Foot + Face = Pain

My oh-so-strange school offers a college course that enables me to have what I like to call "Shenanigan Time". I understand that the phrase "college course" isn't generally associated with shenanigans but I must remind you, my school is strange. We only have this class two out of five days a week so the other three days: Shenanigans happen. Monday was one of these days. I was sitting in the library with some of the other students from that class; Moran, Cassidy and Ryan. We were just sitting. Nothing dangerous at all. Until Ryan had the bright idea of "I bet I can pick you up Cassidy!" and then he proved it. I agreed: "Oh yeah, Cassidy is easy to pick up!" and I gave it my best shot. But she was to good for me. In less than three seconds she had me over her shoulders in a fireman's hold. By this point Ryan and Moran were already goofing off in their own little world. Cassidy started to drop me on my head. Ryan started to push Moran backwards. Then our two worlds collided and I either fell under Moran's descending foot or said foot descended onto my face. But when I tell the story, I usually go with the latter. And she didn't just take a step backwards to catch her balance. It was a curb stomp. She was vaguely aware that someone's face was on the floor behind her as she fell, so naturally, she attempted to prevent this imminent collision. But precariously leaning over backwards while standing on one leg is no way to stop an accident from occurring. So Moran completely lost her balance, the elevated foot landing squarely on my face with the amount of force that a wrecking ball might exert on a building that it's knocking over. Only by the miracles of heaven was I able to walk away from the impact with all my blood contained and my eye barely bruised. My three friends each decided that they were to blame (even though I brought it upon myself)so they promptly went to our English teacher's room and made me a "We're Sorry" card that I shall keep forever. Nevertheless, I love my friends. When they don't curb stomp my face.

Alarm Clock Encounters

So my alarm clock is quite possibly the most incredibly disruptive vexation I have ever encountered. I'm relatively certain that every other teenager has similar thoughts each morning but none as thoroughly ridiculous as mine. From the moment I wake up to the time I arrive at school, my brain is entirely incapable of function. I have been the main character in a series of comical escapades involving me walking around in an unrealistic haze. (My friends have described it as "getting high off sleep"). You probably get the point by now, so here are my morning shenanigans.

The Force
Typically, I unplug my alarm clock during the weekend because I have photophobia when I'm trying to go to sleep and the little blue screen displaying the time is intolerable. One night when I had a sleepover, I had forgotten not only to unplug my clock, but also to turn off my alarm which is set at an unreasonably early hour. We had stayed up into the wee hours of the morning as is custom at sleepovers, so when the alarm woke us up hours before the sun was supposed to, I was more out of sorts than usual. As the alarm diligently proceeded to beep at our faces, I decided, like anybody would, to turn it off. So what did I do? I held my palm toward the clock and thought really, really hard about it turning off. My friend asked me if I was going to stop it and when I said that yes, that was indeed what I was doing, she realized that I was "high off sleep" so she unplugged it for me. I didn't see her complete this action so I thought that I had done it with my mind. Satisfied with my work, I went back to sleep. When I actually woke up, I vaguely remembered having a dream about Star Wars and quickly realized that I had thought that I was a Jedi the first time I woke up and that I had tried to use The Force to turn my alarm off.

Photoshop
I am an avid photographer and Photoshop is one of my best friends. So one morning while I was doing my hair and washing my face and other stuff people do while looking in the mirror, I had the brilliant idea to remove my acne! So I proceeded to use the healing tool (a tool in photoshop that blends imperfections into the rest of the image by sampling the surrounding area) by reaching for the computer mouse, but when I didn't find it, I immediately realized that "Oh, this is real life." and "No, I can't substitute make-up for Photoshop because I am not a digital image."
Now, I desperately wish that there was a real-life Photoshop that I could install into my mirror and use to fix blemishes because I truly hate make-up.

I Hate Ryan
Do not be deceived. I am a nerd. I am part of the classical jazz band at our school. I am the pianist. So one lovely Tuesday night, I dreamed about said band. In fact, I was having this dream at the moment my alarm clock went off. At this time in my dream, one of my dear friends, Ryan, was playing his viola. It sounded so lovely! Until it didn't. And when his playing didn't sound lovely anymore, he sounded just like my alarm clock. So I woke up. But Ryan would not stop playing his viola! I slapped the snooze button with all the force I could muster at 5:30 in the morning and proceeded to sleep. But Ryan would not stop playing his viola. I attacked the snooze button again. And Ryan still would not stop playing his viola! This went on until I had hit snooze at least seven times. That is when I was able to gather the only little shred of confidence that I could find and realize that Ryan was not the one waking me up. In fact, he was probably still asleep. But I was still really mad at him. All day.

Beyond the North Star

I know the title sounds super dramatic, but this is not some rant about the beautiful complexity of the galaxies or a theatrical poem describing the wonder of the universe. This is a journal I found about two days ago. I wrote it at the very (VERY) end of my freshman year. May 24th, 2011 to be exact. I was on an adventure trip with my school and was completely amazed at how strange it seemed. (Yes. "Adventure" and "School" were just used in the same sentence.) We are a very unique school to put it lightly. We take one week off each quarter to have a lot of fun and we call them "Intensives" to make them sound scary. The first week of school, we all go camping. The next three are our choice. We are allowed one "Adventure Trip" of the three Intensives. Our school shares a name with the North Star hence the histrionic title. Anyway, enough ranting about how cool my school is. Here's the journal.

I'm supposed to be in Montana right now. But it seems that the highway is underwater so we had to reexamine our options. Plan B was to go to Moab, Utah. Plan L was to come here, to the Great Sand Dunes of Southern Colorado. So last night, instead of learning about General Custer's last stand, we took a night hike out to the dunes. AND EVERY STAR IN THE WHOLE WIDE UNIVERSE HAD COLLECTED ABOVE OUR HEADS. It was gorgeous. And strange. (Because who was pointing out the constellations to us? Our world politics teacher of course! Who else?) But mostly gorgeous. If I was still at Poudre, I know exactly what I would be doing! I would be losing sleep over the pointless final project that was assigned months before that I'd never started even though it was due the next day. If someone at Poudre had told me that in five months, I would be a GOOD student going on a cross-state adventure with my classmates, I would probably start to think they were "special" if you know what I mean. And now here I am, sitting at a campsite far, far away from Montana; my teachers napping fast asleep in a tent not 10 feet away from me, a girl from my math class reading a book next to me and some crazy middle school boys are at a site across the road, digging a hole in the sand. Before you say that's crazy, it's even crazier that I'm supposed to be in Montana with these people, pretending to be a Crow scout while learning about American History through a reenactment of the Battle at Little Big Horn and NOT through a textbook. Right about now, my Poudre friends are headed home to study for finals and I am dumping sand from my shoes while discussing whether or not we should go to a Gator farm tomorrow. I love school for the first time in my life.