Honestly February, WHAT IS YOUR PROBLEM. LEAVE NOW.

….

And nevaah….come backkkkk!!

So, the last time I had a cold my sickness went sort of like this:

• Wake up feeling sick
• Register alarm
• Drink many liters of tea and water
• Go to bed
• Wake up the next morning feeling not sick

Obviously, the tea and water part are key….my pet theory is that the clear fluids flush your body of evil sickness causing things, thereby making you better.

I still believe that even though I took Bio I and am nearly done with Advanced Bio.

Anywho, Tuesday I saw the place where my mum had written “Clean Me” in the dust on the top of my desk, and I took that to heart, and cheerfully turned my room upside down. The upshot being that my room is now rather wonderfully neat and tidy…the downside is that I’m rather severly allergic to dust. And I found a whole lot of dustbunnies in my room. That got disturbed and flew up into the air. And then I got to breathe them in. So, I spent the rest of the day sniffing theatrically and frantically blowing my nose, hoping to expel the nasty bits of dust.

The next morning, I woke up and my throat was sore and my nose was stuffy and I was like “CRAP” only with somewhat more lurid phrasing….actually not that much more lurid, I just wanted to say that because I thought it was a cool phrase

My pet theory for this is that there were cold germs hiding with the dustbunnies, and when the dust got disturbed and flew into the air so did the cold germs. Although this probably isn’t the case, as many of my NBYO friends seem to be registering sickness as well. So it’s probably something that went around all of us on the weekend.

I therefore went into fullout panic mode (No, I will not be sick, no no no no I AM NOT SICK) and tried to implement my strategy.

However this time it hasn’t worked as well…it’s gone something more like this:

• Register sickness
• PAAAAANNNIIICCCCC
• Remember that you implemented a plan for this sort of happening
• Gulp tea frantically
• Get busy doing something else
• Realize you’re not drinking enough tea
• Get more tea
• Get doing something else
• Realize you’re not drinking tea
• Go to get more tea only to see there is no more tea
• Drink water while you wait for more tea
• Do other stuff
• Freak out because you haven’t drunk enough tea
• Drink your last bit chai tea from your birthday because you are sick and you deserve chai tea
• Register still being sick the next morning.
• Panic more

I feel like if I had just had a little more tea yesterday I’d be fine today….

Happily my dad bought a bunch of chai tea today and I am gleefully trying to decide whether chai tea with honey or sugar is better. I’m thinking sugar at the moment because the honey imparts a distinct flavour that messes with the chai flavour of the tea. Honey is good in orange pekoe, which is what I drink in the mornings and when I feel like sharing the tea I make. Chai tea is mine. I don’t share chai tea.

Actually, I don’t think any of my other family members like chai tea, so I think my tea is safe from them.

I’m feeling very worried. I don’t function well when I’m sick; I get the fabled “man cold”. So today I sort of did school…and then collapsed in a heap on the couch and had a nap. Then a TELEMARKETER called and WOKE ME UP.

I hung up rudely. In my defense I was mostly asleep and rather sick.

I don’ wanna be sick no more….*pouts*

I sent an awkward e-mail to my teacher being all like “hi, I can’t come to orchestra, is that okay, okay bye”…..so now I’m home on the couch with my mug of chai tea (sugared) a blanket, and the computer.

I’m contemplating warm milk with honey before bed.

And I hope this stupid cold-and February-go right back where they came from.

Hiding in a corner behind my bookshelf, waiting to be sucked up by the vaccuum and carried off to the landfill where they will DIEEEEEE.

Anyways, my dentist has always sort of freaked me out. She has a very…intense…personality, and likes to have everything exactly her own way. Since my jaw has been messed up since I was about six, she’s been singlehandedly trying to force appliances on me, which has been a little nervewracking, since nearly every time I’ve seen her she’s told me that I Must Do This Thing To My Mouth, even though it totally contradicted what my orthodontist would say. This was necessarily intimidating.

Here now, are some lame things my dentist said to me today

“You need to toughen up your gums, they’re looking really tender.”

Oh gee, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize I wasn’t allowed to feel pain when you STICK POINTY THINGS INTO MY FACE. I mean, seriously, you’re digging around in my mouth with a very very dangerous looking sharp metal pick, and you expect me to be all like, oh, nbd, I never feel pain because I am awesome?? Honestly, usually when I get poked with sharp things, I WINCE. Got it? That’s just how these things work. Don’t say that to me again the next time you stab me with a metal pick. I might bite you.

“Do you drink tea? Yes? Well, you need to drink it through a straw. It’s staining your teeth.”

Tea. Through. A. Straw. What is wrong with you….yes I realize you’re not a tea drinker, but if you’ve ever in your life drunk coffee or hot chocolate you must realize that it DOES NOT WORK THROUGH A STRAW. Tea through a straw is like trying to eat soup with a fork. It fails. Epicly. All the enjoyment is gone. You might as well have just told me to straight up stop drinking tea, although I’m sure those words were on the tip of your tongue.

For the record, I don’t plan on starting to drink tea through a straw. This is going to be one of those times when I ignore my dentist. Sue me.

“Don’t turn off the suction until you take it out of your mouth.”

This isn’t actually a dumb thing, its actually a really smart thing. She said it while wiping my face after I spewed pale green drool all over my chin. It was embarrassing.

“mmfummmfmfffheadmmghdfffmmaurghturnmmmghtrmedkmurf.”

Oh sorry, you want me to turn my head? I couldn’t hear you over all the scary dental noises. I don’t even know what direction you want me to turn in. Tilt my head up? Or down…wait, what? Please speak louder.

Then of course, while she was doing something to me, there was that epic incident where I thought I was going to die…see, she was using this machine that spewed a fine layer of mist in its path, and she was doing my top teeth…I think it was a stain removing somethingorother. Somehow the mist was spraying right up my nose, and I was like “Oh crap, I’m going to drown at the dentist, how sad is that” and I made a noise that to me perfectly summed up my feelings of “I’m drowning right now but if I make a really loud sound it might startle you and you might stab me again with the pointy metal whirring thing in my mouth and I don’t want that to happen so I hope you hear me before I drown”.

At any rate, they realized that what I was breathing in was mostly water, and either my dentist or dental hygienist had the totally brilliant idea that if they laid a kleenex over my nose, it would block the water and I would be able to resume the process of breathing. So, fears of drowning momentarily allayed, they continued on doing whatever it was they were doing, until it happened.

The kleenex got wet enough that it started sticking to my nose when I would breathe in, and I literally could not breathe. No air. At all. So I started to panic. What do I do? They’re working right in the way of my nose, so if I try to pull the kleenex off I won’t be able to reach it because they’re in the way, and then I’ll mess them up, and then it’ll get really bad.

But then I really really couldn’t breathe, and so I sort of wildly grasped at my nose and totally missed, but the dental hygienist got my drift, and pulled the kleenex free. This made things alright for about two breaths, and then it started sticking again, and I repeated the process. While this all was happening, I was wondering if they would have noticed if I had passed out, or would they have just kept on cleaning my teeth, while I slowly suffocated. The corpse would be growing cold, and all they would care about was the tea stains on my front teeth.

Then they removed the kleenex, and I heaved a literal sigh of relief.

Anywho, that was my day at the dentist.

It came after a crazy weekend involving NBYO, cool hipster rappers (yes, hipster rappers. It was a wee bit disconcerting at the first), and a totally embarrasing out of character incident that sort of happened in front of hundreds of people. I was reassured that this incident was not actually bad but actually sort of cool, however, I’m not posting what it was here. If you really want to know what it is, you’ll have to contact me personally in some way, and I will have to determine whether I can trust you before you can find out. Let it just be known that I was totally mortified. I realize that part of being a teen is embarrassing yourself in front of people, however, for most people it doesn’t happen in front of hundreds of people.

Then yesterday I played in a quartet in a wedding that went on. For. Ever. It was crazy. I had a ripping headache the whole time. When I got home I was so tired I cried. No reason for it. I was just so tired that I felt like crying. So I did. I then had a bubblebath and hot chocolate, and felt much better.

Anyhow, that was my day/weekend.

Happy almost Hunger Games everyone!

Last February, I felt like this. Plus I had pneumonia.

Eleven months is so not enough space between the most craptastical month of the year. In fact, I could happily live the rest of my life without another freaking February. Sorry to those of you who actually like February. You’re nuts. No offense.

I’m trying to not have a repeat of last year’s month of sadness…but I fear it’s a losing battle.

Today is the second, correct?

Well, already February is making it’s stupid presence known.

I was really really happy all morning (getting 100% and 99.5% on two tests in a row is conducive to happiness) and then I was doing all sorts of stupid paperwork for my music festival submissions, and I was timing my pieces, and realized that all but one of them is too long for the final concert at the end. Which sounds sort of silly and pretentious but seeing as I’ve played in the concert the past two years I was kind of hoping to get in again this year, as it’s my last year in the category and all that. But now there’s only one song short enough, and it’s solo Bach, and solo Bach is never ever going to get in the final concert. And it would suck to play it in the final concert anyways because everyone else plays really dramatic showy concerto-y stuff.

Anyways, that was enough to send me into a spiral of apathy and sadness for the rest of the afternoon. Even watching Ellen and drinking hot chocolate was not enough to cheer me up (it didn’t help that the hot chocolate was watery because there was basically no powder left in the tin). Internetz and yarnings were ineffectual as well. Finally, being all alone since about 1pm hasn’t helped either. It’s a lot easier to act normally around people than while alone.

So now I am frantically listening to Josh Groban, because Josh Groban is A Happy Thing. And I just bopped back and forth, which is A Hopeful Thing.

And oh, February? What the heck, why are you one day longer this year??? Seriously, if that is your idea of a joke, IT’S NOT FUNNY. GET OVER YOURSELF. And for goodness sake, go back to being 28 days.

Okay, only 27 more days, and then you leave, February. *breathes in deeply* March is coming and it will pwn you, Febby!

Namely, bundle up and go for a totally epic walk in the snow, and take random cool pictures.

Now, I realize this is probably a very odd thing to do, but somehow I enjoy it. It gives me a rare feeling of adventurousness and awesomeness that I don’t get many other places. Looking down at yourself covered in flakey bits of ice is a joy pretty much unparalleled in winterness.

Of course, the awesome gets multiplied by about 1000 if you’re wearing what I was wearing today, which was a big floufy pink skirt, long blue peacoat, purple scarf, wildy colorful gloves, and a pink cloche with a bow.

Walking around in the snow is way more fun in a long skirt. Plus you get really weird looks from people in cars driving past, which is just another bonus.

So yeah, I walked out the door to go for my walk, and pretty much made a huge rookie mistake right off. Namely, I was so excited to be outside in the snow, that I started skipping. I’m pretty sure you know what happened next.

Yes, I fell on my butt. So what else is new?

Picking myself up, I chided myself gently for being a complete and total idiot for skipping, and went sedately on my way.

There’s something faintly magical about going for a walk in a snowstorm. The light is all greyish and pretty, and there’s wee bits of fluffy white stuff falling from the sky. Nobody else is out walking at this point because who wants to go for a walk in a snowstorm, so you get to be the lucky one to put the first footprints onto a barren white stretch of sidewalk. Don’t tell me you’ve never been totally thrilled by that before.

Virgin sidewalk, ready to be walked on.

There’s a sense of shyness about walking on unbroken snow too. You wonder, “I really want to be the first one to walk on here…but it’s absolutely perfect without steps on it. Should I ruin perfection to suit my own silly needs?” and then you’re like “heck yes” and you walk on it.

So I walked down the street and took a picture of this tree because it was pretty.

Then I felt really really bad because it made me look like a total creeper, because if you were driving by in a car it totally looked like I was just snapping a random picture of the house. Which made me feel sorry for the people inside the house who were currently creeped out by the hippie taking pictures of their house. Which is sad because I’m not a hippie at all.

Then I kept walking, only now I had a destination in mind. There’s a little dead end street that turns off of our street, about 2/3 of the way up our street, and it is very very photogenic. Lots of trees, and a little cliff/ditch/rock thing at the end that is prettier in real life than it sounds to hear me describe it. So I kept walking, and I got to this little street, and I was looking down it, and I was like “this would be a cool shot” so I walked out in the middle of the road (it’s a dead end. There weren’t even any tire tracks. I’m not suicidal.) and took a picture.

See, told you it was pretty. I proceeded to walk down the road, not realizing at the beginning that it was pretty much one giant sheet of ice. Sadly, I realized that about halfway down. Gulp.

At the bottom, I took some random pics of the mini ravine…

Having accomplished what I wandered onto the cul-de-sac to do, I wandered back up, feeling a bit dorkier but still pretty awesome. Hopefully the residents of the dead end weren’t too confused. If they saw me at all.

Finally, I got to go where I had been wanting to go the whole time. Saving the best for last, I had put it off till the end.

This place was the wee park on our street thats not even really a park, just a bit of ground with some trees, paths, and statues. In the snow it looked really cool though, and I had a couple “squee, NARNIA” moments.

On the way there, I realized my feet aren’t actually as big as I thought they were.

 My foot on the left, someone else’s on the right. Of course, the other option is that that person has totally huge feet and my feet are still sort of large, but I’m going with “yay my feet are proportionally smaller than I thought!”

Anyways, once I made it into the park, I took a whole lot of random pictures, and felt very Middle Earth/Narnia-ish (ignoring the cars going by behind me)….

OMG, it legit IS Narnia!

Prettiest orange tree with snow ever!!

That feeling lasted exactly until I saw this.

 Which made me laugh much much more than I probably should have.

Anywho, this convinced me that I was indeed not in Narnia, and I decided to go home as I was a bit chilled and rather damp.

On my way back, I saw in the distance another pedestrian and I was all like “ooh, someone else who likes snow too!”

As said person got closer I was like “oh wow, you are so cool”.

This guy was bundled up, and I mean REALLY bundled up, head to toe. He had on ski pants, boots, a parka, gloves, a hat, and a stripey bandana covering up his ENTIRE face. This was held up by random strings coming off of his hat. It was AMAZING. Overkill, as it really wasn’t that cold, but still beautiful. I was tempted to stop him and ask to take his picture, but thought that might have been rude.

As he passed me he said “Good day!” and a little part of my heart squeed and I was like “hiiiii…” and we walked past each other. I then wanted to run back and start up a conversation about awesome with him, but decided that would be dorky and weird.

Then I realized something else. The two of us, the lone pedestrians out in the snowy wonderland, are the real Canadians. We’re the ones who are happy when a snow is forecast, the ones who squee whenever we see snow falling from the sky, and the ones who don’t gripe about how sucky the weather is.

It could be he’s nothing like this and he just had to get somewhere in a snowstorm, but that’s the way I feel.

Sometimes you need to realize something. Snow is not a curse. Snow is beautiful. The next time you’re kvetching about how terrible snow is, and how nasty it makes driving places, you need to take a look around you. Look at the trees blanketed in a layer of white. Look at the rooftops turned into fields of powdered sugar. Look at the lawns and sidewalks and cars, evened out and perfected by nature’s gentle caress. Look at the wee white flakes falling from the sky. Marvel at how there are thousands upon thousands upon thousands, and each one is completely unique. Appreciate the unique beauty that is only present while watching snow fall. Remember how you felt as a child, how you loved watching the snow. Think on why this has changed. Try to go back, and experience the joy and wonder you felt then.

Then pull out into the road, and hope to goodness the salt truck has been by.

However, today has been an example of when Homeschoolng Actually Doesn’t Work.

Do you want to know when homeschooling doesn’t actually work?

…

It’s when you are home alone on a school day, and your motivation has slowly slid out of your ears while taking with it most of your brain.

You start off the day motivated…in a “Imma gonna get stuff done!” mood. Then you realize that its morning. Then you are sad and wish to flop back into bed.

But your mother frowns upon this suggestion, so you sleepily start Doing Useful Things, such as science and math. Since you are sleepily hypersensitive, when you realize that you made a mathematical error and you don’t know how to fix it, you get really frustrated and start muttering about how you hate math. And school. And life.

Then you fix your mistake and it’s all happy.

Once you have accomplished these two things, you feel very relaxed. Hey…lookit me! I GOT TWO THINGS DONE TODAY! Hurrah!

After you’ve cheered to yourself, you realize that it is possible that there are other necessary tasks for you to accomplish if you want to complete your English course sometime before grade 11.

You wilt into the floor with dismay.

You cuddle up on the couch with tea and a soft blanket and do English.

When your English is finished, you feel even better about yourself.

OMG MOM MOM MOM I FINISHED THREE THINGS!! I AM SO GREAT!!

Then you knit. Because there’s yarn beside you and you’re warm and happy and you don’t want to move and you love yarn but you don’t love school and IT’S RIGHT BESIDE YOU. Then you feel sort of guilty, but you quell the feeling. Very quickly and easily.

When your mother exits the building to spend some time with a friend, you realize this would be a prime time to get on her computer and look over an essay.

Except right about when you started knitting, your motivation sort of…escaped you.

“Knitting is good…me like knitting…me keep knitting…me no do work….me lazy bum”.

Then you get on the computer….and instead of looking at the essay…you log onto Facebook. Then you check Ravelry. Then you do a whole bunch of other timewasting stuff and before you know it, it’s lunchtime, but that’s okay because you’ve ALREADY DONE THREE THINGS.

Then you feel really really guilty, and do some French to appease your conscience.

You look at the clock while making lunch, and realize it’s already 12:20, and you start to panic because YOU’VE ONLY DONE FOUR THINGS and then you hyperventilate and practise piano while your noodles cook.

Since you have no motivation, you end up reading a book for a bit longer than you anticipated, and then you freak out again and go practise violin. Then you feel really accomplished because LOOK AT ME DADDY I’VE DONE SIX THINGS!!!!! IMMA GENIUS!

Once you realize this, you are really really happy because you have only TWO MORE THINGS LEFT TO DO.

But….you don’t do them, because you are a lazy bum with no desire to do harmony or logic because you really hate those subjects.

So you spend half an hour timewasting here and here. Then your dad says that he’s about to leave too to go grocery shopping and you feel really really bad about being a lazy bum but you don’t do anything about it because your motivation is still floating around somewheres not inside of you, so you don’t actually care.

When your dad leaves you start to care, and you do your logic. Then you feel the best you’ve felt all day because you’ve DONE SEVEN THINGS AND THERE’S ONLY ONE THING LEFT oh dangit, there’s one thing left.

This is when your brain seeps out of your ears and you play Party Rock Anthem really loud while wishing you knew how to do the dance. Then you listen to Josh Groban again because it’s the new soundtrack for your life. Oh, and you make a blog post.

Then you watch the video for Party Rock Anthem because the dance is really awesome.

Finally, you decide that your piano teacher might just kill you if you don’t do that harmony, and as you like life more than death, you do it.

Then you knit and drink tea.

Then you realize that this isn’t exactly an example of a homeschool fail since eventually you did get everything done, but then you feel really bad for not getting it done expediently. Then you feel even worse because you are a shameful slothful lazy human being who really shouldn’t be complaining.

Then you figure you might be PMSing, and you might not be, but either way chocolate is good and you want chocolate.