The Bigger Picture

So...I like my small town. Really, I do. It's not so bad. Sure, we could be more cultured and classy, but most people are very kind, and everyone looks out for you.

But the problem with small towns is that hardly anyone sees beyond their circumstance to the bigger picture. We're trapped in this little area, and there is no escaping - it presses down on our actions, our futures, and even our thoughts.

It's a little disturbing to me to hear how lightly my peers take the struggles that less fortunate people are dealing with. Today, our Key Club did Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF. Basically, we dressed up in costumes for school and walked around with these little cardboard boxes and collected change for UNICEF, which is an organization that provides money for young people in other countries to help assist them as they grow and develop and to give them more opportunities to improve their lives.

As I went around asking people for money today, I got three arguments why people couldn't or shouldn't give money. It was kind of shocking, actually.

1) I'm the poor one. I couldn't really believe that people actually said this. Yes, I realize that they probably joking a little bit, but still - I know for a fact that I am completely and utterly spoiled. I know that I don't give enough of myself. And I know that I always want more money so I can buy blah, blah, blah...but still. We are so blessed, and we have to at least try to do something for others.

2) A little bit of pocket change is not going to help, and it probably doesn't even go directly to the children. Once again - we have to at least try. Every little bit counts for something. To create big changes in this world, we have to start small, even one penny at a time. Wouldn't it be better to at least be able to say that we attempted to change someone's life, even if it didn't work? That has to be better than doing nothing.

3) (The most disturbing one) We shouldn't give money to starving children because they will just keep reproducing and have more starving children who we will have to then take care of. I just can't believe this. It's so sad. If we start now and help this generation of people have more opportunities, then it will be more possible for them to have the sufficient abilities to help improve the lives of their children and communities as they grow older. No, we can't save everyone. But we have to at least try.

Sorry about this. I just got really riled up about it today. It's something I feel pretty strongly about.

CrushCrushCrush

Boys and books are seriously distracting me from college essays.

This is not healthy.

New favorite book: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffengger.

Please - read it. It's amazing. I cried for 30 minutes straight. It was worth it.

Wedding Bells

I watched Bride Wars with Karen and Abby tonight. It was amazing, of course. I've seen it about four or five times, and I cry every time. It's brilliant. It has the perfect ending. Yay for friend's brothers.

I would love to be a wedding planner. I think I'd make a good one, considering I'm way more into other people's relationships and love stories than I am my own. Also, I'm a detail-freak, and every thing must be done to the best of my ability. And of course, it's all about the love.

I haven't decided if I'm going to get married yet. I love to hear love stories and write about them, but when something's happening to me, it seems super cheesy and annoying to my gag reflex. I'm just not sure yet.

But I will definitely plan a wedding. Some day.

Come Back To Me

I've been tagged! This is from Jessica - read her blog here.

This is an iPod/MP3 tag....the rules:
Play all your songs on your player and click it to shuffle.
Look at the first question, and write down what song is playing at the time.
As each song randomnly changes, type it down to the next question and so on.

Then, tag as many of your followers that you want and post a comment on their blogs telling them that you tagged them!
1) If someone says "this is ok," you say: P.S. I'm Still Not Over You
2) What would best describe your personality? Bubble Toes (hahaha)
3) What do you like in a guy/girl? CrushCrushCrush (this totally makes sense since really, I only like crushing on people because I'm commitment-phobic.)
4) What's your life's purpose? Sooner or Later
5) What is your motto? Born to Do
6) What do your friends think of you? So This is Love (hahaha)
7) What do you think about very often? Let It Be
8) What is 2 + 2? You Have My Attention.
9) What do you think of your best friend? Stay
10) What do you think of a person you like? Gone Away (ooo...that's sad.)
11) What's your life story? Gotta Have You
12) What do you want to be when you grow up? Forgotten (hahaha)
13) What do you think when you see a person you like? Not Afraid
14) What do you mom and dad think of you? Somebody Loved
15) What will you dance to at your wedding? Find a Way
16) What will they play at your funeral? The Way She Feels
17) What is your hobby/interest? Stranger
18) What is your biggest secret? Lullabies
19) What do you think of your friends? Control (ha.)
20) What's the worst thing that could happen? Morning In May
21) How will you die? You
22) What's one thing you regret? Life Left To Go (why are all my answers depressing?)
23) What makes you laugh? Dreaming of This
24) What makes you cry? Zero (that's a lie.)
25) Will you ever get married? How Great is Our God
26) What scares you the most? End Game.
27) Does anyone like you? Shake It.
28) If you could go back in time, what would you change? It Ends Tonight.
29) What hurts right now? Seasons
30) What do you most often exclaim? Close Your Eyes
31) Where is paradise? New Jersey (hahaha this is seriously what came up.)
32) What did you first say as a baby? Do You Believe In Magic? (ha.)
33) If you had a pet, what would you name it? Blackbird
34) What is your favorite sight to see? Summertime (SO TRUE!)
35) What makes you gag? The Water Is Wide
36) What are you best at? Part Of Your World
37) If you wrote a book, what would it be called? Cry Your Eyes Out (that's pleasant.)
38) What did you last wish for? Still In Love With You
39) What would your superhero name be? The Sky and the Dawn
40) How soon will this be over? A Whole New World
41) Where are you sitting? Missing
42) What do you most hate? Take This To Heart
43) What do you most love? Set the World On Fire (or not.)
44) What is your secret name? 36 Days
45) What will you post this as? Come Back To Me

Haha....well, this was fun. At least it helped me procrastinate while I was supposed to be looking at my ACT prep questions.

I tag...
Ab at Learning to Breathe
Heather at Dreaming Big

annnnd...anyone who loves Glee. :)

:)

I love Glee.

And speaking of Glee, I have to wait until NOVEMBER to watch another episode because of the World Series.

How horrible.

I officially hate baseball.

My blog is slowly becoming gleeked out. I'm sorry if you dislike it. I'm in one of my phases. When I start obsessing over something, I obsess for a long time, and I never really get over it, even if I say that I do - Josh Groban, Disney Princess, The Jonas Brothers, and now - Glee.

no subject

"To you I shall say, as I have often said before, Do not be in a hurry, the right man will come at last; you will, in the course of the next two or three years, meet with somebody more generally unexceptionable than anyone you have yet known, who will love you as warmly as possible, and who will so completely attach you that you will feel you never really loved before."
-Jane Austen

"If you have built castles in the air, you work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them..."
-Henry David Thoreau
Walden

It is sometimes a disadvantage to be so very guarded. In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels."
-Jane Austen
Pride and Prejudice

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away. It is not important that he should mature as soon as an apple tree or an oak."
-Henry David Thoreau
Walden

"A lady's imagination is very rapid; it jumps from admiration to love, from love to matrimony, in a moment."
-Jane Austen

"Then the time came when the risk it took to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
-Anais Nin

"Man's love is of a man's life a thing apart; 'tis a woman's whole existence."
-Lord Byron

"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
-Albert Camus

"To move the world, we must first move ourselves."
-Socrates

";fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you
i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)
-E. E. Cummings

"Sometimes people are beautiful.
Not in looks.
Not in what they say.
Just in what they do."
-Markus Zusak
I Am the Messenger

"Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that. It lights the whole sky."
-Hafiz

"If you ask me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you. I came to live out loud."
-Emil Zola

"The Ven-Diagram for boys who don't like smart girls and boys you shouldn't date is a circle."
-John Green

"These are extreme times. The question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love?"
-Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Maybe it's more like you said before, all of us being cracked open. Like, each of us starts out as a watertight vessel. And these things happen - these people leave us, or don't love us, or don't get us, or we don't get them, and we lose and fail and hurt one another. And the vessel starts to crack open in places. And I mean, yeah, once the vessel cracks open, the end becomes inevitable...but there is all this time between when the cracks start to open up and when we finally fall apart. And it's only in that time that we can see one another, because we see out of ourselves through our cracks and into others through theirs. When did we see each other face-to-face? Not until you saw into my cracks, and I saw into yours. Before that, we were just looking at ideas of each other, like looking at your window shade but never seeing inside. But once the vessel cracks, the light can get in. The light can get out."
-John Green
Paper Towns

Superfabulous Spectacular Book

Everyone should go to your nearest book store and buy Paper Towns by John Green. It's currently one of my new favorite books. I've been waiting to read it for forever, and I finally bought it for myself. It's wonderful. I'm glad it was worth the wait.

In fact, it might be a good idea for you to just buy all of John Green's books. They're superb.

Also, search Brotherhood 2.0 on YouTube for an excellent series of videos by John Green and his brother. Make sure you start with the first one! And only watch them if you have some time on your hands. They're slightly addictive.

What a lame-o...

Today is Make-A-Difference Day! Our Key Club went to work on landscaping for the Baldwin-Reynolds house like we did last year, but I felt kind of bad. I feel like Make-A-Difference Day should be about helping someone who is desperately in need. We worked in the cold all morning pulling weeds and raking leaves, and then, the man who was supervising us told us that the man across the street was in an accident, and he had lost his leg. He said that this man was really concerned about raking his leaves because he wasn't able to do it. We raked his leaves for him, and he came outside with his cane and was just so happy. It was a great day. I love our Key Club group. We all get along so well.

I'm having one of those days today when you just can't stop thinking about all of these things that happened in the past. It's a little sad. All you want to do is sit and remember. I hate these days.

Transformations

We had a free day in Writer's Workshop today, so I read a book I bought recently at Ollies. By the way, if you don't know what Ollies is or you don't have an Ollies where you live...I am very sorry for you. It's a store that has pretty much everything, but their book selection is prime, especially if you are looking for the type of Christian Living/Faith Based books that are about $15 in normal stores. At Ollies, you can get them for $3. Oh, happy day.

Anyway. As I was reading this book, I actually got teary. I know that I am an emotional sap, but it takes a little something-something to get me teary-eyed in school.

This book is attempting to turn me inside out!

It makes me so mad and sad and happy and scared and everything all at once.

The book is called The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical. Let me tell you...this is one tough book to swallow. Shane Clairborne, the author, scares the heck out of me in the best way possible. I haven't even finished the book yet. When I do, I'll tell you more.

Tonight was my first night working at my new job (BP!) by myself without a trainer. Luckily, everything went beautifully. This is probably mostly due to the fact that I had the best trainer ever - Abby.

I came home from work to find homemade pizza and hand-dipped chocolate covered pretzels.

Life is good.

Homecoming Pictures!

My Last High School Homecoming

Homecoming was a total blast. Ab and I got all dressed up in our black and white (plus bright red lipsticks - so old Hollywood!), and we had our friend/date Adam dress to match us in all black. At the dance, we hung out with our favorite little junior high girls - Ab, Lex, and Britters. They're adorable. We love them. We had so much fun dancing and burning off all of the chocolate cake calories from Abby's dad's delicious, most amazing chocolate cake ever that we had the night before. Turns out that if you don't care what people think, you'll have so much fun at a dance. You can laugh, sing, dance, and be merry. Who cares if people think you're weird? We had an amazing time. More pictures to come eventually.

Some Big Changes

This is what can happen in a year. I feel like one of those commercial women - "I lost BLANK lbs by switching to NutriSystem!" Really...I didn't switch to NutriSystem. But I'm still really happy with the progress that I have made on my own. I feel happier, healthier, and so much more like myself. I think that's part of our problem. We always want more, more, more. Lately, I've been feeling bad about myself, like I'm still not quite thin enough, or there's still so much more weight to lose. It's those times that I have to remember how far I've come. That doesn't mean I'm giving up. It just means that I am proud of myself, and there is no reason to look down on myself if I'm not to the exact place/weight/position that I want to be in. I just have to keep being positive, striving to become a better person, but not losing my true self in the process.

Shelf Life

http://shelflifereads.blogspot.com/

This is my new blog for book reviews. I have so many thoughts in my head after reading books, and I want to share them with someone, even if it's just a blog.

Welcome to Adulthood...

I now have a job. Luckily, my first training session was with Abby. She's the best trainer ever; however, I am totally lost basically when it comes to lottery and reports. Ugh. No me gusta.

Growing up is super lame, I've decided.

At least I'll finally have some money.

Now all I need to do is get my license and stop being such a loser.