On learning interesting things

Yesterday I learned something really cool and interesting. I was on my way home from an orthodontist appointment, (I know, gripping beginning right?) and my mom rolled down the windows. The wind was blowing really hard (I like wind) (I like parentheses too ha ha) and I stuck my arm out the window, it felt good. Now, I was wearing a long-sleeved shirt, and the cool air went all the way down my sleeve and into my armpit, where it felt very strange. My reaction to this strange occurrence made both my mother and my sister crack up laughing at me. This is what I learned: apparently when it is windy and you stick your arm out the window, the air will rush into your sleeve and up your arm. Actually, once you get past the shock, it's kind of cool. So, I rode the rest of the way home with my arm out the window laughing all the way. Yep, this is me people, I'm sixteen years old and living it up.

Another window into my ultra-glamorous life:
Today, in my math class, we played Halloween Bingo. We used Smarties as our markers. The kid who sits across from me, Seth, made fun of me for arranging my Smarties according to color. I told him I was OCD and to deal with it. Henceforth I have decided that all of my faults shall be blamed upon my being OCD, even though no doctor has proclaimed me to be such. I have way too much fun writing these things.
Also, about thirty minutes ago, I found a leaf in my church's parking lot, (I like leaves) and I picked it up and brought it home with me. It just seemed so perfect, so whole and unblemished. I'm glad we have fall and I'm glad we have leaves. So, today I say, "thank you God for the fall and the leaves, and thank you for letting me learn about wind and armpits."
Did you like the picture? I made it myself. "I'm a big kid now." (in song--if you don't know what I'm talking about, it's probably because you have a life)

On 3 comments

So, I'm thinking it's pretty stinking cool that on all my posts, it says "3 comments". That means it's all even, yeah. If you didn't already know, I'm OCD and I like for things to be even and in order and stuff. Now that you know that, you'll probably use it against me like everybody else, oh well. Ha ha I'm doing that thing again where I make people feel bad for me on purpose. Did you feel bad for me just then? If not, you're a terrible person who has no heart. If you did, don't because the only thing that's pathetic about me is that I tried to make you feel bad for me in the first place. I should really quit that. Conviction! If I'm not making any sense, then welcome to my world. Actually, ever since we talked about doing stuff to get attention on that one Wednesday night, I've been very observant about the things people, including me, do to get attention. I used to think it was a problem other people had, you know middle child syndrome but I realized that I can be guilty of it sometimes too. So know I can take the plank out of my eye yeah! Isn't it amazing the way the Holy Spirit can work in your life? It's so cool how every day God's making me more like the person I'm supposed to be forever. Wow, I totally got away from the whole 3 comments thing, oh well.

On rainy days

Hooray for rainy days!! I think that dark, rainy days are truly super blessings from God. One, because the rain nourishes the earth, and two, because they make people appreciate nice sunny days more. I mean a beautiful sunrise is even more special if you don't get to experience it every morning. Today, my journalism teacher informed me that there is an actually psychological disorder that causes people to behave differently when the sun is not shining. Pretty weird huh? She said some people even have special lighting in their homes to imitate the sunlight, so they don't become sick. I thought that was pretty interesting. So, today I thank God for the rain and the cold weather. I love fall and winter! Today, when I got off the bus after school, I could see my breath yeah! I'm so excited about the cold. One of the best feelings in the world to me is being cold, than warming up with a cup of hot chocolate, a sweater, a blanket, and a bowl of tomato soup. Eww, that sounded gross. No, I don't eat tomato soup and drink hot chocolate at the same time that would be nasty. oh, by the way, I ate two marshmallows(why is it spelled marshmallow when we actually say marshmellow) while I typed this blog. Just thought you'd like to know.

On being blessed

I think it's pretty incredible that I am so completely blessed. Sometimes it's good to stop and take a minute and I know it's cliche, but count your blessings. I thought about this today as I was folding laundry with my mom. (There you go, a window into my glamorous life.) I was folding my dad's socks and my mom told me to put them into two separate piles, capital letters and lowercase letters (they say "Hanes" on them). As I sorted his socks, I thought, Wow, this would be crazy to so many people in this world. I mean, my family is blessed enough that my dad has two different kinds of socks. And not just one pair of each, no, he has a lot of socks. I bet homeless people don't care whether both of their socks have capital letters or not; they'd probably just fee lucky to have socks. Now I realize how silly I am sometimes, worrying about things. Obviously God is taking care of me and he's going to continue to do so. Okay so now I'm sitting here laughing at how weird I am. I guess it's just that I need to get a life. I mean I doubt many people sit at home thinking about the lettering on socks. I suppose I get the weirdness from my mom who is OCD enough to want the socks separated into capital and lowercase letter piles in the first place. Hmmmm. Well, the only thing I'm for sure of is this: From now on, if someone mentions "counting my blessings" to me, I'm going to remember my dad's socks.
Hooray for advice: Start paying attention to the little things in life. It may cause you to come to realizations.
Ha ha. Like anyone is going to take the advice of a girl who just wrote for twenty minutes about socks. :)

On reading the newspaper

I'm supposed to read the newspaper 15 minutes a day for my journalism class at school. Right. Anyway today I actually did it and I read a news brief and I'm not sure how I feel about it. Apparently, some artist in New York sculpted a giant Jesus out of chocolate. Now my guess is that this wasn't some unique act of worship, but I suppose it may have been. I don't know. Well anyway, this guy was supposed to display this thing last year, but he couldn't because some Catholics got really upset, because it was during Easter time. Now in the grand scheme of things, I guess how I feel about this guy's "artwork" isn't really going to affect anything; however, I at least need to know how I feel about it. While reading I was torn between wanting to laugh out loud and becoming very angry. On the one hand, I think it's kind of disrespectful. Although it is kind of amusing to me, like something out of the twilight zone, because of the conversation Hannah and I had at church a while ago.

STORY!! In big church, pastor Brad was talking about how some people crave chocolate, and how we should be craving Jesus instead. I wrote to Hannah on my program, "Is it wrong to crave a chocolate covered Jesus?" I was totally kidding. She laughed out loud and we kept joking about a chocolate Jesus the rest of the day.

You don't have to tell me, I know. It's pretty weird. I guess I'm psychic...no not really.

Also in today's paper was a story about a polygamist in the Middle East. If you haven't heard my rant about polygamy, I'll paraphrase it for you: It's gross. It's stupid. Those people are gross. Those people are stupid. How can anybody think that's okay?

Anyway, this guy as eight wives and like sixty some odd kids.

See, this is why I don't read the paper.

On prayer, P.S, smiley gum, and flowers

Today was supposed to be pink day, but pink really isn't a color choice now is it? Rats. Did you know that when the little clasp thing on your necklace moves around, so it isn't behind your neck anymore, that you're supposed to make a wish? Me either. Well, now I do because my grandma told me the other day. I though Wow my necklace gets messed up all the time... that's a lot of wishes I could have wished but didn't. Okay, so really making wishes at dumb times is stupid, but here is what I'm actually getting at:

I think we miss a lot of opportunities to wish, rather ask for things. I know in my life, there are a lot of things that I should probably pray about, but I don't. Why not? I don't know. It really is silly, because there is really nothing too small for God to pay attention to. So, I've decided that no matter insignificant something may seem, if a worry crosses my mind, I'm going to take it to God.

Like this morning. I got ready for school and checked the temperature- a beautiful 60 degrees again, another nice day. I walked outside like I always do to catch the bus at the end of my driveway. I noticed how pretty the sun was coming up. Yeah, I thought, God, thank you for the sunrise. Then I saw the bus. The bus that was not stopping at my driveway, but driving on past my house and down the road. Oh no. Well, lots of buses do pass my house in the morning, maybe that one wasn't mine, I couldn't see the numbers. usually I have time to enjoy the morning for a couple minutes before it arrives. So, I waited, to see if my bus would come for me, or if that had been my bus that drove away. And I decided to go ahead and pray about it. I did. I prayed that that really hadn't been my bus driving by, that my bus was on its way. Then feeling a little foolish I prayed that even if that had been my bus that maybe God could give me a do-over and let me get on it this time so my mom wouldn't have to get up to drive me. And you know what? My bus came and I got on it and went to school. Yeah, I feel like a dork that I got so excited about that but, hey it was an answered prayer.


Alrighty, so now I have a P.S. to yesterday's giant thank you note. Thanks to Marc for being gullible enough to let me get you with a marshmallow, again. Okay sorry STORY!!! Here is how it went:
Me: My marshmallow smells funny.
Dad: It's just the smoke and fire. Eat it.
Me: No it's weird. (wink wink at dad) Smell it.
Dad: (smells it) Hmmm. I don't know.
Me: Here Marc, you smell it.
Marc: Okay
Then as he smells it, I shove the marshmallow forcefully at his face, getting it all over him. he he I win big time.
And thanks to Sarah for my soon to be finished ukulele! (STARGIRL PLAYED THE UKULELE!) I am way too excited for my own good? Wait. is that possible? Oh well, I'm super excited.


Hooray for "have a good day" gum! For my birthday, Emmy gave me a jar full of yellow gumballs whose wrappers have smiley faces on them. She said that they were for me to give to people when I told them to have a good day (I tell people to have a good day a lot). i brought a bag of them with me to school today and I had SO MUCH FUN!!! I wish I had enough "have a good day" gum so that I could give one to everybody at my school everyday. It would be fun to just walk through the halls and smile and hand gum to every person I saw. If I were the ruler of the school, I would make all the teachers keep jars of "have a good day" gum on their desks and whenever they had a student who was looking kind of sad, they would give them a piece. In fact, when I become a teacher, I'm going to do that. I'm going to keep stores and stores of "have a good day" gum for anyone who wasn't having a good day. That way even if they felt overwhelmed and bogged down by school like I do sometimes, they could a least have something to smile about.

Hooray for flowers! Yesterday at church spontaneously, Megan and I walked around the parking lot for a long time and picked flowers, well weeds really but I bet it hurts their feelings when people call them that so I call them flowers and we talked. It was quite enjoyable. I love flowers, especially white dandelions. My grandpa planted flowers, mums, around my tree. My dad and grandpa spent the whole day Saturday planting my weeping cherry tree. They planted three mums and built bricks in a circle around it. Now I smile every time I look at it. When Emmy was here yesterday, I commented that the whole thing kind of looks like a memorial, you know, like I died or something. My mom laughed and brought out this funny cross thing she had and put it in front of the tree. Really, it looks super. Today, I told her that I wanted to leave the cross there, that I liked it. So now it's official, even if I don't become famous, they've built a Lindsey Memorial.

On being thankful for friends

I just had my sixteenth birthday, and today my fingers itched like they always do when I know I need to write. I've been thinking about how much fun I had on Friday, (my birthday) when everyone came out to the house to celebrate with me. I'm horrible about writing thank you notes, horrible in the sense that I just don't do it. But today I really wanted to write thank you notes. If I did write thank you notes, I would write them my own way. Some of them would thank people for their thoughtful gifts, but some would just thank people for being who they are. After the party, my dad made a comment to me about my friends and how they are all really great. I must say that I definitely agree. So, even if in the following, I don't mention you by name, thank you anyway. Thanks to those who were there on my birthday... and thanks even to those who weren't for just being in my life. OK, here it goes:
Thanks to my parents for letting me have my friends over.
Thanks to Katy and Devon for being my friends and standing by me for so long.
Thanks to Grandma and Grandpa for surprising me by coming down from Michigan on my special day.
Thanks to Logan for my song, because that was one of the things on my birthday wish list. Wait!!! Story: My parents had been repeatedly asking me what I wanted for my birthday. I told them I wanted a pet fish and a tree to plant in the back yard. They just didn't seem to think this was good enough, so they kept asking me to think of more things. Then, my mom and I found the video online from the Guatemala trip with Logan playing his ukulele and singing the song he wrote about Kyle. It made me laugh so hard I cried. So, the next time my parents asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I simply told them that I wanted a fish, a tree, and a song written by Logan and that was it. They complained saying that they had no control over whether Logan wrote me a song or not. I just laughed and smiled, knowing full well that I'd be happy with whatever they really chose to get me, but not telling them this. Then, it turned out that I really did get my fish, (who by the way, I will be naming Leo, when I finally pick him out), my tree, (it's a weeping cherry), and my mom wound up asking Logan to write me a song for my birthday. Therefore, I am spoiled and happy and very thankful for Logan and his creativity. It's definitely on the list of 'best gifts ever'.
Thanks to Drew for playing your guitar during Logan's song and for telling me HAPPY BIRTHDAY over and over again.
Thanks to Beth Swango for your kind and touching words, they really meant a lot. Geez. You almost made me cry on my birthday!
Thanks to Sarah and Alexis and Emmy for always being there for me and being amazing friends. Much love.
Thanks to Sean for the thought put into the sunflowers and star-cookies, which are very tasty by the way.
Thanks to Brian for assuring me that I'm "kind of in-between"...I'll take it.
Thanks to Jaymen for dancing with me while we played island tag, you're always making me laugh.
Thanks to Eric for keeping me humble by obliterating me in red rover. Seriously, don't feel bad, my foot will be fine someday :)
Thanks to all of you who have taken the time to know me well enough to know that all I needed for my birthday was candy and reading material. Oh! And I almost forgot the SINGING CARDS!!!!! They are amazing and had nobody been watching, I probably would have sat there opening and closing them as fast as I could until the batteries died.
Now last but not least, Thanks most of all to GOD for blessing me with this plethora of awesome friends whom I love very much.

So, my 16th birthday was all that I dreamed it would be and more. The only thing that could have ended the day better would have been dancing and singing in a gazebo with a blond Austrian, like in Sound of Music but that's okay, there's still time. I'll be sixteen going on seventeen for a whole year, ha ha.