Life on my Own?

After my 5 days of camp, I decided to stay in the McMinnville area and just catch up with all the friends I haven't seen in months. My 'home' here is my grandparent's house, but I am mainly just couch surfing at all my friends. My grandparents have an extra car, and they are letting me use it for the week -- But I have to stay in Mac. Which is okay with me. The first night back I stayed at a family friend's place, the Dyments, and had a blast there catching up with them, then I spent the day at my grandparent's place, then the next night at my cousin's place, and tonight I believe I will be back at my grandparents. I don't know where I will be tomorrow. I'm basically making plans spur of the moment. Today I hung out with my childhood best friend, Tasha Balwit. Had a blast with her! Lots of catching up to do! On Wednesday, my DCC friend is coming to Newberg, and she will probably try and make it to Mac also, so we will hang out then! Plus I would like to see Danii and Hannah sometime again, girls sleepover? I don't know.

It feels really weird being here without my whole family, and having a car to use as my own for the week. I like it, but everything feels unsure. I don't know if I will have a place to stay every night (of course I will - at my grandparents, but still, its rough out here!) and I don't know where I will get a meal, and I am living off basically 6 dollars ($3.51 now...) I think I have some quarters in my wallet. I've got my writing stationary, a sleeping bag, a pillow, and a phone. Thats pretty much all I need at this point. What I have learned though in the past few weeks, is that I am really not ready to live on my own yet. I pray that my parents will spend my last 2 years living at home teaching me how to live on my own. Of course, this week I did learn how to use a washer and drying, get green beans ready, and some other stuff I bet, but I can't really remember now...

Just a few months ago, while I was rather miffed with my parents, I remember saying, "I can't wait to live on my own!!"

If you are a teenager, and you have said this, take it back. You don't mean it. It's sketchy out here. You have to think about what you're doing. There isn't a warm meal at home waiting for you, and you don't have your own bed, and you have to think about the gas in the car, and how expensive it is, and how you are going to pay for it, and you have to remember to eat when its time to eat, and sleep when its time to sleep, and it is intimidating as hell out here. Even though I know I have a place to sleep, and food to eat, just being alone for a week and making so many plans freaks me out! Take advantage of the time you are still living with your parents! Have fun! Don't worry about what you will do tomorrow, or when you'll eat again. You still have time. Once you move out... Thats when you really need to start using that brain of yours for things much, much more important than just dumb old math. Thats when some of the school stuff you learn finally comes in handy. Like how to count money, and tell time. That has helped me a lot this week.

Oh, I just finished reading this amazing book - It's Kind of a Funny Story by Ned Vizzini. My favorite quote from the book is this, live by it:

I know something’s changing in me. It

might not be dramatic, but it’s real. And for the first time in a while, I can look forward to things I want to do in my life...

Bike. Eat. Drink. Talk. Ride the

subway. Read. Read maps. Make maps. Make art. Have a party. Hug my mom. Kiss my dad. Kiss my little sister. Make out with Noelle. Make out with her more. Take her on a picnic. See a movie with her. See a movie with Aaron. Heck, see a movie with Nia. Tell people my story. Volunteer at Three North. Help people like Bobby. Like Muqtada. Like me. Draw more. Draw a person.Draw a naked person. Draw Noelle naked.Run. Travel. Swim. Skip. I know it’s lame, but, whatever, skip anyway... Breathe. Breathe. Breathe. Live.

Drift Creek Camp!

Well, I just finished my 6th year going to DCC, and as usual, it was the best! It's always the best part of the year for me. I made many, many new friends, and had two amazing counselors. So thankful for that! I left Sunday with Danii and Hannah Coe for camp from McMinnville. It was a long drive over filled with much singing. I'm pretty sure we listened to "Last Friday Night (TGIF)" 3 times.. Her grandma drove us, and gotta say, she's a pretty hip grandma. I got a huge bag of salt-water taffy over in Lincoln City before we drove up to the camp, and snacked on that for quite some time. When we finally reached the camp, we were 2 hours early. So we got to hang out with Casey, Karli and Abby because they were there early, and we got to meet our counselors!

Their names were Jalisa (JA-LI-SA! was the chant) and Krista (KRI-I-STA! Didn't work out quite as well..) and when you smush their names together you get JA-LIS-TA! And then it works great! Anyways, our whole cabin agreed that they were the best counselors any of us had had yet. We got pretty much the best cabin in the whole camp, Siuslaw, which is on the 3rd floor of the lodge and has its own bathrooms and showers, plus its extremely large! This is my second year in a row getting this cabin! HUZZAH! Soon more of our soon-to-be cabin mates started showing up until we had a hearty cabin of 14 campers! All of which were extremely delightful! They were Danii, Hannah, Paige, Marianne, Lisa, Fiona, Corrie, Abby, Joanna, Karly and Karli, Casey, and Calla! Best cabin buddies (butties) ever!

That night was a hard core game of Human Foosball, and then we all slept soundly! The next day began the best week ever. So many laughs, and we all got to know each other so well, so fast. I was thankful for that. I had a lot on my mind during camp, and I am so glad my counselors were so trustworthy and kind, and had great senses of humor because I was able to talk to them about a lot of it. Thank goodness. Without the lovely Kate Plotner there to talk too, I was completely lost. Good thing I was surrounded by magnificent people. We had many laughs, playing in trees, and hiding in shrubs.

By the end of the week the whole camp was playing a game called 'Double Tap' which is very funny, and a bit stressful. When you take a drink of water, or whatever fine beverage you're drinking, you have to tap it twice on the table when you set it down. If you fail to do this, and someone catches you, then you get dared to do something, and you have to do it before the meal session is over. And you HAVE too. It's never anything bad, just hilarious. There were people standing up on the tables singing, and people going up to other random people, taking a bite of their food, putting the food back on their plate, and walking away as if nothing had even happened. That was me. At one point during the black light night with all the loud music, my friend Paige and I both single tapped, and got dared to go up too our counselors and dirty-dance on them. That was the most awkward thing that I've probably ever done. So embarrassing! Dang it! Then we ran back to our tables as fast as we could and I'm sure if the lights were on, everyone could see how beet red our faces were. My face was literally HOT. My apologies!!!

We played the Amazing Race too on one of the days, but due to my broken knee injury and the still slow recovery of it, I was unable to participate in most of it because it was a lot of running. But that was totally fine by me. So I just sat in the sun and ate pretzels and talked with Jalisa while everyone else was out and about running. Too bad. Later, since I was baking in the hot sun, a big group of us went down to the swimming hole. There, I made my own little race. I ran down the sandy hill, swam across the river, stood up on the big rock on the other side, swam back across (There is a bit of a current), and ran back up the hill in 30 seconds, which is record time for a gimp like me! Everyone got a great laugh out of me attempting to run. In my mind I was thinking a. This is really funny, I must look mental and b. If I take one wrong step I could re break my knee. So it was like I was panicking jollily. Is jollily even a world? I like it. Later, after swimming, the girls from our cabin creeked Krista, and then went up to get Jalisa next, but she ran off, obviously knowing she was next. Dang.

You know what isn't a word? Totes Innapropes (Totally Innapropriate for those of you who aren't in the loop of shortening words). Neither are words, but they spread through our cabin like wildfire. We even had our counselors saying it by the end of the week! That was a laugh! This year I brought my guitar to camp! I sure am glad I did! I had a blast with everyone! We played pretty much every song in my binder, and later serenaded the boy's cabins with The Way I Am by Ingrid Michaelson and Sea of Love by Cat Power. Both excellent! For the Acoustic Cafe part of the night, our whole cabin went up and sang Hallelujah and had many different harmonies. It was beautiful! So proud of everyone! Danii sang Sea of Love for the Cafe while I played guitar and I was SO PROUD OF MY BESTIE!!! GO DANII!!! And then I played Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls for it, and that was fun :).

I really don't know if I will be able to make it a whole year. This year was life changing, and I want to go back so bad already, and it's only been a day. I am so thankful for everyone who I met, and for everyone who I got to know even better. I plan on keeping in touch with everyone, and hopefully visiting everyone also! No matter how long I blog, I could never begin to explain how much fun, and how much I appreciate everyone in Siuslaw! If any of you girls are reading this, I love you so much!! Thanks for such a great week! COME VISIT ME IN BEND!!!!!!!!

So Much Great!

In 3 days I am leaving to go on a remarkable adventure with Danii, up to Drift Creek Camp, which is basically like the best place in the whole world, and I am SO excited! Not to mention it is officially SUMMER VACATION! This July it will have been a year since I learned to play guitar and I'm so happy! I love it so much! I cannot get enough. I'm bringing my guitar to DCC! Then I think I am going to stay in the valley for maybe 5ish days, and just see everyone, Hannah and Danii and I will do the usual sleepover, I definitely want to see Tasha, and make a really funny movie with my hilarious cousins Emily and Caitlin! I want to see my whole family, and I'll stay with Grandma and Grandpa! AH ITS GOING TO BE SO FUN!!! Plus I just cleaned, re-organized, re-arranged, and re-decorated my room and it looks completely different! I love it so much!! Its totes cool. And so clean! Almost unbelievable! And guess what else! On June 29th my 6 months of having a driver's license are up, and I can drive friends around! I'm so excited! Life will be SO much easier now that I can just pick people up and dropp them off! No more begging for a ride to so and so's house. Ah thank goodness. And more good news - I transfered schools! I went to Summit High, and now I am going to Bend High! Its going to be so much fun! I look forward to fitting in again! Like in middle school, the good old days. Actually, I didn't really fit in there, but at least I had a bunch of really amazingly great friends! As you can read about earlier on in the first few posts of this blog. Back when it used to be called "Pranksters R Us." Yeah, gooooooood times.