Swim is Over!

Last week was the last week of High School swimming, unless you are going to state. I am not going to state, so this was the last week of swimming on the High School team for me this year. It has been a good year, I decided that I love swim meets this year. I use to hate swim meets and do anything I could to get out of them, but now I have grown to love them and am a little sad to see them go. The surfers have meets of course (that is the non high school team that is for anyone from like 5-17), but it won't be the same without all of my Lancer and Knight friends. There will be no more bus rides and meets that you have to be checked out of school for. I am really sad about all of this, but at least I know that some of the people that I know from the HS team will be on surfers.

We had our last meet on Friday. It was a big meet, so our whole team went to this boy's house on Thursday night. Thursday was a lot of fun, all of the girls got their hand spray painted blue. The spray paint isn't coming off, but to be honest I am trying to keep it on; I like how it looks to have one blue hand, plus it makes it more like I am on a team, so my blue hand is currently making me happy because it just makes me feel kind of special. I also got my back spray painted, but that isn't as cool to me as my hand. Most of the team had blue spray paint on, and I think that it made our whole team look united and cooler because we all had blue paint that stood out compared to the other teams.

At the meet I had fun, I had several freak outs though. I got to the meet a little on edge, but my first little panic attack (I don't know what to call it) came after my first event. I was in the first event of the meet, which always puts me on edge, because I am afraid I will miss it. The event was a relay, so I was swimming with three other girls. (In a relay there are four people in a group, they each take a turn swimming a 50 or 100 of what ever stroke it is.) In my relay I was going to swim 50 butterfly. I had been nervous for this meet because I was in four events, three of them involving butterfly, so for the whole week before I had been focusing on butterfly, which mostly only succeeded in psyching myself out.

Despite my nervousness for the event, I did well. I swam it the very best I could and was in the zone the whole time. My goggles fell off, but I did well without them. When I finished my 50 my friend Jinni helped me out of the pool and said I did amazing, I could tell that she meant it and really was impressed, but for some reason I started freaking out. I started to hyperventilate a little bit (I seem to do that a lot I guess,) and saying sorry. I did good, so I don't know why I was acting like that, but I just kept saying sorry and saying that I should have done better and telling the girls in my relay that I was really really sorry.

I snapped out of my freak out pretty quickly and sat down with my friends. I tightened my goggles and ate something, but I was doing pretty well. I was good until my next event, which was a 200 IM (IM is all four of the strokes in a certain order). I was a little bit freaked out because I usually pray before an event (yes, I do, don't mock me if you have a problem with that), but at this meet I had a mental block and wouldn't allow myself to pray or to relax in any way. I couldn't just say a prayer in my mind for some reason, don't ask my why. Because of this I had a hard time calming down before or after an event.

I asked someone to cheer for me during my IM, and I did pretty good. I couldn't relax at all during the race, and my goggles fell off again, but over all I felt okay. When I finished the girl who had been cheering for me helped me of the pool, I started hyperventilating again though. I didn't know why I was so anxious, but I tried to relax. I felt a little off still, but I was again able to at least calm down a little bit.

Right before my third event we had a break. In the half hour break with no events taking place, one of my friends got hurt. I was not sure how hurt because I didn't get to talk to him, but I knew he was going to the doctor. I don't like it when people are hurt, and I couldn't relax at all for a while after that.

After the break I had a 100 butterfly. I guess the tension I had helped me or something, because I dropped quite a bit of time on it, but I refused to try and find peace or anything. I spent the whole meet feeling very edgy and jumpy, but I had a good time. I talked to some people I usually don't talk to, and was pretty much like normal by the time my last event came.

I was in the second to last event of the meet, which was another relay. I had a good team for my relay, and I asked Allie if I could borrow her goggles for the race. She said I could and she went to go get them.

I was waiting to get on the starting block when she came back. She said that my friend who had gotten hurt came back, but it was seconds before I had to go, so I had to just take her goggles and go. When I got out of the water I went and got my hoodie and took off my cap and goggles. I went over to my friend who had been hurt and waited until it was a good time to say something (some other people were talking to him too). I asked if he was okay and he said yes, so I relaxed a little bit.

After the meet the team went out to dinner. Dinner was a lot of fun, and I am glad I got to see everyone. I realized there how many people there I love and don't want to see them graduate or even just not see them until next year. I can't wait until we have a swim banquet next month. After dinner I went and hung out with some friends at Jinni's house. Even though I just spent a whole post saying how stressful the meet was, I really actually loved it and wouldn't change it for anything.

This is the last week of high school swim for this year. I am kind of sad that this is the last time I am going to see some people ever, and some people for a while at least. One of the people I am going to miss is Shelby, I think we will see each other, but not every single day like right now. I will see some people like Allie and Jake and hopefully Jinni, but there is going to be a void without Shelby and all of the kids that don't swim for Surfers or only swim during the season (although I doubt many people just stop swimming over the summer and stuff).

The person who I will miss seeing everyday the most is probably Shelby. I am going to miss everyone, but Shelby is a closer friend than most people on the swim team. I promised her I was going to write about her on my blog (she is my most loyal reader I know of). She swims for a different team over the summer, so I don't think I will see her much after this week.

Since I promised her I would write about her I will start with what she looks like I guess. Shelby is taller than me, has short hair, and is thin. She is pretty, and is nice. She also always carries a knife with her, so don't mess with her. Shelby is really funny, and is great at listening. She seriously heard like my whole school drama for a few hours on the way to the Cedar City meet last fall, and didn't act annoyed or bored at all. She is a great swimmer, but she says she loves acting more.

She is a Knight, so even though we are on different teams, Lancers and Knights usually have meets together, so we have been to most of the meets together. At the beginning of the year we didn't really talk, but we all had to chose bed mates for an overnight meet one day, so we signed up together because we kind of knew each other, and that was better than getting paired with some random girl we didn't know at all. We talked for the whole five hours it took to get to the meet, and got to know each other pretty well there.

She has scars from hitting a tree, biting through her lip, crashing her bike, hitting a mailbox, playing with a slushee blade, and road rash. She has a ton of funny stories about how she got all of these, along with many other stories, including four ER trips and being bitten on the toe by an old lady. She also has stories about camp. She works at a camp during the summer called Camp Kiesel, and tells me about all of the cool people that work there. I have met a lot of these people from dances, which she made me start going to when we became friends.

She is a pretty awesome person, sorry if this is a little scatter brained, I will try to edit it when I am less tired.

Okay, It's 10 o'clock on Sunday night, I have put off blogging enough. I guess I should tell you about this rather eventful week.

I have actually had a really cool week, a lot of really weird lucky things have happened. One of the best things to happen was I got best of show in the school art show. It was great because I didn't expect it at all, and it came with a sort of revenge.

Last year I was friends with a kid named K, now K is a little socially awkward, but I figured that he probably just didn't have a lot of friends, so he would be happy to have a friend. I had art and homeroom with K, and since my homeroom had a lot of people in it that I didn't think I could talk to, I spent a lot of time talking to K. K was mostly nice, that is until second semester started and I had art with him.

I had art with Allie (from swim) and one of my other friends, but they both ditched me, so I spent most of third term alone in that class. At the end of third term this girl named Taylor (who I had been friends with in elementary, but hadn't had any classes previous to that art class with) started to come sit with me at the end of class sometimes. She invited me to sit at her table, and soon my official seat was just there. At this table there was Taylor, a cheerleader I went to elementary with, another girl who I went to elementary with, and K (who I also went to elementary with...), so I knew everyone a little bit before I even sat down. Taylor and I became good friends again pretty quickly, and K and I became pretty good friends.

The only problem with K is he was a little full of himself. He always assumed he was an AMAZING artist, and once he told me it surprised him that I had good grades. He got jealous of me and Taylor I think, because in art the teacher assigned us to make trash sculptures, and his didn't look very good. Taylor and I made one that was supposed to be writing, but ended up making an elephant (don't ask how). The elephant that we made was the best sculpture in the class and the teacher asked to photograph it, but the teacher didn't seem to like his. After that the teacher asked Taylor and I if she could keep the altered books we made, and photograph them over the weekend. She didn't get to photographing them over the weekend, and kept them all summer. K was jealous of this, so he actually lied and said she already photographed his, but she gave it back to him the next day.

Over the summer I decided to text K, and he told me he was WAY busy with honors english. In honors english, he said, you had to write a novel for first term, so he was spending forever on writing the novel. He made up some length it had to be, and told me that I was too stupid to honors english. He said he was smarter than me, and it would be too hard for me. He actually convinced me that he was in honors english (which he's not), and made me think I really couldn't do it (but not because I was dumb, because I hate writing stories I make up).

I did decided to do honors english as you can tell, and he totally lied. The fact that he didn't even do honors english at all makes it worse, so now I have no respect for him at all. He also LOVES to say horrible crap about everyone's art, and then claim his as the best, which makes me have negative respect for him.

He was in my art class AGAIN this semester, so I got to hear a lot of his stupidity. He thinks he is really talented, which he is good, but not that good. The fact that he thinks he is so good makes any talent he does have worthless.

Ok, backstory over, onto my real story.

I was in art last week, and we had just turned in a book cover we made. I went to go talk to the teacher after class to see if she could let me take it home and make it better (because she usually does, but that day she didn't grade them in class, so she told us not to take them). She said yes and graded mine right then. While she was grading mine, my friend Kate came to talk to her. Kate wanted to know about the art show, and my teacher told her about it. When she was explaining about it to Kate, she looked at me and said "Go to the art show and look at your art piece facing Mrs. G's office." I told her okay, but I was hesitant, because the way she said it was pretty intense. She kept insisting I NEEDED to go see it, and I commented some thing like "Okay, I will, I'm a little scared..." She gave me another one of her scary intense looks and told me to be proud not scared, which made me even more uncomfortable, since I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about.

I went to the art show with Kate immediately, and we tried to find our pictures in the art show. I had a mask and a jellyfish mosaic in the show. Kate had a poster and a swan mosaic in the art show. We were trying to find one of her things, but then I saw my mask and wanted to show her. We went to where my mask was, and on the way we saw K. K was happy and really smug. I heard him bragging to his friend about how, "they will finally HAVE to believe me!" and saying stuff like that.

Kate and I went up to see what it was, and we saw that he had a best of show ribbon on one of his pictures. He turned the ribbon around and read my name on the back, and the look on his face was priceless. I could see all the pictures on that display were printer paper sized, not big like my jellyfish, so I was just as confused (although my teacher had made it clear my jelly fish was not as good as it could be, so I didn't expect it to win at all).

I told him it must be a mistake, it was clearly on his, and he said we had to get it all cleared up immediately. He took the ribbon and went to go find an adult to complain about it to. I was confused, and decided to look at the other pictures on the display.

My attention was caught by a picture above his. It was a picture of a butterfly on a flower, and I saw that it was mine. I didn't know my teacher had entered it into the art show, she didn't tell me, but there it was. Next to the picture were two pieces of tape that you could tell were supposed to be holding up something. I called K over and told him that maybe it was supposed to be on my picture. He knew I was right and immediately started freaking out. He lost it, and I wasn't as sympathetic about it as I would be if it were someone else. Kate was really happy for me too, and the next day she was jumping up and down with me in gym when I telling Taylor.

It was nice to beat K because he is always so condecending. If it were Kate who it was mixed up with I would be really sorry, but as it was I thought it was pretty awesome.

Here is the picture in case you were wondering.

Cupcakes

If I ever offer you cupcakes... refuse immediately. It is in your best interest to just say no and not risk it. I say this for a few reasons, starting with the fact that I made cupcakes yesterday and today. (Although I am determined to NOT finish them today because I am too lazy, I may have ruined them beyond repair already, and I still can't work my oven) Yesterday my cupcakes were actually really good, but I promised one of my friends cupcakes at church today, then came home to find that there where no more left.

 My little sister Adrienne helped me make them yesterday, her job was to put the batter in the cups and turn on the oven and set the time for the oven and mix them... so pretty much everything after me putting the ingredients in. We didn't have enough frosting, so we were going to make some, but after I opened a bag of chocolate chips I decided some of the cupcakes needed chocolate chips in them. To be safe we left a third of them without, but it turned out really good. Adrienne frosted several of them and I frosted a few, but I had homework I was slacking off on and she had to go to bed, so only about half got frosted.

Turns out we shouldn't have frosted any, my parents came home and ate some of them, and Eliza and Adrienne and I had some, so today there weren't a ton left. I counted them and decided it was a safe bet to tell the girl at church that I made her cupcakes, but when I came home I found out that there were none left. My mom says that she HAD to eat them because she was too sick to go to church so yeah. But there are none left and I told someone I made her cupcakes, so I am now making a second batch.

The problem is that yesterday I made chocolate cupcakes, so now I want chocolate cupcakes again... but there is no chocolate cupcake mix now and I don't want to make them from scratch, so I made an experimental batch. I made half of the batch normal white cake, but I added cocoa powder and sugar the the second batch, so we will see if that worked out or not. I don't think it will, which is why it is good that there are some white ones.

P.S. About the frosting I had to make, it tastes not good. I do NOT know how to make frosting it turns out, yeah not a great surprise (well it won't be for my family when I frost some of the cupcakes with the gross frosting). Sadly I have eaten a lot of the gross frosting today, hoping each time I tried it that it would taste better... it didn't. I think that the frosting actually got worse over the day, because I tried to make it less thick and intense, so I added like sugar to make it sweeter, bad idea. Sugar makes frosting grainy, so even though powdered sugar makes frosting thick, just use powdered sugar and water, normal sugar makes frosting gross to eat. It actually doesn't taste as gross now, but it is less edible because the sugar did make it sweeter, but graininess makes all the sweetness pretty much useless, because who wants to eat grainy frosting? I don't, I guess my family will be the guinea pigs on whether or not it is as bad as I think it is.

Christmas (Okay, I posted this Christmas, then deleted it, and now I am reposting it, I am not just seriously confused)

Today is Christmas, as you most likely know. I love Christmas, and I could go on and on about why and what it means to me and all that, but that seems like an essay, so I will start out with telling you about the random things I was told.

First random thing is about my friend's sister. One of my very best friends is named Taylor. She is about my height and has brown hair like me, she is in four classes with me, so we have a ton of fun at school. I only gave her a present for Christmas, I know I should give everyone some kind of gift, but I decided that unless there was a great reason why someone NEEDED a gift, it wasn't worth it. She needed a gift because she loves the cube gum I keep in my locker, she always thinks it's really cool. So I gave her cube gum on the last day of school, and yesterday she came to my house to give me chocolates. (I felt like chocolate was better than gum, so I kind of wish I had given her more gum...) She came to my door and I saw her sister Fae first (Fae is in 7th grade and is my nemesis), so when I answered the door I went, "EWWW! What are YOU doing here?!? " or something to that effect. Taylor laughed in an oh-no-here-we-go-again sort of way and gave me the chocolates.
My dog had come to the door when Taylor knocked and was trying to figure out who they were, and Taylor said, "Oh I love your dog, it's so cute." She said something about her dog so I said, "I STILL don't know your dog! I don't even know what it looks like!" Taylor replied, "He looks like..." and was interrupted by Fae with, "HE'S CUTER THAN YOU!!!" Taylor said they had to go after that, and it was a lot funnier than how I just made it sound (more awkward too, actually).

The second funny thing that happened was at my cousins' house. Yesterday for Christmas Eve we went to my cousins' house. They have four kids, and one of them is a month and a day younger than me. Her name is Roo, and she is a very.. blunt person. Roo tells it how it is, and you have to earn her respect. Sorry that is off topic, but I may need to refer back to her later and that is kind of important to know about her.

When we went to my cousins' house I went up to Jade's girlfriend (If you don't know who Jade is read my last post) and told her I got her a present. Now Jade's girlfriend, let's call her Tressa, is kind of in the same boat as Jade, she lost her kids over drugs a few years ago and just visits them now. She lives with Jade about 5 minutes away from where I live now, and I see her more than her own kids do I think. Tressa is really funny because she is also very blunt like Roo and tells it how it is. She isn't married to anyone and since she never sees her kids I guess there is no one that my mom thought would give her presents. My mom bought her a present and I wrapped it, but my mom said to say it was from me to give her.

After I told her very enthusiastically that I got her a present she said she was almost done with my present. I asked her what she was making and she said an Ostrich egg. How do you answer when some one tells you they made you an Ostrich egg? I didn't know how exactly to react so I asked her if she was carving it out of wood. She said no, she was just carving it. I asked what she meant and she still said that she was carving me an Ostrich egg, not out of wood though. She finally asked Jade where she could get the internet and googled a picture for me. Here is what she learned she meant:
[Image]Makes a lot more sense than her laying an Ostrich egg right? Carving designs out of an egg makes more sense than carving an egg shape out of a block of wood too... I guess it is kind of fun and hard, so if you ever feel like you just need to carve an Ostrich egg, come talk to me, Tressa has some to spare I guess and has offered to give me one if I want to try my hand at carving eggs.

Th ose were random things that happened to me, they don't pertain to much, but I still don't feel like writing in my blog, nothing meaningful at least. If you read to the end of this good job to you!

P.S. Emu eggs are even cooler than Ostrich eggs, you should google images of it, they are pretty freaking awesome.