Senior Pics

I haven't been on here in a while, and I can't say much now, but for all who is interested, I have my senior pictures up on my myspace. http://www.myspace.com/christschild08 . It is also up on my facebook. If you have a facebook, look me up and I'll add you. I will try to put them on here too, but blogger is a little more difficult. God Bless!

No longer in the motions

In my last post I said that I would take the challenge, to step away from the normality and motions of my life for one day. Until now I have been unable to do that. With upcoming showcases, dinners and concerts I haven't had the opportunity to get away from the motions of my everyday life. This morning I was praying we wouldn't have a snow day. With this snow day, I lose a day of work and pay because my program is an after school program. Also, my first and last Christmas Choir concert has been cancelled. Despite the disappointments of the day, I realized I had the chance to step back and follow through a day differently. I slept in today, for the first time in months. For all who knows me well, it is easy to see that I don't handle cold well. Today, I faced the cold full force to build a snowman with my brother. I laid down in the icy snow to make snow angels. I am now drinking hot chocolate instead of coffee with the idea that hot chocolate better suits a drink after building a snowman. My day has only just begun, so I shall continue my day of suprise, I guess you can call it, so now I must end this to continue in a day of adventure.

The motions of life

As humans, we are creatures of habit, striving through life completely based on repitition. We wake up every morning to an alarm clock knowing almost exactly how the day will pan out. I know when I go to bed at night that the next morning my alarm will go off twice and I will ignore it. Ten minutes before the bus runs, I'll finally stumble out of bed with no extra time to pack a lunch. I'll then find myself running to the bus, thankful that I'm running late becaue I then get to avoid waiting in the freezing cold. I'll follow the motions of the school day, smiling at the teachers, mumbling answers to questions, hugging about fifty people because they all like me for some reason or other, giving the goofy waves and smiles to make those people happy for a moment, even though I'm dead tired. And then I will scramble to find a ride to the middle school, where I smile more to the teachers of the kids I work with and hug about thirty more students, the entire time, faking enthusiasm. I then go home exhausted, yet too thoughtful to sleep, and it is all just the motions of my life, predictable in every way. I never had a point to this rambling nonsense. I am exhausted at the moment and simply feel like rambling about obvious points that we all know and have heard, but think about it, creatures of habit. How boring is that? I am an artist. I love every aspect of music, playing instruments, coming up with melodies, tweeking old melodies and making them new and alive again. I love writing; and the concept that I write for my life, but another can look at my work, and the poem will be exactly what they feel simply amazes me. I love spontenuity, and yet I have formed myself to the basic human standards, living the motions ,if you will, of life. So for all who reads this (which is likely to be no one because I never update), I'm going to challenge you to break the every day habit for one day and see what happens. Pay attention to people's reactions when you do something out of the ordinary, and play back to yourself at the end of the day everything that you did differently. One of the greatest quotes I have ever heard came from Walt Witman. Carpe Diem. Two words. It means Sieze the Day. Sieze the day. Impossible if we just follow the motions. We need to break free, suprise ourselves. In fact, I'll take that challenge upon myself, and I'll report back within the week to share my experience.

Football Friday Night

It is so interesting how random people can be. I went to get my schedule fixed and my band director came up to me. He is such a great guy, but you can tell just by looking at him that he has about a billion thoughts going through his head at once. He walked up to me with a puzzled look on his face, probably thinking the same question every teacher would think. "Why in the world is this kid in school right now? It isn't a school day and we don't have practice." So he walked up to me. This is exactly how the conversation started. Frazier walked up to me with a serious look on his face and said simply without a breath, "Just the person I wanted to see. What are you doing here? Anyways, do you want to be on tv friday night?" As it turns out, channel four is featuring our band during Football Friday Night. He could only choose seventeen band members to go down to the news station, and I was one of his first choices, so from 11:15- 11:45 My band will be on channel four on friday night. It isn't the fact of being on tv that I'm so excited about. The band geek within is just ecstatic about the fun night that our little ensamble will have together. Oh the joys of band and being a senior.

Long Ago With Chocolate and Dolphins

Long ago... about a year ago... I started this blog, with full intentions of using it faithfully. In that area I have drastically failed. As always, I found myself caught up in the action and hecticness of every day life. To say that I didn't have time would be a blunt lie, but to say that I was so engaged in this increasingly busy life that I did not even think about this site that I started would be one hundred percent truth. So much has changed since I stopped writing, and yet it is all the same. That is just how life goes though. Everything changes, yet it all stays the same. I am a year older, therefore a year wiser, though often times it doesn't show. I no longer have a car of my own, but I will soon. I was single then, and I'm single now, but in between then and now I was taken. I now know even more what love and heartbreak means, and how stupid guys can really be. Through several lectures and performances I have seen with my job, I have learned the value of looking at the bright side of things. One of the motivational speakers at the ASC Conference taught us about the dolphins living inside our head. First she asked us to close our eyes while titlting our heads back and forth. she needed to make sure the water was in our heads so the dolphins would live. She explained that laughing released dolphins, and that they needed water to survive. She then replied that she could tell who the crankypants were because the were the ones that leaned over and said I think she means endorfins. But then she got back on topic saying that chocolate and some other simple pleasures of life release the big dolphins, and dolphins are always smiling, so we should be to. No matter how confusing it was for her to get to the point, her message was clear. Life is to short to be wearing crankypants. When we are wearing them, we need to do something, like eat chocolate and release those dolphins. By little lessons such as that, I have grown a little more wise, enough to know that I need to get to bed in order to babysit tomorrow. So God Bless!

E-mail

Have you ever realized how important e-mail is or how important technology alone is in our current way of life? I had a major wake up call today. Earlier yesturday I went to check my e-mail, only to find everything worked perfectly except for the inbox link, which leads me to my only means of communication with half of my friends. At first I thought it was only a temporary glich, but I came to a horrifying realization after I woke up this morning to find that the problem had not vanished, but continued well into the evening. You see most of my friends lives at least an hour away by car, some one or two hours or more by plane. The only way I can keep in touch with them is through e-mail. The problem is fixed and the only e-mails that I had recieved was junk mail and advertising. Go figure. But computers are only an expanded version of the technology we rely on daily. I woke up this morning and was getting ready to clean my room (a sight you will never hear of again), and my light went kapowee. I have no window in my room to watch the gorgeous sunrise in the mornings on the rare occasion I get up early for something other than work or school. Without a light in my room, it is impossible to see anything, so I was going on a desperate search through this cluttered house that everyone we know claims eats things, praying to find the one thing that would save me from being grounded from my car. I'm so thankful I found the last one. I get to keep my car tomorrow. And not to long ago, my battery for my car completely died. I went from being free to get to places like work and church back to being completely dependent on everyone else. And what if Y2K really did happen. I don't even want to think about that. The every day technical gliches is already to much for me to handle. Oh yeah, our washing machine just broke. Back to the old fashioned way... Save me now. I have to use my brain after school and band practice. First day of school tomorrow. Tell you how it went later...

Summer Life

First I want to say something about the animals we saved, since I haven't figured out how to put up pics. A few months ago, a guy gave us two puppies. They are smaller jack russel terriers. We named them Naomi and Rachel. Not long after that, a family gave us kittens they found on the side fo the road in the rain. We took them to the vet and bottle fed them and all that stuff that the mother should have done. The weakest of the two had a broken rib, and could barely move when we first got him. About a week later, we almost lost him, but with prayers he is just as strong as his big brother now. I was going to post pics, but I can't figure out how, so Tony (the tiger) is gray tiger striped and storm is a deep gray with gray-green eyes. They still have their baby hair too. They was only about three weeks old when we got them, poor things. They were found on the side of the highway in a trashbag in the rain. Who could do that? My mom is talking about giving them away because we already have way to many animals, but I don't see why. They are very smart and loving. The puppies on the other hand are so stupid. The kittens were litter trained at three weeks old. At almost four months, we are still have problems with the dogs. DECA Camp was so much fun, but I'll tell the stories once I get the pictures up. During the summer, I work with an after school program. We have day camp all through July. Last week was the last week for the summer. The staff had our farewell/ my birthday dinner saturday. Half of the staff won't be coming back next year. Two are leaving on missions trips and one has more to do with college. Her schedule doesn't work out. So all that is left is Machaela (pronounced Macaw, don't ask) the boss, Leon, a coordinator, and me, a high school assistant. So before October we have to find three replacements. Before this year I was just a volunteer and student in the program. We had some interesting conversations about the students, and the staff that's been in RAP for a while told stories from previous years. It was so funny. I wonder what they said about me when I was a student. But I wasn't one of the trouble makers. Well, I think I'll figure out how to get the pics up. The stories will be better with those. So God Bless.