Barefoot freedom

Small rocks submerged at Mercer Lake New Jersey. I took this picture while watching boats race at Nationals.

The rain is crashing down in one glorious sheath. It smells so good. I am out on the porch and the May rain is misting in through the screen. It comes and goes in degrees of intensity, but it is so wonderful.

Thunder booms and cracks adding to a symphony of rain drops and swirling water on the street below.

My heels are black from the shoes I wore yesterday. They are these cheap little ballet flats that I adore. But whenever I get them wet the soles of the shoes rub against my feet and leave a black residue that you have to scrub to get off.

A picture of my little yellow umbrella that I took with a disposable film camera, thought it was fitting for the circumstances.

Moving into today though, I walked home barefoot in the rain. It was lovely. I had been wearing rubber flip-flops that were giving me blisters that hurt like the Dickens. I abandon any hope for the salvation of my feet and put the water logged plastic footwear in my bag.
It was a lovely end to a hectic day.
This morning I awoke at 7:30ish. This unheard of. I do not wake up early...nine, I consider early. I don't really function like a normal human being until 10... at least. But today I woke up early for no reason what so ever and realized some six minutes after waking up that I had a total of five hours before I had to be at school.
This was a wonderful revelation. That was soon dissipated.
My parents decided it would be nice if I tagged along with them again (YES!) to the doctors office (...oh...)
It was nice though, I accompanied my mother to her check up in Georgetown and sat in the car while she and my father unloaded boxes full of shirts and hats carrying her companies insignia, once we got to her office on K street. After dropping mom off, I drove (*gasp*) my father and I all the way to Best Buy. At this point I was grinding my teeth with growing anxiety concerned about getting to school and finishing an English essay. But! It all worked out. I was able to purchase a spiffy new power cord for my computer to replace the one I lost (yes I loose everything) and made it to school with ten minutes to spare! I dare anyone to try and beat the time I made getting from Bailey's Cross Roads all the way back to Arlington.
School was pretty much uneventful, except I missed my AP World Presentation because I was printing my AP World Presentation and the computer in the library hated me. So the rest of my group winged it and apparently did very well explaining to our teacher that we would be doing a documentary on George Washington...in outer space?
Strange things happen in that class.
The rest of the day went by smoothly and I learned that my essay is actually due tomorrow! instead of today...

You never know whats coming for you

This is my "hmm, that sure is nice" face

This quote is from the popular film Benjamin Button. It was a very beautiful movie in my opinion and although I really could not connect with any of the characters in much of any sense at all, I do have quite a few stories that could go along with that quote about not knowing whats going to happen.

Like today for example:

SOL week has granted me a strange and wonderful opportunity! I do not have to be at school until noon all week.

With this said, I slept in until about nine today, awoke wonderfully refreshed and ready to conquer the day. Given that today was the day that the President was said to be announcing his choice for the vacant Supreme Justice position, my parents schedule was a toss up and race around the block type of situation. My mother works for a non-profit organization where the competition is everyone and anyone who might get there press release out faster than her organization might be able to. She tends to be pretty good at what she does:

Washington Post

Associated Press

AUL!

What a fun day rushing about in downtown DC!


And! It was the last day of crew!!! I can hear the Hallelujah chorus...
All in all I learned a lot this season, I dropped about 20 seconds off my 2k time (!) and can sit happy and proud on a 7:39.2 time! Yes this year had its ups and downs, but it was probably one of the bests I've ever had.
For our last day at the boathouse we put away boats and through our coxswains in the water and took pictures. That was about it. I bought my friends ice cream and we enjoyed ourselves immensely. I was not elected to be our class representative but I figure you can't have everything. Next year I will be the vice president of our class, hopefully make it onto first eight again, and be taking a good number of art classes.

the tipping point

this is a picture I took of the boathouse where I row...

Today I reached my limits.

I am not a morning person, never have been, never will, and most certainly was not this morning at 7:30.
I am woken up by the sound of an elliptical spinning while my father "runs," and erg fan turning as my mother rows, and my lovely younger sisters bickering about nothing.

The previous night I had gone to sleep not to late with the assistance of Tylenol PM, hoping to combat a cough I had picked up over the past few days. The reason for the late hour in which I fell asleep is mainly due to the fact that I had promised a friend I would draw a few sketches for a project she was looking to finish. I willing accepted and naturally forgot. So at around 10ish I broke out pencil and paper and threw down a jot basic enough to fit time restrains, but also dynamic enough to fit my friends idea of a finished drawing. The drawing, however, did not take that long and seeing as I would finish earlier than expected I decided I might read a few chapters in the book I had been reading by Ken Follet: Whiteout. It is very good and I highly recommend it.
This is all pretense to the fact that when I awoke this morning I was groggy and not in any mood to wake up before 10. Seeing as I had no tests, no quizzes, absolutely nothing to turn in for any of my classes, today would have been ideal to stay home sick. I am not, I am afraid, quite clever enough to have realized this the previous night. In which case, had I been clever enough to pull the day into perspective, I might have been able to play the "sick and exhausted" card and stay home.
But no. I slaved through the day, coughing, miserable, doing absolutly nothing of purpose in any of my classes, two of which I watched movies in. It was horrible, I was late to every single class I think. I was so tired.
Then at practice this afternoon, naturally the one day I do not bring a tank-top it is terribly hot. I had not eaten lunch due to a lack in funds, I was quite dehydrated, exhausted from practice the previous day, and still trying to emotionally recover from the race at Stotesberry we had just come home from.
In short, I was tapped out and running on empty.
This does not bide well for three-by-twelve minute pieces with twenty stroke bursts on choppy water.
By the second piece I was crying behind my sunglasses in exhaustion. It was as if every stroke was heavier than the one before it. And every worry and concern I have been carrying around the past month seemed to crash down around me in those few minutes.
In the past few months I have managed to effectivly lose:
my wallet (with my permit inside)
my phone (the only nice electronic equipement I own besides my camera)
all of my rain gear ($170 coat, GONE.)
a pair of my shoes that just disapeared
the battery charger to my camera
any number of homework assignments I either forgot to do or simply left at home, never to be seen again

and I have begun to bite my nails again...a habit I have not engaged in since elementary school

My grades have fallen from bad to worse. The beginning of the year I had all A's and B's, second quater I caught pnemonia, and my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. My grades fell to C's and D's. Third quater nothing spectacular happened and I pulled most of my grades back up and won a Principles award, and was elected to be vice president of our class for next year. However this quater comes around and throws me for one. Midterms came out: all time low. D's and E's. This quater, the wieght of the year bore down hard.
The fact that I have to enroll in summer school for the first time really bites. The fact that I threw my brother a huge birthday party that he will never fully appreciate and that I won't be able to have such extravagance on my birthday because my mom will be too sick by then to handle it. The fact that I will never be able to both go to parties on the weekends with friends and have my parents trust at the same time. The fact that crew is ending in five days, and it isn't soon enough.
I am a complete mess.
The money I had saved up to get a hair cut with ended up going towards my art lab fee. This would put getting a hair cut out of the realm of possibility for a good time now, seeing as tomorrow after I take the chemistry SOL I will be accompanying my mother wig shopping. She just started chemo and will be loosing her hair soon.
She's trying to put on a brave face.
But it doesn't help at all.

All these thoughts, all these internal struggles that I can usually just push down inside me, they all found their way out into the light at 5 PM today somewhere on the water between Key Bridge and the Boathouse. It was literally all I could do to hold onto that oar and keep from screaming.

After practice a few of the girls asked what was wrong.
I said I was fine.
I didn't know where to start.

All I knew was that I was done.

French.

Il homme mange.

I can say He eats in French. Such an accomplishment. And I have an accent! tres bad. Yes I have started my homeschooling adventures in French language skills! Great. Every day I have the privilege of staring dumbfounded at a screen showing me some kind of puzzle I have to solve, in French, for the sake of advancing my linguistics skills and homeschool resume. Then record down the grade the program gives me after an hour's worth of head aching. Afterward I go and ride herd on my siblings to get off Runescape and actually do some work, which is a battle I tend to lose. So I go and blog/write essays (some of which you will see tomorrow).

Also going on in the world today:

• The marine who allegedly killed fellow pregnant marine is the subject of a massive world-wide manhunt.
  
• GOP candidates are trying to sway the votes of South Carolinians
  
• Huckabee did seven events today, flying back and forth. Fun.
• Tom Cruise is stirring things up with a new video on Scientology, that is all over Youtube and various other internet broadcasts.
• the Dow is way down. Which I gather is pretty bad since we can hear Wall Street's screaming and crying all the way down in Arlington... Virginia.
  

Very slow day

Today has been typical. I cleaned the house, while John and Gib played Runescape. We are packing up preparing to leave on Sunday (for Arkansas). Friday we are going to visit one of dad's tech dudes who has diagnosed a problem on their site Reasoned Audacity, caused by some evil bug-thing coming out of Russia. Sooo. In four more days, 10 hours and a whole lot of sibling rivalry, we will some how miraculously end up back on the road. But in the meanwhile:

Sad to say that I have also (once again) failed in my attempts to leave the confines of my house-turned prison in search for calm/productivity. We were literally inside Tyson's mall, we buy Rosetta Stone French edition and a whole five minutes later, are driving away. WE WERE INSIDE THE MALL, and only spend, tops, ten minutes. Painful. So that was my escape for the day, 30 minutes in a car with four kids and father, then a sprint through the mall.

Tomorrow John is going to the doctor to get his arm fixed, after a trip down a double-black diamond (one of the slopes in New Hampshire he daringly proclaimed as easy) he took the high jump, smashes his wrist and now I'm playing nurse. A look at the break:Tomorrow, then another day, and another day, and then finally take-off for the greater chaos of campaign life. I may actually survive.

1st day homeschooling

Wow. I am finally withdrawn from Yorktown. It is over and yet it has just begun. I also am pleased to say that I managed to dig in my heels and push my Art grade up to a B (still can't believe it was a D). Life is good, I learned how to disassemble a bunk bed while causing minimal damage to the walls and reassemble it after much collision with door frames, swearing, and chipped nails. This and getting my sister hooked up to the internet with Peter Rabbit Math Lab lessons, yes I am learning so much. Dad also wants us all to install his Rosetta Stone Chinese tapes on our computers and start learning Mandarin (I would prefer French or romance language, but oh well) I did manage to conjour up a few images and headers for some friends in Fireworks (really old version of Adobe) though:

NEW COMPUTER!

Bursting with happiness! My grandparents are supporting the Yoest family free fall into the oblivion of homeschooling by providing laptops for older children! We are all expected to blog each day and write for 20 min. Still figuring out math and science but English and history are covered, along with public policy, economics, political strategy, campaigning, management, and the arts. Nothing like strong political upraising, and nothing beats immersion either. So Tuesday we will hit the highway and head for HQ to join our poor mother who is in desperate need of hugs and kisses from her babies.
But yes I am now in possession of a machine of my own on which to blog and rant my teen angst to all the world, highlighted by book reviews and political input/commentary, and don't let me forget continual school work which I'll be posting for the sake of my fathers precious time (this way he doesn't actually have to look at any papers, just comment how horrible it all is and tell me to fix it).

Books I'm starting/reading:
Leonardo Davinci, Flights of the Mind; Charles Nicholl
A Return to Modesty, Discovering the Lost Virtue; Wendy Shalit
and a couple others

Running around

Huckabee is on the road again folks, well he was a day ago now he's down in NC campaigning and apparently my mothers down in Little Rock working on a couple papers. Anyway I'm back in Arlington and it has not changed a bit. Cleared things out with the schools, or are in the process of doing so, I still have to return a calculator and find a self portrait I did a month ago in an effort to save my Art grade which in my absence fell to a D, kind of weird too, since I kept A's and B's in all my other classes. Plus it's Art class, art is my good subject, my soul talent and one class I actually want to expand on beyond school/pursue as a career. Of course I would be failing. The irony is only natural. Besides these pesky little details I will officially be withdrawn from school and free to begin homeschooling. OH! and while I'm on a roll about the art situation, turns out I did not submit anything in the Scholastics Competition since my teacher called and left a message on our home phone (or somewhere unaccessible) waiting to see if I still wanted to turn in my second piece, of course I find this all out a little late in the game i.e. this morning--four days after deadline *sigh* It's all for the best I suppose, Scholastics would have held onto my work for two years before returning it, this way I keep both and can sell, frame, or otherwise deal with them--along with all my other class work which was hiding in a portfolio somewhere.
Whatever, I have the whole year ahead of me and a whole life to submit work in competitions of my choice.
Moving on, in a few days we'll head back on out to Little Rock and Headquarters roaming like the gypsies much to my pleasure. When mom clears up her work in HQ hopefully we'll be out following the bus again in NC, Michigan, or Florida. I miss everybody out on the trail already.

No touchy

A middle school (thank you Lord that i am in two days officaly graduating from such a horrible place) in Vienna, VA Kilmer Middle school counslers have banned all in school physical contact (audible sound of jaw snapping open--who knew it acutally made noise??) here is an is the aritlle that explains the story.

stories like this remind me of that x-men character, Rogue or something, who couldn't be touched because she sucked away peoples life force or energy, this puts people in her position, wierd.
I read the article and i swear in school suspensicion because of leaving an assigned table to show minor affection? wow, maybe the guys jealous or just a freaked controling ego maniac with his own issues on seeing people touch, i don't buy his spew about "teens need boundaries" yeah we do, but they also preach about never understanding why we are so lacking in the field of comunication. did they ever think maybe it had to do with the fact that they're shutting it down? Yeah, yeah i'll give them there case on PDA but hey ever wonder why your teenage daughter has such a low self-esteem? would it have anything to do with the fact that she might be feeling rejected or forgotten among here peers?? or how about never being accepted by guys or lets put in to the action this stupid ban, what if, just what if,someone had begun to show intrest and the school board shut them down??? I'm not talking about making out or holding hands in every single class, but a hug showing that someone outside of your family cares for you isn't a bad thing for the self conscience of a teenage girl. it's amazing the heart to hearts that happen in the girls bathroom and lunch table, a girl fails a test, girl gets acussed of spredding false rumors, etc. verbal cat fights are more common then physical ones.

thailand, a project

THAT IS DUE MONDAY!!! i have a quater done and the rest has to be printed in color so i'm basically in a lot of trouble not mention what i have to print is not yet typed, but in notebook paper somewhere deep within the confines of my tote-bag. life is so good.

bad day turned good!

today in school we had to submit our class choices for next year, which if there isn't enough room in the classes we chose then they pick for us, so basically they pick for us and if we end up in plumbing 101 it's not there fault, makes perfect sense. this would probably ruined my day if it had not immediately been salvaged by my World geo class, and English class, which had extremely fun class activities and homework that was actually appealing; we got to go around our W. Geo classroom examining photographs and describing there content, the different landscapes we looked at included: a coffee farm, a spiritual site in Peru, several birds-eye views of coastlines of more urban parts of Ecuador and a Sugar-cane farmer.
then in English we had to take a picture and describe it in a descriptive paragraph without using helping verbs, i really wish my teachers would make up there minds on whether or not they want short and brief sentences or long-winded paragraphs, because at my old school my teacher wanted short and choppy and here they naturally want long descriptive sentences. whatever. i like writing and the more feed-back and perspective you get on writing the better your writing is, so i consider the lack of consistency a challenge to be met! Back to the homework assignment, our teacher wants us to describe a picture, i chose the one above, and she wants a brief paragraph with no helping verbs, and a lot of action verbs. this would be a very easy project indeed if i didn't use had so much. here is my paragraph, that kind of turned into a one and a half page paper, single spaced:

Unplanned Murder
(i didn't like the name "the poor painters cupboard"-the name of the painting)

the blood dripped slowly from his finger tips, his heart beating wildly, stars danced and flashed before his eyes... he collapsed to the ground covered with the guilt of murder.
Morgan hadn't meant to kill her, but rage had gotten the better of him. his wife Loraine managed to steel several paintings he had done and sold them to an auction house, keeping the profits for her self. He reflected on the events of the night before, caring the evidence back into his private studio for hiding: the knife, the letters, the top-hat, and the painting-the painting he loved only days before now haunted him with memories of her fingers clasped tightly around his wrist, cold and lifeless things, sent shivers up his spine. the blood stained painting had to be burned, the evidence hidden, the guilt removed. he placed the freshly cleaned knife behind a collection of his favorite novels, the letters in a red portfolio underneath the book "lives of Painters", "i bet they never thought a painter would be capable of this..." he mumbled to himself. the top hat was then shoved in on top of it all. he quickly decided against finishing the croissant he had been eating before he had taken off on the unexpected chase and later murder of his wife, but the thought of eating at a time like this was sickening. he pulled a curtain concealing the incriminating articles. he threw the painting into the almost dark embers of the fire place and proceeded to the bathing room hoping to wash away the guilt.
the painter was found dead the next morning, if an autopsy had commenced there would have been evidence of cyanide poisoning taken in the middle of the night.

there wasn't much i could do witht the sea shell, maybe in a different story, but the crime scene evidence in hidding look hit me full in the face.

more projects: animalism and CD's

in our english class there is a project on George Orwell's classic novel Animal Farm, that is due in a week. we either had to create our own utopia, write commandments and make a flag or create a CD and booklet on how the songs we chose relate to the book and it's characters, i chose the latter.
here are the songs i have so far:
stab my back, All-American rejects
waiting on the world to change, John Mayer
too little, too late, JoJo
i won'tback down, Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
it is you, the newsboys
and that it for now but i only need 5 more. i pulled these songs from my sisters, dad's, mom's and Pnzr's playlists, i have absolutly no idea who Tom Kelly is besides the fact that the song that i picked was in the movie Barnyard, and i was the one who was on the computer when my dad asked me to download it for him.
the weird part about this book that i'd seen it before and it had creeped me out and then when our teacher introduced it, the books had different covers so i was oblivous for a while before the name finally sank in, it was very odd, pigs taking over and humans being hopeless. i was thinking about reading some of his other work...

school is so much fun

today was the first day of the third quarter, fun. this means that my schedule that i was just beginning to figure out had to be changed so that i have to go up a level for a class i didn't know i would be starting!! this class happened to be health, more fun. so i went to health, and afterward i got confused and went to lunch instead of World geo, so i had to walk into the middle of the class confused and embarrassed, poor little me. but all this is really rather dull in comparison to the fact that the theatre arts class has no stage on which to perform our play!!! the spring production has begun work and has suspended our performance for another two weeks (gasp). today really has been quite a drama. on a brighter note, i curled my hair and it stayed curly!! this is really quite an accomplishment considering the weather was very gloomy and the air was really thick and cold!! also even though after health there was a problem, the class itself was not half as bad as i thought it would be, we all made lists of places we would rather be then in that class, here were the top three picked: abroad (too many countries/states were named to put them all up), asleep, or Starbucks. Starbucks just barely beat the Superbowl by one vote. some of the funnier places mentioned were: a mattress store, dead, the Vegas All-star game, and/or a playboy mansion (the girls were thoroughly disgusted by the boys insensitivity, the guys obviously didn't care).
what a fun day. (the Starbucks picture was taken by my dad when he was in China)