I died for a week but I'm back now.

Guuuyyyyyys it's my first day of Easter break how great is that?? 
I'm also sick because the universe hates me. 

Yesterday I was talking with my amazing friend/writing critique, and I went on a mini-rant because we somehow got onto the topic of writing letters and I was complaining because nobody writes letters anymore!! Remember when you were little and iPhones weren't a thing and you would write letters to your friends and then get super super excited when they replied and you would keep those letters for years? Remember that?? You can't replace that with a text or a screenshot, it's too special. 

I was lucky enough to have had a childhood filled with letters and imagination and bruises instead of one filled with screens and how many "likes" a picture gets. 

Why don't we write those gorgeous, flowery letters anymore, with the wax seals and all that?? People don't even read anymore! Neither did the dinosaurs, and look what happened to them! 
(Btw, I didn't come up with that line on my own, I'm not that clever ;p)

It's a gorgeous day to be in Southern California. 



You can see the ocean from my porch! And I really want to chop down that telephone pole right now... 

And we are now in the Holy Triduum, the three days before Easter (and it's actually four days because the Jews counted days weird and it's playing with my brain). Have a happy Easter when it gets here! And I recommend watching The Passion of the Christ, the one with Mel Gibson and Jim Caviezel (whom I've met multiple times because I went to school with his kids and I feel like I say that too much BUT IT'S TRUE) on Good Friday because that movie is so powerful and I watch it every year. 

HAPPY ALMOST EASTER

Dance Nostalgia.

Isn't it funny how just one object can bring back a whole flood of memories?
Dance is like that to me; a whole flood of memories. It was so important to me, and it still is in some ways. Just maybe in different ways than it was three years ago.

I decided to quite dance in sixth or seventh grade during a fit of tears because I was super behind on homework and I was still getting through the homeschool-to-regular-school transition, and I was doing five or six hours of dance a week and little thirteen-year-old me couldn't take in any longer. I remember sitting at my desk crying over homework because I was so overwhelmed and I was thinking, So now it ends? The ten years of dance training, just thrown out the window? Because dance used to be everything to me.

And all those emotions came rolling through my head again this afternoon when I found my first pair of pointe shoes.

And naturally, I took pictures of my feet because I'm just so freaking weird like that.

Here they are! 

They no longer fit me. I forced them on anyway.

Feet are so weird... I always loved how
dancers could make ugly feet look beautiful.

A black-and-white, just for y'all

Trying to be artsy...

So many memories, you guys...

Walking around in them today absolutely killed my arches because my feet are totally not pointe-shoe worthy anymore. 

Another reason I miss dance, and a bit of a less deep reason, is because for my whole life,I could get out of going on runs because I could say that running hurt my flexibility. I could get out of exercise in general because I had dance as my form of exercise and it was a good one. But now I have no form of exercise for myself and I'm totally lazy and out of shape and I'm kinda worried about myself. I'm super underweight and way too thin and I don't eat nearly enough. And now I don't exercise either. Like, I'm not a doctor, but this can't be healthy...

I gotta get back in shape. I'll start now. 

^^said no American ever

But seriously. 

Small Ways.

*decides to lose all dignity right now* 
Hellooooo it's meeeeee 


I apologize, I haven't eaten much today and I dissected a chicken in biology class and my hands still feel contaminated, despite the many washes. And so those are my excuses, just don't hate me please. x)

This week was an interesting one. I realized just how done I am with school. It was a relatively difficult week on multiple levels, and although today's rain helped my mood, I'm still very glad it's over. I don't like stress, it makes me feel like a twice-used tea bag. 

I'm just generally not good in stressful situations. Fun factoid about moi. 

Hugs are a good remedy for bad days. We have a bunch of my dad's family staying at my house right now, and I have a lot of little cousins, so when I came home from school today I found them all in the sun-room and yelled, Give me hugs, little children, I need hugs! 

I have the most adorable cousins. 

But I wanted to come and give you guys some words of wisdom, just a lesson I learned: true friends stay beside you, no matter what you've done to them. Someone who really loves you- and I'm not just talking about the romantic kind, I'm talking also about the love between friends- will stand up for you, even in small ways. 

Small ways. Every day is a small step to the greater goal: Heaven. A lot of the things we do are just small ripples in the pond, but those ripples lead to bigger and bigger ones. Think about how many people you've influenced in your life. Think about how many people you meet every day. The old man you smiled at when you passed him on the street. The lady walking her dog you said hi to. That little boy you hugged. 
If you look at it like that, everything we do if huge! But what is it, really? A smile; a kind word; a hug. It's nothing. It takes 26 muscles to smile and we do it involuntarily all the time. We don't even think about. Maybe you just said hi to that person you passed on the street out of habit. But you influenced someone else's life by living your own. 

When we do things for people, no matter how small, it influences their life. People who say their lives don't matter are only looking at themselves and haven't looked at the people around them whom they've influenced. 
Modern society today is telling people that all we really need is us, that we're perfect on our own. But we weren't even created for us! We were created because God is infinite love, and He wanted to share His love with us. So why don't we share our love with the people in our lives, as God shared His love with us? 

Another thought, another rant. I appreciate that you guys read this x)
Off to do geometry homework! Because I'm still a teenager who goes to school. 

Californian Winter Sunsets.

"The day was reluctant to leave,
so it gave us
one last gift
as it burst into flames..."

I took this picture a few weeks ago, but since then there have been many sunsets like this. Because maybe our day was bad. So the evening sky leaves us on a note of happiness and sets itself on fire... And how gorgeous, right??

Just thought maybe you'd like to see some stunning sunsets as you begin your week x) Lots of love to you all.

Hello March.

Ooooooh because it's March and I'm changing the font to make it more fancy! 
Yes, I am so done with normal people life. I'd like that solitary confinement cell right about now.... 

I need to get back into writing short stories and not just poems. Because the way poems work for me, I get emotional over something and I manage to spill something coherent onto paper and make it rhyme somehow. And sometimes it doesn't even rhyme. My poems lately have just been the result of teenage-girl emotion with nothing else to do but try to express themselves through rhyme and horridly thought-out meter. 

Gah. Poetry. I love it and it's killing me. 

FEBRUARY IN REVIEW

Ha. I'm going to say the same thing I did last month: I, uh, didn't do much. One of my bigger feats this month was driving all my siblings *safely* home from the grocery store while they all screamed DON'T KILL US in my ear. It was the first time many of them had allowed me to drive them, and they're all currently alive so huzzah, I'm good at life. Lent started, of course. It's going.... well. We had family come out to visit, which is always nice. And I'm still working on my Latin grades, but they're going up slowly but surely. 

March started off pretty well. I woke up, looked out the window, and was pleased to see a thick, soupy fog outside. It didn't last, naturally, but it was nice nonetheless. 

Maybe March will be a bit more interesting, hopefully with more rain. California needs rain. Desperately. 

How was your February?