Just like a movie

So, I am sitting in my classroom listening to one of Mr. Haskins infamous lectures on how we should all feel the physics, while all I feel are my eyes failing me because some idiot decides to put a Bones marathon on in the middle of the week. And though I have seen every episode there is, it’s like a potato chip. You can't just watch one. So as I desperately try to understand this foreign language he is speaking, white dust starts to sprinkle on my head like snow. Now, where I am from, the closest thing that I have ever come to snow is watching the Christmas Story on ABC. I take a quick glance towards the ceiling but don’t take notice to the caving roof, at least not until an unknown source drops from the sky. His name is Jett, or at least that is what is says on his overcoat. He stands tall with a cocky grin as if he knows he will win whatever competition he is a part of. He is bald but not because he can't grow any hair. He may have not had broad shoulders, but he looked as if he could hold his own in a brawl. He dressed nice. He was a lot of things, but friendly didn't seem to be one. With a growl in his voice, he said my name with more poison in the first vowel than anything. While I more than likely had the look of confusion and fear in my eyes, he had the look of purpose in his. As our little stare off game proceeded, the classroom including Mr. Haskins all hid under their desks. I really didn't blame them anyway because I was in a pretty much frozen state. I stayed there not moving an inch until a squeeze and a quick tug were initiated by a man that I had never seen before, yet seemed familiar. One blink and I was on the roof. His low but stable voice whispered out the words that forever changed my life. "You are in grave danger," I snapped out of my shock then... Okay you caught me. This as you well know never happened. Sometimes I freak out at how far my imagination takes me. Even though I know this isn't true, I sometimes wish it was. Or at least was about to be. Like every American, I seem to watch more than the normal amount of television. I just wish something interesting would happen to me like in the movies. At times I feel it will. What I mean is, I will be walking in the hall ways and out of nowhere I feel like every student that passes by will break out into song with matching choreography. Or whenever the days are passing by, a song will be put in and the scenes sped up, as if I was a part of some movie montage. Like at any moment, Ill randomly end up in some foreign nation and be a part of some over-the-top adventure and fall in love in the process. Oh the imagination I have! I know I should place my feet on the ground, but how boring would that be? It would also be almost impossible since my dreams are like a hot air balloon, and once you turn it on it just keeps floating up. Hmm, sometimes I just wish my life was just like a movie. Too intriguing to ignore.

308 Miles in Between

I am awoken every morning by a light that was turned off the night before. I get dressed, kiss my mom goodbye and leave for school. I come home to her, my sister, and my father. When I close my door to start my homework, I am constantly being disturbed by the opening and closing of all the doors and my mothers high pitched voice screaming across the house for someone to get her water. I am surrounded by chaos.
I have taken an appropriate amount of college courses during my attendance of concurrent enrollment at University of Texas Pan American. I have had the hardest professors that have made me buckle down and give up my weekends so I can study at the school library. I have had all nighters in hopes of getting an A during finals, but when I think of college, it is not the Academics and english professors in cardigans that scare me, It is that 6 hour distance between me and my father's voice telling me its my turn to wash dishes. When I was young, college seemed like an amazing experience filled with big books and freedom, but as the clock ticks down to the final time for me to go, I already find myself homesick.
My mom likes to joke around about how many people attempt to leave the valley but their plans never pan out. Since my freshman year I would stand in the hallways of my school and admire the many acceptance letters of the past seniors who went away to college. Unfortunately, the amount of students that graduated and stayed in that particular area can be counted on one hand. The main reason was family.
As someone who was always deemed the homebody, most people find it hard to believe that I wish to go to college away. I am very close to my family, but I understand the need to venture out. I have always been fond of growth, whether that meant getting taller or expanding my mind and becoming my own person. I know, once I am gone everything will change. I will be alone and scared. The thought of coming back may even cross my mind time from time, but I have to learn to be independant.
With technology nowadays, being everywhere at once is simple. There is email, text messaging, and facetime that all work as forms of communication. Visits back home every other weekend will also help me to transition from being with them everyday to only being with them every once in awhile. It is all a matter of sticking it out and learning to be strong.


Love Always,

The Girl in the Floral Scarf : )

The Girl in the Floral Scarf

That First Homerun

When we were young, we were in love with falling in love. Chasing the ice cream man on a Saturday afternoon. The cheers of the crowd as we hit our first ball. The excitement of our first dance recital. Everything was new and exciting and truly innocent. As we get older we forget all of this. We forget the stained shirts that came from the melting Popsicle that made your face red and cold. We forgot the taste of those delicious ballpark hot dogs. We forgot the stiff feel of those new costumes, and most importantly we forgot what made us fall in love in the first place. Life gets busy and days become shorter and a blur. We become consumed in the idea of perfection and what we are doing wrong. We focus on all the problems that this love brought about. It shouldn't be like this. Life is negative as it is, so why bring that negativity into our loves? To look through life through a child's eyes would be beautiful. They see everything that is right and good. They notice the fun. They see the truth. They see the love. Sometimes doing something just for yourself is amazing. So I want you to remember that first time you fell in love with something that was so pure. And I want to know what you think.

It's the End, What are You Gonna Do?

Its December 21, 2012. The clock is ticking and I am inside with my friends and family reflecting on old times just like the do in every series finale on TV. When the the hands on the clock go straight up, the lights go out with no hope of ever returning. Alright, you caught me. It's mostly bull and the whole thought of the world ending has been over done. I am no believer and scientists and historians alike have been saying for the longest time that this is false, but with the day around the corner, it makes you wonder.  So it is pretty obvious what today's topic is. 2012. To be honest, I don't know what I would do if life ended before Christmas.  Well, for one thing, that means I would die before knowing whats in that big box under my Christmas tree so I would probably open it, but on a more serious note, I have no idea. I would, like any girl probably grow a set to tell that special guy , that I have always liked him and all that junk. (Okay, so I am not the delicate flower kinda girl, I have a hard time showing my feelings)  But mostly, I would just want to be around good company. My best friends and family telling old stories and watching movies. It wouldn't matter what we would be doing. We would be together. So ask yourself this: What would you do today if you knew that by midnight December 21, 2012, the world would cease to exist? 


Love,

The Girl in the Floral Scarf : )

The Girl in the Floral Scarf

It's Not a Drill

Today, in all my classes we went over lock down procedures and what to do in case of an emergency. With the tragedy of Sandy Hook Elementary and copy cats across the nation, stress is at a all time high. But I don't want to talk about the copy cats or my day in lock down. I want to talk about the 26 souls, 20 of whom had yet to begin life. By now everyone knows about the shooting in Connecticut  A young kid with a troubled background opened fire in an elementary after killing his mother. Of course the murders were hard on the entire city and more over the nation, but what made matters even worse, the bastard (killer) killed himself. The coward checked out before being chastised in front of the whole nation and even worse, before we even knew his reasons for this horrid event. Now, we may never know. It makes me so angry how easy it was for him to slip into the school and just kill, as if he were a machine. How could this happen and can we ever prevent this again? Who knows, but for now I am just praying for those poor souls and a better way to prevent these accidents.


Love,

The Girl in the Floral Scarf : )

The Girl in the Floral Scarf

The Story That Got Me Through English 1301

When I was first given a writing assignment for my college English class, I wanted to cry. But after reading this, I didn't feel so bad. So if your in a slump when it comes to your writing, just read this and you'll realize that you are not the only one.

“Shitty First Drafts”
By: Anne Lamott

        Now, practically even better news than that of short assignments is the idea of shitty first drafts. All good writers write them. This is how they end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts. People tend to look at successful writers, writers who are getting their books published and maybe even doing well financially, and think that they sit down at their desks every morning feeling like a million dollars, feeling great about who they are and how much talent they have and what a great story they have to tell; that they take in a few deep breaths, push back their sleeves, roll their necks a few times to get all the cricks out, and dive in, typing fully formed passages as fast as a court reporter. But this is just the fantasy of the uninitiated. I know some very great writers, writers you love who write beautifully and have made a great deal of money, and not one of them sits down routinely feeling wildly enthusiastic and confident. Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much. We do not think that she has a rich inner life or that God likes her or can even stand her. (Although when I mentioned this to my priest friend Tom, he said you can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.)          Very few writers really know what they are doing until they've done it. Nor do they go about their business feeling dewy and thrilled. They do not type a few stiff warm-up sentences and then find themselves bounding along like huskies across the snow. One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do--you can either type or kill yourself." We all often feel like we are pulling teeth, even those writers whose prose ends up being the most natural and fluid. The right words and sentences just do not come pouring out like ticker tape most of the time. Now, Muriel Spark is said to have felt that she was taking dictation from God every morning--sitting there, one supposes, plugged into a Dictaphone, typing away, humming. But this is a very hostile and aggressive position. One might hope for bad things to rain down on a person like this.          For me and most of the other writers I know, writing is not rapturous. In fact, the only way I can get anything written at all is to write really, really shitty first drafts.          The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later. You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, "Well, so what, Mr. Poopy

Accepted

          Okay, so fall is over and all the college applications have been sent and early acceptance letters are being received so, guess what? That right, I got accepted! Alright, so it’s a townie University and it’s not the acceptance letter that I have been pining for, but the "Congratulations" in the letter still got me a little giddy. 

          To take the confusion off your face, a townie school is a College which is basically a school where everyone gets accepted and 98% of the people in my high school end up. Mostly because its a ten minute drive and its really cheap. Bottom line, I do not want to go to school there, but that acceptance letter still made my day. It is like Valentine’s Day in elementary. You are supposed to give everyone a Valentine’s Day card but when you get that card from you crush it still makes you smile. Even if it was a forced card. You still feel special. So this made me feel special, which is way better than what I had been previously feeling. 

          I am a pretty smart girl. I take high level classes get good grades. By normal standards I am above where I am supposed to be. Unfortunately I have always taken higher level classes, so the friends I have made are basically level 2 geniuses. So where does that leave me? Well, compared to everyone else, I might as well be a chimp. I don't feel good enough when I am around them. They are all top 10% heck even just top 10 period. They understand everything and for that I resent them. Okay, I don't really resent them; I just wish I had their brain. Oh yea, and their acceptance letters. Back to the reason I started talking in the first place: Acceptance Letters. 

          Because all my friends are top 10% they basically get their pick when it comes to Texas colleges. (Now, my first pick would not have been a Texas college, but there are a lot of factors which played into me staying in Texas but that's a story for another time.) They all have automatic acceptance where I have a patience that is growing thin. You see, when you are automatically accepted, once you turn in your application, instead of a "Thank You for sending your application" email, they receive a "You have been accepted!" email. I received the former. I would be lucky to even get a "You have been wait listed" email. But I am fine with it and you know why? I'll tell you why! In March when I receive my acceptance letter to the school of my choice I will know it is because I was an all-around a-mah-zing person and they just could not say no. While a computer gave those geniuses the okay, I will go to sleep at night knowing that those people in admissions looked at my essays and test grades and transcripts and resume and said "I believe in this girl!" That's the difference.

      Well it has been fun, but I must go. 

Love,

The Girl in the Floral Scarf : )

The Girl in the Floral Scarf

The Gift of Being Ugly

I ran away crying. I looked nothing like her, at least I didn’t think so. I mean sure, we had the same glasses and a mouth full of metal, and yes that perm was a bad idea and made my hair more frizzy than curly, but I was not her. I was shaking I was so mad. My sister had the looks and the athletic ability, and all my parents could talk about was how her softball games were great and how many trophies and boyfriends she had, and all they had to say about me was that I was “the smart one.” I was not my sister, but I was also no Ugly Betty.

It started off as just a new show to watch at night with my family. It was suppose to be some mindless entertainment, but I was not suppose to be the main act. I guess I did look like her, and her journalist job in Manhattan was my dream, but the way they made the comparison had so much venom, they did not realize how it made me feel. My dad used to watch the Spanish original show, so instead of Ugly Betty, he called me Betty la Fea, with the emphasis on the F.

I hated it, and you could have blamed the tears on my emotions on my hormones like I did, or tried to put a positive spin on it. Either way, I was an overly emotional, pig-headed thirteen year old with dreams bigger than the stars and parents who gave me lead shoes and wanted for me to be practical. Practical, yuck, how I hated that word. Mother Teresa did not become a saint by being practical, and Edison would have stopped after his fiftieth try at making the light bulb if he was practical. Not once has the word practical ever been tied with the word success. So there was no reason to keep this word in my vocabulary. But I guess a girl called Ugly Betty working at a posh fashion magazine was not practical either. In fact, it was brave.

Okay, so she was just a character in a show, but to me she was real. She was courageous, loyal, positive, and yes, she was smart. I began to look forward to every episode. I watched her move up in a society obsessed with looks. I marveled at the success she had earned and wanted the same for me. I looked in the mirror everyday with the picture of her in mind. I admired the frames over my eyes and my obvious dental work while running my hands over the wild mess I called my hair. I thought of my journalism class I had just started and my semi good grades and mass knowledge of things. None of that was worth being ashamed of.

With the cancellation of the show I was devastated, but not completely. Years later, I still look in the mirror and see that girl I used to cry over. Except now, she is Editor and Chief of her yearbook. Her hair is a little straighter, she wears contacts, her mouth is less magnetic and she goes by the name Alexis. But whenever hear the term Ugly Betty directed toward me, all I can do is smile. I am not Ugly Betty, but I thank them for the compliment. Until next time...

Love Always,

The Girl in the Floral Scarf : )

The Girl in the Floral Scarf