Baked Veggie Puffs!

My family and I have recently decided to lead healthier lives.

As we went grocery shopping last night we looked for healthier alternatives to some of the foods we usually eat.

I absolutely love chips but don't eat them because of their insane calorie count and fats.

When I saw veggie puffs I was insanely excited! 

I know that these are still not something that would be considered "healthy," but it's a great feeling to know that I can have chips and not be worried about the amount I eat.

I highly recommend these to anyone!

They are delicious!!

Prison, Jail, Slavery, The Exeter Pen....School

Senioritis...

As I go throughout my senior year of high-school I find myself suffering from senioritis more and more every day.

If it weren't for the fact that I only have two more months left to go I am sure that this disease would kill me.

I no longer care about mathematics or how the economy works.

(P.S. I have never really cared for mathematics)

Going to school from 8:10 to 3:30 simply makes me want to take a bath in boiling water.

(Total exaggeration, just for those who may take that seriously)

Yet there is one thing that I will miss about high-school.

Not seeing my friends every day will put a damper on my days.

Kaitlyn - the beautiful blonde in blue

Mr. S - our loyal principal 

Me - in the pink scarf

Hunter - the care-free doll to my right 

These wonderful girls have made my senior year a little brighter and a whole lot more entertaining.

They have the ability to make me laugh when all I want to do is cry.

Smile when all I want to do is hide.

Friends, the family that you can choose.

I am proud to call these girls my family.

They make my weekly stay at the Exeter Pen. worth while. 

To Feel

"You hurt my feeling."

The first time my father said this I had to stop and ask him to repeat himself.

Yes, he had indeed said, "feeling."

I asked him if he had meant to use the singular version of the word, and he confirmed my question with  such enthusiasm that I couldn't help but chuckle.

If only it were that simple.

To only be able to experience a single feeling at once.

The range of human emotion has always baffled me.

How can someone feel happy, disappointed, and angry all at once?

When asked how you are feeling how can you simply respond with a single answer?

If you take a moment to truly ponder how you are feeling the array of sensations all taking place at once is dizzying.

Often when I experience something unpleasant my first reaction is anger.

Yet once I take a mere second to really ask myself what it is that I am feeling, anger is usually just a tiny portion of the underlying emotions that are pooling around me.

It is so much easier to revert to simple emotions such as: happy, sad, angry, than it is to feel everything that you are undergoing.

So why exactly is it that the human mind conjures up so many different emotions to particular situations?

Would it be easier to be a creature that did not feel, but instead relied simply on logic?

Or is it this crazy spectrum of madness that makes us what and who we are?

Once Upon A Time...

Once upon a time....


Every story I cherished growing up started just like this,  “Once upon a time.”  There was always a man whose charm and whit made him loved by the most beautiful of maidens.  As a young girl growing into a young woman I was filled with this longing to find my one and only.  Something that I hadn’t realized though was I had found the man I would love unconditionally forever when I was six years old.  This wasn’t a half-hearted kind of love that would fade over time, it was a love that exists between two people with an unbreakable bond.

If you had asked me yesterday if I thought love at first sight was actually relevant I would have laughed in your face.  But as I sit here and seriously consider the notion I realize that it happens often.  Every time a mother first glimpses her newborn baby I can only imagine the kind of happiness and love that consumers her heart.  Yet I have a notion of what that overwhelming sensation on love would feel like.  The first time I saw my baby brother it was as if God himself had come to Earth to grant me the opportunity to become something so much more than I had intended.  He had given me a reason to achieve beyond my goals and make the best out of my life so that I could give him all I could.  I wanted to be the kind of person that he would always be proud to say, “That is my big sister.”

As the years went by I got to watch a beautiful baby turn into a handsome young man.  He is kind, honest and loving.  Qualities that many young men to not posses today.  The more he grows the more we become equals.  I am able to come to him when I need a shoulder to cry on and he always has an open ear to listen to me when I need to talk.  He is more than just my brother, he is my best friend.  So as I sit here and contemplate what truly loving someone means, I automatically think of the unconditional and never ending love I have for my baby brother.

Quotes

"Inside each of us is a monster; inside each of us is a saint.  The real question is which one we nurture the most, which one will smite the other."

~ THE STORYTELLER BY: JODI PICOULT

"I believe in pink.  I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner.  I believe in kissing, kissing a lot.  I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong.  I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls.  I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles."

~ AUDREY HEPBURN

"Thousands of candles can be lighted from a single candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened.  Happiness never decreases by being shared."

~ BUDDHA 

"The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money."

~ THOMAS JEFFERSON

"Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls."

~ JOSEPH CAMPBELL

"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself."

~ PLATO

"I learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.  The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear."

~ NELSON MANDELA

"I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly."

~ WINSTON CHURCHILL

"Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too."

~ H.L. MENCKEN

"Love is like war; easy to begin but very hard to stop."

~ H.L. MENCKEN

Secrets

"Three may keep a secret, if two of them are dead."

~Benjamin Franklin

Have you ever had a secret that could potentially be catastrophic if the wrong person found out?

A secret so utterly selfish that it makes you shutter at the mere thought of ever speaking this repungent truth out loud?

I have one of these nasty little secrets.

Buried deep within the walls of my mind it lies waiting for the moment to rear its ugly head.

Sometimes, when I let my mind wander, this secret tends to play upon my imagination.

Conjuring notions that my usual logic would reproach immediately.

Yet once upon a blue moon I let this secret play out it's theatrical work.

It's akin to sweet music enfolding me in the softest of silk.

I close my eyes and feel a happiness that I once believed was impossible.

The sun feels warmer, the air cleaner, the flowers smell sweeter.

I have never been able to see the end of my secret's play.

It's almost the same as when you are falling in a dream and right before you are about to hit the ground you jolt awake.

Rationality and empathy stir inside me.

They put to rest the desires that haunt me.

The desires that are always on the brink of my destruction. 

A Silly Little Thing They Call Love

Love:

For something as simple as one might envision love to be, there seems to be an abundant number of definitions in the dictionary.

At a recent speech tournament there was a young woman who had the audience close their eyes and think about their perception of the word "love" as a color.

As one might suspect the immediate color that I believe came to most minds was the color red.

There was not just a single color that came to my mind, nor was it just a fleeting image of a color.

Yes, there was red.

Mostly there was a vortex of swirling, sharp black, with flecks of crimson red swimming within the shards of black that cut the edges of my mind.

This sudden tornado of feeling did not help my already unsteady nerves.

On the long ride home I found myself trying to figure out why in the world I had such a strong reaction to such a simple request.

All I was asked to do was envision the word "love" as a color.

There is no use trying to deny that I have troubles, and that's putting it very nicely, with letting people into my life.

Why is it that when I think of love I am consumed with irrational fear?

Most girls my age are engaged in relationships, planning their imaginary weddings, and picturing their lives 10 years from now.

There are very few people I truly love outside of my immediate family.

I could probably count them on one hand actually.

To some that may sound horrible, but I have a terrible time of putting things kindly.

Honesty is my course of action.

Honesty....

Maybe that will be my next topic of discussion.