All Right, Things Are About To Get Sarcastic

The only thing more fun than getting added to the SENIOR LADIES <3 group on Facebook is the fun times discussing t-shirt ideas and browsing through picture after picture of various tie dyes.
Nothing is more fun.
I honestly don't care how the Senior Ladies (Definitely how that should actually be typed) shirts turn out but I did have a fabulous time watching my fellow peers fight via a social networking site about the color scheme and slogan of a t-shirt we can only wear for one year of our lives.
Updates: The ladies are leaning towards tie dye for sure, but the font and saying are still up in the air.
Some ideas include: C14SSY, SW14G, and, well, those are the ideas being discussed right now. Yay creativity, individuality, and a desire to be ourselves.
I just want my shirt to say, "GETTING CLOSER TO MY RELEASE" or a simple "FREEDOM IS NEARING". That really should be the basis of our theme. Gosh darn it I should be posting.
There also was a controversy over who the leader of the group and creator of the t-shirts should be. I'm just sitting over here reading the posts and wondering why any of this matters until at least five months from now.
We literally don't need these shirts until at least the last week of school and this "pressing issue" definitely doesn't need to be something to fuss over.
I don't think they all know they're only halfway through junior year.
I feel like I am painfully aware of that fact, while these ladies are already feeling high school nostalgia.
Woof.

Am I Ready To Push Boundaries?

This is what an email (spam) asked of me today when I was scrolling through my Inbox and deleting all of the emails colleges send me that urge me to "grab hold of my future" and "be proactive".
It can't be my fault that seemingly every college in America has grabbed hold of my email address and will not let go no matter how much I beg. I should really email them all back and say that they have the wrong girl, I'm just a delinquent who has terrible grades and beats up people.
That probably wouldn't stop them though, what with their relentless search to find "the right Madeline".
And that's the most annoying thing. They refer to me as "Madeline". The only people who call me that are my teachers when they go through their class list on the first day, my father when I've done something wrong, and my friends when they want to make fun of me. As you can see I feel personally attacked when a college or university doesn't take the time to figure out my nickname. Since they care so much about me and want to "Give me a competitive edge" and "Design an education plan for me" you would think that my feelings would be a higher priority.
I do intend to attend college, don't get me wrong. I just don't like getting badgered with emails that at one point may have made me feel special (lies) or that I was being let in on a secret, but now I have seen through their thinly veiled attempts at flattery and will make my own college decisions far away from my now corrupt Inbox.

Yeah, I've definitely won this battle.

A Life Without Chocolate (And What It's Done To Me)

As I've been thinking about it, it's been five or so months (including this month which I basically consider to be over) since I've been running.
And it feels pretty good.
I doubt I'm gonna be racking on the pounds anytime soon though, since just last Wednesday I joined my German exchange student, Franzi, on a mystical journey I like to call being a vegan. I'm not Catholic but she is, so I decided to join her in her efforts to both give something up for lent and "get in shape". I for one definitely feel different. I'm hungry almost all the time and I sometimes I go into strange trances where I find myself standing in front of the refrigerator. But I think I'm doing okay.
Franzi is too, except a few days ago when I saw sitting with her laptop at the kitchen table before breakfast. I went behind her to see her screen and discovered her looking at pictures of chocolate online. I didn't know what to say.
I guess this vegan thing should be easier for me. A couple years ago I went vegan with another one of my friends and the two of us lasted for a little over five months. I felt incredibly fit and was at least five pounds lighter than when I started, which was before the Track season and after the Nordic season. By the time the Track season rolled around, I had the beginnings of a six pack and a heck of a lot of self control. That season I ran the best I had ever had (which wasn't that great but really pretty good for me), my mile PR at 6:33.
When the season ended I had a lot of both pride, and a strong desire for chicken. So I quit being a vegan. With the season over, I wasn't running everyday and I did basically nothing until school started up again in the fall, with it bringing Cross Country and a rude awakening that I probably should've been running. Whatever.
And the great thing about lent if you didn't know (I didn't know until somebody told me) is that on Sundays, one can have off their duties of giving something up. At around 4:00 this past Sunday my father told me this wonderful rule and pretty soon after that I called up my friend and she brought over chocolate. It was a good night.

That is all.

Special Talents

For a long time I've wondered if I have any special talents that aren't commonly possessed by a large population of people. I can solve fifteen puzzles pretty fast (not as cool as the Rubik's Cube, which can really impress people), I have really straight teeth, my hair has the ability to grow incredibly long, and I can do a cartwheel from my 3 1/2 years in gymnastics. But I just don't have all of the cool abilities that you hear of some people having, like break dancing, tap dancing, and beet boxing, among others. This is especially true in several domains of my life such as woodworking, measuring, drawing hands or faces, hairstyling, and team sports. In these ways I have absolutely no talent and will bring shame to my family if ever asked to perform one of these above tasks. I'm not kidding in the slightest about woodworking or team sports. For some reason I find it to be incredibly difficult to build things out of wood or play on a team for any sport ever imagined or proposed. If I ever was to be on your soccer team for whatever reason, never make me the goalie because I will singlehandedly lose the game for you.
I'm not too ashamed of my inability to play team sports though. I don't really see a point to possessing that skill unless you're in gym class. And after I got my two credits of gym freshman year, I was promised that I never had to take it again.
Team sports inject a tremendous amount of unneeded stress into the veins of insecure and physically weak girls like me. Competition, when the word is spoken, echoes in the most unpleasant way in my eardrums like the memory and premonition of past and future failures. Like my inability to effectively toss a frisbee, a football, and a baseball year after year since I was indoctrinated into the every-other-day gym class religion that is headed up by people that yearn for physically related achievements. These people are called "gym teachers", and are a specific kind of person that both spew incredible amounts of pep and manage to stay in shape as the years go by. If Michelle Obama wasn't a president's wife (and there is absolutely no research or added information going into this opinion), she would be a "gym teacher". Maybe not a literal gym teacher, but definitely one of those people that pushes for widespread exercise and healthy eating habits.
Like she does currently.
So today I urge you to look inside yourselves in order to discover what type of person you are. Did you enjoy gym class when you were forced to take it (also could be rephrased to ask, "Are you a boy?" or "Did you once aspire to become a gym teacher?")? Or are you one of those people that enjoys chocolate, reading for leisure, and playing indoors? I can assure you, I am the latter.

The ACT, Babysitting, and 10 Things I Hate About You

There is one thing I would like to say.
Never spend your Saturday taking the ACT followed by babysitting for nine hours. That night I slept like I hadn't slept in years.
After I spent the morning squinting at graphs and filling in tiny bubbles with a #2 pencil, I scarfed down a subway and strolled on down to my neighbor's. I usually babysit for them at least once a week and the three kids get along pretty well with me.
Until bedtime rolls around.
Then I go from the sweet, loving babysitter to evil, mean babysitter in a matter of seconds. All it takes is the phrase, "Bedtime" and one or more of them begins to cry.
The scene is always the same. I stand up and tell them to come with me because they need to go to bed. They begin to tear up and shout excuses in hopes of getting more time with their toys. I have none of it and tell them that if they don't come I will pick them up in a very humiliating way and aren't you a big girl/boy? This usually gets them up the stairs and into their pajamas. After that is a frenzy of books, night-lights, and songs. After we debate the amount of books I agree to read to them (usually two picture books or two chapters out of a chapter book), I usually get begged to sing. I only know a few and the one I usually result to singing is "When Will My Life Begin" from Tangled.
This is always a crowd pleaser. Every time I sing it, the oldest usually asks if I am Rapunzel. I say no.
After all three are tucked away in bed, I faint on the closest couch and lay there for a few minutes. Then I get up and pop in a movie to pass the time before the parents come home. The latest movie I chose was 10 Things I Hate About You.

I get ten or so minutes in before I hear a noise on the stairs. My head pops up and I turn the movie down. The oldest stumbles in with her blanket and my little pony.
This is not news to me. She simply loves to stay up late and make up excuses to persuade me to let her stick around. She asks, in sweetest voice you'll ever hear, if she can watch with me. I know that this particular movie is not one a child should watch for a variety of reasons. Plus she should be in bed. I tell her no and that she should go back to bed. She sits down next to me and tells me that she could hear it in her room. I repeat what I said before.
She looks to the screen and asks, "Are you watching the real Olympics?"
I tell her no.
"Is this your movie?" She asks me.
"No, this is your parent's movie." I answer.
"Oh." She says, staring fixedly on the screen.
Before she caught any offensive scenes that no doubt would conjure a wide variety of questions I didn't want to answer, I told her to go back to her room. This time she did, obviously no longer intrigued by the 90's.

Nerdy Yet Deceitful

It was today that I decided I would search online for a nice, quality movie poster to hang on my closet door. And...BAM! I entered into an entirely new world of stress and lies.

Buying things online is incredibly stressful for me for a number of reasons.
1. You honestly have no idea what you're getting. All you see is a 2" picture that could've just as easily been taken of someone else's random item.
2. I, personally, like to get a feel for something before I spend good money on it. All I can do now is stare at the tiny picture and hope for the best.
3. Things randomly appear in different languages and I get very near to buying it before realizing it's in Swedish.
4. No matter where I seem to order things from, it always happens to be from very far away and have a sketchy sounding name.
5. All of the options stress me out and lead me to regret completing my order.
6. I just hate spending money.*

I can just imagine the nerdy yet deceitful people that sell things online, just waiting for unsuspecting people like me to give them money. One of these days I'm going to sell a bunch of really crappy stuff, tell everyone it's amazing stuff, and get my revenge.

*It's my parent's money I am referring to, but the guilt is still very much there.

2:2

As per usual, my schedule this semester follows the 2:2 fantastic to sucky ratio. A fantastic class is one that I actually enjoy attending, while a sucky class is one that I am forced to endure, mostly because I would like to graduate high school. But fate sometimes smiles upon me and divvies the classes up so throughout the day I switch between fantastic and sucky classes and don't end up stabbing myself with my pencil.
I imagine if my math class was any longer, I would end up stabbing myself with my pencil.
My math class isn't even held in a math classroom. It's held in a World History classroom so there are no posters of math stuff to possibly provide hints on test days.
Then there is my Spanish class. First block, furthest possible classroom from where I park my car, several flights of stairs...
No me gusta subir escaleras o el aprendizaje de español.
So many more weeks to go.
But never fear! I also happen to be taking History and Literature of Film (29 movies, full semester, talk about major chillin) and Range of Poetry (So very much enjoyed).
The great thing about taking a poetry class is that instead of wasting my time on Facebook instead of doing my homework, I now waste my time reading poetry. I feel like that's an improvement.

"Don't tell me what to do"

Listening to my German exchange student, Franzi, attempt to figure out what a German word translates to in English has become one of my favorite activities. Some things don't translate directly and this results in confusion. We both work together and teach each other words and about the varying cultures in our two countries. Today, we caught up on some reruns of Drake & Josh and The Suite Life of Zack and Cody and realized that both of these shows (That shaped my entire childhood), are shown in Germany too.

And the other day we were talking about words that are combined in German and spoken separate in English. For example, it was brought to my attention that in German, there is a word that describes finding happiness in the misfortunes of others. At first I found it kind of sad, but now, I'm pretty disappointed the English language hasn't given a word to this concept yet, since most people definitely experience it all the time.

Because there was an abundance of them on google:

And some suite life:

Dat haircut: