Goodbye, 2008

It was a good year. A very good year. I learned a lot - about my faith and myself especially.
I learned that I love to act and need to write.
I learned that I fiercely love being Catholic.
I was in my very first play this year.
I read over 120 books.
I learned and mastered the Shipoopi dance, though it seemed impossible at first.
I made a lot of friends that have taught and helped me - Miss C.N.W., Froggy/Janny, Elenatintil, Lady Rose, BB - I'm looking at all of you! ;)
I kept up with this blog pretty faithfully.
I learned that I prefer sincerity to sarcasm in the long run.

I hope, after all of that, I'm a little wiser. I think I am.

Here's to 2009!

When I Wish I Had My Camera

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas! :) I certainly did, even though I was sick.

Today I was in Barnes & Noble and my sister and I saw a step-stool in the journals section. There was a paper taped onto the stool that made me wish I had my camera with me. It read, "This stool is for stepping and those who need to step. Please do not use as a seat, table or dental instrument."

Huh? My sister and I read it out loud several times, and finally we gave up on trying to figure out what the heck it meant by "dental instrument". Does anyone know? Were they just being snarky?

Um...

I left one of my writing notebooks on the computer table.
Open.
While my dad was checking the weather forecast.
When I sat down at the computer just now I said, "Uhhhh..." I do dearly hope that no one read any of it.

Please pray for me. I'm grouchy and sick and I can't decide what to read. And I'm driving myself crazy because I want to write but I'm too sick and tired to write anything.

My Hot Cocoa Mug

This is the cup from which I drink my hot cocoa, tea, or coffee, especially while reading a Father Brown story aloud to my sister. My aunt gave it to my as a Christmas gift last year - my family knows me too well. :)

News That Is New, and AUSTENBOOK!

News that is new: I'm 16, my throat hurts, The Music Man is on Christmas vacation, and it's cold, cold, cold.

I found this on Ribbons of Light and it's just completely making my night.

Favorite part:

"Elizabeth Bennet and Caroline Bingley are attending the event Take a Turn about the Room." HA!

{edited to add the darn link *facepalm*}

Snow Day

Today we had a Snow Day. As home-schoolers, we aren't really supposed to have those; but my dad stayed home from work, and Some of Us (*cough*me*cough*) slept in, and Others frittered away in the snow.

This is the snowman Desirae made. She made it on the other side of the house and transplanted it. It appears to be missing a nose in this shot... I think the dog ate it...




This is Zoe, disguised as both Ralphie ("He looks like a pink nightmare,") and Randy ("I can't put my arms dooown!") from the movie, A Christmas Story. Isn't she DARLING? We were all laughing so hard when Courtney stuffed her in this suit.



Our (currently not in use) stable in the snow. Yes, we started to paint it red and never finished...

Superior Scribbler Award

I forgot about this until now, but my "sister", Miss C.N.W. gave me this award. This girl is so great that she even edited her post to update the title of my blog after I changed it. I'm so excited that I'M GOING TO MEET HER NEXT MONTH!!! In person and not online, I mean. :P Thank you, sis!




Now I award... Gosh, this is hard. I think I'm going to award...

Erin, for her Backstage Musings blog.
And "Rose" of A Rose In Bloom
And "Owan" of Among The Gently Mad

Ok, that's not five, but if I did anymore I'd never be able to stop.

Safe

I had the following conversation at the dentist's office. We've been going there for years.

Note: All the dentists there are from the Philippines, so you must imagine everything the dentist says with an accent.

Dentist: So... you are almost 16, Delaney?
Me: Uh-huh (I had my mouth open)
Dentist: You have boyfriend?
Me: (In an "oh-dear-what-an-idea voice) Ha, no.
Dentist: (Laughing) You don't want one?
Me: No, not for quite a while yet.
Dentist: Oh, you are so good. Your parents will not have to worry. I wish all teenagers were like you.
Me: ... (I wasn't sure what to say)
Dentist: Maybe in college you will have boyfriend?
Me: Maybe.
Dentist: If you went to The Real School, you would have boyfriends. The boys would be chasing you, because you are very pretty. That is one good thing about home-school: you are safe!

Inside my head I was chuckling and thinking, "Thank you, Lord, I am SAFE!"

New Blog Title and Abundant Harvest

I've decided to give this blog a new name.

The new name is "Hat Full of Hope," because one of the things that most saddens and frustrates me is seeing people around me who have no hope. No hope for the future of the world, or their life, no hope for their children. People like this always sound depressed and cynical. I'm guilty of feeling hopeless and sarcastic, but I try to fight it, because to be without Hope is not Christian. I may be naive and sheltered, as my dad says, but at least I have hope.

Today my mom had an Abundant Harvest thingummy. What an Abundant Harvest "thingummy" is: People sign up to get a weekly crate of fruits and vegetables from local(ish) farmers, along with add-ons like raw milk, nuts, extra fruit and vegetables, etc. My mom organized it for our town, and today I went with her to the drop. It was very cold, so I sat in the car and took pictures...

Lovely scenery. Well... I think it's lovely. :)



Less than lovely scenery in reflection, and Someone's Truck:



And this is fennel. It tastes like black licorice - no kidding. I like it, though.



That's all I have to say tonight...

Favorite Moments from The Music Man

Today I did a rather fatal thing. I counted the days left until opening night of The Music Man. Forty-eight, not counting today. I feel like I've eaten of the tree of knowledge of good and evil - now that I know how many days left until we perform, I'll wake up every morning with a new nagging number in my head, unconsciously counting down the days and weeks.

Before it's too late, before I become so sick of this play that I feel like burning my script, I'd like to share my favorite quotes, lyrics and moments from The Music Man.

For some reason, I really really really like this play's music. I'm not exactly sure why. It's not powerful or brilliant in the way that other musicals are. At first it even drove me crazy. But now I've grown to appreciate songs I didn't like, or at least be more tolerant of them (Shipoopi).

So, here are some of my favorite lyrics:

Oh, there's nothin' halfway
About the Iowa way to treat you,
When we treat you
Which we may not do at all

-- Townspeople, "Iowa Stubborn."

I'm slightly biased in favor of the "Piano Lesson" song because as Mrs. Paroo, it's sort of "my" song.

When a woman's got a husband
And you've got none
Why should she take advice from you?
Even if you can quote Balzac and Shakespeare
And all them other high-falutin' Greeks!

-- Mrs. Paroo, "Piano Lesson/If You Don't Mind My Saying So"

There's not a man alive
Who could hope to measure up
To that blend o' Paul Bunyan
Saint Pat and Noah Webster
You've concocted for yourself
Outta your Irish imagination
Your Iowa stubborness
And your liberry fulla books.

-- Ditto

Remember, my friends
What a handful of trumpet players
Did to the famous, fabled walls of Jericho!
Oh, billiard parlor walls come a-tumbling down!

-- Harold Hill, "Trouble Reprise/Seventy Six Trombones"

But when I try in here
To tell you, dear
I love you madly, madly
Madam Librarian,
Marian,
It's a long lost cause
I can never win
For the civilized world accepts
As unforgivable sin
Any talking out loud
With any librarian
Such as Marian...

-- Harold Hill, "Marian The Librarian"

My mother laughs every time she hears the following line - she says it reminds her of me.

And if occasionally he'd ponder
What makes Shakespeare and Beethoven great?
Him I could love till I die
Him I could love till I die...

-- Marian Paroo, "My White Knight"

What I like more than the music in the show is its fun dialogue and characters. Here are some of my favorite quotes from the script:

----

ALMA
And there I was in Madison Hospital, and nobody come to see me! Cousin Will never come... Aunt Bertha never come --

ETHEL
Your Aunt Bertha's dead.

ALMA
She wouldn't a' come anyway.

(Our Alma's are fabulous.)

----

MAYOR SHINN
Will you members of the School Board stop bickerin' in public?

(I don't know why this line always makes me laugh)

----

ALMA
Oh, professor Hill, we're all agog - simply agog!

(Ever since I listened to Les Miserables, the word "agog" has made me giggle.)

----

ZANEETA, the Mayor's daughter
Papa, please! It's Capulets like you who make blood in the marketplace.

Later in the same scene...

MAYOR SHINN, to Harold
I'll settle your hash as soon as I get these premises offa' my oldest girl.

----

(I love all of Charlie Cowell, anvil salesman's great phrases. "They are gems," as my director says. )

CHARLIE COWELL
I got the goods on him in spades. Swindlin' two-bit thimble rigger.

A few lines later

CHARLIE COWELL
Mistake my old lady's corset cover! That fella's been the raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth just long enough.

(Brilliant... absolutely brilliant. I must start using the phrase "raspberry seed in my wisdom tooth" more often.)

----

MAYOR SHINN
And always remember, fellow River Citizens, I can only remind you that I did everything in my power to prevent this dire happening from - ah - happening.

----

Honorable Mention: The song that is way too much fun to make fun of.

"Till There Was You." The melody is beautiful, but the lyrics are lame.

I Don't Even Want To Know What My Dreams Say About Me

I have weird dreams. Weird, weird dreams. Last night I had a weird one. I won't go into all of it, but in part of it, James Dean came to a Music Man rehearsal (anyone who regularly reads my blog will know how perfectly logical it is that I should have a dream about a celebrity visiting us). In the dream, Dean had recently lost his father and so refused to talk about East of Eden (which is mainly about a young man's relationship with his father). From what I know about James Dean as a person, the guy in my dream was very much like how he really was - not entirely pleasant.

Then I woke up and remembered that James Dean is dead, and that even if he were alive he would have been over seventy. I was sad and it put me in the mood to watch East of Eden again. The DVD is on my Christmas list... Here is a scene from the movie that I like a lot. I wouldn't say it's my favorite scene in the movie, but I do like it quite a lot.

Haha... silly Abra. "HI, CAL! Aron isn't here so I'm free to flirt shamelessly with my boyfriend's brother! Whee!" No, I'm kidding. I like Abra very much.

Long version:



Short version, for those who don't have the patience to watch all five and a half minutes!



Hmm, what else do I have to say tonight? I can't think of anything, so I'll leave this post hoping that you all don't think I'm a fangirl for having a dream about James Dean. Because I'm not. I'm a Cal Trask fangirl sometimes, that's all. ;)

Gandalf the Yellow-haired

Noah, my four-year-old brother, after watching an animated movie of The Hobbit: "Could you put on my cape?"

I said, "Sure. Do you want the Superman S facing in, or out?"

Noah said, "In. 'Cause Gandalf doesn't fly."

I straightened up and grinned at my sister. "Oh!" I said, "Are you Gandalf?"

"Yep," said the little wizard in the Superman cape, "Only I'm a different kind of wizard, with a sword and shield. I'm a boy Gandalf."

Then a few minutes later, I saw him wearing a red Santa hat. It was his wizard hat, of course! "But it doesn't stay up very good," he admitted to me.

Then for part of today he was St. Michael the Archangel. With a spear, so he could "poke the devil."

Baby's First Word, among other things

My baby said her first word yesterday. I'm excluding the word "Mama" as her first word because she uses it more as a wail than a word ("Mamamamamama..."). Last night my brother had a box of the ice cream treat known as Dibs, little pieces of chocolate with ice cream inside. Zoe saw my sister eating one of these and somehow identified them as ice cream (yes, we feed our one-year-old baby ice cream). "Ice?" she said to Noah, holding out her hand. Only it sounded more like "ishe." Aww.

This morning my brother had me tell him the first part of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Lucy, Edmund and Eustace fall into the water and Caspian saves them. Fast-forward 20 minutes: I came out of my room to find two of my sisters thrashing about on the floor while Noah called out, "You don't see me yet, you have to hear a splash first." He made a splashing noise and proceeded to rescue them and bring them aboard the Dawn Treader.

Now for Katie's meme. Sorry it took me so long!

1. pick up the nearest book (of at least 123 pages)
The Once And Future King by T.H. White

2. Open to page 123

3. Find the fifth sentence:


4. Post the next three sentences:
"One of these paths ended at a clod with a natural hollow underneath it. In the hollow - again with the strange appearance of aimless purpose - he found two dead ants. They were laid there tidily but yet untidily, as if a very tidy person had taken them to the place, but had forgotten the reason when he got there."

So that's random. Dead ants, woohoo. Part One of The Once And Future King (The Sword In The Stone) is very random like that.

I thought I had some other news to tell, but I guess I haven't.

Oh. Yes. I have to have Act 2 of Music Man memorized tomorrow. Eeeeeeek! Actually, it's not a big deal. I have only a handful of lines to learn in Act 2, and I know them.