell you about these miserable past months. My Aunt Anne Marie - I've told you about her before, right? Well, just in case I haven't... In 2007 she had breast cancer. But her doctor was too vigorous in her treatments, and it caused leukaemia, which reared its ugly head in 08. My mother - her sister - was tested to see if she was a match to donate stem cells. But she was only a half-match. Then the cancer started spreading so fast they had to use her marrow any way - not cells, actual bone marrow. So February of 09 she flew to Houston, where Anne Marie was in MD Anderson. Anne Marie seemed to recover, but then the leukemia came back later the same year. This time they were able to find a perfect match, and later we were told she was cancer free. But she got pneumonia. In late June of this year I flew (my first flight) to Houston to help Elaienar and my grandmother take care of her. Anne Marie had a crisis about a month after I got there. She was intubated, sedated, and put on paralytics. I do not know what all was wrong with her. Elai flew home and switched with Mama, but Anne Marie stabilized and remained intubated. Mama stayed for a month, but really needed to go home. So she left. Around that time we quit spending the nights with Anne Marie because we realized she was so heavily sedated she didn't even know we were there any more. Meanwhile Mama and I were getting little sleep. About a week after Mama left, the doctor called and said to my grandmother "I don't know how she's going to make it through the day." Grandmother called Pa's daughter Aunt M, a hospice nurse, who left within thirty minuted of being called and drove the eight hour trip from Arkansas to Houston. Grandmother spent that night, and the night before. Aunt M spent the next night. The next morning Grandmother went up to the hospital, and then Aunt M came back to the apartment and said to me "I didn't think I should tell you over the phone." Well, I've only been expecting to be told this since Anne Marie was intubated! But she didn't quite say what I expected. Anne Marie was have lots of heart attacks, and the only thing that could be done about it was to give her lots of pain medicine. Aunt M took me up to the room. The whole time I kept moving. I tidied up all the odds and ends around the room, and when I knew she'd passed, I started collecting everything we had in the room and putting it into a big paper bag. The chaplain came and sat with my grandmother for a long time, talked and prayed, for which I am so very thankful. I opened up one of the prayer books Mama had given to Anne Marie and found a prayer appropriate to our situation, and he read it, then we said the Lord's prayer. When we got back to the apartment I emptied Anne Marie's drawers into bags, and put everything from the closet into bags. Two of Grandmother's nephews flew to Houston the next morning to help us finish packing, and Aunt M and I drove back to Arkansas in her car, while Grandmother and her nephews drove in her car. All of Anne Marie's friends asked if they could plan the funeral, which took a great load off my grandmother's shoulders. Our across-the-street neighbours took care of our animals so the whole family could go to the funeral. And I didn't cry. Not when she died, not when I went with her friends to do her make-up, and the two closest broke down; one of them had to step outside. And I carried around her cellphone in case my grandmother needed to call me, or Mama, or somebody, and one of her friends drove past her house and saw someone in the window and texted her, and I realized he didn't know she'd died, so I showed the phone to one of her friends, and she took care of it. I realized why I wasn't crying, why I wasn't sad. I was watching her, waiting for her to sit up, for God to give her back, because she just doesn't belong dead, not yet, not like people who have lived their lives, people who aren't half as alive as she is, and it wasn't until the funeral at the end when they opened the coffin for people to walk past and look at her, that I started crying. I would have cried harder than I did, but I wouldn't let myself because I hate crying in public, and I don't know why.

Saturday we started the drive home, stopping for supper at the house of a close friend of Mama's. Sunday evening we got home, and I drove the last hour. After what would have been eleven weeks come Tuesday of being gone, and no church, I was so glad to be home, and I am so glad to have been able to go to church today. I hate not going to church. I was so glad to be in a 'Good clean dirt' atmosphere again, with animals, and land, and proper plants and trees, and my family, and a real house, however terribly messy it always is. Even though I don't have a bedroom right now; I'm sharing with my little sisters until upstairs and been fixed. And I'm turning eighteen in October. And even though I've never wanted to before, people have got me wondering if I should go to college so I can learn to be a nurse. Not this year, not next year, probably not until I'm past twenty-one, so I won't be expected to 'break loose' or anything.

Now I've rambled at you far too long and need to get myself off the computer. Goodni- I mean, good morning? D:

And now I feel more confidant

For part of our morning studies, we read a chapter of C. S. Lewis' Mere Christianity a week. This week's chapter is called The Invasion. The last paragraph and a bit is really interesting, so I'll quote it:

[...] One of the things that surprised me when I first read the New Testament was that it talked so much about a Dark Power in the universe - a mighty evil spirit who was held to be the Power behind death and disease, and sin. The difference is that Christianity thinks this Dark Power was created by God, and was good when he was created, and went wrong. Christianity agrees with Dualism that this universe is at war. But it does not think this is a war between independent powers. It thinks it is a civil war, a rebellion, and that we are living in a part of the universe occupied by the rebel.
Enemy-occupied territory – that is what this world is. Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage. When you go to church you are really listening-in to the secret wireless from our friends: that is why the enemy is so anxious to prevent us from going. He does it by playing on our conceit and laziness and intellectual snobbery. I know someone will ask me, 'Do you really mean, at this time of day, to re-introduce our old friend the devil – hoofs and horns and all?' Well, what the time of day has to do with it I do not know. And I am not particular about hoofs and horns. But in other respects my answer is “Yes, I do.” I do not claim to know anything about his personal appearance. If anybody really wants to know him better I would say to that person, "Don't worry. If you really want to. you will. Whether you'll like it when you do is another question."

Isn't that an exiting way to look at life? Now it's not so much a boring 'and what am I doing to help evangelize?' I really like this book. I'm glad we're reading it.

Suddenly

I'm at my grandmother's house right now, because Pa died Monday morning. We drove through the night to get here. He'd been diagnosed with glioblastoma about a year ago now. It was rather, well... Mama and Elaienar left Houston to drive my grandmother back home one Monday. Wednesday they left her house and drove to our great grandmother's house, and Friday afternoon they got home. Meanwhile, Pa had to be taken to the hospital. My grandmother said that the nurse told her he'd been fighting to wait until she got back to get much worse. He went downhill fast after that. It was kind of a shock to me, because for some reason I'd thought they were going to be able to cure the cancer. I only found out Sunday afternoon, less than a day before he died, that they hadn't been expecting him to recover. His funeral will be on Thursday, and then we have to leave right after to drive back home, since my recital is on Friday. We won't get back until Friday afternoon, of course, but it'll be enough time to get ready, and should be enough time to pick up the friend I was planning on taking with me to listen. SHOULD BE. I hope.

Like I said, we drive the night through, but I didn't sleep until the sun had started coming up. And that was probably only because I had to since the exhaustion had made me car sick like I haven't been since I was eleven or twelve. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep on the way back. Also hopefully, I'll be able to help drive on the way back, since I do have my learner's permit. Mama didn't want me to help drive on the way here because it's been well over a month since I had my first and only driving lesson with her. She said she'll try and help me practice while we're here, though, so I should be able to help drive a bit on the way back.

I found myself missing my blog.

Does that wound weird to you? Well, it's the truth. And I've been working on my constancy, so I just might post more often. I worked on it by making myself write a page a day in my diary. If nothing happens, I think of something to ramble about, so all's well. For now, at least. I do miss a day every-so-often, but I always make myself make up for it the next day.

Life has been busy around here for a while. We've had all kind of things happen - We were going to move, but with no idea when, so Mama and Elaienar would get together and pack up some things ...and then find that we need them still, and so go and unpack again. This has happened several times. No it's unsure if we'll ever actually move at all.

My aunt has had breast cancer and leukaemia - and that twice. The first time, they checked Mama to see if she was a match, but she was only a half-match. Then the cancer started progressing so fast they had to use her any way. And now it's come back again - but they found a perfect match in time this time. But Mama and Elaienar drove down to where she is to be with her for a while. It's been a few weeks now, with just me and my older brother looking after the four younger ones during the day while Daddy's at work - well, actually, I'm doing most of the looking after, since Xhavan has so much he's doing already. He's a volunteer at the fire department, and works as a bagger, too. Plus he's still working on his car an awful lot. So I cook all the meals, do school with the little kids, and work in the kitchen. I don't do much more than half the work in the kitchen, though, since I'm having the little kids help out with that, and Daddy and Xhavan help in there, too. Also, it occurred to me that I won't be able to call them the little kids much longer. Little brother 1 is turning sixteen next year, and little sister 1 is turning twelve this fall. Little brother 2 is turning ten, and little sister 2 just turned seven. And speaking of birthdays, Elaienar just had her twenty-first, and Xhavan's twentieth will be in the fall. I'll be eighteen, and I'm still so far from all of my dreams... >.<

Elaeinar has told me I have a very definite style of writing, but I can't see it. Unless she means the way I ramble, in which case, I do see it.

I'm blogging.

No, really. I haven't done it in months, and it needs doing. So, um... Since I last blogged, lots of things happened. And I will try to remember the most importent ones.

In the ...spring, sometime, I went to Missouri, and got to see Natalie's babies. They're really cute. I also got to feed Nathan, which was nice. I haven't been feeling quite so baby-deprived since then. I worked in to gardens around the porch of our house that we're fixing up over there, (And it's supposed to be finished very very soon! Yay!) and actually liked it! I'm afraid it's going to be very weedy again though by the time I see it next. *sigh*

In the summer, Daddy took everyone except for Mama and me and my littlest brother to visit Nanny for her 100th birthday. A few weeks after they got back, Winter kidded. She had triplets; two boys and a girl. A few weeks after that, Jemima kidded too. She had a girl and a boy that I named Yesterday and Tomorrow. Tomorrow is really adorable.

And, nothing much else has happened important other than that. ...I think. I'm not so sure any more. XD

Well, I did start to work on one of my stories once, but seeing as I made hardly any progress on it, that hardly counts.

Dreaming of...

Filth
I was in a room, and I was taking care of a baby. I don't know who's baby, and I don't even remember what was going on, but I had the baby in a room where it look like a long time ago there had been people living in that room with no toilets... Remind me why I was keeping that baby in there again? And why is this part of the next bits I will be describing?

Balloons
There were three families, each with a few children. I don't remember the exact number, but it seems like one family had two children, one three, and another five. For some reason they were balloons, somehow, and then not balloons. I think the names of two of the children where Hansel and Gretel. They had really fancy clothes. Or maybe that was some of the others. Anyway, somehow they all changed which parents they were living with, in a kind of ring. The parents didn't notice that they had more (or less) children than they were supposed to have. I'm not sure what this has to do with the next part of the dream, but maybe the Boy in that part was one of the children in this part.


The Black Box of Life
There was a Boy who had been shown a black box, and told something bad was going to happen that would have something to do with the box.

Some time later he was with a group of boys in a building. There were gatherings held in this building, and collections were taken up. Somehow a lot of money didn't make it into the plate, and afterwards the boys would collect the money left there. I think people knew they were doing it, considering how much money was always left afterwards.
There was one boy who was helping the Boy around, and he pointed out a place to the Boy where there was a lot of money. Another boy saw, and tried to beat me there, (Yes, it turned into me for a bit) but I beat him to it. I noticed that some of the money was full of holes. Was this going to have something to do with the story later on?

The boy I'd had to race got there and pushed me off. You see, the chairs were set up kind of like in a stadium, where there was a circle of chairs getting higher and height each row back, so I had a long uphill climb to get back to collecting money. (Wasted time! The dream-me really didn't like that)

When the Boy got back up there, (yes, it's him again) he found a little box. He picked it up, and the boy who had knocked him off told him if he pressed on the car inside of it in a certain way he would set free the robot that was inside of that. And knocked the box out of his hand. So the Boy went down to pick it up, (the lid had come off and the car had come out) and the boy who was helping him told him not to set the robot free. (The robot looked kind of like the ones in Transformers, but smaller and plainer) Of course, the boy did it anyway. Now, I'm not sure exactly what happened here, but basically he set it free with no restriction on it, and then it left.

In a similar method, (I don't remember this part, so I can't tell you exactly what happened) the Boy got a new robot, but this time when he set it free he put the restrictions on it that it was not allowed to kill or harm any living being in any way. So, because of that somehow, the robot decided to hang around with the Boy and take care of him. And, um, he was a prophetic robot of something, because he had an image of the first robot (the one the Boy set free with no restrictions) eating the black box that had been shown him in the first part of this section of the dream, and then the Boy realized what it meant! The black box was the Black Box of Life!


Leave it or Loose Him?
The Boy was hiding in a stack of mess, sitting on top of his robot with just piled around them to try and disguise them. A bad guy had gotten a hold of the first robot, and now it was going to help him do his evil deeds, namely, destroying all man-kind. By destroying the Black Box of Life. So the Boy was hiding from them, but it didn't work. The bad guy found him, (luckily, he did not know about the second robot) and started monologuing. He was showing off the strength of his robot, and telling the Boy about how he was going shoot him, and then he wouldn't be able to save the world, blah blah blah, the usual, you know, and all the while the Boy was carefully uncovering his robot, trying not to let them see what he was up to, so his robot would grab them quick before they did anything. But for some reason the Boy wasn't sitting on his robot the way he thought he was, just beside it, and for the robot to activate and protect him he had to be touching it. So the bad guy was going to have his robot kill him or something, I'm not sure what, and the Boy was desperately trying to re-program the robot to the way he should have done in the first place, and it wasn't working, because the bad guy had changed something, and then the Boy's robot finally activated, and they started chasing the bad guy.
Now, for some reason, the bad guy didn't hop onto the robot, (he would have been faster if he had!) but got on a motorcycle and put on a Bright Yellow Helmet. So the Boy and his robot were chasing him, and they'd almost caught up, when two things happened. First, the bad guy's Bright Yellow Helmet fell off, and second, the Boy dropped a ball. It was clear, and kind of blue, and I think it was what the second robot had come in. While the bad guy was scrabbling to get his Bright Yellow Helmet back, the Boy was checking to see if he could get the ball back. Unfortunately, it had fallen down a section where the floor was a few feet away from the wall, landed on insulation, and rolled a pretty long way away. So the Boy knew he had two choices. One, go after the ball and probably loose he bad guy, or Two, let the ball go and get ready to jump on the bad guy, because he was nearly ready to hop back on his 'cycle and take off again. So the boy chose the second one. He stood right around a corner and waited, and then hopped on the bad guy as he came around it on his motorcycle.

Critters, Ships, and Islands
Scene change! There's a ship sailing along under the water, (yes, an under-water ship-thingy) and it gets attacked by a Great Big Sea Monster! I think it looks just a bit like a sting-ray. For some reason, only the captain was on board. The only way he could get at the Sea Monster to kill it would be to open up the ship, which would flood it, which would cause it to sink. (Even though it's under water.) So, he waited for a bit to get to an island so he could kill the thing, (and I'm sitting here going, "I ought to have made sure the robot could kill things when I tell it to, instead of 'just don't kill anything at all ever. '"

Change
So then the dream started to change back to the story with the Boy and the robots and the Black Box of Life, but I got woken up to do the milking, so that was that.

Yes, I know; I've done it before

Or, at least, something almost identical, but it doesn't matter, anyway. I think I may have added one or two things to the list, and it's fun to do these things over, anyways.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band (I'm not sure if this counts, but I played the piano for a bunch of little kids who were singing once, but I don't think it does)
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain.
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child (I'd like to have...)
16. Had food poisoning (Possibly, but I'm not sure enough to check it off)
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors (Which ancestors? )
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language (I'm working on Japanese...)
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal in a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class (I want to!)
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Gotten flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets, or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favourite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt (I tried for a bit...)
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper (I had my name in it, but I don't suppose that counts.)
85. Read the entire Bible (Almost. Only almost.)
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating (Well, I've helped, but I've never taken part in the actually killing)
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby (No, but I can't tell you how much I want to be able to check this one! DX You're makin' me sad!)
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a lawsuit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

Mistakes

IT DID NOT SAVE MY ARCHIVES! I will just put the new template back, then, and leave it that way. D<

My recital went off okay. I made several mistakes, but they weren't as bad as they could have been, and were all in the last movement.

Have I mentioned yet that Anne Marie, my mother's sister who won't let us call her 'aunt' has leukaemia? And that the doctors thought that they had her in remission, but they hadn't? Well, I have now, anyway. She's going to Dallas tomorrow with Grandma Joicie and Pa, and Mama's going to have to fly out there soon so she can donate bone marrow. It's all very confusing and stressful. Daddy and everyone except for me and Mama are going to Georgia on Thursday to visit Daddy's grandmother, who will be turning 100 in June.. or July or August, I can't remember which it is, just that it's sometime in the summer. So we're all very busy.

Not to mention, Xhavan and I are volunteering down at the Washington Birthplace, and we stay there all day. Which is fun, since I get to dress up like a slave-girl or a indentured-servant or something like that, judging by the style of the costume. They don't really say.

I'm wondering...

If I change back to my old template, (I found a way to do that) will it keep on archiving the way it should? I think I'll try it out.

So much has been happening recently. A family came to visit us, taking six of their seven children with them. The house was wonderfully full for about two days. They came on New Years Eve and left the day after New Years Day. We played cards and cooked and moved around tables and found chairs, and Mama bought Apples to Apples to play while they were here - and then we found out that they had brought theirs, so that was funny - and since it was during the twelve days of Christmas we hung up stockings for them, too.

The sad thing was that the morning they left Mama got an email that said a church friend of ours had passed away very early that morning. She didn't say anything about it until after they left, though. It would have spoiled it for everybody else. Elaienar and I were there when she opened the email, though, so we knew. His memorial service was soon after, (I can't remember exactly when) and his funeral will be on Thursday this week.

My recital is on Friday. I'm playing three movements of a sonatina by Kuhlau for it. I don't know why I chose it... No, wait, I do. There are two eight-measure-long parts in the first movement that are beautiful is one reason, another is that I was actually able to play it the fist time I tried, (if I went absolutely super slow) and the third is that it has three movements. Apparently I am Mrs Richardson's star student... And I've only been playing for three years. I've gotten to the point where I'm having to tell people that I'm an advanced intermediate. It's kind of embarrassing. When I was volunteering at the Washington Birthplace the woman there was being sure I told her everything I could do that might be useful. She wanted to know if I played the piano and how well I do it, (because they have a Spinnet) so I had to tell her I was an advanced intermediate. Mama can tell the difference from when I started, and I sort of can, but I'd have to see a before and after to really know.

Masterworks

Quizzing aside, I have finally gotten a lot more confident in my playing. Masterworks was today, and I played two songs for the junior masterworks. Even though I have never played in front of so many people before, I was able to not be so nervous. It's partly because I knew that few of them were paying any attention to me, they were only watching the children sing. I know, I told myself, Because that is how I do it. Now, I know that's not how it really is, but I was able to not remember that, and I was able to use reverse psychology on myself to keep me from freaking out the whole time and making a kabootle of mistakes, and ended up with maube four, only one of which was noticeable. At least, I hope only one was. >.>

The Oneiromancer



Your Japanese name should be

'Moriko'

which means "forest child".

You love being in nature and see beauty in almost everything; the trees, the flowers, the sky, the sun. You're at your best surrounded by nature. You love animals and they love you!

You're a "Pink Angel". Now, just because it may be a little bit of a feminine colour doesn't mean you're all girly and whiny. You're very self-less and love to bring good news to people because you like seeing people happy. You have better manners than most and people love how polite you can be. You're friends love that they hardly ever get in arguments with you and can barely get mad at you! You're friends and family mean so much to you and it takes more than a fight to break you away from them.




WATER

Your element is water. On the surface you are calm and relaxed like a still lake or small pond. However, appearances can be deceiving, because underneath you are powerful and emotional. You are creative and introspective though not completely solitary. You like the company of others as much as you like the peace of solitude. You are well-liked and easy to get along with unless your temper is unleashed. Kind and nurturing you love helping others and cannot stand seeing pain. You would be best matched with Earth or Light.

BUTTERFLY EYES

You have Butterfly Eyes
Positive Traits: Thoughtful, Intelligent, Humble, Clever, Open Minded
Negative Traits: Naive,
Overly Optimistic, Elitist, Conceited, Apathetic, Cold, Sarcastic

Somehow, those positive traits don't sound like me at all...



You really arent in touch with this earth at all are you? sing with me now...."they're coming to take me away, ha ha!"

Retaking quizzes

I'm retaking some quizzes I did a while back, so I'll post the results as I get them.

First two:


Pink -> Okay, everybody hide your sugar and run like hell! You're completly insane! You've got a lot of friends and most of them are just as crazy as you. Although here's some advice; put down the sugar(no whining!) and pay attention to to your friends that aren't as crazy as you! ^^

I had to go looking for this one, and I didn't find the original right at first, so when I did find it, I took that, too:


Blue! Your eyes are the Blue of insanity! You make a lot of friends easily, and you're very carefree and easy going. Watch yourself, though, because responsibility is still a big deal. That doesn't mean you have to stop your flower obsession, however.

I think they both say practically the same thing, though. Except for in one I'm obsessed with flowers, and in the other it's sugar.

Okay, I cheated

Now all of my posts are visible on one page. I think I can change it back in a little bit and it will put them in the archive place. And then I'll try changing my template back and see if it saves them still.

Facebook is creepy. I added Elaienar as my friend on it, and then it came up with a list of people I might know. Yes, I knew every single one of them. No, I hadn't seen a single one of them since before I turned nine. So how on earth did it know? Elaienar explained to me it was because those people are all in her friends list, which helped, I guess. I like Myspace better. I found out right off the bat how to make my page and info private, but it took me a while to find that on Facebook.

EDIT:: You'll never guess what I just found out. I CAN'T HAVE MY OLD TEMPLATE BACK! It's not even because I didn't save it, but blogger wouldn't let me put it back up! DX I'm so mad.

I changed the template....

But it didn't solve my problem! DX My archives still aren't showing up. TT-TT I've run out of ideas, so I'm just going to listen to River Flows in you and read lolcats for a while.... Until I have to get off the computer.

Diseases...

I never mentioned it here, did I? My aunt, Anne Marie, has (or had) leukaemia. I'm waiting for Monday to hear if it's gone yet. The doctors had her come to the hospital the Thursday before last, and they let her go home yesterday. They took a bone marrow test, and we should hear the results from it on Monday.

We finally got Paisley neutered. We had one of her kittens spayed at the same time. It was supposed to be Ransom, her oldest, but he didn't turn up until too late, so Daddy took Deuteronomy instead. Seizaburou, T S Kittens and Ransom will be done sometime next month.

layouts and songs

I wonder, if I changed my layout whatever, would my archives show up? I think this layout thingy is faulty. But I really like it and don't want to change it! DX Maybe I should learn HTML. That would help, I'm sure. But it's such a lot of confusing work! And the picture Entwife made for me is broken. .-_-.

I picked up the music for the junior masterworks last night. I really like the sound they have, and the accompaniment is so much easier to play than I thought it would be. I really love those songs.

I was Glad
I will Clap my Hands
One Single Light
Praise, Rejoice and Sing!

Right, I think I forgot to mention that we own that land in Missouri, didn't I? Well, we do. There's a little bity house on it that was gutted, and we're thinking abut having the thing remodelled to add a second story, rearranging the rooms below, and maybe even adding some windows in. Perhaps we will have moved there by 2010? >.>

Songs

Masterworks started last Sunday. I'm singing in alto this year! The song we are singing are

Psalm of Praise
Gaudeamus Hodie
How Lovely are the Messengers
Rock-a My Soul
The Lord Bless You and Keep You

You can listen to the Psalm of Praise that the youth masterworks choir will be singing here. (Ours will sound better, though, because we have more than four people in our choir)

Mrs Richardson wants me to play for the junior masterworks. She's going to give the music to Daddy on Wednesday when he goes to the adult masterworks practice, so I can start learning it. I don't know if I'm actually going to do it, though.