Reflections on 2009

Looking back, I think I grew more in 2009 then I have any other year of my life. Not physically of course, I'm not any taller or wider then I was a year ago. But mentally, emotionally I've grown. I've learned to put things into perspective, to let the little stuff go and accent on the good rather then the negative. I've learned to think about how my actions will affect others and solve my own problems, while asking for help when needed. I've gone (ever slightly) outside my comfort zone and tried new things. I've become more aware, observant, confident, capable and relaxed. I'm working towards my goals and my dreams, and step my ever tiny step they are coming into form. 2009 was an absolutely amazing year (with a slight hiccup of not-greatness at the beginning). Now I can look ahead into 2010 with excitment and plans of greatness. Check back with me in a year to see how that went for me. :) ;)

Skiing Update

Well, a few days ago when we went skiing it was a good day. I made 6 runs total, a few on the easy main run, a few on a harder one and I always went up the chair with my mom or my uncle or my cousins. The first few runs that day were a little hard and slow for me because I had to get my ski legs back. On the harder run, it's called 'Panhandler' I was going a little fast over an icy bump on a steep hill, and I crashed over the bump, lost both skis and poles, rolled over a bunch of times and almost slid into a tree well. It was fine though, I landed in powder.

Today, my cousins went up to the hill at the crack of 8am with their friends and I went up with my mom and aunt and uncle around 10. My mom didn't feel up to skiing so she stayed in the lodge and socialized and I went up with my aunt and uncle. My aunt needed to get her ski legs back today so my uncle coached her a bit and I took off alone. At the bottom I couldn't see anyone so I went back up the chair alone. It's a long bumpy lonely ride alone and so was skiing back down alone too. I passed my cousins and their friends a few times. Usually I skiied under them when they were on the chairlift. I made 5 runs alone and then I had to go in and get some feeling back into my fingertips. Back on the hill a while later I met my uncle on the top of the hill and we were going to ski down together but I got going ahead of him and I actually had to wait for him at the bottom before going up one last time.
Total runs made today: 7
Total times I went down the hill alone: 6
Total times I went up the chair lift alone: 5

It wasn't until later that everyone told me how fast I'd been going. I was just plowing down that mountain every time they caught sight of me they said. My uncle (a very experienced skiier) said he tried to catch up with me like 3 times and he couldn't because I was going so fast. This I should mention is only the 6th year I've been skiing in my life and I'm very impressed with how capable I've become. That's one thing I've noticed throughout this year is how capable and confident I've become with almost every aspect in my life. It's a wonderful, in control feeling and I'm proud I've achieved it.

The Days Following Christmas

It's hard to believe, my fifteenth Christmas come and gone. Christmas morning itself gets less and less exciting every year older I get. I got nice presents; a few hoodies, books, chocolate, manicure set, a bunch of writing stuff. My mom gave me a ticket to Cirque de Soleil when they come to Victoria next September which is a totally awesome present!!! It utterly amazes me how flexible they are!! I think a girl at my school used to be involved with Cirque de Soleil in some way. And my aunt from Japan called us and it was nice to hear from her again. Japanese Christmas is like a big date night, so is Valentines Day and Thanksgiving doesn't even exist!!

Christmas Eve we did all go over to my aunt's parent's house for dinner. It was fun, good food, nice people. We all went over there again this morning (well, afternoon really) for brunch-lunch. I know all my family on my dad's side in Victoria had Christmas dinner together at my grandma's house. I almost wish I'd been there because I'm always saying they don't get together enough. But there's always next years Thanksgiving for that. As for our family back east; I'm sure our distant family in Oakville had a huge, happy family Christmas, and if my aunt, uncle and cousins in London are reading this... I'm sorry we haven't called you yet!!

Boxing Day here, my uncle and cousins went skiing but I woke up in a total non-wanting-to-ski mood so I stayed behind. I'm regretting it hugely and we're going up again tomorrow fortunately. I'm a much more confident skiier then I was a few years ago and I've long abandoned the rope-tow. The chairlift no longer scares me and I even promised to try the t-bar at the top of the chair lift to get up to the bigger runs. I can't go home again having not tried that. I'm sure my uncle will me fine to take me up the first time. And I promise to not freak out!!!

Today after brunch we went for a ride in my cousins Teryx (an off-road 4 wheeler that my uncle adapted a bit. It's about the size of a smart car. I rode on it a couple times when I was here in the summer and I even got to drive it a few times, and I only put it in the ditch twice!!!) It lives in a warehouse on the edge of Kitimat during the winter so my mom, my uncle, my 2 cousins and I drove out and rode it through the woods halfway up the side of a mountain (in the snow I might add!!). It was so cold the wind was just whipping through my quite warm winter jacket and the part of my face my helmet didn't cover; my eyes, ears and mouth were just frozen solid. But it was so beautiful. Just picture it: a forest full of trees and not a single leaf on any of the branches, but sparkling virgin snow layering the trees, covering the ground in a thick blanket and showers of icy sprays filling the air now and then.

My aunt and some of her family were waiting for us when we got back. They made another trip or 2 up but I only went once. But one time when it was just my aunt my cousin and I waiting in the car because it was so cold and she asked me if I WANTED TO TRY DRIVING THROUGH THE PARKING LOT!!! I actually said no at first (I'm studying the driving guide book, but I'm not 16 till February and I was scared) but eventually I said yes. She was very patient with me: "Put it in drive, now forward, okay stop, now into reverse, good, now shoulder check and back slowly then back into drive..." and more of the same. I did a few slow loops of the parking lot and actually enjoyed it. Everyone else was just pulling into view like a second after I parked. My aunt said I would tell my mom I was just sitting in the drivers seat but after they babbled about the ride it just popped out. My mom and uncle were both shocked and impressed that I'd done it. My cousin wanted to drive too, so badly, but my aunt wouldn't let him. He's only 13 after all. However he can drive the Teryx and he did a bunch of donuts and even I got to drive it again. At first my donuts were "lame" as someone put it to me, but then I got the hang of "gunning it" and they got better. It's much easier than driving a car.

So, a very eventful day for me. More tomorrow to report on my exciting skiing experience!! Wish me luck!

Christmas Eve

How an entire year has gone by this fast and we've once again returned to Christmas Eve is absolutely beyond me, but we are. It seems like the older I get the faster time goes. Will it be like that forever? I don't know.

But that doesn't matter. It's 11:30 on Christmas Eve morning and I've got to wrap some last minute stuff, have lunch and get ready for the get together at my aunt's parents house. Her whole family is here and we go there for Christmas Eve dinner every year we're here. It's always lots of fun, even though they're not my family. They're still very nice. Well, gotta fly! More tomorrow!

JOYEUX NOEL!!!

The Journey North

It suddenly occurs to me that I never did explain how we got to Kitimat. It's a two day drive here from Victoria and an absolutely beautiful one in the summer. You can either take the ferry to Vancouver and then drive halfway up (to about Quesnel or Williams Lake) in one day and then the rest of the way the next day or drive to Port Hardy at the north end of Vancouver Island (an 8 or 9 hour drive from Victoria) in one day and then take a 15 hour ferry trip to Prince Rupert the next and drive 3 hours to Kitimat from there. I've done both ways several times and it's absolutely beautiful.

However, it's December and it's not so beautiful a drive this time of year so we flew. We couldn't get a flight out of Victoria so we ferried to Vancouver and flew out of there. After spending the whole day in the airport (we went hours early so my mom could go to ikea. Yeesh!!) we were finally ready for takeoff. But then there was a mechanical problem and our flight was delayed for about an hour while we waited for a replacement plane. While waiting, another flight going to Smithers also had a mechanical problem and several others were held up because of weather at their destination point. One flight to Cranbrook had to be redirected to Edmonton!!! That means bussing back across the mountains in the middle of winter. Not fun.

Well, we finally got on our flight and not 15 minutes out of Vancouver there was another mechanical problem and we had to go back to Vancouver so they could fix it. They told us to wait an hour for another replacement plane, but while we were waiting I heard someone say they'd fixed it after about 5 minutes. Aurgh!!! It's less than a 2 hour flight from Vancouver to Terrace but with a 3 hour delay that adds up quite a bit. Oh, plus then there's the 45 minute drive from the airport into Kitimat. And they got snow here a few weeks ago that wasn't very much and wasn't really worth plowing, so everybody drove over it and it turned into slush which then froze and iced over every street and driveway in town, very much like the odd time it snows back home. It's like, no matter where you go you can never really win. Life's funny like that isn't it?

Blame Game

People fascinate me. Like, the relations, the interactions, the feelings and emotions, thoughts and actions everything. Sometimes I wonder if some of what people do is simply human nature and can't be helped. What I'm really thinking of right now is blame. For example, think about when something bad happens. Most people seem to imediately say "It was her fault..." "It was his fault..." and it just goes on and on, everyone trying to put everyone else at fault for whatever it was that went wrong. Nobody wants to be the bad guy but everyone wants to be the hero right? Another thing I've noticed people do is blame themselves. "This is all my fault. If only I'd... If I hadn't done... If I'd looked sooner..." you see what I mean? It just goes on like that. But maybe that's just part of what we as a species are. Maybe it's just human nature and unstoppable. It's an interesting thought don't you think?

Good old Kitimat!

The thing I love about coming to Kitimat for vacation is the sense of relaxation. There is absolutely nothing that immediately needs to be done. Like, at home there's always school and school related activities, there's weekend courses and volunteering and shopping, there's groceries to buy and carpets to vacuum and you see what I mean? There's always something!! But here, it's really vacation. I mean yeah, it's my aunt and uncle's house and there are things and chores that need to be done, but we're only ever here at Christmas or in the summer and we can fall totally into vacation mode. And there's family and snow and it's just so wonderful and magical. I get that the rest of the year it's just like us, work and school and things to do, but that's why we all need vacation right? To get away from the chaos of real life. And in 3 days it'll be Christmas, after which will be the last week of 2009. How the time flies. I don't know if I like that or not.

End of Victoria Christmas

Once again my mother and I are making the preparations to embark on our journey to Kitimat up north for Christmas. School ended yesterday, our tree is down, and our Victoria Christmas is pretty much over. But we still have much more Christmas to enjoy, and New Years too for that matter. Here's a picture of our Christmas tree, I decorated the whole thing myself. There is also a little one that usually spends December in my bedroom.

An Incident with Fluff

Well, the days leading up to Christmas are getting busier and busier. School ends on Friday and we're all getting hyped up for it. Our band concert in tomorrow night, and our last carol band gig was this afternoon. It's so much fun to do! The music's easy enough we can all sight read it pretty well but it gives me such a warm feeling of self-succession to be able to produce this music for others to listen too. And I'm playing better every day. I'm sad to see our line dancing almost at an end since it's about the only thing I like about PE, but I want to ask my teacher if we can do more line dancing throughout the year. Maybe every other Friday at break they could just put on the music and a bunch of people could show up and do a run through of the songs. I think enough people in the whole school like it that it'd be worth it just to ask.

But, the reason for my blog title happened today. I wore one of my favorite tops that I bought when we were back east this summer (a black v-neck peasant blouse with embroidery down the front) but since it's been so cold lately with even a bit of SNOW (in Victoria!!!) I didn't want to wear just that so I grabbed a sweatshirt on my way out the door without really looking at which one it was. Well, I wore it all day and my last block I was baking. So I took of my white sweatshirt and revealed my beautiful black, white fluff covered shirt underneath. It covered my front and back, it ran down the sides under the armpits and over the shoulders and worked itself into the little emroidery on the front. You know what happens when you accidently leave a kleenex in something you threw in the dryer? That's a little what I looked like. It looked awful but I was able to rub and pick most of the fluff off and it gave everyone something to laugh about. I laughed too of course, how could I not? When life gives you something to laugh about, the only thing to do is to laugh. Too bad I didn't have a camera. :)

Windy, Winter Weather

It's hardly rained here since December started. It's been beautiful in fact: crystal clear blue sky, bright sunshine beaming down all day, night begins and 4:30pm and ends just after 7:00am and it is absolutely freezing cold from dawn until dusk. I am so much in love with my winter coat; it's warm and thick and just wraps me up in warmth. And it's zip out liner is an atractive coat for late fall and early spring. I had band first block today (after going to the orthodontist to get an imprint for a new retainer... Ugh!!) and about half an hour in the power went out. It's been really windy the last few days so that wasn't anything really major and we made due. But about 20 minutes later both the vice principals came in and asked if one of the bass players had plugged in an amp that had overloaded the outlet and one kid said yes, he had. There were already about six plugged in and the cold weather hadn't helped that situation. They were quite exasperated by that and so was the band teacher. At the end of class when we were about to leave he made us stay and said: "The band program has broken the school." That was what had blown out the power. He also added "The band program had also broken the neighbourhood." So we blew out the power for everything around us too. We all laughed and cheered and said "Yay, go us!!" then they got the power back on and we continued our day. Ah, the memories you make in high school.

Creating a Dream

Last year in late January I got an idea. I own like 6 books from the Chicken Soup for the Soul series (people often give them to me for Christmas) and so one day I was flipping through one of them and I thought to myself, "Wouldn't it be a cool idea if my school had something like this?" It didn't sound like a totally horrible idea, so I told some of my teachers and they seemed to think it was a relativly good idea so I decided to make it happen. However, like so often happens to 14 year olds who have ideas and no motivation nothing happened to it for about 4 months. Then I thought of it again and I still wanted to make it happen so I tried to make it happen for September this year. But when September came it was a madhouse as everyone tried to fix their schedules and figure out their classes and planning my "Reynolds Soup Bowl" became a lesser priority. But I was bound and determined to make it happen, I talked to a counselor who was helping me with it as well as a peer mentor in grade 12, then the principal who loved the idea and then the English department head. Finally, nearly a year after I originally got the idea to create our own Chicken Soup for the Soul book, it will happen. I've now written about 4 different proposals and edited my idea with help from many people and my final proposal will be given to all the English teachers this week and my idea (I whose ideas never work or get anywhere) will come into existance. I am SO excited. But it just goes to show: If you want something badly enough and you put in the work and the waiting, anyone is capable of doing anything. And that is a valuable message worth carrying on.

Tuesday Night Out

Tuesday this week I proved to myself and the world that I actually have a social life. Well sort of anyway. We had a carol band performance right after school (the entire band and audience all got to witness my stand colapse and all the music in my folder go flying across the floor) and we got back to school around 5pm. Then, for the first time ever I took the bus by myself all the way downtown (in the dark I might add!) and met up with one of my friends at the Conservatory of Music after her singing class and we walked down to the Royal Theatre for Stuart McLean's Christmas Show 2009. I went 2 years ago with Mer (my friend in question) and my dad and his girlfriend. It was great then and it was now too, only it was so much better because we were alone!! No grown-ups!!! I listen to the Vinyl Cafe almost every week and I love it! The stories, both true and fictional (Stuart is SUCH a great writer!! Just like I will be someday) the appreciation of young musical talent and one thing I love is he always has something good to say about whatever town or city he ends up in. I doubt there's a place in Canada he's been to and hasn't loved. I'm the same way and believe me I've seen a lot of Canada in my short life. My mom picked us up after and we dropped Mer off and then came home. I had to do my homework on the bus on the way down there as well as before the bell the next day but it was an evening I'll never take back no matter what!!

The Joy of Line Dancing

My school has a tradition. Every year for the past who knows how many years in December we line dance. On transition day back in grade 8 I couldn't believe I would actually have to attend a high school with such a stupid tradition but last year along with almost everyone else I absolutely fell in love with it!! It's such a cool feeling to have 50 people in the gym all doing their own thing and dancing to their own beat but moving at the same time. That satisfying thunk of everyones left foot hitting the ground at the same time, with time to the music is just so wonderful. I loved it last year, and today was the day when we started again this year. We do it in PE, which makes this the one month I will actually enjoy PE out of the entire year. On Wednesday the grade 9s will be in with us and we supposedly have to teach them or something, because it will only be their second day of line dancing ever and I'm not really looking forward to it. But it's okay and they'll learn fast and most of them will pick up the love of it. You laugh when you mess up, and mostly it's just a ton of fun with your friends. May we dance forever!!!

A Fulfilling Saturday

This day was very busy, and extremely fulfilling. Everything I did gave me a happy warm feeling deep in the pit of my stomach, a feeling I have more and more these days. I volunteered at the pool this morning at the crack of 9am. I am currently a certified AWSI (assistant water safety instructor) so I'm basically a student-teacher for swimming lessons. I volunteered in the spring and summer (it was a requirement to pass the course) and now I'm just in for practice. I did today and I'll do next week and then a full lesson set in January. The kids are so cute!! Mostly I just help out the ones that need a little extra attention. One little girl wouldn't jump into the water unless I held her hands and when I caught her I had her under the armpits (gently of course) and she had this iron death grip on my hands. It's frightning how strong they are. Another boy wouldn't kick or breath under water. He'd kind of float and not move until he ran out of air and come up. I worked with him mostly in that class. I kept saying "kick your feet, push your tummy up, blow out all your bubbles" and he just wouldn't. But the instructor said he'd improved a lot from previous weeks, so that's good at least. My mom was a lifeguard and swimming teacher too in high school and university, and she once had a kid who just sat on the side and refused to get in the water. She worked with him and it took her 2 summers to get him in up to his neck, and years later he ended up working at a pool, so go figure.

After that, (like an hour after that) my mom and I ended up at the mall to do our shift at Santa's Anonymous. It's the third year we've done it, and we love it!! The same people as previous years had the shifts before and after us and the pick up and delivery guy is the same each time. What Santa's Anonymous is, is a Christmas gift gathering for kids that don't necessarily get Christmas gifts, that's happened for like 32 years here in Victoria. I think a radio station sponsors it. There's about four or five tables in various malls around the city and they each have a Christmas tree with paper bears that elementry school kids coloured and cut out (every year from kindergarten to grade 5 I coloured bears for it) and on the back of each bear is a code name for each kid, whether they are a boy or girl, their age, and what they want. The code names are to keep it anonymous. People come up to the tree, pick a bear with a gift they want to buy, sign it out with the people at the table (there's a number on the bear that matches the same number in the book, so we can find it) and then go and buy the gift and bring it back and hand it in and it goes to the workshop to get sorted and on its way to whoever it's for. It seems like it would be boring to sit behind a table for 2 hours and sign out bears and sign in gifts, but it's actually really fun.

After that we did some shopping, (we had to get Santa's Anonymous gifts for kids too) and this evening was my first carol band gig. In case I haven't mentioned already, carol band is a little band that my school has and every December we do various gigs around town playing easy, fun Christmas tunes. We've practiced a bunch of times at school and more then once I was the only flute player there, and unfortunately that was the case tonight. I'm good, but there's no way I'm powerful to be heard with as many saxophones and trumpets as we have, so the band director played the flute part (over my shoulder!!) on a piccolo trumpet. It did feel special though, to be the only long, shiny, horizontal instrument there. I love the flute!!

It was one of the busiest Saturdays I've had in a long time and one of the best. I love being busy, especially during the holiday season. Tidings of comfort and joy indeed!!

P.A.R.T.Y. Program

The first time I heard of the PARTY program a year ago I thought it sounded cool and fun. Mind you, at the time I was only in grade 9, and I just heard reference to it over the announcments. Then, a week ago they had an assembly for all the grade 10s and they explained to us what the party program really is. It sounds cool, but that's only until you find out what the acronym stands for: Prevent Alcohol and Risk Related Trauma in Youth. It's a program that explains to us the consequences of driving while texting/drunk/high etc. and making smart choices in life and death scenarios. They briefly explained it at the assembly, but today, I got to go to the hospital to partake in the program itself. All the grade 10s were split into 3 groups to go on 3 different days. I got to go on day 1.

We got to the hospital and they took us into a conference room and talked to us a bit about the program to start with and then gave us some info. The program began about 20 years or so ago in Ontario in the hope of preventing alcohol related and other forms of preventable death in youth. A trauma doctor talked to us for a few minutes about some of the kinds of accidents he sees in the ER and he showed us some slides of crash scenes: cars wrapped around telephone poles; dead, unconscious or critical victims in the cars; a deer shoved through a windshield, it was very graphic.

We were then split into five groups to go see different stations they had set up for us at different parts of the hospital. First my group met with our school liaison officer and she told us about some of the crash scenes she's been to, the drunk kids she's found (and whose not-to-thrilled parents she's called) people she's caught DUI. She told us to make smart choices; if you're going to drink at parties, don't leave your drink unattended, have a designated driver in your group of friends, leave with the same people you came with, don't get in a car with a driver whose been drinking etc. She's really fun and we laughed a lot at how she told her stories, but I think we all got how serious it was. She also had goggles that made you see things like you were drunk when you put them on.

Next we talked to a paramedic who showed us a destroyed car that had rolled through a ditch (teenager going too fast in their new car) and he had a few horror stories of his own of things he'd seen. He showed us the equipment they have (spine board, stretcher, neck brace, breath pump, intibation tubes) and how they would assess a crash scene and use each piece of equipment. If your conscious during all that, it really wouldn't be comfortable. Then he told us that many crashes like that are very traumatizing physically to the body (no kidding!) and can leave you with a permanent brain injury or dead. Brain damage would be worse in some cases. He also elaborated on the importance of a helmet. If it's destroyed but your brain isn't, it did it's job.

A trauma nurse showed us a fake car crash patient (the "victim" was a grade 12 student from our school) and how they treat them. She showed us all the machines and tubes they hook you up to and explained how it all works, but I can't remember all the details, just that it was very unpleasant. She also said not to switch ID with your friends, because when the parents come and look at the kid and realize it's not their child that raises two big questions: who is this kid so they can call their parents, and where is the kid of these parents? She also showed us how they get drugs out when you overdose: either they give you a bottle of liquid charcoal to swallow, or if you don't cooperate they force you to swallow it. Basically it's a super fast laxitive and out come the drugs.

We went to the morgue, but we didn't see any dead bodies (though I heard another group did by accident) and the nurse there told us the absolute worst part of her job is having to bring parents down to the morgue to identify their children. It doesn't feel real she said, and they just stand and cry because there's nothing else to do. She said it's better for them to say good-bye in the hospital than in the morgue. And when you die in a trauma room it's not like on TV, where it goes all dark and everyone comes and stands around for a few hours. In real life they pack the body up tubes still atatched and send it straight off to the morgue because they need the room for the next patient.

We also listened to the tragic stories of 2 people who have suffered with living with brain injuries. It was so sad!! Here they were, just normal people, healthy, happy, active, who hadn't been drinking or on the phone and had their seatbelts on, and became the victims of other peoples mistakes. It was heartbreaking to hear!! The last activity we did was to try buttoning a shirt without the use of your hands (hard!!) and to try writing with the paper facing you, but you had to look in a mirror while you wrote and it all came out backwards. I can't imagine living like that. At the end they showed us some short videos about simulated car crashes and my God it was hard to watch that!! I couldn't watch parts of them it was so terrible.

I knew all of this already. I've heard stories and watched to news so I knew it all happened on a more or less regular basis but this just reinstated it all for me. It was actually scary and that's the whole point. When I learn to drive I will never text or talk on the phone even a hands-free, I will never be brought home drunker then Hell by the cops, I'll never take drugs of any sort (prescription meds. exempt) and I will never get in a car with someone who's been drinking. My life's just not worth the risk. I have a bright, wonderful future ahead of me and I'm not about to screw it up now.

A Day of Accomplishments

Well. Tuesday. It always messes me up when we get days of in the middle of the week, or at the beginning or the end. You can tell by that how often I miss school, skipping, sick or otherwise. Well, I'm almost finished my second sewing project (hobo bag) and it doesn't suck too badly. I went after school to pick up my ugly blue toque and scarf for when our little Carol Band starts performing this Saturday. We do more and more performances in the leadup to Christmas break and it's quite busy. I missed socials today because a doctor from UBC and UVic (he works at both) came to talk to us about cancer info and research. You had to get permission from whatever teacher you had that block in order to go, something I had no trouble in achieving. It was informative and interesting and I'm glad I went (cancer tragically runs in my family) but it was also long and I had a hard time focussing completely. And in missing socials I missed writing the paragraph they did in class today, so at 3:40 (after the long wait for carol band stuff, 35 minutes after the day ended) I had to go up and write it. And I took so long (I'm very detailed with socials and writing) that my teacher asked me if I was writing her a novel or something. And then I had to wait for my mom to come and get me which took longer than I expected (true, today was a day I was supposed to walk and you have to give her credit for that, but it was cold and dark.) Anyway, that was my busy, long Tuesday. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?

Quiet Monday

It rained most of the day again today. I didn't have school (Pro-D day) so I slept late, did some laundry and dishes, cleaned my room, and watched about four episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My aunt came for a visit two summers ago and left the entire series on our computer, and I am HOOKED on it!!! I am in season 5 of 7, and I just hit the point where Buffy's mom died. I don't think she's really dead though. I mean, lots of characters die in this show, but her mom died of natural causes and everyone else was brutally murdered by a vampire or demon. Oh well. We'll see how it all unfolds. It's just a show right? But it got me thinking about life. The older I get the more aware I get of how often people do die, and you just never can tell when it'll happen. Even if you're ready, you're never really ready right? Not if it's someone you really and truly loved. I'm always saying how my life is boring and I wish something would happen, but not anything bad. I don't want anything bad to happen ever. In my mind, TV ought to stay in it's televised state, not invade real life. Anyway, after babbling about that I'll just conclude by saying that was how I spent my Monday off. Back to school tomorrow. And in the mean time, I have to change the wash.

A Rainy Week

Though it went by really fast, this week was another long and rainy one. It didn't rain every day, Wednesday morning was beautiful, and so was Friday afternoon, but the other days it rained solid and heavy all week and never really got bright. I had two tests to write on Friday; (chemistry in science, conflicts in the Red River Valley for socials) so I spent the better part of this week studying. I think I did all right on both. Not much to say about Monday; cold, dark, wet and rainy. Tuesday the french immersion and flex (flexible studies) grade 10s from my school got to go to Science World in Vancouver for the day. We met at the ferry at SIX-THIRTY AM!!!! and caught the seven over. It was fun, better than spending the day at school, but science world is a lot smaller than I remember it being, and once we'd done a loop through all the exhibits and gone to the OMNImax (I still prefer Imax) there wasn't a whole lot left to do. It's a good thing we went on Tuesday though, because Wednesday the rain and wind cancelled all evening sailings out of Vancouver, and I think Victoria and probably Salt Spring Island too. Not much excitment Wednesday or Thursday; cold, wet, rainy, much like Monday. Friday there was a light drizzle when I walked to school in the morning and afterschool was beautiful and sunny, and even though it's mid-November it was actually to warm for my jacket on the way home. Yesterday I... okay fine slept for most of the day, then Mom and I ran some errands, did some Christmas shopping and watched the Santa Clause parade go down Government St. It's much shorter than the Victoria Day parade in May, which is actually nice, because it was very cold, but it wasn't raining which was nice. There was so much rain this week that Duncan and Cowichan (about two hours or so north of Victoria) were completely flooded out. The Cowichan River and another river (name forgotten) burst their banks. It was all over the news, which is no surprise, there was a lot of damage done. That's way too close to home for comfort for me. I think they drained most of the water out of the city, but there's more rain to come and it'll take a long time to fix all the damage done. Here, it's not raining now, but it poured last night and was accompanied by a howling wind. It looks like it'll rain again later. But, that's why they call it the Wet West Coast isn't it?

Circle of Life

The way I see it, everyone in our lives is connected to us. It is almost as if we are all standing in a giant circle, the Circle of Life...

Obviously not everyone in the circle is connected to each other, but they are all connected to us. We are all the centres of our own circle. You could almost imagine that everyone is standing in an actual gigantic circle, hand in hand. As time goes on the circle can grow as people come into our lives and then shrink back as people leave our lives. That's the natural way of life; friends, family, neighbours, colleagues they all come into our lives, and then sometimes they slowly and naturally fade out again, and the circle can accomodate that.

But when someone leaves in a horrendous way before we're ready for it to happen, like if someone dies, or leaves in another way and breaks our hearts, it's as if they've been ripped out of the circle and they leave behind a gaping hole that can never again be filled. True, as time goes on we move on and we heal and accept, but the hole will always stay there forever. When the next person comes along they get their own space in the circle and the old hole stays empty. If you are picturing an actual circle of people hand in hand, you could imagine that with time and healing they reconnect, maybe throw a rope in between them to stay together, but the hole is still there.

My point in all this, is you can never replace someone who's gone like that. You can move in with your life and you should, we all should it's what's healthy and normal, but those we've lost can never be replaced.

So love the ones in your circle. Appreciate everyone in it and treat each day with rich care and love because you never know what can happen.


Life=Love Love your family, love your friends, love yourself

Reflecting on a Long Week

I had plenty of time to blog this week. I don't really have a good reason for why I didn't and I hate to make excuses. So instead, now that I've gotten to the end of this long week I'll reflect on it and sum it up all at once. Wednesday of course, we got the day off, given that it was Remembrance Day. Tuesday we had a wonderful assembly for it, just like we do every year. The senior band played a few pieces, including Oh Canada, and the stories they told, the detail, it was incredible, and so real. Scarily real. I think it's so valuable to celebrate and remember those who died fighting so that we could live in peace and freedom here, and those still fighting today. I doubt there is a person on the planet who isn't related to or hasn't known someone who's died in war, or fought in one. It is so tragic, and hopefully with time, we can improve upon that and maybe see world peace.

I am constantly up to my ears in band these days. There was a time, not all that very long ago when I would say to people "I understand you're busy" when I wanted their help on something and I got that it would take a while for them to get around to me. Now, all of a sudden, I'm the one with no time. I've got three lunch hours taken by band, three after schools and one before school. I'm going to start volunteering at the pool soon (one step ever closer to me becoming a lifeguard) and I've suddenly gotten my flair for writing back, full of inspiration for my stories and I thought it would be a waste not to use that gift when it came, since I've been lacking writing inspiration for the past few months.

I went to my friends 16th birthday party last night. She had 39 people over and another 21 on her guest list who didn't show up. I'm scraped to even know that many people in my life never mind to invite to a party!! She had so many different groups of friends, so most people knew a small handful of people there and no one else. It was fun though. There was food and dancing and movies and we socialized and mingled and her friends are actually really nice people. It makes me think of my friends, how much we've changed since we started high school a year and a half ago and how much we will continue to change as high school continues. But I will try my best to stay in touch with all of them. When good people come into your life, it's good to hang onto them.

The more of 2009 that slips away, the more I think about what a good year it was. I've grown so much in my thoughts, my views, me feelings and reactions towards various things, everything. I feel happier, stronger, more confident and capable than I have before in my life, and that, I'm sure is a clear sign that I am growing up. And it feels great.

Sparks

It rained a lot today. There were quite a few sunny breaks, and the sun was pretty much fully down by 4:30. Another sign of fall. But all in all I found it was a good day. It wasn't really cold and actually quite pretty on my walk home from school. I had PE this morning, but we didn't have to go outside which is always a bonus, and it was the only time we have to do it this week because Wednesday's a holiday!! Carol band started at lunch today. It's a small band that plays very easy Christmas music during the holiday season every day. We practice in November and then perform in December. We play at the big light up and Saanich Hall and the Legislature, both of which are great to be a part of, and then at a bunch of seniors centers around the city. They enjoy listening no matter what we play. I started a hobo bag last week in sewing class and today when I started sewing it together I made a mistake right away and sewed it inside out. Mesure twice, cut once. That doesn't really apply here, but you get the idea. And a highlight of the day, was in science this morning. Our teacher did an experiment for us: sodium (VERY REACTIVE METAL) in water. It fizzled around in crazy circles for a few seconds before exploding, much like what happens when sparks pop in a fireplace. It was so cool, and we all screamed when it happened. I think we all need a few more sparks like that to brighten up our days. They reminded me of people running in frantic panicked circles before the pressure gets to much and they burst in all directions. It's something to bear in mind the next time you feel stressed. fizzle...fizzle...fizzle...POW!!! Wouldn't that be interesting to see a human do!

(*I feel I should explain the pictures. The top left one is actually baryum not sodium, and the bottom left one is rubidium. But they look close enough to the untrained-to-chemistry eye)

Story Sides

In most situations, I can see both sides of an argument. If person A is mad at person B, and I'm listening to person A gripe and complain about it, and then I hear person B's side of it, I can look at the info I've got and I can see that in a way, they're both right. This is the case in most situations, unless it directly affects me, then of course I'm right and everyone else is wrong (and in all fairness, who isn't like that?) I've learned a lot in fifteen years, and one thing I've seen proven and repeated over and over, is people in general (and I'll admit, myself included) are not great at communicating. It could be thinking something over and over in your head and not telling anyone, or not listening when someone is telling you why they're unhappy or just keeping all your feelings and emotions bottled up inside until you just can't hold it in anymore and it all comes exploding out. It could also be on a project where information is just unclearly passed on so other people don't do what you think they said they'd do. I've seen all of these examples played out over and over in my life, and sometimes it's enough to make me scream. It leads to heatache, anger, tears and frustration and what does it fix? Nothing!! Poor communication is just a collosal waste of time and it doesn't fix anything. The world would be a lot easier if people shared what they were feeling, their thoughts and opinions, and let the little stuff go. If you're not happy about something, fix it! Find a way to work around it don't dwell over it, or be mad at people for unneccesarilly long over it. People can only teach what they know. If someone grows up not properly understanding how to share they will teach that to their children and the cycle can only go down from there. All I'm saying, is to make it easier on everyone and to make the world run a little smoother if only in this one small way, everyone should try and share how they're feeling. Communicate rather than isolate. That is, in my mind anyway, a worthwhile message.

November

People start wearing poppies on their shirts, the clocks are turned back, it's cold all day and dark at 5pm. No two ways about it, it's November. I once thought of it as the most miserable month of the whole year, but now I've got a happy view on life. Today, and yesterday too in fact it was cold, I could see my breath in the morning and afternoon, and the last of the leaves are starting to fall, but it's not raining, and it's really pretty. And it's not unbearably cold. It's not yet winter here. I just know that this year it'll be a bad one for being being sick, goodness knows fall has been bad enough already, but I'm optimistically hoping that the fact that I never get sick will continue to serve me well. And there will be ice, I know, but hopefully not a lot of snow (people here CAN'T drive well in snow and it's no fun to walk in) And time has been going so fast this year that I just know spring will be back before we know it. Until it does, I will not be befallen by winter blues. It's all smiles and happy from here on out!!

Halloween

Well, it's two days before the day of Haunts, All Hallows Eve, and whatever else it's been called throughout time, known today as Halloween. We haven't carved our pumpkin yet, we don't have any decorations up, I'm not going to the Halloween dance at school tonight, I don't have a costume and for the second year in a row I'm not going trick-or-treating. I'm volunteering at the local nature centure the day of to help with their Halloween program (mostly I help little kids with crafts. I've done it many times before. It's actually kind of fun) and then having a friend over later to watch the Great Pumpkin. Not the all time greatest Halloween, I know. When I was younger, up till a few years ago actually I went out every year. When I was little I'd go trick-or-treating with my mom and the people next door. As I got older I went with friends with no parents and then last year, I quite. Now, I don't go out to movies or parties or dances or anything. It's like the older I get, the more holidays get downgraded for me. But I guess it's part of growing up. Maybe next year I'll find something really fun to do for Halloween. But for this year, it's passing out candy and watching poor Linus spend his 42nd Halloween alone in a pumpkin patch. You've really got to honour his resilience. Happy hauntings!!

Thoughts on the "isms"

Something I often think about is how confusing the human race is. I am reading a book right now, A Song for Summer by Eva Ibbotson (it's AMAZING!!) and it takes place right before WW2, so the late 1930's. The main caracter is British, but she's working at a school in Austria. The staff and students of this school come from everywhere: England, Germany, Austria, Russia, America, Sweden, Scotland, Czechoslovakia and so many more. They all speak English and German and it really doesn't matter where they come from, because they're all friends. Then, at the beginning of the war the school had to close. The main caracter had a friend in the Austrian village who wrote for the first few years, and then was suddenly called the "enemy" and wasn't allowed to write anymore. But she was just an ordinary girl from a beautiful village, and she was all about peace and love and everything wonderful. It doesn't make any sense. There were caracters who were austrasised or interned because they were Jewish, or because they were German, and so many more reasons. That isn't fair! That's the complicated about war. It's not just this book and this war, it's all of them!! During the revolutionary war in the states, suddenly everyone who stayed loyal to Britain was dubbed the enemy and run out of their homes by their friends and neighbours.

But here's what I want to know. Did they change? If two people were friends before a war, and then a war happened and one of them suddenly decided the other was the "enemy" or whatever and dumps the other one. But did the one who got dumped change in any way? No! They stayed exactly the same, they just happened to be a certain way, and a law or a war suddenly made that bad. Maybe people just go looking for things in each other to hate. Maybe it's in our nature and we can't help it. Only I know it's not. I know that, because I'm not like that. There are some things that we just can't help or change because it's the way we were born. Nobody chooses to be born, or how or where they just are. They don't (WE don't) pick what religion their family practices, or if they are religious at all. We don't pick our skin colour or nationality or language or if we're gay or straight. It's just the way we are and we just have to accept it.

Now me, I'm really lucky, because I was born in Canada in the 90's and raised believing everything I just said. Nobody that I've ever met hasn't wanted to be near me because of what I look like or believe or anything else about me. The past few hundred years have really changed the world. People worked hard so that people of all nationalities, all religions, all skin colours, both genders, gay or otherwise could live together in peace without problems. And still the world isn't perfect! People are still rasict, sexist, homophobic and all the other "isms" that exist. Why? I don't know. But it's stupid. And it all goes both ways. When I read The Secret Life of Bees and To Kill a Mockingbird I learned that in those times, in the southern states, (Alabama and South Carolina) people were excluded and beaten on (physically and emotionally) for having black skin, which I knew, but the racism went both ways and some of the black people were just as hostile toward the white people. I read a story once in Chicken Soup where a boy in the grade 8 class of whoever wrote the story got in a fight with another boy and was suspended and punished for a few weeks and had to miss out on all the special school events. Nobody thought that was fair, because the fight started when the second boy had said something rude and racist against the first one (who was African-American) and the school had a zero tolerance for violence ("missing the irony of the situation" to quote the story) I didn't understand the irony until my mom explained: zero tolerence for violence, but not for racism. And that was in current times.

My school is great. Everyone is included, cared about and welcome no matter what. People get in trouble for being rude or smoking or skipping class but skin colour and religion doesn't play into that. There are programs like Gay/Straight alliance and posters everywhere saying "Homophobia free zone" and other inclusive things like that. And still I hear people saying "that's so gay" or other rude things like that. I guess for some people they can't help it, it's what they've grown up with. For others they're trying to be cool. But for me, I'll never do that. It's partly because I was raised knowing everyone is equal, that we're all the same inside and most just want what's best for their families and themselves. But also, I don't say or write things like that because I can flip the situation and I can imagine how much it would hurt and how I would feel if it was me. Think of what the world would be, how fast wars would end, if everybody started believing that. It's so easy! So why isn't it happening?

I've been thinking these things for years, wars and human equality. I want to do something to help change the world, to stop this more then it already is stopped, but I don't know how effective it would be. If people I see in the hallways of my Homophobia free school can still say rude comments like that, how much more can be done? Now that I think about it, nothing. Now they've got the information and it's just up to them to change. Let's hope, for the good of changing the world, they pick it up soon.

Sorting Garbage

It was a beautiful Saturday today. The perfect kind of day to spend outside in the fresh air, which I did. I spent six hours in the parking lot of my school sorting through other people's garbage. Okay, it's really not as bad as it sounds. We have a really great recycling program at R.S.S., technically we are called a "zero waste" school and we don't have any more garbage cans and absolutely everything can be kept out of the land fill. Truth: there are still illegal garbage cans, but there are also recycle stations, probably around 10 or 15 around the school. At each station there's a paper recycling box, a juice box bin, a food waste bin (for all food, paper cups, paper towels and napkins etc.) and the recycling tower. It's one of those plastic rolly things with 5 drawers and you split soft plastic, hard plastic, foil lined plastic, styrofoam and electronics into their own separate drawer and it all goes to special recycling stations and is all kept out of the landfill. Well, once a month (and this actually started before the in-school recycling) we have a mass recycle depot in the parking lot. We sort all of that and way more and bag it and keep it all out of the landfill. When I started working at the depots last year it was totally unorganized and completely chaotic, but it's really changed and now there's a great method. It's actually kind of theraputic (not that I need therapy or anything) to sort through the disgusting garbage and keep it out of the oceans and landfills. I did that for four hours today, then worked for another 2 (a little short of 2 actually) at the bottle drive for band. It's one of many fundraisers we do. Anyway, that equalled almost SIX HOURS spent at school on Saturday. True the school was actually closed, but the point remains the same. I don't mind though. I love school, and mine is so great, I couldn't imagine going anywhere else. Even though I actually went to two other places for nine years before I got here and thought the same thing about both of them. Maybe I just settle well. Anyway, to wrap it up. Saturday: sorted garbage, watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, blogged, now I'm off to... I don't know. I'll think of something.

A Question for the Day...

I have questions. Not normal every day questions ("Where's my favorite pen?" "What's wrong with the sink?" "How do you do this math problem?" etc.) but actual, deep, life questions. Here's today's question: "What is it about people that we need each other so much?" When we feel sad we put a hand on someone's shoulder or hug or just sit in their presence. When we're happy we want to find the people we care about and share our happiness. When bad things happen most people would rather be with people (friends, family, anyone really) then be alone. People are better than no people. Same thing when bad thing happen, we'd rather be with people then alone. It's an interesting point, and I think I understand why it's like that. It's just the way humans were made. We are built to be caring, loving creatures. We can't survive on our own. True, with the right resources and equipment, physically we can live alone all our lives. But emotionally, we need people, we need that warm feeling deep down inside that you get when you know there's someone in the world that cares about you. That is why we need each other so much. For some they don't mind showing love of life and everything around them, for others it's more important to shove personal feelings deep down and try to lose them down there. But you can't deny the fact that we are built this way like it or not. It's one of those things that we just have to come to tearms with and accept, sooner rather than later. "Live to laughingly love life!"

Wonder Water

There is nothing more precious, beautiful, enchanting and wonderful on the face of this earth than water. It is everywhere, it is everything. We drink it, breath it, bath in it, wash with it, play in it. It falls as rain, fills in waterfalls, oceans, lakes, rivers, streams, ponds, freezes into ice, condenses into steam. We absolutely need water, and there is no way around it. Our bodies are made up of mostly water and it is one of the three things that every living creature cannot live without. But, as much as it is a necessity it is also completely fascinating. There is nothing more soothing than watching rugged ocean waves crash across an open beach, pulling the rocks back in it's wake with a beautiful rolling sound. I have seen these rugged waves on beaches, on the Queen Charlotte Islands, and in Cape Breton, as well as Botanical Beach a few hours from where I live. In these places I was staring straight into open ocean, open Pacific, with nothing between me and Japan, and open Atlantic with nothing between me and France. It's an incredible thing, to see, just this wild, crashing, powerful water. It's just water, it runs through your fingers, it gets everything wet, it creates mud where we don't want it, and it's absolutely powerful. I have also seen Niagara Falls, the world's 50th largest waterfall (from the Canadian side which everyone knows is the better of the two) and the enormity of what comes crashing down there every minute, not to mention who's gone over the falls and lived through it is truly something to marvel at. Many people in the world don't share our novelty of instant water from several places around the house. Some have to walk a long way to get to a pump or a well and often times it is dirty or infected and makes them sick. We are so fortunate here to have this instant, clean, wonder water at the turn of a tap. Water: clear, beautiful, delicious, wonderful. Waste it not.

Happy Monday!!!

I called this "Happy Monday" but it really didn't start out that way. I've learned over the past few years that being late first period on Monday morning is really not a good way to start a week. I had to play soccer (something I hate) in gym class and I didn't have my extra shoes, so mine got drenched out there!! I killed a frog after lunch in sewing (not a real one! I'm not an amphibeon murderer!!) I'm sewing a little frog, one that you fill with rice, and I was instructed that I had to sew very slowly and carefully and if my stitches weren't straight it would end up as a roadkill frog. I honestly tried, but even at the slowest speed the machine seemed to be going too fast, and I was constantly going over the lines, and my stitches were all coming out choppy and uneven, going zig-zaggy where it should have been straight and pointy where it should have been round and it was just awful!!! I killed it! I picked out my sewing and I'll try again tomorrow. The teacher wasn't kidding about it being a long, hard process!!!

More bad news later didn't do much to make my day happier. But over the past year I've come to understand that sometimes in life, bad things happen, things you didn't expect. These things are hard, often unfair and they can hurt. But they do happen and the thing to do is to feel sad and sorry for a little bit, but eventually to accept that it happened, and you just have to move on with your life. We just have to say to ourselves "Okay this happened, and it sucked. What am I going to do about it? How am I going to react? What is the best thing to do right now?" Once we can ask ourselves that, and deal in a calm manner, we can handle anything. Take for example, the boat in the above picture. It is the bow of an ancient ship that was sunk on a beach on the Queen Charlotte Islands a few hundred years ago. That was unfair, a lot of people died, and it was hard. But it happened a lot, and people kept sailing and with time they improved safety measures until they got to what we have at present time. And that's what we have to do in life. Just keep moving, and things will generally look up when the sun comes out and it stops raining.

Time

Time is a fascinating thing. It is untamable, unstoppable and always, very much so in existence. We have tried over the centuries to control and understand it, and we have achieved it, to a certain extent. We have split what we call a year into twelve months, and those months have been split into weeks, which have been split into days. Each day in turn, is split into 24 hours, each hour split into 60 minutes and each minute is 60 seconds. We say it is morning when the sun is up, but our clocks say that it is morning around five or six am, regardless or whether or not the sun is out yet. We cannot stop time, we cannot reverse it. No matter how often we want to or try to (not necesarily in real life. Sci-fi, for example) we can't.

People grow. We are born and we die, and we live in between. We make mistakes, we say and do things we regret and we can never get them back again. Once it's out there it's out there for good because we can't go back and undo it. We can't stop time. We are incapable of freezing hours, days, years when we think we need a little extra time before moving on with our lives. Like it or not, it always keeps moving. Morning will always come, things we dread about for ages come, we get through them and we move on. As much as we can't move time backwards, we can't move it forward either. We can't go forward and see where we will end up. For the most part I think that's good. We as humans shouldn't have the power to see into our futurs. We can make our plans, but things beyond our control will always happen. I think it makes us better creatures over all to deal with these things as they come, not to predict them, not to prepare for them, just to on the spot deal with them.

Time as we've set it out, will always move forward at the same speed it always has. Yet, as we get older and busier time can seem to move slower or faster. Often times it's faster. You wake up one morning and realize a whole year's practically passed without you hardly noticing. A lot happens in a year. A lot changes. And it's meant to. Because time is healing. We think thing through we over come our roadblocks and we move along. It's the way it should be. It is the way the world was created to be.

Resiliant leaves

No matter what the season, I always have to marvel at the resiliance of tree leaves. They are, after all one of the symb0ls of the season. They bud in the spring, these tiny, new, green, tender frawns that over the course of the season grow into their own unique shapes. Oak, cedar, maple, birch, they're all different, they're all unique and they're all special.

During the summer they continue to grow, darkening in colour to deep greens, and they toughen up so they are harder to rip and very hard to crumple in your hand. On hot summer afternoons they provide shelter, whether in the back yard, or by a pond or creek or river, and they provide a beautiful, music as the summer wind rustles through them. It is within these dark, leafy canopies that baby birds are born, grow, feed and return to when they have matured enough to take the leap and embark on their first flight.

With the arrival of autumn the leaves begin to lose the strength that has bound them to the tree branches all summer. As they stop the photosynthesis process they stop being green and turn a multitude of bright fall colours; reds, yellows, golds, browns. They give into the prying of nature and go dancing from the tree where they were first created down to the ground, blustering together along sidewalk curbs and covering grass in back yards. All across the world the natural wonder of these fall leaves paints the ground in a thick, warm, protective layer of colour.

Winter is the hard season. The bare, cold trees stretch their empty branches skywards, whipping easily in the bitter winds, dripping water and snow to the ground below, there being, of course, no leaves to stop it. But the old leaves aren't ready to go yet. They stay, many monthes after they've fallen, mashed into the sidewalk curbs, sodden, falling apart, destroyed by rain and wind, by people walking on them, and cars driving over them. But despite all of that, they remain on the earth, staining concrete orange where the rain pulled the colour out of them until spring returns and the new leaves take their place on the trees.

So yes, I see leaves as resilient plant life. But that's what nature does. It creates, and when the time comes, the things it has created end and take on a new form or are replaced by what is next to come. Eggs become baby animals, buds become flowers, sapplings become trees and the leaves fall and return in their own cycle, year after year. Almost as a way of marking seasons in a way humans are not able to do themselves.

The Rainy Season

Fall on the west coast of BC is the beginning of our 'rainy season', a period of time where it rains almost constantly from October to about April when warm spring weather really sets in. True, we do have one of the better Canadian winter climats (we don't, for example, have snow on the ground on Halloween and Mother's Day) but the rain can become really depressing after several months. Waking up at 7:30 in the morning to a still dark sky and a sheet of rain pouring from the sky, which will stay grey through the day until it gets dark at around 4:00 pm. That's not to say it always rains here. We're quite sheltered where we are on Vancouver Island, surrounded by the mountains in Washington and Vancouver and we can actually have some really beautiful weather sometimes. In late September and early October the leaves turn brown and crispy and the first few days when the frost covers the ground is really pretty. It's so cool to look out at the lake out in front of our house and see a sheet of fog hanging over it on cold winter mornings. I don't so much mind the days when it is freezing cold. It's the rain that I really can't stand after too long, and the terrible lack of sunshine. Sometimes in March or April when spring returns it's as if the sun is this forgotten object, lost forever in the oblivion and mysteriously returned. Spring can come quite early here (sometimes there are snowdrops in February!) but it's generally just winter playing with us. This year from January through to May we had a few weeks of warm-ish weather (as warm as you can get for January anyway) and then the cold gross rain returned for a few weeks, then it would be nice and sunny again. It did that for months, as if teasing us before the warm spring weather turned into the gorgeous warm summer (that turned into scorching hot later on) that we just finished enjoying. Really, I have no right to complain about winter weather. We don't have to run jumper cables five blocks from our houses to strat our cars in the morning, and we do get snowdrops in February and crocuses in March and then daffodils and tulips all before the middle of April. And we don't get as much rain as Seattle or Prince Rupert, we get a lot less by a long shot. Everybody can find flaws in the weather where they live. Too hot, too cold, too wet, too dry, too sunny, too dark etc. But the fact is, we have to adapt to the environmental changes that our planet is going through. So what I'm going to try to do this winter, is suffer through the rainy days, and thrive on the odd sunny one. It's a much better way to live don't you think?

Invisible friends

Every kid has imaginary friends, and if they don't they should. I, being an only child, had lots. The first one was intended to replace the dolls I had been dragging around forever. Not replace them exactly, but imaginary friends could go everywhere with me and not take up any space and get themselves dressed in the morning, which I thought would make my parents happy. So, the first 'friend' came along when I was in kindergarten. I was five years old and I named her Y-la. She was a giant (or the same size as I was which really wasn't all that big) letter Y (hense her name) She came everywhere with me for years. She had an adopted sister named Triangle, who was a life sized, orphaned, fuscia coloured triangle. Later, Y-la's parents and brother and sister came into the picture too. The 'Y's' as they came to be known as lived in the blackberry bush across the street from my house.

The next family was the Mice. They were, if you can believe it, real mice (but invisible ones of course!) The main one was called Dot, and she had like twenty siblings and the whole family lived in our wood pile. For that reason my mom was somewhat relieved they weren't real. They had a little car that they drove everywhere we went. They had to go like four times faster than we did so they could keep up because they were so tiny.

I also had invisible friends who were people. There was Sally and Sasparilla and a couple of boys, but I can't remember their names. I remember there was also Uncle Platypus and Grandma Platypus (I have no idea where the platypus part came from) and Zuki the cat who had been found in a zucini patch. I put an imaginary door in the wall of the hallway right beside the bathroom door and up that door was a staircase and going up were about five doors on either side of the stairs which were rooms (kitchen, TV room, bedrooms, bathroom etc.) which is where my invisible family lived. I used to pretend that the water from their bathtub ran down invisible pipes to our bathtub and there were little plugs I had to open to let the imaginary water go down the drain.

Otter was around for a long time too. She and her sister Little Otter were, big surprise, otters. I can't remember where I got the idea for them, but I did a lot with them. When we had fish and chips I 'd have the chips and they'd eat the fish. I don't know why my mom went along with that, but she did.

I had invisible friends for probably six years before I outgrew them for good. I had a really good imagination and had a lot of fun with my "friends." It's cute now to look at little kids who make up these elaborately detailed worlds that surround them and their invisible friends, but really it's an essential part of childhood. That total immersion in make believe fun is a healthy part in becoming a good person. And it also makes cute memories that parents like to bring up at embarrasing moments when you get older ;)

Music: The Universal Language

I don't know how many times and in how many different ways I have heard this, but music is the world's universal language. Every culture in the world has music in some form or another; from classical to religious, sombre to celebratory, music is everywhere. It has helped keep people going when it seems as though all hope is lost. People sing or play music at weddings, births, funerals, during wartime. Whether it be happy or sad, bring smiles or tears it makes us strong and builds a bond that goes beyond language, to a deeper place of togetherness. We may not be able to understand the words of songs, but the notes of the music are unmistakable. The soaring flutes, deep, strong brass, the filling of the reed instruments, and the drums, keeping beat for everyone. Music is everywhere, in all of us. It is the one gift that we can all share, and treasure.

Dreams

I had the strangest dream last night. I can hardly even explain it, it just didn't make any sense at all. That happens to me a lot. Every time (which isn't very often let me tell you) that I can actually remember my dreams they are always the same: Weird, unexplainable and unrealistic. Sometimes I wake up and it takes a second for my brain to register that it wasn't real, it was only a dream. They aren't nightmares, they're just unreal. But when I really think about it there is always some sort of link between the dreams and real life. Like, if I'm really thinking about something, or if I'm nervous or anticipating something I'm more likely to remember my dreams, and whatever's on my mind gets tied into the dream. It's almost as if my unconscious mind is trying to sort out what my conscious mind can't. It's an interesting concept when you think about it. It's as if there's a hidden message all wrapped up inside letting you know something about yourself, whether it's to slow down and think things through, or to do a job you've been putting off or just to enjoy life as it happens and not worry too far into the future. We should all be grateful for that reason that we have dreams. They're more important than we think.

Life

Life is a very complicated thing. We all have our thoughts, and opinions. We all feel things, sometimes the same way about different things, sometimes differently about the same thing. Some of us are able to share our emotions freely and openly, others not so much. I dream more than I live and that will become problematic later on, I'm sure. When I feel something, it shows all over me and the whole world can tell. When something bad happens I almost can't process it as real. It's like there's a part of my brain that can't realistically process serious issues. I've recently discovered laughter is my stress response, followed closely by panic. Fortunately I've rarely had to experience anything really bad, but that's just the thing. We can never tell what life is going to throw at us and when and how. It's as though we've always got to be prepared for something, just in case. Now me, I'm young, still in high school. I've got a long life ahead of me, and I've got big plans with what to do with it. This year has been a real growth year for me, and I've learned to look at the world as glass-half-full instead of half-empty. It's much more relaxing not to be constantly worrying. It's such a simple concept, relax and smell the roses, and it seems to be one of the hardest ones for people to really grasp. Either way, here's today's philosophy: Live today, Worry tomorrow.