No Work and No Play

I am so tired. And I just keep wasting so much time. I'm at work right now. The Boys and Girls Club? Yeah. I just with there was something to do. I feel like... I'm getting paid to be bored.

At least the kids are really cute. You get weary after a strong dose of them when they're rowdy and won't listen, but they are cute. One little girl was sitting on a bench in the Tech Center with me and she was playing with my hands, looking at my class ring. She says, "Is this your married ring?" I smiled really big and told her "No, it's my class ring. It has my school on it."

"Do you gotta boyfriend?" she asks.

"Yes, I do."

"Then why don't you have a married ring? You better tell him you needa get married."

I chuckled but managed to restain my laughter and just agreed, "Okay. I'll tell him."

Jacob found the story very amusing. We were both laughing pretty hard as a matter of fact. Little kids uckkk... they're adorable.

Another day this week I was sitting by the front desk (with nothing to do) and another little girl came up to me and introduced herself as Seanae. (Pronounced shaw-nay) She too, took an interest in my hands and observed, "Miss Ashley, you're nails are long," then added, "Can I break one off?"

Oh, children. Wonderful little monsters. I'm glad it's thursday. One more day of waste before a whole week at Girl's State. I think I'll be ready to go back to work after that.

Wonder if I have any stories to tell... after a big fight and months of silence, I called Dan a couple weeks or so ago and on Sunday he met me at my pool. He had his wisdom teeth removed last week so his one cheek was still a bit puffy but we managed to devour a good quantity of homemade chips and salsa between the two of us. The water was chilly so we didn't swim at first but instead opted for a long conversation about adding "ing" to every verb as you're doing it. For example, while one is running, one would announce "running." And should one run one's self too hard in heat and hence make one's self sick, one might announce "vomiting," as one vomited. It's very amusing, you see? The same conversation Nicolette and I had memorial day weekend. I'd thought Dan might find it amusing. And he did. We were stuck on it for an hour at least.

And then we decided that inanimate objects could be like Pokemon and say aloud what they are. Their attitudes change over time though. For instance, when a chair is first created it might have a certain happiness for existence and would exuberantly announce "chair!" But after awhile, when you sit in it, it might sort of sigh or grumble, "...chair.." However when put out for the garbage it would begin to worriedly cry, "chair! chair! CHAIR!!!"

Dan and I are a couple of silly geese. We still have a really strange mental connection, we discovered. I took the words out of his mouth a couple times and I asked my stepmom for the pool's address to give it to Dan just seconds before he texted me, asking for it. After conversing on chairs and the awkwardness of announcing things like "gossiping" and "sneaking," and whatnot, we took a walk to a local elementary school and followed a pair of rabbits all over the property for probably a half an hour. These bunnies... they didn't run, they just hopped a short distance away whenever Dan and I got close, nibbled some grass, hopped away, repeated the process. We named them Maude and Wilson. Wilson is not only a name BTW, it's also a verb and adjective meaning "chill" or "relax."

If you'd like to add Wilson to your vocabulary all you have to do is say things like this: Yo man, you need to Wilson. It could be worse. Or: I love my science teacher. She is just totally Wilson. Nothing bothers her.

Then after Wilson at the school, we went back and feasted on all the food my parents and the people at the pool had brought. I don't even know how many potstickers I ate. And lots of cream puffs for dessert. Dan decided to start something after dinner, swiping a mini beach ball off the deck and throwing it at me. This led to a peg-each-other-with-mini-beach-balls face off which started out on land and ended up being carried to the pool. We both had some good hits, though I'll admit that Dan has much better aim that I do. He hit me in the head more times than I could or would like to count.

Today was the first day that my arm hasn't been sore from throwing those stupid beach balls at Dan. It really hurt when I woke up Monday. Now I just hurt on the inside. I miss Jay :(

I think the next class is coming in soon. TTYL.

For CEREAL?

Ashley AKA RainDance is the author featured on Protagonize on June 8th, 2009? SWEET. This post definitely gets tagged in the "whoa" category. Which really puts me in the mood to think about happy things. Which means that I am about to compile a beautiful list of things that I really ENJOYED about this year. Thinking positive. I like it. Here goes:

~ Creative writing and the little to no effort that it took to get an A in that class

~ 2010 goes Under the Sea for Homecoming. Luckily it was just our one awful hallway because...

~ Homecoming was Harry Potter-themed

~ Third place of all four high school grades at Spirit Week (We beat the freshmen.)

~ Our unofficial class motto: "No one beats us at losing."

~ No ceilings in our school, endless constuction, construction workers everywhere, that random knife stuck in the ceiling, wheelbarrows of dirt being wheeled out (?) of the school, no heat and wearing winter coats for 10 hours a day

~ Big Epiphany of the Year: Aliens are here. They're all around us. Trust your instincts.

~ Time spent at the mall with Dan, finding Atlantis in a soda machine, splitting chinese food and drinking smoothies which never tasted quite right but which we always bought anyway

~ Traveling to Opaltopia in my head with Nicolette when junior year was sucking out our souls

~ The day our school flooded with poop... HAPPY POOP DAY!!!

~ Frightland and how thought it was going to absolutely positively terrifying. LOL.

~ The boy Nicolette and I met at Frightland, BJ. He writes very interestingly and lives in a feild.

~ Beginning to write EPIC with Nic; getting to know our characters and falling in love with them

~ Getting... what's that? My first boyfriend ever? Yeah. I know.

~ Mr. Mazz and his songs/stories/off topic ramblings

~ Going to King of Prussia with Dan and getting a new winter coat

~ Christmas dinner and eating my body weight in food

~ School New York trip with Dan: holding hands running around the city, being foolish, trying on knitted mohawk hats, browsing the comic book store, watching ice skaters, sitting by that beautiful lit up fountain with our hot cocoa, getting lost, almost getting left behind when the bus was about to leave...

~ New Years Eve party at my house and almost getting into a fight with Nicolette over a boy. HAHAHA. That's never happening again.

~ The ensuing nine hours at the mall that followed our almost-fight-over-a-boy during which Nic and I managed to entertain ourselves even without money. We just outlined a novel to pass the time. ;)

~ Finding someone who also uses "piss!" as an expression of frustration

~ Rockford Park in spring with Jay

~ Frozen vanilla mousse in ice cream cones at seven in the morning. MOUSSE PARTY YAYY.

~ Getting in touch with my Spanish side and embracing Ashlidad as my new Spanish class name

~ Aric imitating screaming bunnies

~ Crazy hilarious skits in Spanish-- "Yo soy una princessa!"

~ Stopping for water ice three times at Rita's on the first day of spring

~ Awamu with Nic and getting so lost I started crying. I hate the highway. I hate driving. But I do have a great story about getting lost now.

~ Discovering I can rollerblade without breaking my neck

~ Failing to do very much of anything in newspaper, even if that means we only got out 3 editions...

~ Selling tickets at the Flower Market for NHS

~ The weird school lunches that they serve you at the end of the year with all the food that you don't normally get

~ Elliot Yamin from American Idol performing at our school? What???

~ Coming in next to last in an NHS 5k (Jacob was dead last as he insisted upon it)

~ Crying at graduation even though I didn't really know any seniors

~ The worst school year of my life being over. That was the best.

Overwhelmingly Over

My favorite-y favoritest Corri Corri mentioned this website once during our creative writing class:

http://thisiswhyyourefat.com/

I think I'm in love with this website. I look at that bacon cheese muffin currently residing on the page and I think... oh, fat... I just wanna eat it.

I'll have to add this to my list of fabulous linkage.

But that was just a start to this post. My real purpose in posting today (today's reason to live) is--

SCHOOL IS OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That really took some self-control to take my finger off the exclamation point. I'm so happy. And I must have spent four hours on the phone with Jacob today after school. It was funny because we were talking about when we first started going out. What we were thinking at certain times. How I look so incredibly sick in the pictures from Winter Ball but he says he never even noticed while we were there. Praise the lord for that. Nothing was stopping me from going to that dance.

I think maybe tomorrow I'll steal Nic's idea about creating a list of good things that happened this year. And I'll look at it and think, "That's how I survived." But I have to get up early for my sister's graduation from elementary school tomorrow. I'm going to hit the hay.

Goodnight, my someone. Goodnight, my blog...

Sunday: My I-Don't-Have-To-Run Dayyyy

Didn't expect to see me back so soon did you? No.

SURPRISE!!!

Today I have a present to share with you. It's my Spanish essay for my final tomorrow-- TADA.

Mi Vida
Por Ashlidad McNeilio [My Super Secret Spanish Name]

Cuando era una niña, era sonriendo siempre. Vida fue lleno de mariposas solamente esperando a ser capturaron. Me gustaría jugando y cantando y reiendo.
Este ano, he perdido las mariposas. Este ano, mis amigos han hecho me loco y he estado muy, muy triste. No me gusta tengo diez y siete anos.
En la futura, espero algo se una escritora. Publice novelos numerosos esa hacen gente quieren leyendo. Tendré una casa y una familia esa hacen me muy feliz.

If you can read that, you know more Spanish than I do. For sure. But you know what? I don't care because tomorrow is my very last day of school. This wretched junior year will be over.

Today's reason to live: the day after tomorrow. (How do ya like that?)

I'm sure I'll feel very triumphant tomorrow when I come home, so perchance I'll make another entry. As it is now though, I had a lovely day with Jacob at the pool and am very tired. The water was cold so mostly we just laid in the sunshine on the playground of a nearby elementary school. I'm wondering if I have sunburn or if I'm just paranoid. Not sure. Anyway, I'm happy with my essay and I've eaten enough in the past few hours to satisfy a hungry hippo so I'm going to high tail it to bed.

Night night.

I am actually still alive.

BLOG! It's been so long! I missed you so much!!!

I'm sorry again for my abandonment. I know you don't want/need/care about excuses, I but I feel that I must at least explain.

If we're being honest, I got caught up in life and I just sort of forgot about you. I know it hurts. I'm sorry. So sorry.

Is it normal that I talk to you like some forgotten hermit crab that has been left to die in the darkness of an unclean cage? That is so sad. I really must stop this.

See, it's graduation that has put me in this somber mood. Not my graduation (praise the lord) but the graduation of the class of 2009. Tonight I volunteered to usher for National Honor Society and then stayed to watch the ceremony. Nicolette and I had first row seats. We watched the people on stage intently as their faces changed, some laughed, many smiled, a good number cried. Nic took loads of pictures for the yearbook. And then, suddenly, after speeches and accolades and much loud applauding-- it was over.

The stage was empty.

And I wanted to cry. Really wanted to cry. Next year it will be me leaving that stage empty, me graduating, ME getting ready to go off to COLLEGE. EWWWWWW. Someone wake me up from this nightmare. I'm afraid. I don't want to grow up.

But at least this year is almost over. I have one day of school left on Monday. Two icky but insignificant little finals and I am home free. But this summer will be different on account of my having a "paid internship" AKA a job at the Boys and Girls Club. I'm excited to be working with the kids and all, but it's a big committment. I won't have nearly as much time to slack off and find inspiration to write :( There's so much to do this summer. Not enough time to lie around like a beached whale at the pool and get a tan. And so I sigh. I think I should go to bed. Things will look brighter after a nice long rest.

Goodbye for now.