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-