A portion of my Wake Forest Application.

On the application for Wake Forest University for students applying for the Fall of 2010 there are some of the strangest essay questions I have ever seen.

About half way though the "Thoughts" part of the application it says, "Your Top Ten List"

Top Ten what? Favorites, ambitions, colors. Who knows. I suppose the challenge in this one is that there really isn't a guideline. It's your top ten whatever.

So I decided that I would make mine a top ten list of things I wanted to do with my life.

Here goes. Now these are in or order of importance. Well, they are in the order I thought of them in...but that doesn't really mean anything.

1. Spend some time in the Peace Corps or with Teach for America.

2.Expand Backpack Club so that we are able to help at least 1,000 students.
(Come on. I think that's possible. I've got how many years to do this in? Well, unless I get by bus, but that's not something I need to lose sleep over.)

3. Adopt an American child.
(I know that international adoptions are amazing and yes, I'd adopt every child who needed a home if I could but really, think of all the children in your own country, in your own town, in your own community who need a home.)

4. Have a career where I'm actively helping people and improving the quality of lives everyday.

5. Have an art exhibit entirely of my work.

6. Teach free dance classes to children who can't afford them.

7. Go on a dig in the middle east.

8. Save enough money so that all of my children can go to the colleges of their dreams.

9. Learn American sign language.

10. Always remember that everything is a learning experience.

Sometimes...mommies like mommies.

So I'm sitting on the couch, watching Under the Tuscan Sun with my family. The scene in the restaurant where Sandra Oh's character and Kate Walsh's character (the lesbian couple) announce that they're having a baby just passed.
Now, many times has my family watched this movie but my nine year old sister is getting to the stage where she can pick up on a lot more than one would think.
Gina: "Wait...are they both going to have babies?"
Mom: "No, just one of them, but they're both going to be it's mommy."
Gina: "How does that work?"
Mom: "Well you see..."

So now here I sit paying more attention to my mother trying to explain homosexuality to my little sister than to the movie.

Honestly, I never remember having a conversation like that when I was younger. I suppose I grew up just always thinking that some boys liked girls, some girls liked boys, some girls liked girls, and some boys liked boys. I grew up knowing both gay and straight couples. The dinner parties my parents would hold always had Brent and Ryan, Jolene and Grace, Kurt and Nancy, and some other random couples. Perhaps it depended on the drama in the work place but aside from those three couples, all others were just strangers. It never crossed my mind that anything was too different about our guests. It didn't matter. I didn't care. I had no need. I was just the cutie in the tutu that everyone loved. My mind was not yet tainted with the bull shit of too many rude people in our culture. Yes, I was raised Catholic but...how do I put this? We're a little...unorthodox.

Kelsey Wild

So about 2 years ago I came across this singer, Kelsey Wild on myspace. (Yes, I know, no one uses myspace anymore, I don't either, like I said it was 2 years ago.) She was honestly a friend of a friend. However, it's myspace friends of friends so... Well anyways, I absolutely fell in love with her music. The first 4 songs I was able to get (downloaded from myspace of course. remember when you could do that?) were Meaningless, Fall Down, Let Me Go, and Lightning. "Meaningless" became one of my favorite songs and still is to this day. Last year at my dance studio, in our teacher Lexia's class we frequently did improv. Like, legit, one person gets up infront of the class at a time, the music comes on and you dance. It took everyone a while to really get comfortable but before long it had become the best part of our week. We wanted nothing more than to dance every worry away infront of each other. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would ever be able to do that outside of my own kitchen. Anyway, "Meaningless" was a song that I put on one day as my ipod was often the source for music in that class. It almost became the theme song of our improv. time. Everyone found a way to make it their song. Everyone heard something in it that they could connect to. I felt rather awkward about it at first because honestly, I thought it was rather suggestive but apparently I was the only one who thought so. Everyone else heard something else in it. I suppose I was the only one who heard it that way. Hum... Well, once again, ANYWAY, I've recently found a new(ish) piece by her and suprise, it's incredible. It's called "Drunken Sailor" I would try to explain to you what I've gotten out of it and what it means to be but I can't say I'm up to that challenge tonight.




How incredible.

Well, I'm off to finish editing photos from dinner with Julia and Jenn, Christmas Eve at the Covey's, my family's christmas, and our trip to seaworld. I promise to get some photos up here as well as the rest on facebook soon!

My "Before Graduation Bucket List"

1. Spend an entire day (until I'm so exhausted I can't see or think the concrete looks like a great place to take a nap) at the Ringling Museum taking pictures of the gardens, random people, and soaking up all of the knowledge I possibly can and learning to better appreciate some the artists I'm still rather confused with.

2. Enter a photo into some sort of competition or exhibition. We've been members of the LBK Center for the Arts as well as many other places like it since we moved here and I've never taken the opportunity to do anything like that.

3. Take a class at one of the many art centers that I happen to be a member of.

4. Go to at least one dance convention. I'm craving this so badly. I'm thinking The Pulse and Jump. I love Jump and have always wanted to go to a Pulse convention and unless I find loads of free time in college...this is my last chance.

5. Go to a drive in movie. Put your dirty minds away now, that's not what I do at drive in movies. There used to be a drive in theatre in a town about 30 minutes from Dubuque and for 4 dollars your saw a double feature and pretty much camped out in your car for an evening. It was so much fun and you always ended up meeting some rather interesting people.

6. Sell jewelry at a craft fair. Unfortunately I have a feeling it'll conflict with a Saturday dance class but...maybe I'll find a Sunday one. It might be hard for me sell my hand crafted jewelry but, I'll find a way to overcome that fear.

7. Not do any homework for an entire weekend. Yes, that includes Friday afternoon and evening.
8. Read 5 books that are not required for any of my classes.

9. Get a mani pedi...yes, I've only had one in my life and it was over a year and I half ago. It's just so hard for me to commit to sitting in a chair for more than an hour accomplishing nothing. (And yet, I sit here and blog...the hell with my priorities, haha)

There will be more to come as I think of more.

Cocoa, yoga, and Wiis.

I'd forgotten how much I truly love hot cocoa until this very moment. It all started this morning. Gina had come into my room and woken me up around 7:30...yes, for too early for a day with few plans, begging that I make her a cup of cocoa because her throat was killing her. Because I'm me, I began an argument with her that if her throat was in fact killing her, cocoa would not be the answer. However, because I'm the most amazing big sister ever (well, not always) I rolled out of bed and made my into the kitchen to make to poor, dying child some cocoa. Of course I had to test the cocoa. You know, make sure it wasn't poisonous or anything and the one sip...it did me in. So, once I got home this evening I decided to make my own cup. All mine. So, I'm sitting here, drinking cocoa, blogging, and attempting to organize my schedule for next week. It's looking super fantastic, let me tell you.

So, I've found the most amazing yoga studio. It's Body Heat on Fruitville. They have hot yoga, power yoga, and music yoga classes. The instructors are incredible and the studio is adorable. I took a power yoga class tonight. The room was about 95 degrees (I was next to the thermostat) and for the hot yoga classes the room is 105 degrees. It was hard, but so much fun. Definitely requires a different kind of strength and control than dance though.

This evening my mother bought a Wii. I never thought I'd see the day that my family purchased a video game system. She bought it with a Wii fit and supposedly that's all it'll be used for but...who knows if that will always be the rule.

I need to find a way...it won't all fix itself.

So I've pretty much come to terms with the fact that...all of this nonsense, I'm not going to wake up one morning and have it cleared up, gone, fixed, better, perfect, not a problem anymore.

For some of them I need to push them away. Get them as far from my happy place as possible. Not just pretend they don't exist, but make them non existent factors.

Others, I need to resolve. Make amends. Work on fixing. Heal. Find good in. Over look bad. Get rid of bad.

But some, I need to ride out. Hurt a little more. Find ways to fully understand why it's wrong or doesn't work. See to the bitter end. Fight my way out. Discover it's flaws. Make a scene.

Or maybe...maybe, I need to just let it all go. Forget salvaging, find new? But what if the second part doesn't work? And I'm left with nothing. Maybe nothing is better than "terrible somethings"... I don't know.

Wow, I just made loads of progress. Ok, I didn't.

Excuse me while I rant.

With my birthday coming up and my L.A. trip canceled...yes, don't get me started, my parents have decided that it would be a great opportunity to finally invest in the camera that I've been wanting for about a year and a half now. However, according to my mother, Mercury is in retrograde so it's not a good time to purchase an electronic or start something major like for instance a relationship. Well, the relationship nonsense has nothing to do with me but for the love of God, I want my camera. However, I guess if I wait and then something bad happens with the camera, she won't have anything to blame it on. She's nuts. I love her dearly and I actually believe in a lot of her madness but too much of it gets in the way.

So I'll try to do with this with out dropping any names but we'll see how it goes.
First of all, I'll never understand how people can demand so much respect when they have such little respect for others. Also, how people can carry on like nothings wrong after doing (or not doing actually) something that not only screwed over a couple people but also hurt them. I must say that while I've been losing respect for someone throughout this year, whatever was left just got flushed away. Nice one...thanks.

Oh a happier note. My seventeenth birthday is Saturday. Initially I was going to be on a plane but, who knows, maybe it would have crashed (sorry, not so light.) Friday night will be my first EVER birthday party and I'm rather excited. Nothing beats sitting around a hot top Japanese cooking table thing (yes, my vocabulary is lovely this evening) with your best friends, eating sodium saturated food, fumbling with chopsticks, and laughing about god knows what. Well, we actually do that almost every Tuesday only with tacos and without the chopsticks.

I had an absolute blast in class tonight. Not only was it amazing because I really needed to dance, for sanity reasons of course, but I honestly feel like I just got it tonight. Not all of course but I was picking up choreography better than I have lately. Both the across the floor combinations (which are always complicated and intricate in Melissa's classes) and the center set combination I actually picked up just fine, could work on the details, and even began to find some accents and stresses. Super cool....well I think so, haha.