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!!