sick

I'm sick. And I really, really hate it.

Obviously, nobody likes being sick...except for maybe cubicle workers really eager for a day of soap operas instead of staples, but I am certainly not a cubicle worker.

This bout of illness just came out of nowhere and steamrolled me, like a sumo ninja or something. I mean, yesterday I felt ill enough that I was wondering how possible it was to get an ear infection at age 16, but this morning, I just knew my body was only working at 60, 50% capacity. Decided to go to church for blessings and whatnot, figuring that by the time I got home and took a nice Sunday nap, I'd be good to go and work on my room.

We weren't far into sacrament meeting when Mom and I realized I had to go home. Not only was I feeling sick, tired, runny/stuffy nose-y, and always ready to cough, but I was talking like I do when I'm sick. Trying to make jokes that turn out reallllllly bad, saying whatever random thing passes through my head, confusing reality with non-reality. (And I'm well-aware that now I described that to you I sound like I'm perpetually sick, but trust me...I'm not.)

We got home and I took a lovely four hour nap, but it didn't do much good. I woke up at 2 and still felt ill, but needed to get up. Lots of times I recover the more I walk around if its just some puny bug- another reason I wanted to go to church. But Dad's watching Golf and its nowhere near as exciting of a game as it was last time he watched it, so I just decided to complain about my sickness. If I had my way, I'd probably be playing Super Mario Galaxy right now, as I'm too crazy-brained to do anything really productive.

But anyway. I'm sitting here with my nose constantly hurting from need to blow, but everytime I try it just gets worse. Then, all of a sudden, it gets runny. Then proceeds to block itself up again. And coughing still barrels me over. But the worst part about this summer cold or whatever it is isn't the visible symptoms, it's the sledgehammer that sumo ninja is slamming into my head. I can feel it...could probably describe where he's hitting it, but to a sane person my description would make even less sense than any of the other gobledegook I've written. (Let me say this- thank goodness keyboards have backspace...I tried to spell "2" with a "D", "visible" as "symptoms" and "written" came out as "ritne". To name a few.)

So combine the headache, nose issues, and throat issues (plus that my neck hurts from trying to touch my head and my back hurts from...feeling left out, I guess) and I'm practically crying. A few minutes ago, reading comics, I heard myself shouting "no, no, no, no!" at apparently that ninja, and I didn't tell my mouth to say anything. Then I was crying.

So just gonna try and drown this cold and recover over a meatball sandwich so that I'm not completely useless today. The sandwich thing reminds me- when I was cleaning out my room I found this little book I drew in when I was young, and there was this section I had for puzzles...like a witch jumping out of sand would be revealed next page to be a sandwich, and some fire-fighting flies ended up being fireflies, and...uh...some other ones.

Eugh.

Youth Conference!

So on Thursday, I wasn't super looking forward to YC. I dunno, I think my room preparatios and the two parties I was missing and whatever else appealed more to me, but whatever. However, when I arrived at the stake center, I wasn't feeling at all that same way.

For YC, we're split into groups of 6-7 girls and 6-7 boys with a couple for group leaders. My friends and I had tried to set up a train on the "who do you want in your group?" question so we'd end up all together and, against any previous results EVER, we ALL ended up together.

Now, there are downsides to this. That meant we were basically a gaurenteed clique and the boys and us were completely segregated. I only remember the name to the face of one boy, and that's because he had the unfortunate reputation of being the one boy at YC who didn't like showering. But on the upside, we were already all the best of friends and, well, gaurunteed a fantastic time together.

That picture was actually taken later that night, but still. These beautiful daughters of God from my group are (clockwise) Me, Heather Kearly, Jenny LaPlant, Marianne Grunnich, Sarah Langdon, and Tiffanie Abbot. Not the best picture of us all, but we were a bit busy when we actually looked presentable. ;)

After we met our group and our group leaders (Stacey Iseralson and her husband, brother Iseralson) and played some team-building games which, by the way, we creamed everyone at, it was about time to head to the Iseralson's for some late-night stuff. We watched the very end of "Raiders of the Last Arc" and we and the boys all tried to find something good on TV. We thought maybe we had found it with "Mad Money" just starting, but alas, this was not the great movie with Queen Latifa and crew, but a show on the economy. Not what a bunch of teenagers were looking for.

Later that night, when we got to the Barns' (where we slept...that's their last name, they didn't shove us into literal barns), we took the majority of our pictures. We stayed up until about 2, just talking and laughing and taking pictures. Also, Sister Barns suggested we "raid the fridge" and we definetly took her up on it. Our biggest scores were flavor-ice, those plastic tubes of frozen deliciousness, (she pretty much only had green left after we were done) and a gallon of chocolate milk. Next to Mom's chocolate-with-some-milk recipie, gallons of chocolate milk are the way to go.

The next day we went to the church for some workshops. They were okay, not as good as in the past, but not absolutely horrendus. Poor Heather, however, who got the most sleep of all of us, found them excellent opportunities for a nap. After the workshops were over we had lunch and started playing "The Sniper Game", where we were all assigned an ID card of someone else at YC. This game is supposed to help us meet other people, while at the same time having fun killing everyone off. Jenny was being very slack about finding her person, and the rest of us were killed within the first few minutes of lunch. That meant we had to surrender our assassination target to the one who sniped us- see, the point is to collect all the cards. When Jenny eventually did kill her person, she got herself practically an entire deck from his handy work before hand. Suddenly, protecting Jenny from anyone who even approached the table was the most entertaining part of lunch- we nearly made one little 14 year old wet his pants. D:
Jenny didn't win, by the way, and the game ended later that night.

We got the opportunity to go to "Feed my Starving Children" Friday, which is an amazing service place I highly reccomend. FMSC has volunteers pack rice, soy, veggies, and chicken flavoring into food bags, then to boxes, then to foreign countries. I don't remember the statistics, but it was really amazing how much good we all did. Plus, it was amazingly fun. They played peppy music the entire time (sometimes I was so busy dancing I almost forgot to dump in my chicken!) and the atmosphere is just so lively and lighthearted you can't help but have fun. Plus, the boy refilling all the rice buckets was very, very cute.

After FMSC, we went to Cantigny, a military museum park. Very interesting place...we took a tour through the museum and then got to hang out on the tanks around. See, this millionaire who had served in WWII decided to give his estate when he died to the purpose of enlightening others on Division 1 in the army. His family was able to get all sorts of really amazing things for the grounds and museum.

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I really have with the boys. That tall guy standing by Marianne and me is Adam. He hung out with us at Cantigny on account of the boys didn't want him around...seeing as he's the one who dislikes showers, it makes sense.

Later that night was the Variety show. We really, really didn't want to preform our ward's skit (the 4 awkward situations at a stake dance) but we ended up doing it. All our excuses ended up showing up, including Little Jenny Aguilair, who we adopted into our group that night after Sister Neilsen brought her around. The variety show (USO show, I mean. Sorry.) was pretty good. Nothing really amazing, as acts were dropping like flies. However, I can say that only two wards stuck up and did their required act- us, which amused the audience at least, and the fourth ward. Our sister ward was absolutely amazing...they pulled off a beautifully cheoreographed dance to "I'll Make a Man Out of You" from Mulan, which was both hilarious and beautiful at the same time. Ah! Love the fourthies! They even had matching shirts.

After the show, all the girls disapeared to go pretty themselves for the dance. It started out very lame, with literally only the fourth and sixth wards dancing (and even then, only the fourth ward and the sixth ward girls), but pretty soon more people joined in. It was just like a normal dance to me, except waaaay smaller. This year's YC was small to begin with, plus I'm used to at least tri-stake dances. Very spoiled little girl I am.

Probably the two highlights of the dance where when 'Cruella DeVil' started playing and, upset at the songchoice, a bunch of girls started a "Ride, Ride, Ride that Pony" game that lasted about five songs until the DJ put on chacha slide and yelled at us to go do the ChaCha Slide. I don't blame them- RRRtP is a great Girls Camp game, but not the best when the boys get involved too. ;)

Second highlight was when Jenessa told me to ask this short kid to dance. This poor kid had asked two other girls to dance, and they both turned him down. Seriously, if anyone turns you down, you don't want to dance with them anyway. But still, that's gotta hurt. So once it was finally a slow-song I had to practically run to catch him before he left the gym. We danced, and he was an absolute dear. Really fun to talk to and very nice- those girls missed out! But the best part was that I heard that, from that dance on, his mood lightened considerably and he stayed, asked other girls to dance, and even put on his sunglasses to be the star of his own life. hahaha or just look cool. ;)

Sister Iseralson was ridiculously cool after the dance ended. So she gets her picture here, with her husband. ;) We were all very bushed, and very hungry, so we begged her to take us to McD's. Lovingly, she did, and since I had money on me for some unknown reason, I decided to treat my girlies to icecream all around. Unfortunately, after Tiffanie and I were served, the icecream maker ran out of icecream. So we all just stood around talking while the McD's workers tried to fix it and flirted with us. One guy was so funny...kept coming out and trying to sell us burgers. Very fun. After about ten minutes the icecream thing finally worked again, so we got a free McFlurry for the wait (and cause they were still flirting). My icecream was ALREADY done by then, so I took one for the team and ate the flurry. Then, even after that, Stacey agreed to swing by Jenny's house and pick up Sydney White. Marianne hadn't seen it and we all wanted to, so we were gonna watch it. However, the day had creamed most everyone, so Marianne, little Jenny, and I were the only ones who lasted the whole thing.

(Only one day left, I promise!!) (Oh, and breaks aren't working anymore. :C)

Saturday started with more workshops. Heather had learned her lesson from the neck-pains she had the day before and chose to spend half a class asleep on my shoulder and the other half on Sarah's. Again, she had the most sleep, but oh well. I guess athletes are delicate. ;) Before we left, the leaders started a brand new game of Sniper that Sarah seemed to be more interested in than anyone. Marianne had to leave at the end of lunch, so with some careful playing and strategy, Sarah ended up with a huge amount of cards before lunch even ended.

For the day's activities we headed out to some park somewhere. We started out at this station with Marshmallow guns. Very fun indeed- our group combined with Jenessa's, and we saw firsthand how much fun it is when boys don't segregate...though I guess its really our fault we segregated. C'est La Vie; we probably had more fun than them anyway. ;)

After the marshmallow guns which were more fun to shoot at eachother than targets, we did the waterballoon launches. Our group ended up getting 2nd overall, which is very exciting.

After THAT, we headed to go play Capture the Flag. Ironically, the shift that went before us had an absolute blast and it was the highlight of their weekend. Our shift...notsomuch. Let's just say the bugs, scratches, brambles, heat, and whatever else went on wrong was a bigger deal than the game itself. I weep for our poor nurse.

When we all arrived back at the stake center, it was time to get ready for Bishop's Night and Testimony Meeting. Bishop's Night was a bit dragging after the park activities, but was still a very good lesson. Just wrong time? Anyway, to our great amusement, Bishop Dad let us try and nap for the 15 minutes he ended early with. Didn't work, unfortunately.

The Postprandial (look it up! C:) testimony meeting was deeeefinetly the best part of the weekend. Everyone I aksed agreed that it was THE BEST testimony meeting we've been to ever. Better than girls camp, better than efy, better than anything...and not just because as many boys went up and cried as girls.

The spirit was so strong in the chapel, I hope I never forget it. Everyone in the room felt it, I can promise you that, and those who were too shy or too afraid of running out of time to bear their testimony on the stand definetly did it in their hearts. The testimonies that were shared were so beautiful...different people bearing their souls in different ways than I'd heard before. It was simply a miracle of God.

It was nice to hear how YC had affected so many people in so many ways. Some people, like Jason Brown and Josh Nair, were especially touched by the "I am Worth Fighting For/A.R.M.Y-A Righteous Mormon Youth" theme, others, like Phil Jones and Aaron Davis were affected by the lessons, and others by other things. The thing that hit me, I said, was when President Duffield talked about the Purple Heart and its relation to Christ.

We were all able to witness something very special we all were able to witness in that remarkable testimony meeting. Hailey Snow had brought a friend to Youth Conference and although, knowing Hailey, she knew a good deal about the Church, her friend (Whitney) had never gone to an activity before. Whitney pushed Hailey up to bear her testimony, which she did on missionary work and the church and all. Whitney herself bore hers right after mine, starting with "I'm not a member of the church yet", thanking Hailey, Christ, and the Church, expressing her belief in the Book of Mormon which she hadn't read much of yet, her testimony of prophets who she didn't know all about yet, and her assurance of the truth of the church, touching on the difficulties ahead she would have going back to her nonreligious home, and finishing with a promise that she wanted to be baptised. When I asked Hailey at church on Sunday, she told me Whitney is starting discussions with the missionaries this week and still definetly wants to be baptised. If that isn't proof of the miracle of the truth of the gospel, its youth, and its youth programs, I don't know what is.

When we said the closing prayer, the number of sniffles going through the chapel was comprable only to Girls Camp. I opened my eyes at the end and Tiffanie and I said in pretty much unison, "I don't want to go home!" That was an anthem heard through the entire church as we wandered through the halls picking up our luggage. The spirit was too strong- no one at all wanted to return to the world. We had had too much fun, and our lives had changed too much for it really to last only a weekend. Christina Rosa and Jenny LaPlant held eachother and cried for at least ten minutes, but by then I had to go home so I don't know how long it took them to calm down. Sarah held herself together until she got home and realized it was over and then she cried.

It's not that we didn't want to see our family, sleep in our beds, and pet our pets. Its just that for two days, we had been surrounded by our best friends...including the three best friends anyone will ever have. YC this year was closer to the celestial kingdom, I feel, than any efy, church meeting, or camp I've ever been to.

And in case you don't believe it was a miracle weekend yet, Naperville was scheduled to get a tornado at six o'clock Thursday night, when all that showed was blue skies, blue skies, and the occasional drizzle. There wasn't even lightning until Saturday night, after we were all home in our beds.

He's good- He's really good.

Sweet Sailing, Sophmore Year!

Unfortunately couldn't think of a song that worked with sophmore year. If it was still freshman year I was talking about, I know a great Barenaked Ladies one I could have used, but...alas. Guess I won't have a nifty tradition of having songtitle entry titles anymore.


I'm fairly proud of my work and final grades this year, so I decided to brag. C: This is long (imagine if you were in Illinois and I was telling you all this) so I bolded the numbers so you can pretend you read it.)

In American Studies, I got a 98% on my "Final", and thus a 91% in the class. Just barely an A!)Instead of having a classic scantron exam, for second semester we had a very tedious but far more enjoyable project called the "museum project". Each group was assigned a decade, and each member chose two topics of intrest in that decade and had to link them to themes. We wrote a paper on one topic and then presented a short presentation on both. We had the 80's and I had 80's music and teen rebellion. Wrote my paper on the music and recieved a 48/50, the only points of were for the bibliography. If I had an honors teacher, however, I most definetly would have gotten a lower grade for all my silly mistakes. I spelled Sting as Sging, for goodness sake. e_e But anyway, the presentation was quite fun, and a picture of me is on Mom's Blog if you're intrested. I would have done better in the class overall, but I'm a very lazy girl and there was one week I just...I dunno...decided I was too cool for homework or something. :P I pity the fool who follows my example.

In Health I only got an 89% on my Final, but that's because I was at a point in the class where if I had turned in a completely blank scantron I still would have had an A in the class, so I didn't study. Which earned me a 101.2% overall. Yay.

I have to say, I was honestly disappointed with Math. Last semester on the final (gotta love multiple choice math problems for a class called Algebra 2/Trigonometry...thank you plug-and-chug) I got a 39/40 and knew exactly which question I got wrong. This semester I felt just as confident coming out, but still only got an 84% on the final. :\ C'est La Vie, I still got an 86.67% in the class, so I'm happy. Math was pretty hard this year.

Chemistry was my miracle. I prayed so hard for this one, and somebody up there loves me. Coming into Chemistry I was already scared for my life and honestly a bit worried I might not pass. Mom kept pushing me on, saying "if Emily could survive Honors Chemistry, so can you!". Thanks a lot, Em. ;) I studied crazy hard because, although I wasn't on the verge of failing, this was my teeter-totter class where getting below 60 on the Final would have brought me a C, and last semester I didn't do so hot on a final I was proud of. When I had the test in front of my I was not a happy duck. The first third was -okay-, the third third was kind of gross, but the middle third...it was math equations that I didn't even remember learning in the first place and no joke, I just chose the prettiest numbers. Apparently Chem teachers are very shallow and made all those pretty little numbers the correct ones, because I got an 88% on my final, my HIGHEST honor class score. Guys, Don't Doubt Heavenly Father. He created the laws of Chemistry, and so He's pretty dang good at it. Anway, that tender mercy got me an 86.75% in the class, which is more than I could have ever dreamed for.

Art makes me laugh. Really hard. The final was in four parts; one by Waubonsie, one was actually our most recent unit, and two by Miss Kinast, my teacher. The two for-credit question parts were crazy easy. She gave us all the questions we needed to know the answer for (with the answers). The unit was Printmaking, which is really fun, by the way. We only needed to make 5 prints and I had extra time so I turned in 6, so I got full credit on that. Then the last part was completely extra credit, where we were encouraged to find 26 artists, one for each alphabet letter, and memorize them. Half a point for white males, full point for women or minority. I just found a big ole' website of women artists and memorized the easiest. Anyway, I got 124% on the Final (no typo, I promise! One-hundred Twenty-four percent!) which got me 101.4% overall.

I was slightly disappointed in French. Not much to say here- I had a 92 in the class initially because some days I would miss homework and other days I would get low A's on the quizzes. Then I got a 92% on the Final because...I don't know why. But take a wild gander at my overall- yup, a 92%.

English isn't very exciting either. Our final is split into two parts, one that all the sophmores have to take (15% of the final exam weight) and then an essay on any book we studied this year. The scantron portion was so easy I could cry, by the way. I was worried about my essay, because even though my words were very pretty and it was quite well-written, Mrs. Peplow grades on content. I had good points and all (I wrote on how Daisy Buchanan's moral ambiguity caused the downfall of everyone and everything she affected), but I didn't have a good grasp for my assertions. All year Mrs. Peplow's been ragging me on assertions and, finally in the essay before this one, I figured it out and got myself a solid A paper. But I couldn't manage to find my assertions for this one, so I got exactly what I expected- an 85.2%. Okay, so I didn't perdict the .2. But I did expect a middle-range B. Anywhoo, that earned me a solid 88.15% in the class and I am a very happy girl.


Next year is going to be very different. First of all, it's Junior year, so that means I'm basically going to die. Second of all, I don't have advisory, so that means I have to actually do my math homework at home. I think I did that...four times this year? Maybe five? You'd be suprised what I can accomplish in 20 minutes. Oh, and did I mention its Junior year? So that = death? Yup...you guys all survived . Unless 'you' is still only me, rereading this thing, which I guess means I survived....so it still applies. That's uplifting.

Welcome to my Life

(Cue Simple Plan...or not...I'm really not that emo of a girl, I promise)

Now that Summer's finally started and I've been a Junior for four beautiful, ridiculously packed days, I decided it was time to start this puppy up. I figured it was the best way to communicate with my siblings. Maybe Mom will enjoy reaping the rewards too, as I imagine I'll probably end half of our conversations with "oh, you can read about it later" (and then proceed to decide its too stupid to bother typing up). Maybe that way she can use her ears for something more useful than my incessant blathering.


This blog is named aptly...It was originally going to be something about "High Heels, Highschool, and other Missalainus things" but I realized that implied that the other things were also "high", and I'm too short to make that kind of implication. Plus, it didn't fit in the limits.
And in case any of you were wondering, I do know how to spell miscellaneous correctly. It's just kind of ugly that way...and *cough* google had to help me spell it anyway.

But anyway, a MissAlainius life is exactly what I lead, and exactly what I'll write about. Don't ever expect a pattern...somedays you'll (whoever 'you' is...probably just me, rereading things I write about to laugh at myself) be honored with my shoe collection, other days it might be something like school and boys, and then again I might end up ranting about Yoshi or cheese or my disfunctional internet. But for those of you who don't understand me at a keyboard, I tend to have a direct connection from my fingertips to my brain. So as random and bright and happy as some days will be, other days will be more depressing. Hopefully those days won't happen often, but you need rain among the sunshine if you want a rainbow.

Edit: I'm crying now. I just realized as I was reading Mom my url that I spelled missalainius wrong. :C It's nowhere near as punny as it should be.