Fore score

So much has happened lately.

I've had a lot of inner conflicts, and right now I feel as if I'm finally sorting through the rubble to find little pieces of old and new me.

You'd think that self discovery would be easier.

I've been told that I'm hard, quick to judge, and a bit of a jerk by some fellow colleagues, and you know what?

I feel like these somewhat negative qualities make me who I am.

I've had a paradigm shift. Things that were once important last year seem to not even matter now. I don't know what this means. I'm not sure about a lot of things right now, which is causing me to act out in a way.

I'm not talking to my mom till she talks to me.

Also, if I feel down, then I'm down. The sooner I realize I'm down the quicker it is for me to get up. I don't know. I don't know at all.

$75 richer.

Ah, for once I'm not going to talk about the woman I've been recently unofficially estranged from!

See, I'm making jokes already. Great progress.

Friday/Saturday has been so jam packed. Yesterday was my friend Hannah's 16th birthday party, and as her gift my friend Rebekka and I bought her two fan tailed goldfishes :)

She really liked them, and I think by far it's the best gift I've ever had the honor to give someone. MRoS and I bought them together, and who knew how hard it was to find a goldfish. It's like, no one sells any all american goldfishes anymore.

I didn't get home till 10pm, which wasn't good because I was im-promptly called to go to a tourney at 8:15 in the morning to help out in rounds.

The only reason why I went was because I was promised $75, and right now that money is greatly needed!!

It was weird though, because I showed up and the lady is charge was just like,

"Can you judge extemp speaking and LD? Yes? Good. You're going to do that."

So I judged debates. And let me tell you, I wanted to shoot half of those kids.

The whole time I was just thinking, "Man, I couldn't have been this bad as a novice."

They didn't know anything! No format, no anything! A lot of them couldn't even read their cases. And afterwards they were so unprofessional! You're not supposed to say, "Man, I really think I won this round, my opponent sucked." in front of a judge.

The only thing that kept me sane through the seven hours I judged was the fact that I was getting a little over $10 an hour.

Hopefully I'll get my check soon. I hope. Oh man, I really want/need that money.

-----Like two seconds ago I thought about ranting about things, but I don't want to ruin the mood I'm in right now. I'll save my rant for later.

Catharsis

At this point I'm at a loss. From what I learned in therapy, denial and not dealing with pressing issues is never good, even though it seems like a good idea at the time.

All week I've been trying not to play up the thing between my mom and I, trying to get by with sarcastic remarks and "it just really sucks", however like my therapist always said, it's easier to move on if you share. It's also easier to find kindred spirits--- even though at this point in my life, I don't think anyone understands me unless one of their parents did what my mom did.

What did she do? Lets start at the beginning.

3 years ago she started talking to this guy. I'd like to refer to it as a long-distance relationship. They started 'dating' a little after I moved in with my dad. From what I remember they would always fight, my mom would get sick of him, not talk to him for weeks until he sent her a present, and then start talking to him again. Throughout the whole 3 year period it was like this.

Personally, I thought he was creepy back then, however I was also in middle school, and thought any mouth-breather was creepy.

About a month ago, without any warning whatsoever Josh, her boyfriend moves in with her. As I've stated before, he MOVED here. He lived so far away previously he had to take a plane down here.

It probably wouldn't have bothered me as much if she would have told me. Or anyone for that matter. Even my sisters, who live with her didn't know. Yeah. Talk about a douche move.

My youngest sister's birthday rolls around and my dad has custody of her this weekend. We make a big deal out of it, threw her a big party even. You want to know what my mom did over my little sister's birthday? She gets her marriage license and gets married without telling anyone AGAIN.

You'd think she would have at least told my sisters. And I'm not even going to lie at this point, I'm pretty hurt. All week I've been putting off, again trying to joke about it, because that's how I cope, but everyday she doesn't call it's like I get even more hurt.

I'm angry that I had to find out about her marriage by reading the friggin newspaper, and it's complete and utter bullshit that she didn't even ask my sisters if they wanted her to re-marry.

She has kids. She has an obligation to them, to me--- to make sure that we feel safe and comfortable with whomever she wants to be with. When ever my dad would bad talk my mom and call her names I used to get offended, but now I could care less. She's everything my dad has ever said about her, and it's taken me till now to understand that.

I've been playing scenarios in my mind of what would happen once we had to talk--- let me tell you: it involves a lot of yelling and crying.

What are we going to do for holidays? What am I going to do come December when her birthday and my birthday roll around? Will I ever be able to view my mom as an actual mother?

I don't know. Typing this out right now is bringing up all types of emotions, and there are so many different things that I'm not sharing because it just hurts too much.

And I'm sick and tired of telling my friends and hearing them go "That sucks."

Like they're passive. Just another thing to store in their mind under the little folder labeled "Things that have never happened to me that suck" ---I'm trying to share, trying to sort this out, trying to see if maybe, just maybe they might understand that I feel like breaking down every single time I think about my mom---- But no. I get, "That sucks." followed by, "Hey did you do the chemistry review?"

No I did not do the friggin chemistry review, I was too busy laying in my bed trying not to be angry at the world.

The only person who I can closely relate to at school is Miranda. At least one of her parents was shitty also.

I'm a teenager. I'm entitled to be irrationally angry. Right now I'm going to try to be relatively normal in front of my friends. I'm sick and tired of feeling like I need my friends to pity me.

I'm angry that my mom has pretty much ruined our relationship by being selfish. However, there's not much I can do but buck up, put on a strong face for my little sisters, and try not to let this ruin my year and all the fun I can have in it.

Random thought.

What if individuals with multiple personality disorder were just people who are caught between parallel universes? Kind of like layers on photoshop that someone jacked with.

Douchability, permitted.

So this week I haven't been the greatest friend in the world. Or even the greatest person.

I'm sorry. Under any other circumstance acting like a douche would be inexcusable, but I've been under stress.

Last night my baby brother puked on me-- he has the flu, today I had a deposition* to attend, my mom is being a major douchebag*, my math grade isn't up to par, I have a cold----or something, and did I mention that I'M ON MY LADY DAYS?!

Yeah. I apologize for any excessive... I don't know, meanness? Or any crabby behavior or sharp comments made in anyone's direction. This week hasn't been my week.

*talked with some Lawyers
*what she did was so bad I had to submit it to Fmylife.com

Algebraic

Oy my life.

I would trade every ounce of sculpting skill I have if I could be good at math. No lie. At this point I'm at a loss.

I do my homework without cheating, I ask questions in class, I take notes. I use hand sanitizer daily!

Why can I not make at least an 88 in maths?! I don't know how I'm going to survive college math. Right now I'm seriously considering just taking math models or something.

Oh well. I'm going to go do some Algebraic crap.

My mom owes me Therapy money

With all of the recent things my mom has talked to me about, or not talked to me about I'm going to have years of therapy and thousands of dollars worth of therapy in order to get my mind back in order and sort everything through.

First she tells me about her intimate life with her boyfriend... Yeah. Not the greatest thing.

Then she keeps my youngest sister out of school for a week.

And finally I pick up the paper and find out that she and her boyfriend are now married. Yeah. I had to find out by reading the newspaper. You'd think that I don't know, I'm her kid she'd inform me that I'd have a new stepdad.

She's the reason why I have affection issues.

She's the reason why I get so irrational of the tiniest things.

She's the reason why I'm never going to view monogamy in a positive way ever again.

Isn't my mom the best? Seriously, you guys, if you have a good mom, give her a hug or call her or something.

Something.

I'm not an adrenaline junkie.

It takes an honors physics student to coax me on a roller coaster and tell me equations and statistics throughout the ride in order to keep me sane.

However, even though I'm not into stunts, I get the same rush whenever I do any form of public speaking.

It's weird. I always feel so jittery and rushed during a Debate round, my brain on overdrive, my hand writing so fast I smear ink if I'm not careful--- it's great.

I feel smart when I use words like pragmatism, and feel even smarter when I discuss the philosophical side of economic theories. There's a reason why I promote debate and speech programs.

It's important that we as individuals expand our horizons and learn to view life with a little objectivity. I'm tired of listening to ignorant people and I know that maybe, if they were put in a position in which they had to argue both sides their thoughts on some issues would change drastically.

Also, everyone needs to feel smart.

Utility monster, or "I really need to crash"

OMIGAWD. The University of North Texas is the most bug infested place in the state of Texas. In a certain slant of sunlight you could see invisible little flying bugs in the air. They made the air thick, and your skin itchy. Not to mention a plethora of black ugly crickets everywhere. I hate bugs. And I hate UNT.

Why was I at UNT? Well, originally I thought I was going to go to a nearby Junior College to attend Super Conference, however JGraves being the wonderful (not) man that he is forgot to inform us that instead of a maybe 2 hour drive, it would be a 4 hour drive to Denton, Texas.

Apparently everyone but the debate kids knew where we were going. In hindsight I should have looked up online about where it was going to be, but oh well. Super Conference wasn't all bad, although we were a good 20 minutes late.

First I attended a philosophy lecture, and I was a bit miffed I was 20 minutes late, but oh well. I still got a lot out of the lecture, and the woman speaking was so great! I loved the way she simplified things, while making them more complex.... if that makes any sense.

Afterwards I ran into some of my debate friends from other schools. We couldn't chat much due to the fact that we only had five minutes to hang out before we had to head over to the Topic Analysis area. We had the same guy from last year, who again, was the BOMB. I was so hungry throughout the whole thing though, and the only thing that tided me over was Wint-O-Greens and water.

Still hungry, I headed over to some other lecture which was POINTLESS. And non topical. The only good thing was the fact that I got to sit next to Travis (the cool one, not lame one) who entertained both of us by peeling off his laptop stickers and putting them on my arm.

5:45am - 1:45pm Without food. It is an unholy thing. UNHOLY I TELL YOU. Also, the last lecture was so boring that in the middle of it, Travis's computer went into hibernation mode. It was that bad.

I really wanted to make this post a long rant about how much I hate people, and JGraves's flip flop nature, but I don't know. My brain is too tired, I have more bags under my eyes, and my life is most likely over. Ok, now I'm just being melodramatic.

But my sister's birthday was today, she's 6 now. She got a crapload of presents, which got me thinking about my birthday, and stuff I wanted, and then I saw this. I NEED THIS.

Ok, maybe I don't. But I'm sleepy. My mind is hazy, and I'm prone to yelling and convincing myself and others that I need coloring books. Sleep, here I come!

Lucie Manette + Hate

There is this girl in my grade who I share my classes with who I cannot stand. Supposedly she's lived in like every country known to man, and knows 4 different languages.

I don't know.

She's so annoying. If she's not bragging about all the places she's been and all the money her family has, she's showing off in a non humble way how she can speak and write in all these different languages. And she complains. About.Everything.Please.Shoot.Me.Now.

I doubt she's done half the stuff she's claimed to have done, but that's beside the point. Mention one thing about Korea; "OH I'VE BEEN THERE, AND I SPEAK AND WRITE KOREAN. Want me to write your name in Korean? blah blah blah I'm so cool, Daddy is a chef trained in some rare Korean cooking style, I lived in Japan for two years and I know everything to know about that place too. Oh yeah, last night I was up till 4am skyping with these people I met in China who actually live in England. I have a room full of stuff that could probably pay for 4 years at community college. I'm going to Yale so I can be a dermatologist and make more than the president."

Who in their right mind would go to Yale to be a DERMATOLOGIST?! ARE YOU FRIGGIN KIDDING ME?!

OMIGAWD. I honestly don't think she's THAT bad, but sometimes I wish she could be more humble, or something. Maybe quieter? No. Maybe just, I don't know--- Less annoying?

In AcaDec I wanted to like bang my head on the desk due to her annoying-ness.

I don't know. I'm going to TRY to maybe get to know her better.... but maybe that's not the best idea.... that might actually make me dislike her even more....

Maybe if she didn't spout off total bullshit 67.7% of the time I might like her better. Maybe. Maybe it's just her.

John Mashpotatoes.

So I volunteered at my local homeless shelter serving dinner, and I have to say it was quite fulfilling. Although I was doing it for Z-Club for points, I still think it was pretty fun.

Remember the kid who smiles like Lee Pace? Yeah his name is John, and his last name reminds me of MashPotatoes..... I don't think he appreciates me calling him John MashPotatoes, but whatever :P

Yesterday in advisory we played Heads Up 7up, and today we played Charades. A bunch of high schoolers. Playing kiddie games. This is great.

JGraves the debate coach is being rated right now by all of the Debate and Theatre kids. Consensus says he's a 4.5 due to his major a--holeness.

I don't know what this is. To the loo I go!

They loved me! (they really do!)

Ah. A long time ago I would have found public speaking a complete and utter horror. Even if it was only a crowd of 10 people I would find it so nauseating and horrible. However after a year of Debate and public speaking and an ample dosage of Bill Maher and Anderson Cooper I seem to have found a liking for public speaking.

My school, in the vain attempt of reducing gang violence between at risk teens decided to bring back the Advisory, or homeroom period. Officially they brought it back "in order to build long lasting bonds between teens."

Yeah. We all know the real reason.

Anyways, everyday they set up all these little activities for us to do, and they're all interpersonal so no matter what we do we end up "sharing." It's not too horrible because I happened to get lucky and didn't get a mixed grade class. I know, or know of everyone in my advisory.

Today we had to share about what we did over the weekend and we could do so by either giving a speech or writing it out on paper. Needless to say I did a speech. I didn't intend on sounding so witty and sarcastic, and all my faces and anecdotes were pretty sincere, but it turned out everyone thought my rendition of my weekend was pretty humorous. I was told by the whole class that I should consider a career in comedy. Wow.

I like it when people laugh at what I say. In a good way. Yeah.

I'm a lot funnier in person.

Tea, but not.

I'm quite disappointed that I was invited to a "Tea" but actually did not get any tea.

Today I went to a initiation "tea" for a local chapter of an international womens group. From my research, it's a bit like a High School sorority, and to be honest, you can actually gain entrance into a handful of college sororities just by being a member of The Club.

I don't want my blog showing up on any google searches for The Club, so I'm going to avoid mentioning its name directly.

Anyways, I'm glad that I'm a part of a program that "improves the legal, political, economic, health, educational and professional status of women through service and advocacy." - taken directly from their web site.

The only thing I'm worried about is if it conflicts with any of my other activities. I'm in sosossooo many.

Debate
AP Art
AcaDec
Business Professionals of America
Art Club
NAHS
Teen Advisory Board
(new)'The Club'
(maybe) Fine Arts Advisory Board

Yeah. I'm an overachiever. However, my goal (other than getting in Cash Cab) is to graduate college with a minimal amount of debt, so I think I'm on the right track to achieving that goal.

I made you a sign

I truly don't want to start this post negatively, so I'll begin this post with a list of nice happy things that happened this week:

-Asstin moved back from Fresco
-I reached the halfway point in my AP art piece, and was complemented on how it was "College level work"
-I FINALLY scraped up a non-fail negative and affirmative case for debate.
-The boy who looks like Lee Pace has been talking to me more
-Only about 3 weeks left of Drivers Ed!
-I bought a Fountain Pen, and a menagerie of nibs!! I love my new inks!
-Metcalf, an old debate buddy who is going to college locally was at my school's pep rally. He was on the other side of the gym, so I made a sign with his name on it, and the paper was yellow, and he saw me! He gave me a thumbs up.

Now that the happy is out, I feel like I have something else to get off my chest. Almost all this week my mom has been causing problems. I don't want to go into the dirty details, because let's face it: You all probably don't want to know.

But I digress, my mother for lack of a better term has been acting like a major a--hole. Yelling, keeping my youngest sister out of school for a whole week, more yelling, and a lot of not listening. What makes me angry is the fact that my mother takes out all of her general anger on my sister Kimberly, and it got so bad this week we had to pick her up from my mom's house because she was crying.

All week I haven't been sleeping well because I've been so frustrated and angry with my mom. Subsequently I've been coming to school tired, and because of the fatigue I've been in extent acting like a major a--hole. I'm sorry.

Hopefully, next week I'll be better. But for this weekend I'm going to sleep, watch movies, and get happy.

My weekend it already looking up because my parents won a $500 gift card to Target. That's 500 $1 knick knacks, or 150 transformers. Or possibly a whole bunch of new towels.

East Texan Ignorance

Today, around the same time at millions of schools across America students tuned in to listen to President Obama.

Well, excluding my school that is. No other school in my district is making this big a deal out of such a small issue. Did you know that we had to get a permission form signed to even watch it?! Yeah.

My school decided that just in case anything needed to be edited out they were going to pre-record it, then stream it the following day. I guarantee that no one threw a fit when Reagan or Bush addressed the students. I hate to say it, but the only reason why they're doing this is because 1) Obama isn't white, and 2) He's not a Democrat, and lastly 3) Most east Texans are cursed with ignorance.

Another thing that ticked me off was the fact that some people were like, "Yeah, I'm going to watch it just so I can see him fail."

First off, when Bush was first elected everyone had high hopes. No one wished him ill at the beginning of his term. I don't think any president should be criticized during the first to years because they are just getting acclimated to the whole "Dude, I'm president" idea.

My dad even admitted that he had high hopes for Bush, but around Bush's second term he started to get angry with the way he was handling everything.

I don't think that in these first few years we should get angry at Obama. We should keep high hopes and wish him well, not ill. If however, Obama is a total fail, then we can get angry, but for the sake of being good citizens of the U.S. all thoughts directed towards Obama should be pleasant because, after all he is in charge of our country.

"I'm surprised that you've never been told before---"

FNT by Semisonic has been put on repeat all day because it has become my newest song of fancy. It was featured in the 10 Things I Hate About You soundtrack and brought to my attention by MRoS last night.

Oh did we party hard last night.... Well, that is if you count going to Wal-Mart, buying our Jane Austen dress materials and patterns, and some Hanes T-shirts to decorate-- partying hard.

However, MRoS did manage to somehow mess up her mom's sewing machine so we only got half of the bottom part of our dresses sewn. Oh well.

Recently I was caught off gaurd because I was on Facebook, and I just happened to look over at the birthday alerts, and my friend Celery's birthday is coming up soon and I totally forgot. Oops. I need to figure out a present.

Affirmative case excerpt

Ok, so I'm a pretty bad blogger for not updating, leaving my blog dry as my mom's thanksgiving turkey, so to tide you guys over I'm just going to cheat and post an excerpt of my Affirmative case for the upcoming debate season.

The topic is resolved: Standards of professional behavior ought to be valued over freedom of expression on social networking sites.

b. social networking profiles are relevant to the representation of an employee and job.

New York Times August 2009: “According to a new study conducted by Harris Interactive for CareerBuilder.com, 45 percent of employers... are using social networks to screen job candidates — more than double from a year earlier... The study, which questioned 2,667 managers and human resource workers, found that 35 percent of employers decided not to offer a job to a candidate based on the content uncovered on a social networking site. (The survey has no margin of sampling error because it was not drawn from a representative nationwide sample but rather from volunteer participants.) The report showed that Facebook was the most popular online destination for employers to do their online sleuthing, followed by LinkedIn and MySpace. In addition, 7 percent followed job candidates on Twitter. More than half of the employers who participated in the survey said that provocative photos were the biggest factor contributing to a decision not to hire a potential employee, while 44 percent of employers pinpointed references to drinking and drug use as red flags. Other warning signs included bad-mouthing of previous employers and colleagues and poor online communication skills.”
With employers checking in on future employees it only emphasizes further the fact that we as a society need to acknowledge what is acceptable and what is not lest we face unwanted consequences.

In a way the childhood quote “If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all,” must be applied to the situation. In no way are we harming our freedom of speech, it's just a common everyday courtesy that seems to get lost with many other childhood lessons.

Anyways, cheers to you guys!

"honeys, and loves"

I don't know why, but I've never really liked "affectionate" terms being used in everyday language.

Like the new Debate coach JGraves. He has this knack for saying "honey" "love" and other terms that just in general bother me. I don't know why. It just wears out these words.

I don't know....

I mean, it doesn't bother me if the speaker is sincere, but most of the time it's said so casually by people I barely know that it's just WEIRD.

But that's just me.

PV=nRT and some more bullets

- My AP Chemistry teacher is hilarious. She's this sweet little old lady with a doctorate in who knows what, and she makes words out of things like PV=nRT. Pervnert. Yes. Pervnert. Not to mention her philosophy on explosions in the classroom: If we all explode, then oh well. We won't be alive to feel any pain. Isn't she great?

- There is this boy at my school who smiles like Lee Pace (aka Ned from Pushing Daisies) I see him in the hall and yell, "Hey!" and he returns greeting and smiles. I often have to refrain from calling him Ned.

- JGraves is probably the biggest ahole I have ever met. He's egotistical, narcissistic, loud mouthed, and yet oddly enough I enjoy his presence. What can I say? He has a good taste in music. Not to mention, he's pretty smart. Let's hope he's a good coach and can take me to State in debate.

- My witticisms and sarcasm has increased by tenfold since the year has started. I don't know if this is good or bad. I just hope I don't scare any of my friends off.

- AcaDec is proving to be a very fun, yet awkward class. This kid Connor, who knocked his girlfriend up has this weird vibe.... I don't know. It's hard to explain. It's like, we could be friends, but the fact that he has a baby mama is totally scaring me off. I know many expectant mothers, but he by far is the only expectant father I converse with and have classes with on a regular basis.

- Also it turns out Philip Hayes isn't going to Princeton, but SMU in Dallas. Thank Buddah. I can still consider Princeton for college. Maybe. I'll have to weigh it against Penn State.

Bullet me rants

- Why is it that the only worth while comment on my Facebook is from the one person I don't find worth while. What gives him the right to start a comment with "Hey beautiful" then give me such great suggestions about my case writing and philosophy AND THEN inadvertently give his college address to me?! I HATE THIS. Oh yeah, he wants to visit over Christmas and such to work on Spring Cases. FML.

- Why is it that no one gets my Gilligan's Island references? Are we that brainwashed by the MTV societal influence that we have forgotten the classics of television? What has this world come to?!

- Why is it that I feel like a total ahole, when there's a perfectly worse ahole as the new Debate coach. Where does he get off telling me I can't have tape! What an ahole.

- Why does my family keep pressuring me about guys? Are they worried that I'll be a spinster? Let me tell ya, I'd be one ballin spinster.

POO ON YOU JACOB ROOT.