Don't Worry 'Bout a Thing....

I thought today was going to be a bad day. But it wasn't. I went to Michael's and we had veggie pizza, and played with the foam swords and the nerf bazooka. I didn't have to worry about a thing. I felt crappy when I went there and I was smiling on the way home. Maybe I have more of an ability to pick myself up than I thought. This is not a huge deal. It won't be a huge deal tomorrow, or the next day, or the day after that. I'm going to be fine. :) No worries here.

“If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there.”
--- Lewis Carroll.

CHICKEN!!!

Well, to say the very least, I am a happy camper right now. I've been craving sweet and sour chicken for two days now, and to shut me up, Ma decided to oblige. So, OM NOM NOM!!

On the way to the take-out place, we were driving behind this car with two bumper stickers on the back window. The one in the middle said, "FUTURE-PORNSTAR: Official training vehicle." Then right under it was a sticker that said, "Don't laugh, your daughter might be in here." My mom and I couldn't stop laughing.

I'm actually reading for once now, a book I got from Zaq called Story Sense: Writing Scripts and story for feature films and television. Pretty useful information, some that I've been able to apply to writing the opening scene for our play. I'm about seven pages into it, but it's starting to slow down. I don't think we developed characters enough to actually start writing, but I'll see what everybody else has done. I kinda like the way it's going so far, but that could change dramatically.

Two-three-kick-turn! Turn-turn-kick-turn!

Carie Ann Elizabeth Rockwell Kamikaze Lippenschnopp Gregorio IV......

1) ...very much enjoyed her morning of chicken biscuit and hashbrowns.
2) ...got up earlier than necessary for once to go watch her boys wrestle in the rain. (Honestly, is there anything I won't stand in the rain with them for?)
3) ...misses school, kinda.
4) ...hasn't started her AP homework quite yet. She's pacing herself.
5) ...has officially selected a camera model and emailed the page to Jacobs.
6) ...is currently eating Fritos.
7) ...misses hanging out at the gallery.
8) ...loved the new Harry Potter movie. (RANDOM ACTS OF ARSON!)
9) ...had a tasty dinner of chilli at the Pool residence. (Mitch's mom = AWESUM!)
10) ...needs to think about wrapping a "special" birthday present.
11) ...can't wait for Fiddler on the Roof!

Life Is Just POOF!

I know, I know, I know, I should sleep more, but my hours are all screwed up because I slept in until two today. Anyhoo, Harry Potter was very good. People were whining about it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it, despite a few holes in the quality. All in all, i'd say it's been a very good day. My fabulous twelve hours of sleep put me in a fantastic mood. After I drove home, I completely took over the televison and set myself up for a vampire double feature. First on the playbill: Fright Night. While Chris Sarandon is one of my more annoying Hollywood pet peeves, I like him in this movie. Creepy vampire junk and all that. Plus, for a horror movie of it's time, it wasn't completely hokey or revolve completely around the stupid actions of teenagers, drinking and having sex, therefore condemning themselves to being cut up by a stranger in a hockey mask. Nope, this actually had PLOT! Special effects are excellent for it's time, too.

Then I watched Dracula with Anthony Hopkins and Gary Oldman. This was exactly like Bram Stoker's novel, which I'm now anxious to read. I'm not entirely sure what I thought of it, it was borderline disturbing, yet intriguing. And my constant devotion the classic stuff is a big mental SCREW YOU, STEPHANIE MEYER.

Mowed the lawn today, too and managed to knock another $20 dollars off my ticket that I'm paying back to my parents. The interesting part? Dad randomly offers to pay Michael and me $100 each to take care of the yard at the house in New Castle when Jacobs is done remodeling it, which shouldn't be too much longer. God, I can make a $100 last a year if I so choose. :) Think of all the prints I could have made. I'm so excited!!!

Not Enough Green

Dad's back on the job rant again.

He wants to sell me the car so that it will be MY car. They don't want to be liable for it anymore. They want to sell the car to me, using their money so it can be transferred into my name. But I have to pay insurance, therefore Dad's back on the job. Where the hell am I supposed to work though? Somewhere I'll hate, that's what, because there's only one place I'd want to work, and it doesn't seem like that's going to happen anytime right quick. Niether of you find this very heart-wrenching, I know, because you've had jobs you've hated. Boo-hoo for me, whatever. Doesn't change the fact that it makes me mad.

My number one concern is having work take away from what makes me enjoy life in my teenager years: theater, my photography and my friends. I keep trying to stress that to Dad. But as always, he's got something backed up in the artillery for me.

"Michael's got TWO jobs, Carie. What makes you so different from him?"

Well, if you think he's so damned responsible and wonderful then ADOPT HIM for crying out loud, I don't care!

Not in a good place right now....not at all.

Per Chris' Request...

I am getting my blogging done early tonight so that I may be well-rested in the morning. Thank God rehearsal is at 4 tomorrow, so I'll have more time to get things done.

Today's rehearsal was the biggest waste of my time by far. Only four days until show and we finally have a set. JEEZ. This is the most stressful show I've ever done, it's nerve-racking! All we did today was a line-blitz and IO got to play around with my makeup a little. THAT'S IT. Sheesh. The rest of the time, some people were trying to piece together the set. Gosh. I hope we get to rehearse with it one time all the way through before we have show. *coughcoughbeautyandthebeastcoughcough* My makeup is hideous. I repulse even myself when I look in the mirror. Blech.

After rehearsal, I went to the fair by Evan's request to "chaperon" him and this other clingy girl, who's name coincidentally happens to be Paytine ;), who's been flirting with him lately. Yeah, the whole best friend girl buffer thing where I am mostly there to make it NOT a date. That worked out fine for most of the time. However, while she rode rides with other boys, Evan and I hung around and people kept mistaking me for Evan's girlfriend! He got pulled in by one of the carnies who introduced himself as "Truth" because, "he'll never lie to ya." He asked with a head toss in my direction, "This your girlfriend?" And Evan replied, "No, she's my sister." But he won me this little stuffed red dog anyway, by throwing balls at paper plates. We named him Weasely, because of his red hair. :D

The gyro man was shocked when he heard that I have never had a gyro before. Evan got one for himself (I didn't have any real cash, and I certainly wouldn't have spent it on a GYRO), and as we're walking away, gyro man said, "Now, make sure you share with your girlfriend, there!"

Then, when Evan tried to buy a large soda for us to split, he asked me what I wanted, and I said Mtn Dew. With a wink, the lady pouring the drinks gave the soda back with TWO straws in it. XD I about died.

Crappy day, great/hilarious night. :) I'm calling it quits now so I can get a good night's sleep and go jean shopping in the morning with mummy's money. :D

DELUSIONAL JEWS JAILED FOR UNLICENSED SOLICITING

Today has felt extremely productive, aside from an obnoxious rehearsal. Second Friday is always fun for me, especially tonight when they had the Raw Brass guys play. Really cool guys, fun to talk to. :)

For about five years now I've had posters clipped from magazines covering the hideous pink paint on the walls of my bedroom. When I was nine and I moved into my new room, I asked my dad to paint it pink. It took two years for me to get sick of it and since then I've been trying to cover it up with whatever centerfolds of pretty boys I could find. And about last night, I officially got sick of looking at Adam Brody, Jesse McCartney, Usher, and Ashton Kutcher. I'm actually dumbfounded they've lasted this long up there. Anyhoo, I got up on a swivel chair and removed all the ghosts of my pathetic middle school years from the four walls that surround my space. Then in their place, I put up posters of my photos from South Pacific that I took last year. When I stepped back to look at it, I was amazed at how much more I liked it. I think it was because it was a display of who I was now rather than who I was then. I hate my old self, the one that wanted to pretend like middle school was such a big deal and made everything a federal case. I was annoying, but I like who I am now, and I like those pictures. :) So, it was just a cool change-of-view thing that I really needed.

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Assume the Position

I guess there's different kinds of busy that a person can be. There's stressful busy and then there's productive busy. Obviously its the stressful busy that I hate. Busy, busy, busy. I'm trying to be optimistic about the show. Hopefully once we have a set, it'll be a little less worrisome. Taylor was completely right when he said that if it all does come together, it will be amazing to say that we've done it in two weeks.

I wish I had a laptop that was at least functional, that way, I can be cool like John and just update my blog from wherever my ass happens to be planted at the time. Jayme's got an old one that's missing the ENTER key, which I don't think is such a big deal. It'd just make FB chat really annoying. She says when she gets a new one, I can have the old one.

I think I'm going to go room-purge. Later!

Helping

I read a LONG blog post today. I hope someone can get through mine.

So researching different kinds of charities online led to some pretty interesting findings, and I don't just mean Google results. I knew one of my favorite actresses, Audrey Hepburn, was an advocate for UNICEF. It's interesting to hear her talk about helping other people. She talked about how it felt weird to walk into one of the feeding camps and see the kids there. She said it kind of felt like walking into somebody's room while they're on their death bed, and it felt wrong to be there because the family should have been there, not you. Then you want to reach out and touch them so they'll have someone near, but you're afraid you'll break them. But she did it because she felt like she should help people, because she was able to. "I have been born privileged. And it's only logic that people who are born privileged should help those who were not." If there were more people who thought that way, the world wouldn't be such an ugly place. But not everyone thinks that way. Not everyone wants to help others. Other people have a more effective way of helping others. They don't do it blatantly. They don't loan a family member money, they don't help a friend study for a test, they don't stay with a friend just because "they don't want to be alone." They take a slightly more self-efficient approach. Help them help themselves by not helping them at all. Make them work to get the money they need to buy that new bike. Make them study for that test alone, so when they ace it, they can say they did it all by themselves. Leave them by themselves so they can learn to cope on their own, so they don't use you as a crutch for their emotional handicap. That last one sounds awful, but sometimes, I wonder if I'm ever that crutch. Not just emotionally, but in every way you can use a person as a crutch. I enable people who have a tendency to be assholes to everyone but me. The only time that SERIOUSLY bothers me, is when those people are douche bags to people who ARE genuinely nice to people, or very nice to me (Skittles aigres). People who actually appreciate my friendship and who DON'T take advantage of me. What's really sad is that I can only immediately think of ONE person right now. One person my age, that is. I'm compelled to help people, I think, because I'm afraid that if I don't, no one else will, and I know that's a sucky feeling when no one will help you. Like when your mom is a drunk and your dad doesn't love you. The funny thing is that people in those situations don't seem to need a lot of help with the big stuff. They kind of got their own way of managing. It's when the "big stuff" isn't such a problem anymore, when new "medium stuff" starts up and they don't know how to deal with it. For example, a loved one moving very far away, let's say NEW YORK just for fun. And they're happy to have a really great friend who almost always comes when they call to help them feel better when they're lonely. But then they get used to the charity. THAT'S why I get taken advantage of. THAT'S why I don't feel appreciated by some of my friends. But it's a circle. I want to help, and they shit on me, but if I don't help, maybe no one else will. And around and around we go. Personally, I wish I would take the "self-efficient" route more often. I do it to myself, I know, I know I'm not a victim. Actually, I take that back, I don't just help because I think no one else will. I guess it depends on the person, really. If I love them a lot, I help them because I love them. If it's someone else, the prior circumstances can be instated. I dunno, it's even more complicated in my head....

However, those of you who ARE reading, and I know who you are, who appreciate me, I thank you. Believe it or not, you guys are great enough that you make those who suck not so bad. I think it's one thing to think you're appreciated by no one, and another thing to know you're appreciated by SOMEONE. Little victories, little victories. Actually, no. BIG victories.

Meaning

A product of staying up late (often against my own will) is rexamining the normal parameters of the world, and thinking in depth about concepts that most humans don't consider out of pure boredom. There are a lot of things that we don't normally think about on a daily basis, like how we want to die, or what makes our best friend our BEST FRIEND, or what we want most out of life, because let's face it, really weighing the pros and cons of our dreams and desires aren't as simple as taking out the trash or emptying the dishwasher. And usually, we don't make it a point to think about these things until we are reminded of them by something usually small or insignificant, like a smart and funny TV show you enjoy, or an old photograph on the refridgerator. Then some things that are kind of buried, or things that are repressed can get dug up and flashed out in the open. It's usually things like that that we try to find some sort of meaning. But then consider this, when do we ever try to find meaning in good things? The only time we ever try to find meaning in good things is when our lives have previously been crappy. "When you can't make sense of someone leaving, you sometimes try to make sense of what they left behind. And it makes it a whole lot easier when what they left you was beautiful." You find meaning in the terrible things so it doesn't seem like they were just there to make your life shit. SHIT HAPPENS. Our fates and events in our lives are predetermined and moderated by a powerful, all-knowing being. The real meaning should be in how we let these unavoidable obsctacles, events, anomalies, and redenvous with fate affect the way we move on to and deal with the next little speedbump.

Okay, off my philisophical soapbox for the evening........or early morning.

1812 Overture

Okay, I'm running out of things to do in the wee hours of the morning. :( I wish I had my June schedule back. Get up in the morning, transport the sibling, counselor for three hours, then rehearsal. I enjoyed that. I'm at a standstill suddenly and I hate that. Other than that though, I'm enjoying my life right now. I don't think I've ever been able to say that before, but things are just totally there right now. Everything's somewhat in place, despite some wiggle room here and there. So far, this has been one of the best summers of my life. :) I can't wait for a regular routine during the next two weeks with James and the Giant Peach rehearsals every day at the theater. That's a regular opportunity to get out of the house and get a break from everything here that stresses me out. Honestly, if I could live at the gallery, I would. I wouldn't mind it at all. One day I hope to live in a cool loft apartment, cliche as that is, just like the space up on the third floor. Just one big open room where you could hear music no matter where you are. I'd hang my framed work on the wall. That'd be the epitome of awesome. On the subject of living conditions, something I was thinking about today was if I to be successful in my photography or whatever, I wondered if I would stay in Greenfield, where I could possibly be a big fish in a little pond, or if I would try to be a shark in the ocean. New York, or Chicago or something like that. One things for sure, I'm going to have to be better than I am now.

Wait, here comes the crescendo!

Bom-bom-bom-bom-bom-bom bom bom bom!!!