It's Mother's Day

When I was little, my mom was my best friend.

I would follow her around the house and say, "Remme dis book." She would stop whatever she was doing and we would read, right there.

She would wake me up every morning by singing to me. We sang all the time. We sang real songs, we sang made-up songs, and we made our own songs to go with Nursery Rhymes.

We would cook all the time, too. I would eat really weird and random things. Like raw onions.

We played Blocks. I had a lot of blocks. We built stuff, but not just that, we played SERIOUS BLOCKS. Like, all the longskinny blocks were people and we acted out legit stories.

My mom can sing.

My mom is a born teacher. And she teaches the 8th grade.

My mom is really smart.

My mom is one of those people that everyone likes.

In a lot of ways, my mom is like me. We're both logical and stubborn and LOVELOVELOVE to read. Our minds work really quickly and go in lots of different directions at once. We both have a "low idiot tolerance," which basically just means we're impatient XD

All of this translates to one thing:

Either we get along great, or we don't get along at all XD

When two people are so alike, there are bound to be lots of personality clashes. As I've been growing up, that's happened a whole lot. I can be quite an exasperating person. I'm great at learning peoples' buttons, and I'm also great at pushing them. The past couple of years have been rougher than ones before, but lately I think we're getting along again...

You'd think that hitting Sweet 16 and trying to grow up would make a relationship even rockier, but life (and moms!) are full of surprises. Lately I've found a really cool, reasonable, logical, fun friend and ally in my awesome momma. I don't wanna say it's a shock, but..well... ;)

My mom is pretty cool after all :) Okay, fine, VERY cool. I do love you, Momma.

~Kendra

Where Did I Go?

Hey :)

Well, I'm back. I mean, I'm still being this weird, happy person, but I'm feeling a little more like myself, too XD

My writing style has gone extremely south lately. I used to be fun to read, I think. I used to say things in creative ways that would make me chuckle. I used to feel like words were my best weapon, my own little minions to express exactly what I wished.

I don't feel that way anymore, and it really bothers me.

What happened to the girl who said at least mildly interesting things like:

"School is killing me. Or more like hacking me to death with a bloody ax." (October 11: "...Hi."

and

"FIRST AND A HALF (because 'second' sounds too late)!" (September 8: Imagination and Irritation)

and

"Just keep me in your thoughts...and hopefully tonight will keep itself in my thoughts, too..." (August 15: My Life, the Psycho Mystery Story?!)

What happened to the girl who said she liked the moon better than the sun?
What happened to the girl who found out that blue inspired creativity and thus painted her room that color?
What happened to the girl who convinced her grandpa that she drank lemon juice for snack?
What happened to the girl who planned to read "Paradise Lost" over Christmas break?

~~~~~~~
Hours later:

Whatever. I'm too tired to work on this any more. And it's not even yesterday anymore. It's 12:02. So, I missed Friday anyway. Fail.

*sigh* Sorry. Never mind.

~Kendra

Nostalgia

Quote Day:

“The world is full of people whose notion of a satisfactory future is, in fact, a return to the idolized past.”–Robertson Davies

So, today was the first day of school at home.

*groan*

NOW I remember why I prayed for summer. Doing school for 8 grueling hours with no rest will do that for you. And I'm still not done. I have stuff to do still, but it's BritLit, so it's not that bad.

Subject Rundown:

Latin: Somebody just shoot me. Either the exercises are so easily I want to throw myself off a building, or they're so hard I want to throw myself off a building.

BritLit: Awesome! Interesting, not too hard, great! I love literature!

Art History: Ugh, it sounds fun, but there's SO MUCH TO DO! We have to read all these books, write all these papers, memorize all the stuff about famous pictures, make a timeline of all the big music and art stuff we come across. It's just too much! I really like the books (How Shall We Then Live? and State of the Arts), but there's just too much to do.

Debate: Challenging, but fun, like last year. It's basically the exact same thing as last year.

Biology: Not really hard, just a lot of stuff to read over and work sheets to do. It's not good or bad yet.

Logic: Ridiculously easy, not fun, not what I love, and it's so disappointing! I love logic, but this isn't "real" logic. *scowls*

Alebra 1 (um, again): Do I even have to say anything?

Overall, *sob* I miss Challenge I!! Oh my gosh! You really never realize how good you have it until you're gone! I hate this! I *LOVED* Challenge I! It was, like, the best year of my whole life! (Challenge B was pretty awesome, too, though...). *SOBSOBSOB*

I just CANNOT live in the present, can I?? I was living so in the past last year that I missed the complete and utter AWESOMENESS of the year! And now I'm doing it again! I'll never learn.

But this year really does suck (so far...day two).

And last year really did rock beyond all freakin' compare.

Other than that rant, I have nothing to say. I feel like I'm just barely keeping my head above water, and school has BARELY started.

:'(

Next year when I say that Challenge III sucks and that Challenge II was amazing, come over and kick me, would you?

*sob*


P.S. Vote in the poll, s'il vous plait.

Something of Substance

Posting about how I used to post "deeper" stuff made me think about changing. More specifically, ME changing.

When you're little, it seems like you never do. I mean, there doesn't seem to be much change between age four and five, or really six or seven either. And on your birthday, when people as "How does it feel to be fifteen?" Or fourteen, or seven, or eighty-nine, etc. Your answer is always (or at least mine was): "Fine. Not much different." So (follow me on this, okay? Logical syllogism coming through), if four is the same-feeling as five, and five is the same-feeling as six, then four and six are the same-feeling, too, right? And then if six is the same-feeling as seven, and seven is the same-feeling as eight, then it would seem that four and eight are the same-feeling, too!

But that can't be right! Surely there's a difference between four and eight! Everyone knows there is. Plenty of differences.

Okay, so there ARE differences. But they don't apparenly take place on your actual birthday when you are officially a year older. They must be gradual changes throughout the year. Which sort of sucks because then we'll never be able to recognize them, right?

Well.

A little over a year ago (on December 16th, 2007), I decided to conduct a little experiment. On myself. (Bwahahaha) You know those annoying fill-outs that you get in your email about every three weeks? You know what I mean. The ones that ask: What's your favorite color? Where were you born? How many houses have you lived in? What's your least favorite food? Do you wash your hair with grape scented shampoo or cherry? And blah blah blah.

Well.

I combined a bunch of those quizzes in my journal. I created my own ultimate fill-out. It was over 100 questions. Then I filled it out (duh). And I started journaling. I wrote in my journal every day (almost) for an entire year. And I made it a rule that I COULD NOT read over any past journal entries. Once the page was flipped, it STAYED flipped. Until a year had passed. I wasn't "allowed" to read my journal until December 16th 2008.

Well, it was supposed to be just one journal. I actually filled up ten whole journals before the year was up. Yeah. TEN.

When the year was up, I went back to that very first journal and copied the questions of the fill out into the journal I was writing in. I didn't look at my answers, I just copied the fill out. Then I filled it out (duhhh). Then I compared answers to PROVE to myself that I DO change over the course of a year. And once I had confirmed that I had changed, I could go back and read through the journals and analyze when exactly the different changes had taken place.

I was actually surprised. I changed in more ways than I knew, and in more subtle ways than I would have guessed. It was a really interesting experiment, and I "learned" a lot. I also really like having all my memories written down. I'll never lose them that way. Even if I forget, I still have a way to remember.

You should be able to tell by now that memories and remembering are very important to me. One of my biggest fears is simply "forgetting." I dislike change, in any way, shape or form, so it's important to me that I at least REMEMBER the way things used to be. Change is the worst when you feel like things were JUST FINE the way they were, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I've been through countless changes that took me from my "perfect" life to a "totally crappy" one.

The bad thing is, I never seem to be able to recognize my having the "perfect" life until I've moved on to the "crappy" one. I'm terrible at not living in the moment. I always live in the past. At least I used to. I'm getting better.

But it IS hard to let go of things that I loved so much. Mostly I'm thinking about people. Not really stuff or places, although moving was pretty big and I still wake up confused sometimes. Every time I think things are great and I'm finally doing/being/having what I want, BOOM! stuff just HAS to change.

Which is why it's important to realize how good you have it BEFORE it gets worse. And then, the "worse" will eventually seem pretty cool. (And then stuff changes again, but whatever :D) The trouble is just recognizing when you've got it good. Things can always get better, but they can get worse, too, so live in the moment once in a while. Enjoy what you've got. Cause sooner or later,

it's gonna be gone.