Was it something in the turkey stuffing?

Because I had a lot of it, it was so delicious...
I had the strangest dream last night. It was kind of horrible. But it wasn't your typical nightmare.
I was in the school van and I had my cello with me. There were a couple of other people in the van with me. The choir director and the band director of my school, and for a short while my orchestra director was there, but she had to leave during the dream. There were also some students. We were heading to Oelwein again for all-state auditions. Apparently, because I'm a 17 year old senior and will start college before I turn 18 (it's a dream, so this makes sense), I had the oppertunity to audition for the next all-state. I was on the van on the way there, and I hadn't known about it until that moment. I had to prepare a solo, I had never seen the excerpts (though when I did see them, they were REALLY REALLY easy), but the solo was what was going to get me in. I asked if I could just play my solo from the last time, and I never got a clear answer. It created a lot of anxiety, the whole deal. I wanted to make it in again, be a part of the all-state orchestra (because it was AMAZING), but I didn't want to audition! I hate going through the auditions, having to play your very very best, which takes a LOT of energy. And in the dream I was saying "I'm too tired to play my best, don't you know I just had a lot to eat for Thanksgiving and turkey makes you tired???" (we had an odd discussion about that at dinner.) But I really wanted to make it, but it was so stressful. I got to the school in Oelwein and set up, but this girl who I compete with a lot on cello (and who I've been passing, despite her having played cello about 4-5 years longer than I have-she really does exist and that's really how it is) was really angry that I was there. <:(

It wasn't a happy dream.
I'm glad it was just a dream.
But I hate dreams that cause so much anxiety like that. So much worry and stress... ugggg
So to clear my mind I'm going to bring down all the Christmas decorations from the attic and play Christmas music. :)

The Holidays Are Here....

And we're popping out the Christmas music. :)
I got this piano book for Christmas last year filled with all of the piano music from Charlie Brown (Peanuts) movies. I love it, there's EVERYTHING, from the original popular Linus and Lucy to cute little personal favorites of mine, like his version of the Little Drummer Boy. This is one I learned for today and I love it. :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14z7IHsPVyc (the Thanksgiving Theme). (learning it last minute, I didn't get all the little frilly runs and EVERY chord down.. it was fun and easy reading anyway, though. :) ) Oh, and no drumset or trumpets. :P
so.....
Happy Thanksgiving to everybody! :)
I have to say, this is the first Thanksgiving in my memory where something was not spilled at the dinner table for Thanksgiving dinner. It's a miracle.. haha.
Tomorrow we put up the Christmas tree and I finish putting up lights and garlin and stuff outside. I already have the fence garlin and lights and the net lights on the bushes. The porch has garlin, now I just have to put up some little decorations and possibly more lights. -____-
And I am NOT going shopping tomorrow!!!! I will go to the Y for an hour and that is IT. Thank goodness the YMCA is 2 blocks away... hahaha...oh my goodness...haha... wow. Yes that's another thing to be grateful for.. VERY grateful for.*SIGH*. Black Friday traffic... icky.

I'm going to go listen to some Celtic Women Christmas music now... :)

You know what sounds like pure, absolute heaven to me right now?

A quiet place where it's warm and sunny and where I can lay down on anything light as a cloud and just spend an entire day there, relaxing and listening to my favorite relaxing music (classics, of course :) )and reading a really good book, and just being with somebody who can enjoy it and appreciate it as deeply as I would.

That sounds pretty amazing right now.

So, on a happier note than the last few posts have been... I'll update on the family. :)

Oliver was a vampire for Halloween. I did his hair and makeup. :) Oliver is part of the Green Team at his school and (a program that teaches kids about recycling and how to be more "green"-they also get to go on field trips to special places) - oo it started snowing outside - haha, anyway. Oliver loves his first grade class and has a lot of friends, who he keeps on trying to invite over to his house without their mom knowing or his mom, so it never happens. :P

Grace was a Genie for halloween. Grace is also a part of the Green Team at her school. She is also learning how to play the flute and is doing very well. She's been playing for about 4 weeks and has 5 notes down that she can play fluently without guessing where they are. She's very excited for it, and we're all very excited with her. :)

Sally dressed up from the 80s for the church party and a "wet paint" sign on Halloween night. Sally is liking her honors classes in 8th grade (except for algebra...I didn't like it, either!) and has just started swim team season. She swims with the YMCA Dubuque Dolphins. She made state last year (Molly did, too) and she hopes to make it again, and do even better this year. Sally was also accepted into the Jr. Honors All-State Orchestra with her viola, but unfortunately, the timing conflicts with my all-state and there would be nobody for her to ride home with. She'll still be eligable next year to be in the Jr. All-State, but our conductor will probably make her audition for the actual all-state orchestra (and if she works at the same pace she's working now, she has pretty good chances of making it).

This is what I did for Halloween. I dressed up like a stuffed scarecrow and grabbed people's hands as they took candy. :) (by the time this picture was taken, the makeup was started to fade) My truck also won 1st place in car decorations (you can't see it, but the entire right side of the trunk is one big spider web that I made with fuzzy white and black yarn. I'm leaving for Ames, Iowa for the All-State Music Festival on Wednesday, and I'm very excited for it. :)

Molly was little Dracula's big sister :) Molly is still busy with her classes, but finds them getting better. She is busy with her calling as Nursery leader and her work at a local day care. She's really busy and I don't get to see her that often, and when I do see her, she's either trying to rest or do homework.

Choices

I've always known that the choices we make have consequences, and over the past few weeks I've been realizing more and more how your choices can not only have an effect on yourself, but they can effect everybody around you. Good or bad. In church I always get the lesson of the personal joy and pain you go through when you make a decision. In young women's lessons, they always briefly touch on how your choices can have an influence on your friends and family, and how your friends can have an influence on you. But what finally hit me today isn't completely about influences. Just the choice somebody made, and the effect it's having/will have (not many people know about it yet). It has now effected everybody this person ever knew and many people this person has never met. I can't say I can't believe it happened, because I knew this person and knew of this person's ...view on standards. So I can't say I never would have expected it to come from this person, but now that it has, it's quite a shock. I do believe it happened, and even though I so wish I could say that I never would have expected it, and that this person is too good to do something like that, I can't. This person is a truely amazing person, extremely smart and wonderfully nice, considerate, and a VERY hard worker. But when it comes down to choices and what this person decided to do.. I'm very ashamed. And scared. For this friend.


I know I NEVER will.. but please.
Don't drink and drive.

Politics + School = BAD IDEA

Yesterday was the worst day of school ever. I don't think I've ever been harassed more in an entire week than I was in all of school yesterday. It was not fun. And to top it off, I was feeling extremely crummy (and am not going to school today because I still feel really sick).
Before I get into what happened, let me lay out my view on politics.
I have been raised republican, and after having taken serious studying on both sides, looking at views with out bias or input from the other side, I have decided that I prefer the republican views over the democratic views. However, just because I'm republican it does NOT mean that I hate the democrats. There are some nice things about their views, but there's too much that I don't agree with. So I don't hate Obama. I never have. I don't hate Biden. I really preferred John McCain and Sarah Palin. Overall, I think all of them are pretty nice people (well, I never got to study Biden, so I don't really know much about him, besides his views and plans.)
So I wore my McCain/Palin shirt and button yesterday (and was given a sticker that I put on my shirt), because I wanted to be patriotic and everybody was wearing their Obama shirts and stickers, so I felt I had every right to wear what I want to wear. Now, I was expecting some negativity, but I was NOT expecting the ammount that I got.
Before school: some negative (but joking) comments from some friends. Expected.
1st hour: Intro to Business. We had to watch Saturday Night Live, the one where McCain and "Sarah Palin" come and try to sell stuff. Dumbest thing I ever saw. People made fun of McCain. Nothing was made fun of Obama. NOTHING.
2nd hour: Choir. I hate choir. I might quit. I hate it so much. I am surrounded by these evil little sophomore brat--I mean, girls. They're just evil. Too long to explain. I won't explain what happened (also too long), but they're the most evil creatures in school. And I'm surrounded by them for 50 minutes every day from 8:29 to 9:17. Yesterday was the worst by far with them.
3rd hour: Genetics. In between 2nd and 3rd hour yesterday, I needed to stop by the nurses office, and my genetics teacher knew that. So I walked into class a couple of minutes late. I walk in and walk along the edge of the room so as to not interrupt my teacher and distract the class. But this one girl sees what I'm wearing and shouts "OH MY GOSH" *she uses another word... and more vulgar that I'll also replace* "MCCAIN?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! UGGGGG BLEEEACCCHHHH!!! *mime vomits*" so I just smiled and said "yep!" and sat down in my chair and hoped that would be the end of it. Nope. She turns around and starts shouting at me "YOU KNOW HE'S GOING TO SCREW THE COUNTRY, RIGHT?!?!?!?! HE'LL DIE ANYWAY HE'S SUCH AN IDIOT AND YOU'RE AN IDIOT FOR SUPPORTING HIM! UGGGG BLECHHHH!!!!! OH MY GOSH!!! AND PALIN IS A WHORE" and on and on. She was just shouting crap out and had no idea what she was talking about. So I shouted back (not as loudly) "You know what, maybe I don't care, and MAYBE" (she was starting to shout back again, so I shouted over her) "MAYBE I DON'T WANT TO TALK ABOUT IT AND I WANT TO FOCUS" (I gestured toward my teacher, who looked kind of shocked about the whole thing), "ON GENETICS. THAT'S WHAT WE'RE HERE FOR. SO LEAVE ME ALONE." we had to take a test. It was really hard to focus with her muttering 2 desks away and glaring at me.
4th hour: Study hall. 2 friends and I get passes to go to the choir room and we do homework there rather than sit in the rowdy room full of people who got a study hall because the slacked off. The 3 of us got study halls because my 2 friends got D+s in an AP class that was really hard to pass anyway, I got a study hall because I was sick and had to drop a class. 4th hour really wasn't that bad. I just started feeling really sick and just lay down on the floor the whole hour.
5th hour: is normally orchestra, but a group of us had to go get our pictures taken for All-State. So I had gotten dressed and had to walk across the building in my nice concert black clothes and my cello (with a group of friends also in nice clothes and carrying violin/viola/trumpet cases). There was a crowd waiting to get into lunch and some people said "watch out, big instrument coming through" and it was pretty easy. But these 2 girls who weren't listening (big surprise *sarcasm*), tripped over my cello case (which has wheels and rolls behind me) and knocked it over and started shouting all sorts of profanity that should have gotten them in huge trouble. I just said "oops you just gotta watch where yer going... sorry!" and both of them started throwing the F-bomb at me. Telling me I'm retarted and an f-ing loser and something about McCain and it was ugly. So, I lost my standards for a second and flipped them off as I turned the corner.. I know, bad thing bad thing, but things were just piling up.. I can only be a door mat for so long.
6th hour: I got to class late because of the pictures (had a pass, it was excused), and as I was walking down the hall, I saw/heard a teacher in a classroom say "and Sarah Palin- uggg blech oh my gosh.." so after I passed the door (he hadn't seen me) I shouted "WOOO GO SARAH PALIN!!!" and ran to my class.. hahaha. Over all 6th hour was pretty good. I sat inbetween a quiet republican and a quiet democrat. We watched a movie over a book we've been reading, so it was pretty quiet.
7th hour: I walked in and one of my friends (democrat) was talking about how one of our friends (a republican) was complaining about stuff and he said she should just get over it. I asked if it was Audrey (our friend) and he said yes. Before I spoke up, somebody walked passed my desk, saw my shirt and said "ugggg blech" *mime vomited on me*. So I said "See??? This is what we're sick of. I'm SO TIRED of being picked on and shouted at because of my beliefs! You don't see anybody wearing McCain going around and doing what she just did!" (I pointed at the girl) "We don't go around saying 'Screw Obama!' and 'you suck!' If Obama's going to win tonight, your side is going to be the one representing what America is! And when you mime-vomit all over people who just simply don't agree with you, that makes you look pretty un-intelligent. So yeah, Audrey has every right to complain. We've been harassed ALL DAY LONG." and nobody could retort. It felt great. To break the silence, the girl behind me said "well, I'm independent and I can't even vote, neither can most of you, so how about we just drop it? Yeah! :D" And then a teacher in the room spoke up and said "there are 2 things you just cannot argue about in life with people and you should NEVER try and change their minds, because you just can't. They are politics and religion. So just don't even argue about it. It's not going to do any good."
Later in class I had to make a trip down the hall and a teacher in the hallway saw me and said "Oh! You've GOT to show your shirt to this guy!" and he pulled me into an empty classroom with a teacher at his desk and I said "Yeah.. McCain...?" and he said "ooooooo EVIL!!!" and I retorted "more like SMART! haha" and he laughed, he said "you know, you're probably right". That wasn't so bad, but the fact that a teacher wanted to use me to get a negative comment out of a teacher.. I don't like being used.
So by the end of the day I was pretty upset, and I talked with my favorite teacher (who is pretty much just a family friend who happens to teach) and I explained to her what had happened and she was shocked by all of it and told me that she had seen some of that happen in her own class. People had asked one girl who she supported and she said "McCain" and people just jumped on her.. So this teacher told me that she's sending an email to the principle about the behavior of people in school.
My mom wants me to write a narrative of my day and show it to my guidance councelor...

So today I'm not in school... I really don't feel good, and after yesterday, I don't think I could handle today without breaking down or totaly freaking out at some point.
Today is my break. I don't need to deal with life today.