Cheesy puns, bear with me...

Dearest You,
Since this is how I started my day, I thought it'd be appropriate to begin my blog with the Do's and Don't's (do you put apostrophes there?) of allergy-season.
Do:
*Inhale.
*Take benadryl. YOU DON'T HAVE TO SUFFER! Actually, you do. At least you can convince yourself you're doing something about it.
*Let people know that you have allergies so they don't think you're rudely blowing your nose and exposing your germs to the general public. (Bonus: gain sympathy). (Double bonus: If you talk about it, people are guaranteed to get itchy skin within seconds. THEN they'll feel sorry for you.)


Don't:
*Inhale pollen.
*Take too much benadryl. People might not believe your excuses for being drowsy and completely out of it.
*Scratch your eyes. Especially wearing makeup.
*Sneeze.
*Put cucumber slices on your eyes if at all avoidable. There's a possibility that one of your eyes is allergic to something on the cucumbers. This eye might decide to swell, turn yellow, and freak your parents out so much that they take you to the ER. I'm not suggesting that this happened to me, but--OK, yes, it happened to me.
*Sit out in the grass. That's basically daring the enemy (a.k.a pollen) to open fire.
*Put fresh flowers in your room--ummm, I think this is self-explanatory.


Cheesy pun of the day: While we were in the grocery store, a bag of carrots was uncarroteristically yellow (intentionally). Get it? Hehe. I told my little sisters I would post that on Facebook, but I chickened out at the last minute. I figured anybody who knows me enough to care to read my blog will forgive the dorky jokes :P.
"of the day" may have led you to believe that this will be a daily occurrence, this reciting of puns. Not to worry, I have no intention to--But now that you mention it... :D


I'm totally making a dress out of old curtain for my little sister. She wants it for Easter, but I made no promises. My impromptu/improvised sewing doesn't always turn out beautifully...

Gen's making me listen to Disney music. No, not the "Someday My Prince Will Come", "When You Wish Upon a Star" awesomeness. We're talking about the Disney actors-suddenly-turned-singers stuff. Haha. Some of it's not so bad :P

Decisions, decisions. That free-will is great and all, but it sure is complicated.

Wind-blown hair. Hmmphm. Guess I should be thankful for it--Without it, people might think I actually looked in a mirror before leaving the house. Couldn't have that.

I wonder if one of my blog posts will ever NOT be random? 'Cause I know y'all are SO interested in all those spaghetti thoughts of mine. At least I'm blogging, right? :D

Praise God for choices! I am seriously glad we're not robots.

Con amore,
Sophie

Place Title Here

Dearest You,
I'm such a slacker. But I promise I've been busy :P Today has been lovely. It's pretty nice outside. I spent a few hours in our backyard creek this afternoon. I thought it'd be considerate of me to compose a to-do list for you in case you feel like following suit:
1. Wear a t-shirt. Rip off the bottom half of a floor-length skirt to get a nice rugged effect, and pair it with some leggings. Keep leftover fabric to make a vest at a later date.
2. Stuff a grungy-looking bag with special items. Included but not limited to a book, some cookies, a cell phone, an mp3 player, a notebook, and a pencil. Mechanical, of course.
3. Sling said bag over shoulder.
4. Pick out rain/mud boots. It is preferable that at least one of the boots has a hole in it.
5. Go outside.
6. Find a study walking stick.
7. Take a few moments to decide which is the most challenging way to enter the creek. Options can include climbing over rocks, jumping over poison ivy, maneuvering past bushes, et cetera.
8. Procede into the water.
9. Keep vocal chords healthy by shrieking once or twice once cold water seeps through said hole in said boot. This is easily accomplished if one forgets which boot contains the hole. Suprise is key.
10. Explore, careful to only tread on green algae-covered rocks, thereby increasing one's chances of slipping and falling.
11. Point out scientific findings to your companions.
12. Ignore mocking of your nerdiness.
13. Spread old towel on dry-ish rock and sit.
14. Enjoy cookies while not thinking about the germs that are on your un-sanatized hands.
15. Read book.
16. Swat away a few wasps and bees.
17. Make mini sailboats and rafts out of leaves and twigs and moss.
18. Watch said mini sailboats and rafts drown.
19. Save a catipillar from death by drowning. This occurance is of course unrelated to mini sailboats and rafts.
20. Bask in childhood memories of the days you basically lived in said creek. Then journey back to reality.

On another note...what was my other note? I can't remember. But since I've gotten you all excited, I'd better come up with something. I went to Greek class tonight. Is that interesting? It's interesting that it's all going over my head. I didn't get eaten by a tornado the other day. That's good news, isn't it? And yes, I'm pretty sure tornados can eat you. College financial aid advisors are unique. Especially when they're doing a presentation at said college's preview day in the most monotone voice possible. It really gets the kids excited about said college. Don't mind the sarcasm there.

Happy Palm Sunday!
Praise God for sending His Son, humbly riding on a donkey, ready to save the world.
Con amore,
Sophie

Crazy Novel Job

Dearest you,
Wow I haven't written in forever. Oh well, there's no time like the present to start back. I got a job this past week at Christie Cookies. It's at the Opryland hotel, which is pretty cool. Christie is a man, just in case you were assuming it was a Ms. I went through a seven-hour orientation today with Gaylord...got to learn all about the hotel, eat a nice lunch, and tour the newly-refurbished building. It's pretty spiffy. You should come see it (and me :) when the hotel opens back up on Monday (the 15th). Guess what color our uniform polo shirts are? Lime. Green. What? You couldn't come up with a color that looks worse on people? Haha, at least I like green :P
Other noteworthy point of the month: November is National Novel Writing Month. That being said, I'm challenging myself to write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. I'm on day eleven and only a few thousand words behind schedule :D I initially thought to post my story each day, piece by piece. But after realizing how rough, rough draft-ish it is, I've reconsidered. Maybe you'll see some of it in December, once I've had a little time to revise. :P
So now I'm going to be busy with a new job, a 100+ page novel coming straight from my imagination with no pre-planning, and my senior year in high school (which equals college applications, essays, scholarship apps, etc, as well as a pretty heavy load of school :[). Crazy.
And with all that, I must bid farewell for now, as short as this post is. Not sure if I'll blog again soon or not--as mentioned above, I do have a novel to write. Wish me luck!
Praise God for imaginations. Without them, all I'd have is a blank page.

Con amore,
Sophie

County Fair

Dearest you,
I'll blog about the rest of my summer at a later date. Figured I might as well get something on the board while I'm in the mood, to get my foot in the door, so to speak. Never mind that analogy, didn't really make sense upon editing but I'm leaving it up nonetheless.
So...Wilson County fair tonight with the family. Kind of an annual tradition. Other than the rather, shall I say, less-than-intelligent traffic cop, we had a very enjoyable time. The monkey/dog races were adorable. And my dad liked the tent he affectionately calls "Chickens and Such", aka Poultry and Rabbits.Us girls, sticking to our flip-flop-only rule in the summer, were delighted (facetiously meant, of course--by the way, before you think I'm a spelling nerd, I had no idea facetious was spelled thus) to traipse through the wet mulch which covered half the fairgrounds. Bet you had to read that sentence twice, the parenthesis-enclosed portion so long :P Anyways, foot-washing party back at the house! The free lemonade, chocolate milk, dum dum pops (for those not vain about brain cells), popcicles, ice cream coupons, dorky advertising fans, and random pieces of paper which everyone tosses into the garbage anyways were highlights of the night. Free stuff is always good, right? Anywho, if you've been to the county fair you'll know precisely what I'm talking about--it remains the exact same year after year. You know, the bluegrass singers, the elderly man making brooms, the human canon ball, the pot-bellied pig races (during which Evan won a blue ribbon--applause is appropriate here, since he went to all the trouble of volunteering to cheer the winning pig to the finish line), the little girls dragging their pageant dresses through the dirt, the petting zoo--complete with camels and porcupines (don't freak out, you couldn't actually pet the porcupines. Silly :P), et cetera and so forth. And even though we see this every year, somehow we all end up grinning like kids in a candy shop. Or something like that.

Praise God for family nights :)...and traffic cops on what-seems-like their first day on the job :P

Con amori,
Sophie

It's about time...

Dearest you,

I feel the need to apologize to those of you who have been looking for a post from me these past...few weeks. I've been too lazy to write, which sounds so odd even to myself, but considering the state of our computers, working with them can often be more of a frustration than a pleasure. At least I'm on facebook less now :P
Anyways, I guess you're wanting an overview of my life since I last blogged. Music camp lasted a week, and yes, there were music nerds there. Or music geeks. I have yet to determine the difference between nerds and geeks. Anyone care to enlighten? The camp was fun nonetheless. The food was amazing, as always. I memorized over 70 pages of music for choir and musical theatre. I practiced my violin for two and a half hours each day which is WAYYYY more than normal for me. I learned more music nerd-ish stuff during theory class. Oh, and some cool dance moves during theatre :P Fun times, fun times...

The next week was catching back up to the real world. Tough stuff out there, did you know that? No one ever told me life would be easy, but I never really considered how emotionally draining situations could be. And before these past few months I had never really felt a gazillion different emotions at once. Sorrow and anger go hand in hand sometimes, don't they?

Last week I worked the concessions stand at a Little League park with awesome co-workers Gen, Blake, and Evan. Funnel cakes don't smell so swell when they've been swarming around you for five hours every night. And nacho cheese sauce never really smells--or looks--great. And gigantic pickles aren't all that appealing. But it sure was nice to get a paycheck today :D And it was fun to be all professional-like and work a cash register. And watch the young umpires try to flirt with Gen and I--Good thing our brothers tagged along :P

Gen's deserting me next week to go to Seattle, WA. Ok, just kidding. She's not deserting me :P She IS going to Seattle, but it's her graduation/birthday present/vacation with my dad. I'll miss her though :( Today we went shopping to secure a few more memories before her departure. Old Navy, JoAnns, JC Penny, Ross, Target, and Panera were all on our itinerary. More fun times :)

And while she's off gallivanting in Seattle (with relatives), I'll be counseling at a day camp for 30 little eight to eleven-year-old music nerds :D Which should be a lot of fun. I shall tell you all about it at its conclusion :)


Praise God for His everlasting grace! And His daily reminders to extend that grace to everyone else.
Con amore,
Sophie

So long, farewell...

Dearest you,


(Tuesday)
Today I coaxed Gen into driving me to Jo-Anns in Rivergate to find several last items I needed for a sewing project...that's due the end of this week. :/ Somebody's procrastinating again... Anyways, I was designated Navigator, and with the help of Prudence, (haha, you thought I was referring to the characteristic :P Prudence is our GPS) we arrived--and left--safely. We took a couple wrong "turns", but were none worse for wear. Success!

Then we went to Cici's for lunch. Did you know that this pizza place is the most popular diner for police men? Yeaah, Gen and I were surrounded by men in blue uniforms...liiiitttle weird. But semi-comforting at the same time. You know, Gen and I could meander around the buffet without fear of our purses being stolen from the booths :P

Following our lunch with like ten cops, we went to Walmart, where this really old lady glared evilly at us (and possibly cussed--our windows were fortunately rolled up :) because we were driving in the parking lot where she wanted to walk. And then it started raining, a lot, and we had to run back to the car. I was wearing flip-flops with absolutely no whatever-those-groovy-bump-things-are on them. And so I chose the smart route--I removed my shoes and decided to run across the parking lot in the rain looking like a barefoot idiot rather than slip in a puddle and look like a bigger idiot. Smart choice? Smart choice.

As Gen was driving home on our street, she cautioned me about puddles on the road. "They may look shallow and harmless, but they're really out to get you." Ok, Gen, whatever you say :D

(Sunday)
This week I have been sewing like nuts. I had a temporary best friend for the week--Ruby. She's a bright red seam ripper. Yep. :D And then there's Miranda, a female mannequin. She was a lifesaver, particularly for Gen, who no longer had to be my model and risk injury by pins. I finally finished the prom dress for the contest, took pictures of it while I modeled, and submitted them. Now to cross my fingers until the finalists are announced :)

Tomorrow morning I leave for a week-long music camp. Yes, it sounds nerdy, but what can I say? Hours and hours of musical theatre, theory, ensemble groups, choir, concerts, and a jam-packed, deafening mess hall sounds like loads of fun, doesn't it? :P Really, it is fun :)
Oh, and by the way, all electronics are banned, including (but not limited to) cell phones, music players, and computers. So basically we have no contact with the outside world. I'll let you know how I survive next week :D

Farewell until I return!

Praise God for designs!

Con amore,
Sophie

puzzles

Dearest you,

Puzzles..........good stress relievers. There's something comforting about them--they're often challenging, but you know that no matter what, the pieces DO fit together. (Unless of course they don't go to the puzzle.) There's no complicated mystery, no unexplainable reasoning. Just jagged and abnormal pieces of cardboard shuffled together to form a picture.

Praise God for simple things--they prove life isn't composed of ONLY complex, un-logical (yes, I know 'tis "illogical"), and thoroughly-confusing matters.

Con amore,
Sophie

P.S. Of course there are MUCH deeper, more intelligently created "theories" of puzzles I could go into, but today their purpose is to relieve stress, not make life. understandable :P