Birthday Wishlist (I DON'T WANT TO BE A SNOB!!!)

My birthday's coming up..... In August....

Well, anyway. I hate asking directly for presents. It feels so snobby and I really hate being snobby. So I decided topost it online instead of being an insensitive jerk and demanding gifts over email (not literally demanding, but that's what it feels like...)

Here goes:

• Ruth CDs (i.e. Ruth, Secondhand Dreaming)
• Barnes and Noble gift card
• Sign up for iTunes (mostly for my family since they're the ones with the same internet connection)
• Medieval dagger (and No. I'm not deranged, I just like pointy old things, preferrably if they're metal.)
• Newbury Comics gift certificate (a music store for those of you who are so unfortunate that you've never been there.)
• CONTACT LENSES!!!!!!!!!! (another one for my parents. i'm not even sure if they read this blog.)
• Anberlin's new "Cities" CD
• Newest Underoath CD
• Rise Against CDs (i.e. Generation Lost, The Sufferer & The Witness, Siren Songs of the Counter-Culture, Revolutions Per Minute, The Unraveling)
• Blood & Chocolate DVD

Okay, I'm done. There's the list so far....

P.S. Whoever's planning on getting me a gift (*cough cough* you know who you are, brain buddy) YOU DON'T HAVE TO!!!!! I'LL THROTTLE YOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Just kidding just kidding just kidding........

Steps on how to blog: (for the clueless... jk.)

okay. here we go.

1. Sign in.
2. You will arrive at the page titled "Dashboard".
3. Click on the link "New Post". This should direct you to a page with the title of the blog at the top of the web page, three tabs titled "Posting", "Settings", and "Template". It should already be open to the "Posting" tab, and the "Create" sub-tab.
4. Title your post. (i.e. "Steps on how to blog: (for the clueless... jk)")
5. Go to the large white text box beneath the title box.
6. Type the blog entry. (NOTE:: If you are pasting text into the blog box, make sure to hi-light the text, then click the "Font Size" button on the toolbar above the text box. Click normal. then you must reformat your blog. (i.e. italicize, underline, and bold lettering.))
7. Tabs does not work. Instead, leave a blank space between the paragraphs. (double enter key)
8. When you are finished with your post, click the "PUBLISH POST" button below the text box. It should redirect you to a page that says: "Your Blog Post Published Successfully!" with two links that say "View Blog" and "Edit Blog".
9. Click "View Blog" to make sure that your post is legible.
10. If it is.... CONGRATULATIONS!!!! You've posted a blog!!! If your post is not legible, continue on to the next directions...
11. Click "Customize" at the top right of your screen. This should redirect you to the "Template" tab, under the sub-tab "Page Elements".
12. Click on the "Posting" tab.
13. Click on the "Edit Posts" sub-tab.
14. Find the title of your blog post and click the "Edit" link to the left of the title. This should bring you back to the post, so that you can edit it.
15. Make whatever changes are necessary.
16. Click "Publish Post".
17. Double-check.
18. If it's still not legible, repeat Steps: 11-18.

Leave me comments on whether or not this was helpful!!! Good luck, and keep posting!

CAMPING PLAAAAAANS!!!!!

YAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I can't wait!

I'm going camping this August. From the 4th to the 11th. My family goes camping pretty much every summer, but this summer it's going to be different. AND SO MUCH BETTER!!!

My sister and I get to bring a friend with us. Abby's bringing her friend Amanda and I'm bringing my friend Miriam. There are gonna be way less arguments between Abby and me. Usually, we only have each other to play with and hang out with. Any of y'all who have siblings know exactly what I mean when I say: No. Thank. You. I'd rather pull out my toenails with a rusty fork.

Actually, my sister's not as bad as she used to be. It's fun to hang with her every once in a while. Bekah. Well, she's taken Abby's place as spoiled bratty princess who thinks we're all here to serve her.

But you don't see me holding it against her (much). I was there once. Abby was there once. Bekah's there right now. And it's torture. Remind me to write an apology letter to my parents about being like that.....

Anyway... Back to the camping trip.

Short and sweet, here it is:
My two reasons this trip is gonna rock? 1) I get to bring a friend and my sister can't stalk us either because she's bringing a friend too. She'll be totally occupado. and 2) My birthday's smack dab in the middle of the trip, so we get to go to the coolest!!!! water park this side of MARS. So there are my reasons.

Our itinerary:

• Santa's Village (no idea, so don't ask. it was my parents' idea)
• Lost River (the coolest set of natural caves I've ever seen!!! basically, the place rocks. lol.) maybe going. not sure yet. *Pleeeeeease Daddy!!!*
• Whale's Tale Water Park (again. the best of all time water park. just the right size with all the right rides.)
• Arethusa Falls (totally wicked awesome water fall that you have to climb two and a half miles to get to)
• Clark's Trading Post (just the store this year :'( but they've got lot's of GOOD candy. Teaberry Gum..... mmmmmm.)
• The Basin (it is what it is. and it's beautiful. somewhere along the Cascades Trail.)
• any other place that doesn't cost too much.

Comment please! I'm so bored and I want to read something other than my summer reading books. (which I don't actually have yet... hehehe)

PO'd: Ticked off or bipolar?

Why is it that all of a sudden, I’m so pissed off that I decide to attack the punching bag so hard and for so long that my knuckles bleed? I was doing fine all day long. My friend had slept over the night before and we had had a blast. This morning, another one of my friends came over and helped me to baby-sit (she actually ended up doing most of it.) and now she’s sleeping over tonight. Tomorrow I’m going to Maine with the two wicked cool summer missionaries and my friend (and my family).

There.

Absolutely no reason to be pissed. But here I am.

It’s like… At quarter of six, I snapped. I was pacing back and forth and I kept snapping at my sisters and my dad and yelling at Abby to go and spar with me, but she kept saying no.

My dad asked, “What is wrong with you? Why are you snapping at me? Are you mad?” And my horribly told lie was, “No! I’m fine! I just need to punch something.”

I went into my room and got my speakers and iPod (which isn’t technically an iPod, but it’s a whole lot easier to say than mp3 player), and which, at the time, was really well named. Because i PO’d. (If you don’t get it, no big deal.)

Anyway, I grabbed my music and my speakers and ran outside to the gym.

Linkin Park blaring through the stereo. The satisfying smacking sound as my fists pounded into the bag and the scratching as the bag was pushed farther and farther across the room with each punch. (Mind you, the bottom of the punching bag is filled with almost 100 pounds of sand.)
Adrenaline pumping through my fists and feet and my heartbeat slamming against the inside of my chest.

Glorious.

After half an hour, I stopped and laid on the ground, breathing hard and vibrating slightly with the adrenaline. I was still pissed. Heck, I’m still mad now. And I don’t know why. I figured that typing it out would help calm me down, but no. Not working.


I’m gonna go punch the poor defenseless bag for a while longer.

How to Deal with the Crap Life Throws at You

So, you're in this really awkward situation and it's really bothering you. I think I know how you feel. All you really want to do is go crawl under a rock and hide where no one can find you and you can just be left alone, but nobody's letting you do that. I might not have been in your exact situation, but I've reacted in the same way. I just wanted to throw in the towel and walk away.

I mean, come on, you gave it a shot but it didn't work; what more is there to do? And the whole thing has just gotten to a point where it's too hard to act like nothing happened and it's too awkward for you. It just gives you this gross feeling in your stomach because you know things are going to be different and you can't change it back.

You want to blame the other person and get it over with and then go sit in a cool dark room on the floor with your back against the wall and your eyes closed and just forget. But nobody will let you. They keep bugging you about it and telling you that "it'll be hard, but you can make everything work out in the end." But you don't believe them, you don't want to believe them because it'll mean more work for you and you just don't want to do that anymore. You just want to forget about it and walk away.

The problem is, there's nowhere to walk to. You're completely surrounded. The whole thing's like a buzzing noise in your brain and a hammer on the inside of your skull. And you just want it to stop.


The only way I got it to stop was by talking to the person.

It was unbelievably hard and it was after one of our worst fights (I hadn't talked to her for a week and a half and those of you who know me know that that's practically impossible. Running away didn't work.) and I felt really wierd. But we talked - both of us - and it got fixed. Not all at once, like magic or anything. no way, it was totally hard and took a long time. It took almost two months and it's still not 100% better, but it got to a point where we could hang out and joke around without feeling awkward. The stress stopped and I feel so much better about it.


So... My advice to those of you who can relate is:

Talk. It's gonna be hard, but it helps so much.

New avatars for my yahoo and MSN screennames

I just got a Yahoo screenname and a MSN screenname, so I needed some avatars for them. Here are my top two picks from a list of avatars about my favorite book, Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

more pictures...

like 'em? leave a comment on the pictures. i'm dying for comments!!

profile picture! hope it works!!!

hey. here's my profile picture. i have to put it on here so that i can use it, so... ENJOY!!!

favorite avatar!!!!!!

this is one of my favorite avatars that i have. it's too bad it doesn't show up good as my AIM icon.

Climbing Trees

Climbing trees is fun. I do so much stuff in my tree out front, no matter how termite and ant infested it is.

I write poems in it.
I write songs in it.
I write stories in it.
I read in it.
I daydream in it.
He he... I even spy from it sometimes.

It's so much fun to be up high in a tree. You get this thrill from the fact that if you fall, you might end up dying - and please don't think I'm suicidal or mental because of it, it's just thrilling - and it gets your adrenaline pumping.

I mean, it's terrifying when your foot slips or you have a really bad grip on one of the branches and you don't know if you can get to the next branch, but you really want to make it and you make up extreme scenarios that will happen if you don't get to the next branch. Like the world will end or something crazy like that. That sounds so stupid and little-kid-like, but it's true. And I don't mind thinking like a little kid. Everything was so much more interesting when I was little. I didn't know about so much of the stuff around me, that I'd make up explanations for it.

I remember when I was little, I knew the moon wasn't made of cheese, but I made up the reason that it was because all the little aliens would eat it if it were, so God had to make it out of something that they wouldn't want to eat, like rocks or brussel sprouts or lima beans. Except it couldn't be made of brussel sprouts or lima beans because it wasn't green, so it had to be rock.

Yeah, so anyways, back to trees.

Poems. Songs. And stories. I get so much inspiration from trees. Not looking at them from far away, but actually being up close to one and in one, sitting on the branches. It's like its own little world and there are lots of little people living in it. All the branches are roads and the leaves are houses. The tiny twigs connecting them are the driveways. I can change the world of a tree into the world I want it to be. It can be a world from one of the stories I'm writing, or it can be the perfect world of make-believe that I write about in one of my poems. It can be my own world where nothing is going wrong but I'm not in total control. I'm just observing. That's when I write my songs. They're about my observations and how I respond to them, I guess. I mean, whenever I try to write a song, it comes out lame and emotionless. But if I just write my thoughts down - however random they may be - the end result isn't half-bad.

Again, with the reading. I can recreate the world of the book around me and I can picture what is happening. Sometimes I even read the words out loud with the expression I imagine is in the voice because I want to get a better feel for the story. I can do that in the tree, because no one can hear me and no one can see me. Which makes it great to spy from.

I told you earlier, I like to observe people, to watch how they interact and what their personalities are like. Doing that for so long has made me a pretty decent judge of character. Well, it all started from the tree out front. I would sit up in it and watch party guests arrive and see how they acted around each oter and how they acted when certain people weren't around. I am really thankful for that gift that God has given me.

Thanks for trees too God!!!
Katy

Quotes From DC

Robyn - Watch me do a magic trick!
Katy - Robyn pulled paper out of her butt!!!!!!

Brianna - It smells like nachos. Oh! It's Katy's nuts!

Nichole - Don't be tired, be wired!

Katy - Mmm...Me gusta knish.

Lia - Look! It's a big house! Wow! It's so pretty!
Katy - That's the White House...

Katy - Ugh. That statue is so ugly!!!
Caleb - I was just about to say it looked like you.
Katy - I'M NOT A DUDE!!!

Katy - Dresses were created by Satan. Haven't you ever heard of that movie "The Devil Wears Prada"?

Robyn - What's ten plus two?
Steph - Twenty. Duh.

Nichole - Katy is in - MY PANTS!!!!
(okay, this one needs explaining. we went in the pool, except Nichole hadn't brought a bathing suit, so she wore her clothes, and they're kind of loose... yeah, so anyways, i had been sitting on the edge of the pool and she had been begging me to go in. so i did and she climbed the ladder to come and jump in next to me. as she's about to jump she yells happily "Katy is in the pool!" except she never got to finish the sentence because her pants started to fall down. so she screams "MY PANTS!!!!" at the top of her lungs. hence, "Katy is in - MY PANTS!!!!")

Okay, back to the quotes:

Nicole - Let's call him... bush!
Katy - Okay...
(looking out the window at the blossoming shrubbery)
Katy - That's a cute looking bush!
Nicole - Whaaat?
Katy - The one with the green...
(Nicole looks over at boy. he's wearing green...)
Katy - And brown...
(brown shoes...)
Katy - And leaves.
(phew. no leaves on this boy.)
Nicole - He's the president??!!

Katy - A-D-D!... It's easy as ONE-TWO-hey look a bird.
Nicole - *laughing hysterically* That was soo fun- *stops laughing and looks out window* A horse!

Katy - O-C-D!... It's easy as -one- -two- -three- (hit's ADD person.) you forgot three!!!! .........crap. now i have to go wash my hands.

And finally!!!!!

Caleb - WHOA!!!!! KATY!!!! Your look like a freaking ogre!!!!!!!! It's like you have no face.
Katy - You wish.
Caleb - (smacks Katy)
Katy - Hey! What was that for?! My face hurts.
Caleb - It's killing me.
Katy - (shoves Caleb down set of stairs)
Katy - Hey guess what?!
Caleb - ow.... What?
Katy - Boys are like slinkies. Completely useless, but fun to watch fall down stairs.
Caleb - bite me...

the inevitable week of DC migranes is over and now i'm back.

Here's the short version:

DC. The car rides were fun. Nothing else was. I'm trying to avoid a lawsuit here, so I can't say anything else for fear of my head being bitten off...

If you really want to read it, here are the entries i wrote in my notebook while I was there, when they didn't steal my notebook so I couldn't write:

Sunday - 6:40 AM -
Just left school. We're on our way to DC!!! The car's packed and I'm pumped!!!!! I can NOT wait for this week to get started!!!
4:50 PM -
We decided to go to Medieval Times for dinner. Sat behind the Green Knight, but the Red Knight's way cooler.
An hour or so later -
The Green Knight won the competition, but the Red Knight saved the day. I'm happy.

Monday -
Today started out fun. The people as individuals aren't bad, but the whole group is like a demon, hold for a couple people. Some of the girls have decided to suck the fun out of everything by - Okay, I'll make it short. They just suck okay? Me and two of my friends were in the guys' van (Which is a totally sexist name for it, by the way. It's just a purple van!) with two other girls, but I was completely ignoring them. So me and the guys were having a great time discussing music and what we were excited about doing in DC - well, not one of my friends, she was drooling. But anyway, we were having lots of fun. We get to the restaurant and then the other girls start complaining that they want to go in the "History Mobile" (a.k.a. the guys' van)Yeah right. They just want to flirt. Knock it off people. You're screwing with my friendships because you're bored. And then they had to whine until they got their way. I thought this'd be different than school. I was wrong... And I want to go home.

That's basically when I stopped writing entries. They were going to be too long to put in one blog entry, so I decided not to bother. But if you want a recap of the rest of the trip, here you go:

By Tuesday, the girl chaperones had decided that gossipping about the students and making fun of them when they thought no one could hear was the new "thing to do". It's not. And I hated it. Because I always seemed to be around when they were talking about my friends. And I heard it all. The one time me and someone else tried to stand up to them, they treated us like we were completely immature saying "Do you have a problem? You shouldn't be listening in on other people's conversations you know. That's called eavesdropping. Did you know that?" Well, hey lady, guess what? You shouldn't be having conversations about the students behind their backs. Either say it to their faces, or keep it to yourself.

The monuments were cool though. I especially liked the Jefferson Monument and the World War II Memorial. Lots of really inspiring quotes. Call me a literary dork. Whatever. But I thought they were pretty cool, and I had some really neat discussions with my history teacher about the Supreme Court and what some of the quotes in the monuments meant or signified.

I got some great pictures too, but most of the time I was bugged by the chaperones. Their bad attitudes really ruined the trip for me.