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.

Oh Goodness.

There is something I need to figure out. How to make friends. Of course I have all my school friends who I love, but we don't actually have anything in common, so hanging out outside of school is just awkward. Just sitting around. Then I have one friend who I enjoy hanging out with wherever, but she goes to Bend High, and I go to Summit, so that just doesn't work well. Then I recently made a friend at Summit who is actually like me, and likes guitar, music, art, and all that, but he's a boy. Which is also difficult because in High School, you make friends with a guy and soon they start liking you. I just don't want a boyfriend right now. I want some really good, solid friendships. Maybe one of those good friendships will turn into a relationship, but right now, I just want friends. I make friends with a guy, and I have this gut feeling that he likes me. I'm fine with it. I'm not going to make things awkward or treat him any differently. But I don't want to risk ruining a brand new friendship with a boyfriend. Either things will go really good, or they'll fail right at the start and then BAM, another friendship down the drain. I think next year I'm switching schools to go to Bend High, but I'm waiting for the principals of my school and the other one to approve my application. If thats all approved, then I will be a Lava Bear next year, rather than a Thunder Cat. What even is a Thunder Cat? I really don't know. I want to change schools because I'm ready for a fresh start. Things at Summit just haven't worked out from the first day of Freshman year, till now. Its been nearly two full years and I'm still unhappy at this school. Isn't high school supposed to be fun? I want my last two years to be good. I think BHS is going to offer some stuff to me that Summit never has. There are less cliques, and cliques are what keep getting in my way. Lets leave 'em.

Talk to you later.

xoxo, Kate

Biking and Dreams

Today I wanted to go downtown to hang out with my friends Maddy and Alex. My family was all out at Smith Rocks, and I am not one for hiking, so I decided to stay here. But since there wasn't a car I could take to get downtown, I had to bike. So thats 2.5 miles downhill to get there. Piece of cake. Easy. It was finally a warm day and it was beautiful out! I loved it, minus the clouds of gnats by the river (Thank goodness for glasses. My eye shields.) .... So I got down there, hung out with them for awhile, and saw a bunch of baby Jack Russel puppies! I almost died. I know that is the stupidest thing to say, "I almost died" but I really did. I teared up a little knowing that I didn't get to have a puppy, and I considered slipping one that I called George into my backpack and riding away into the sunset. I didn't. But I seriously thought about it... Anyways. I ended up sitting in the gate with them for like 15 minutes and holding one that fell asleep in my arms. OHMYGOODNESS! I want one. All I have is a stupid cat that hates being held. Hates the world in general. Then I had to bike home...

That was again, 2.5 miles home. Only this time, uphill. I still have a bad knee from when I broke it last August. Plus I can't turn my bike to gear one because its broken.. So I am pedaling with all my might. I finally got home, and I felt like my brain had smashed up against the front of my forehead. My head felt so heavy and I totally thought I was going to pass out. I didn't thank goodness. But even worse, I completely forgot that I had a babysitting job tonight! AURG!! Most embarrassing thing in the whole world. I had never babysat for them before, and I was determined to get there on time and make a good impression. Instead, I nearly pass out on our couch, then forget about the job until one hour later. Stab. Me. In. The. Head. I feel SO bad!! I'm going to give them an apology card with a coupon for one free babysitting. I feel like crap. Mental slap to the face.

Also lately -- Dreams. Every night I have dreams. Every night. Literally. Its not like most nights. Its EVERY night. My favorite part of the day is night. Thats kind of an oxymoron, but its totally true. I look forward to night. Its so entertaining. So thrilling. Dreams are so cool. Two nights ago I had 3 dreams in one night! I remembered them all and they were all LONG dreams with story lines. It was so crazy. One of them I was flying (Yeah, flying!) around Bend with Danii, and we were going to fast, and we landed at this deserted airport and we were walking around and everything was so strange. We went inside and it was the Evergreen Aviation Museum. So random.. That was the shortest of them. The longest one I'm only gonna give you a short summary cause it took up three full pages in my journal to write down, and I don't want to explain it again. My brother and I were on this weird island and there was this MASSIVE treehouse. We were digging up dirt around it, and he said to me, "What is the point of us digging all this dirt?" and I said, "Sam, you know this is what we need to survive the night" and he just kept digging. In the distance I saw this weird creature. It was like a mix of a Jack Russel and a wild boar (what's up with all this Jack Russel stuff lately!?). It was light pink, and had belts of leather armor with metal studs all over them and jagged scars running down its face. My computers going to die. Thats a shame. I guess you can make up the rest.

Best word(s) of the day: Totes Innapropes.

(P.S: I beat the wild Boar Russel.

Hardcore Parkour.

My brother, his friend and I all made this Parkour video. In extreme cheesy-ness, I think that this has made my day. I laughed so hard I had to race back home as fast as I could before I peed my pants. That fast. I couldn't eat dinner because my stomach hurt so bad from laughing. So great. Especially the end. The ice cream. Ohhhh I'm laughing again!