Presenting my day, in point form.

• An early morning bus ride uptown
• A street proformer playing the didgeridoo at 9am
• A morning of volunteering for choir camp
• Attempting to lead a group of kids in a round for a song I don't know
• Cutting out a ton of cardboard for kids in crafts
• Witnessing a child declare that apples are evil and then taking handfuls of them
• Trying to get kids sit still for a half hour small scale string concert
• Failing miserably at keeping the kids under control  
•  Leaving camp after lunch to hang out with Maegan and Tatyana
• Getting pizza at Julius Pizza, where the pest control guy walked in while I was halfway through my pizza, me praying that he was just ordering food, and then him rifling around in the kitchen for a while and being addressed by the worker by name as she filled out paperwork.
• Colouring pictures in the library while witnessing two of my former youth group buddies having a small mental breakdown while putting a puzzle together that (1) didn't have a picture, (2) wouldn't stay together and (3) had a lot of pieces shaped as farm animals.
• Beginning a puzzle that was dogs dressed as the characters from the Wizard of Oz, mostly because it cracked us up.
• Writing a brief blog post for the library blog about colouring pages because it tickled my fancy at the time.
• Attempting to put together the demon puzzle with a group of five people.
• Seeing Will for the first time in over a month and realizing that there is no substitute for his brand of ridiculous.
• A BBQ with the IB kids
• Attempting to play sports and failing miserably.
•  Going to the beach and leading a couple to see Partridge Island (apparently they were from Indiana and travel to take pictures of lighthouses)
• Witnessing my (sort of) friend bring his hookah to smoke on the beach by his lonesome while the rest of us had a small Beatles dance party. Ghetto, broski.
• Starting our fire and taking turns admitting small embarrassing things about ourselves. (When she was little, one of my friends sucked on a barbie head and had to go to the hospital because barbie hair got tangled with her uvula. Nobody could beat that.)
• Driving home with Katie, stopping to run around a grocery store to get cookie dough and cake mix.

Love,
-J-

The Apple/Cheddar/Bacon Pie Chronicles

Today was one of those days that I left the house and embarked on a large series of things that hopped from one to another.

A bit after noon I went out with my mom to do errands and we ended up sitting in a food court arguing whether an entire room in our house is necessary for storage and if it's easier to get rid of things or store things. I was arguing that I have a future as a minimalist and she didn't believe it. 

My mom told me on the drive to the library that my grandparents' were wondering if I wanted to buy their car when they got rid of it. I responded very positively to that statement, but then I realized several things: (1) I don't know how much they want for it, (2) I don't know what condition it's in, (3) I don't know when they want to sell it and (4) I don't know if I have the money to maintain a vehicle (but I probably would if I got a job, but out of 25 places I have dropped applications, none have even called me back). I have come to the conclusion that if things fall into place, I will buy their car. Having a car would be a wonderful thing because my parents would stop complaining about driving me places, causing me guilt and I could get places without bumming rides from friends/their parents or taking the slow/infrequent/inconvenient bus that doesn't come after 6pm or on weekends. 

I hung around the library for a while until my volunteer hour where I was rather talkative. We toured the inner workings of the library and I then shelved books with Kaelen and ranted about how out friends are turning into crazed delinquents and the fact that I'm beginning to fangirl as much as her boyfriend because he isn't around to reach the fangirl quota that has been implemented in my life. After volunteering I sat in a little alcove until the library closed, listening to music and making pros and cons list about acquiring a car. When the library kicked me out, I got a chocolate chip muffin and sat in a rocking chair overlooking the lower floor of the mall, reading the first few pages of This Side of Paradise. 

It soon reached an acceptable time to seek out the house in which I was invited to supper. Despite the fact that it was only a few streets over, my directionally challenged self turned to google maps to assist with my predicament. After navigating several sketchy streets with people tossing their refuse aggressively out of tall windows in preparation for garbage collection, I reached Katie's house*. I arrived just in time to witness the making of an apple/cheddar/bacon pie. We collected a strange assortment of us between me, Katie, Moriah, Travis, the slightly stoned but well intentioned neighbour Marci and Charlo, the exchange student who was a bit shy but pleasant. We had a strangely good time eating pizza, playing little icebreaker games, being confused and skeptical of the apple/cheddar/bacon pie and watching one of Katie's program's concert because Travis (what a kid) dictated that we do so. At one point, we thought we heard gunshots outside (a few blocks away from a shooting a week ago). Someone ran to the window to see that it was only Marci's grandfather dragging his garbage down the stairs.

Moriah and I then walked a few houses down the street to Tatyana's to quickly catch up after she had gotten back from Ontario ridiculously early in the morning. We heard her entire recount of her month away and looked through her new dresses, pinpointing which ones we will steal briefly sometime in the future. She has the most amazing mint green dress that fits me well despite the fact that there is about a thirty or forty pound difference between me and her.

I finally made it home after ten hours of meandering. 

*At the church picnic on Saturday, she collected a few youth to eat supper at her house some night because she has an exchange student from Quebec staying with her for the summer and he isn't getting a lot of social interaction. I don't know her very well, but she is pretty cool. She plays cello, works as a teacher in an orchestra social program for underprivileged kids and is getting me tons of things to volunteer for. Moriah and I are helping with a choir camp next week, which sounds like a grand time.

Love,

-J-

Ivory Road - King Charles

Your life isn't fully enriched until you have heard this song.

Everytime I'm asked for dating advice, someone uses Comic Sans.

There's this dynamic in my youth group where several of the younger kids are always looking to the older kids for advice. Well, some of them are looking for advice while others are looking for validation.

Strangely, it seems like this asking/bragging is usually about dating, which is kind of funny, because these younger kids are compulsive daters while the older kids are mostly perpetually single. Moriah and I have developed a talk for these kids who seek our wisdom, which I have named "The Platonic Friendship Talk."

So it goes like this: one of the younger kids tells us about their latest dating disaster with innumerable complexities involving people we don't know and things we don't care about. As they near the end of their epic, we exchange glances with each other and eventually a nod.

Then we begin "The Platonic Friendship Talk." Moriah begins by telling them that they don't need to date people at their age and should focus on forming friendships that actually have potential to last. I shut down any of their statements of denial with (what some view as sarcasm but I view as) bitter reality.

Today, I gave a guy dating advice that ended with “Girls are not time shares.” Then I reevaluated my entire life and how I got to the moment where I was talking to someone who legitimately needed to hear the statement “Girls are not time shares” implanted in dating advice. A guy who is fifteen and began a conversation at a church picnic with "I'm a little hungover right now because I went to my ex-girlfriend's brother's nineteenth birthday party last night." It was followed by someone suggesting that he "bask in the patheticness" of the fore mentioned statement.

 Another thing I discovered today was the strong potential for the lives of Moriah, Allan and I to practically mirror multiple characters in 'How I Met Your Mother.' It's decided that I'm Robin, Moriah is Lily and Allan is Ted. The more I think about it, the more frighteningly accurate it is. I look forward to finding Marshall and Barney. I could then die happy.
Love,
-J-

Kung-fu and nose sweat

Today, things occurred.

It started with attempting to parallel park a mini van in a makeshift parking spot in an elementary school parking lot with my mom, who was freaking out while I kept my cool. Parallel parking a mini van isn't my idea of fun, at all, nor something that I plan on doing ever again. I then embarked on my last driving hour before my road test and the driving instructor passed me hesitantly. I was pumped beyond belief because I didn't think it would happen. I then got home, got ready to Moriah's for lunch and realized I had to take the bus which came by in the following five minutes. I ran to the bus stop in the insane humidity, walked for twenty minutes and arrived to her pleasant little garden luncheon, sweaty and drowsy. We ate a strange assortment of food and then lazed on blankets on the lawn for a while.

Tonight I went to the city's 'Idol' competition by the boardwalk with Katie and managed several things, while forgetting one basic principle of being around groups of people: when you are standing in a crowd, people around you can hear you when you talk. For example, I humored the guy standing in front of me because I was stating to Katie that my nose was sweating badly*. I forgot how strange things I say and comment on must sound to people who don't know me/ are under the influence of something**. There were this enthusiastic drunk woman standing on a bar patio behind us, singing along in a slurred, raspy shout.

When we were walking back to the car this group of kids in front of me suddenly assembled into stances suggesting that a game of Kung-fu was about to erupt. I jumped in, partially out of habit and partially out of not wanted to miss this opportunity to play a game of Kung-fu with strangers***. Katie rolled her eyes and stood watching me play Kung-fu with five teenaged guys, unbeknownst to either of us, at 10:30 at night, in a courtyard full of teenagers. The guys just rolled with it. I'm one of the cool kids, yo.

Then we drove home in our small dance party like manner.

I drank an ice capp at around 8pm and I'm still wired from the caffeine. Should be a fun night, considering that it's 12:45am. 

* As my nose is prone to doing when I wear my outrageous hipster glasses on humid days.
** I may have gotten a little second high from an old man smoking a joint while standing near me, in a crowd surrounded by security. This city's classiness never ceases to amaze me.
*** Strangely, this isn't the first incident of this (rather specific scenario) occurring. It also happened in a courtyard in Boston when people from my choir found another choir hanging around a mall. I won that game. It was one of the few moments in which I've truly shined.
Love,
-J-

Here are some of my better pictures from Ile-de-la-Madeline. 
Love,
-J-

Creative license to do anything

I've been going through this phase lately where I open a new post, write half a post, decide it's not worth posting and abandoning it. I have about four posts that I've abandonned since the last time I had the balls to hit "Publish."

I guess it's because I'm having this period where I have more time to sit around and ponder my existence than time where I have things planned. I have a lot of thoughts but I don't know which ones are blog-worthy. I guess I need to get out of my rut and just start posting and stop critiquing the creativity out of myself. For goodness sake, this is my blog and I can do whatever the heck I want here. I can do anything from pouring out my soul to posting unfocused pictures of my cat yawning. I have creative license to do anything.

How do you deal with writer's block? Any tips? 

I'll ponder that idea a bit more and hopefully have something worth posting in the next few days. Hitting the post button simply as an attempt to get out of my rut.  
Love,
-J-

"They don't deserve capes."

 As soon as I published the last post, the internet died for the rest of the week. Because of my grandfather's Alzheimers, my family pretty much had the same conversations everyday for the entire week. The monotony was making me die on the inside. I was left to comfort myself with 1984, something which is rarely used for comforting one, but it seemed to work. I also ate my weight in sunflower seeds because camping's constant proximately to the outdoors allows this to be done without the use of a spittoon.

I got my IB French mark back as soon as I got cell phone reception after the ferry on Friday. "The IB," being the sadistic trolls they are, give you three random numbers (only one that has previously meant anything) on the piece of paper that I was given at the end of the year. There were two blanks to get into the website and I used trial and error until one combination finally worked (it was the two numbers that meant nothing previously). Then it gave me an error because the server was so overloaded from anxious IB students wanting to know their fate. When I did finally get it (a 3/7, which is funny because I got a 81% in the course), I freaked out briefly, cursing belcurves, went into an all caps rage at Maegan over text, then realized that an IB French certificate actually has no use in my life and I calmed down. I've come to terms with it now and realize that I'm kind of an idiot for taking IB French in the first place.

On Saturday there was a barbaque with a bunch of my classmates. We ate normal barbeque stuff, Indian food, watched "Shutter" despite my screams of objection and my well known aversion to horror movies, played a bastardized version of basketball where tickling the opposing team was allowed, and sat on the deck until fairly late and had intelligent conversation. On the way home, Katie and I stopped for ice cream at McDonald's, who's ice cream machine was broken. I was sad, especially because Katie and James both work and McDonald's and were going to use their 50% discount for me. I want half price ice cream.

I like having friends who can drive because we can crank up the radio, have mini dance parties and nobody tells us to turn it down. No lie, that's actually the best part. When I get my license, I'm going to drive around town blasting dubstep and gangster rap, simply for the irony of a white girl driving a Jetta or an old Honda Odessy, blasting dubstep and gangster rap. Irony is such a good motivation. Being able to go places easily and getting out of my house when I can't stand it anymore will also be nice. (That said, my driving skills are kind of sad. I'm just kind of oblivious sometimes. Of all things that I could be reasonably untalented at, why something that most mildly intelligent life forms can accomplish?)

This part of town, this suburb on the edge of nowhere, not only proves to be the furthest proximately to anything interesting, but also the hardest to get away from. It's filled with hockey moms, old people, and ignorant teenagers who watch TV all day. Like 90% are grumpy, hate their lives, and have resigned to mediocrity.

I will end this post of unrelated snippets with a quote from my brother: "In a zombie apocalypse, I'm going to find a giant mutated sparrow and fly out of North America." What's even better is that he wrote a story about it in seventh grade and won a creative writing prize for it #swagger.
Love,
-J-

Wikipedia's List of Conspiracy Theories

An unnecessary vacation.

 Hello, lovelies. I'm on vacation (from what, I don't quite know) and I've come to the conclusion that family vacations are far overrated. Vacationing with people that don't bug me after several days of time in close quarters would be nice. This is going to sound pretty terrible, but my grandparents' lack of activity, my brother's incessant cluelessness/complaining, and my parents' insistence in only going on about a million beach walks is all annoying me. That won't stop from trying to enjoy the wonderful beaches that Iles-de-la-Madeleine has to offer.

I hate to be the whiny, unthankful, suburban, white kid here, but I'm only tolerating this vacation because I legitimately have nothing better to do with my time. The planning of this vacation was directed towards the middle aged/elderly audiences involved here. My brother, without a computer and an armchair to firmly attach himself to for 90% of waking hours has evolved into a blob of clueless, whiny being that I ignore most of the time. I feel like I'm acquiring a similar outlook on things as Holden Caulfield, so help me.

So far I've taken 418 pictures, rediscovered the joys of power naps (while listening to Sufjan Stevens and drooling an unusual amount), pretended that my hair is not disastrous but that windblown is the new sexy, listened to my grandfather repeat and forget pretty much everything, worn dresses and skirts to feel them blow in the wind, temporarily abandoned my vegetarian sprint for convenience (as well as my grandmother abundant opinions: "But God told us we could eat meat."), listened to my mom and grandmother gossip, acquired a small bruise from a camp chair, read a large amount out of lack of better things to do (finally finished Mostly Harmless, the last book in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), recorded interesting words I find in my reading (i.e. paroxysm), played ukulele by a campfire, listened to waves, encountered two separate dead whales on two separate beaches, realized that my family thinks I'm hilarious, discovered the extent of my introverted nature, and tried to embrace the fact that I'm not doing much until I get back on Saturday.

At least the beaches are beautiful.
Love,
-J-