Weekend

Yes, I know that it is a tad late to be writing about my weekend on Wednesday. Believe me, I know.

So, Nine o'clock Saturday morning, I went into town for the Community Fair, at which Interact (my junior Rotary club) had a booth. We were to be selling popcorn, nachos, generic sodas, and squishy toys. We also had to march in the parade that went through town, and excitingly (sort of...) we got to march in front. Of course, there was no one to actually watch the parade, because the majority of our town was in it, but that's really a minor, minor thing. I was walking between my friend and the president of the club, who really bugs me. He's kind of funny, kind of jerkish. I'm pretty sure that alll elections are popularity contests.

Anywho, I'm pretty sure that he's come to the conclusion that I have mental issues because I kept humming and staring off into space during the parade. I am a little spacey sometimes, so maybe he's not completely inaccurate.

Eleven people showed up to work our booth (though one went home because she was sick), including yours truly. I think we got a pretty good profit, since our business was relatively steady. Though I don't think we sold even one of the squishy toys.
For the second half of the day, after it was done raining, I monitored the kids games that the Rotary booth next door had. Little kids are kind of hard to communicate with, I've noticed.
The entire time I was there, there was a booth that was selling cookies and fudge, and it was really hard not to think about. I eventually broke down and bought fudge during a slow part.
The fair ended at four. I got to go home for precisely one hour before heading off to babysit Emme, Harriet, and Elisa. .
So it was a nice evening. The girls were in the hay barn, and there was this huge pile of grain they were playing in, which was admittedly pretty cool. It was like a giant, two foot deep sandbox full of grain. Then they wanted to show me their chickens, and I'm proud to say that I've entirely overcome my alektorophobia. Chickens are cute and very soft. (Well, it was only roosters that I was afraid of, for good reason). Also, if you throw them up in the air, they'll fly! For about three seconds. But it's still very cool, and funny.
No, the chickens don't mind.
After dinner, we made popcorn from an air popper. We didn't have any butter, so I used vegetable oil. It wasn't that bad, actually. Then they watched The Parent Trap, which is a weird, unrealistic, but kind of sweet, movie.
Well, that's Disney.

Sunday night I was talking to Gracie (that'd be my third blog-follower) on IM, and we came up with a brilliant idea to make anti-Twilight pins. Twilight is the scourge of teen literature. It's a fad, which is always annoying, but it's doubly so when the fad is about a poorly written book about an average girl who is obsessed with her creepy, non-human stalker. So Gracie and I made pins that read TS: RGVB which stands for Twilight Sucks: Read Good Vampire Books. The good vampire books that are referred to are the Den of Shadows Quartet, which is an amazingly written, deep, and meaningful series about a variety of complex and layered characters.

I exaggerate not at all.

By the way, we wore these pins Monday. I was kind of sad when no one asked what they meant, and kind of relieved not to get into a fight with a die-hard Twilight fan -- though we did have a brush with Sarah, didn't we, Gracie?

School...Got to Love It

...perhaps in the same way one loves a very pretty, fatally poisonous, rather creepy insect: very far away.

Sadly, tis not to be. Back in school today. Sitting at the table in the morning before the first bell rings, it was almost surreal to be back in that building that I've tried my hardest not to think about all summer. It felt almost like I'd never left.

The day was filled with introductions and almost nothing interesting. It's going to be a looong year, that will probably feel very fast in retrospect. (that's the way it works). Anywho, I'm taking digital Photography this year, which should be really interesting and wildly complicated. I also have an actual studyhall this year, in place of Horticulture (which took up my studyhall last year). In some ways, I actually find myself missing the chaos and familiarity and messiness of it. In other ways, I think it might be better off just in memory.

Oh, and something joyful to look forward to: I have coed gym ALL YEAR!!! Yay!!!!

That was sarcasm.

I can't stand coed gym. Playing sports is bad enough, but take away all friends (I have none in that class), and make me play with the boys, who are less forgiving and play too rough, and it is made into a recipe for H-E-double hockey sticks.

Tirzah and Gracie are missing from our lunch period. I find this very sad. I will hardly get to see them at all this year.

I strongly dislike the bus. It's too loud. Too smelly. Too child-infested.

Hate is not a bad word.

And on a parting note, never put Mojito dressing on a vegetable sandwich. It just doesn't work.

Some Pictures

This is Imari Lace, one of our herd of Scotch Highland cattle that we have behind our house. Imari is probably the sweetest of them all, since she's the one that most often will come up to the fence when you yell, "Apples!", granted the rest of the herd is close enough. While the other cows are somewhat aloof, Imari seems to be the most personable. And the nice thing is that she'll never end up as hamburger, because she's owned by Ashley, not her father.

I felt that our 12 foot tall sunflowers deserved more than the brief notice I gave them last time, so here are some more pictures I took of them.

If you look closely on the one below, you can see a small, ruby-throated humming bird perched on our badminton net. I tried to get a picture of one sipping from a flower, but I wasn't quick enough with the camera.

I have a couple like these

, of the bumble bees on the flower. These are the ones I took when I missed the humming bird. The bees are everywhere this year. I was over in the field, where all the wildflowers are (purple knotweed, purple aster, Queen Anne's Lace, goldenrod) and there was a honey bee for almost every flower I passed.
And here you can see our giant sunflowers in all their glory. Considering that I barely reach over the badminton net, you can see how tall these beauties are. If only they were perennials!
August is going by too fast. As always, there's a multitude of things I would like to do and

didn't get around to.

There's also some things that I didn't want to do, and also didn't get around to. Such as

summer reading. I have more than half of my last book left, and five days left of summer.

Better get reading.

August

I haven't written in an obscenely long time, and for this I apologize. Again. How many times have I neglected this blog for weeks on end? Actually, don't count that. I don't want to know.

This weekend we got back from Bethany Beach, Delaware. We stayed in the doll-infested beach house that our extended family rents from a friend-of-a-friend. The house, though oddly decorated and a pediophobe's nightmare, is nice because it is familiar, and air-conditioned.

You know, maybe if I start naming the dolls, then my fear will eventually dissipate as the names generate personalities, which make them seem less creepy and souless.

On the other hand, it may just make my semi-phobia worse, because the only names I can think of are weirdly ominous names, like Chuckie, or Lucy, or It.

I bought four books this week, and read them within the week. They are Tithe by Holly Black (really good, though a little weird), Squire by Tamora Pierce, The Den of Shadows Quartet (four books in one) by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes, and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin. They were all amazing books. I just wish that they had lasted longer. Now I need the sequels desperately, and I have 1 and 1/2 books of summer reading left.

Which reminds me. Shouldn't I be doing that now, before I have to go back to school next week?

Nah.

We drove home on Friday, a nine-hour endeavor. The drive, without any stops is closer to 6 hours, but 6 hours is a long time to sit in the car without bathroom breaks, and besides, it's an obligatory ritual to stop at my Aunt Joanie's apartment in Pennsylvania for a lunch/dinner combination. It's not that I don't like Aunt Joanie -- she's perfectly lovely, and an amazing cook -- it's more the fact that I never see her and know barely anything about her. Thus, few conversation topics. So I tend to leave the conversing to my parents -- or my mom -- and sit in the corner with my sister and try to get in on the neighbor's WiFi. Sadly, this visit, the neighbors wised up and got a security enabled network. So, no WiFi. My internet deprivation must continue a little longer.

Cathy, my cousin, showed us her recently redecorated apartment. She did an amazing job on the painting, and her next project is the retro white cabinets in the kitchen, which kind of counteract her black table and peach-orange walls.

She has an orange cat named Wankster (I truly have no idea how to spell that, but it is how you pronounce it) and her roommate has a dog, Marley, a lhasa apsa. Playing with the insanely cute animals alleiviated the boredom and some of the awkwardness of the rest of the visit to my great-aunt's.

Back to school shopping is a nightmare. My sister whined the entire time, and I couldn't find the correct notebooks. The school section at Target was a picked over, disorganized mess. It got really frustrating. I did, however, get a haircut today, which made my former haircut shorter, and it's now parted on the side. I didn't realize it would do this, but now I look an awful lot like one of my friend's friends, who also has short brown hair and glasses. It's kind of funny.

Oh, and our sunflowers are now 12 feet tall and blooming outside of our dining room. They are magnificent. The one in the photo is a considerably shorter one on our back porch, growing in a pot full of petunias. I love sunflowers in August. And any other time, really.

Has anyone looked at my random profile question recently? I find it quite funny.

The Lake House

This Sunday we drove a nice 2 1/2 hours to my aunt and uncle's lake house in Pennsylvania. On the way down, we stopped in Binghamton and had a nice, 10 minute chat with another uncle who lives there. I haven't really talked to him that much before, and he's actually a really funny guy.

The lake house was really good-sized: there were three bedrooms, three bathrooms, a kitchen, a TV and a living room, and a nice porch. It was very comfortable, and there was a lot of food. Which was nice. :)

When we went inside, I met Devon, my second cousin (I think) who is eleven, lives in Carlsbad, California, and is going into 6th grade. She was fun, and Emme and her hit it off, since they're close in age. We went swimming in the lake. It was really shallow, and there was a ton of rocks, so you really had to pick your way around. Still, there were some deeper sections, which was nice. Jerry (mon oncle) has a paddleboat and a rowboat, so we went for a couple of rides. Later, in the afternoon, they went over to the artificial beach to make sandcastles.

Then I ate about fifteen snickerdoodles, which were delicious (hence the consumption of 15 of them).

Ha! The family reunion wasn't completely excruciating! I think that's a first!