Trees, Books, and Kara-tay

My life has been rather uneventful as of late.
I suppose that's to be expected when you're a home-schooled homebody like myself, but when I'm older, I'm going to spend nearly every day out and about.
If everything goes according to plan, that is.
Not that I really expect that.
But one can dream.

Anywhoozle, I'd wager to say I've spent at least a good four hours reading in a tree in the past couple of days. There's nothing quite like nestling up against the downy fluff of gritty bark twenty-five feet off the ground, back stiff and sore from craning over a book, legs dangling over empty air. My perch is actually quite nice, if I shift around occasionally to ward off numbness (unsuccessfully). I sling my bag over one of the branches and camp out Katniss-style, and I can climb up a good deal father in it too.

I've lived at my house two flipping years and just discovered it about a week ago.

So I was really bored. I had this unassailable urge to climb a tree, and by darn it, I was going to climb one. Except that despite the largeness of our span of land, we didn't have any trees
a) with branches that were within my tippy-toed grabby-fingered reach
b) that weren't as completely dead as MySpace.

So I lugged this rickety excuse for a stepladder around the backyard and hoped that the boost would propel my unsatisfactory height to the appropriate level for at least some spindly-branched thing. Nothing seemed promising, however. (I was examining a very dead, very prickly number when a huge stripe-legged spider bungeed down in front of my face and sent me flailing backwards in a flurry of yelps.)

The one next to it, however, was golden.
(...Meaning more than marginally okay. Did you really think I meant foliage made of precious metal? My, but you're dumb.)
There are two mild knots perfect for footholds but you still need the stepladder to even reach the first branch, and have to perform a clumsy sloth-like swinging operation to get down, so I'm the only one in my family who can climb up there. Or bothers to. But the net effect is the same.
There are not very many ways to attain privacy at my house, and those even in their scarcity are not always effective, but tree-climbing is quite impeccable. It does ensure my legs are in a perpetual state of scuff and bruise, but that I can deal with.

So I've been doing quite a lot of reading lately.
I went on a bit of a reading hiatus for a couple months, a barren wasteland lacking the printed word, and it had scared me. Honestly. Reading has always been a great joy of mine, but no matter how hard I tried, it just wasn't pulling me in like it used to. I missed the neck cramps and under-the-blanket flashlights, longed for that gripping suspense that when I was younger didn't seem so dreadfully hard to find. Since the discovery of The Tree, however, I've read about five books and I'm hoping this indicates that my battered stumbling through the desert of non-literacy has come to an oasis.
I just hope it's not temporary.
(By the way, the Princess Bride is a good book. For realz. And, as a side note, one with an entirely misleading title you Manly Men of the Order of Raw Meat.)

I also started tae kwon do back up last week. It's fun, but the class is intimidating. Our instructor is a rather planetary grouch-with-a-mustache and most of my peers are super-high belts, and so far the class has been exclusively male.
And they're good.
...
Like, really good.

One of the red belts, an albeit good-natured karate beast who could break your jaw without so much as trying, we just call The Bad Man.

But hey, at least my oppressive guilt for not sticking with it before is enough to outweigh any future desire to quit.

~Elizabeth

P.S. My white belt is dangerous.
FEAR ITS BLINDING POWER.

Hello again...

The Web Nanny is a cruel mistress.

Our dumb internet filter won't let me post or edit previous posts. This one I'm accessing from my mother's iPad, and it's no easy feat to format blog posts via tablet.

So take pity on my neglected, webbernet corner and its hideously disjointed text design.
It's not my fault.

She lurks around every corner with her warning of adult content, feather duster brandished hostilely, eyes burning with hellflame...

It's terrifying.

~Elizabeth

In Which I Have an Impromptu Piano Performance and Drink Lemonade

Saturday was lots of fun.

So my friend Sarah and her little sister have a lemonade stand every year. They live in the middle of our small town in a close proximity to the festival that's going on right now, so there are a ton of people walking by (ideally strutting along with loose change jingling in their pockets and throats dry as old parchment).
Once any one of these hypothetical persons has spotted the colorful, marker-drawn banner reading "Eighth Annual Lemonade Stand", they will undoubtedly do one of these three things. 
a) They are kindly folk who, regardless of their thirst, will come up and buy something. Or just slap a dollar on the table in approval of our avoiding the pull of electronics for an entire day.

b) They don't have money with them but will congratulate us on our ambition and try to strike up a quick conversation, as if that compensates for their lack of monetary contribution. Then they walk away and wish us luck.

c) They spot the stand from a short distance and something just goes off. Shoots a thousand pointy signals to their brains, setting every hair on end across icy skin, alerting every nerve of the imminent need for fight-or-flight; something suddenly explodes in a cacophony of blinding red lights that scream "DEATH. DEATH. DEATH."

They must avoid the children selling cold drinks at all costs.

We might as well have been serving black plague injections. Or sneaking up on random passer-bys and mugging them in the street.

So what they would do, after spotting this immediate danger of children selling lemon beverages, is cross the street before they reach us. They think, "Well, if I'm walking over here I can just pretend I don't see them. My guilt is quenched."

Sometimes they would just avert their gaze and shuffle past. Because everyone knows if you make eye contact you immediately owe a favor.

So it was one of those particularly slow forty-minute intervals. I drummed my fingers on the fold-table. We slapped lazily at flies. We sipped lemonade that quickly became sickeningly sweet and sticky to our tongues after our third glasses.

I suggested that Sarah go get her violin and advertise for us on the street corner. After all, I continued with a chuckle at my own enormous wit, I'd lug a grand piano out to the lawn but that's not exactly portable. 

Her parents, who had been on the porch unbeknownst to myself, overheard and chimed in. They asked me if I wanted them to bring out their electronic keyboard, thinking I had been entirely serious. I blinked. "Well... I guess, sure," I managed, astonished, and before I had time to register what I had just agreed to they were dragging it out onto the grass with the neon orange extension cord trailing behind. 

After that we fell into a routine. We'd sit, and at the sight of any meandering pedestrians they'd hustle me over to the keyboard and make me burst out in the only music I had memorized at the time and didn't require a pedal, which happened to be the Turkish March by Mozart. Some guy they kind-of knew gave us twenty dollars to split for my "performance" and because I wasn't really getting paid for helping at the stand they gave me the biggest cut, a smacking wad of Ones. Sixteen, total.

My spirits were high, my ego properly inflated, and I was banging those keys with gloriously soar fingers. After about the twentieth repetition of this a-melodic tune their neighbors closed the window to my musical genius, but I was not deterred. Unfortunately, no one else gave me any money, but whatever.

I was satisfied.

We waited for the kids from our class to arrive after closing shop. Alex showed up and we burst into applause, chatting on the lawn for a bit, but the twins were still due to arrive and gave no signs of doing such. We waited. We watched every car that passed with increasing hopelessness that consumed our beings. Sometimes we'd belt out chanting their last name like overenthusiastic cheerleaders, but our rain dance did not summon them to the scene. With heavy hearts we plodded to the festival, faces downcast in depressed delirium, but our spirits quickly rose when it came into sight.

We had fun that day. We ate overpriced roasted nuts that were lukewarm from sitting out in the humid air, bought baubles and useless nicknacks, and bumped into my public-schooled friend whose energetic companions slightly terrified my homeschooled ones. 

I went home with Sarah and we ate ice cream. And played cards. And watched Megamind WHILE eating ice cream like the bosses we are.

Bless all your faces,

~Elizabeth

P.S.

I won a cheap plastic sword at the festival. It'll most like disintegrate within the month, but I totally decked it out with my sharpies and duct tape.

"My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father."

"Prepare to die."

Formatting

Yes, I know it's a dragon.
Sheesh.

And yes, the layout of this blog is a work in progress. I'm tired and I don't feel like messing with it anymore tonight though, so I'm doing what I do best and putting it off until tomorrow.

Or the next day.

DON'T JUDGE ME.

But yeah, I'm sorry if things look out of wonk and somewhat hectic right now. I'm working on it!

~Elizabeth

Family Bands and Tragic Love

* * * * *

Yesterday after church I was hanging around waiting for my family to assemble on the sloped lawn so we could pile in the car and head home, per usual Sunday. Then this girl Kate I kind-of know sidled up and started talking to me about how she was going to a concert later that night and how her friend Rudy quite rudely bailed because of school activities. She asked me if I wanted to go in his stead.

It was a band I'd never heard of and of which had no opinion, the Annie Moses Band. One deadly phrase from my bubbly companion quickly painted me a mental image, though, in a fatal brushstroke.

Family band.

Why I associate unpleasantness with this term is uncertain, but it's true.

Immediately an image of children wielding classical instruments sprung to my head, suffocating in their stiff pilgrim-esque clothes, shoes tight, hair prim, every interaction between siblings brimming with openly emotional closeness that's almost cringe-inducing to a coolly aloof sophisticate like myself.

(Perhaps more substantially adding to my lack of friendly terms with this phrase, one of the things in my Closet-of-Jealousy is people who can play lots of instruments.)

But earlier this year an idea surfaced from the ashes of wrong choices I've made. It's profoundly wise if I do say so myself and has the potential to prevent much heartbreak. I now stick decidedly to this idea, and I've only regretted it once when I drove an hour to Sam's Club with my mom for groceries.

And the idea is this.

If the choice is "go" or "don't go", then go.

So I told her I would.

I rode home that day with Spontaneous Plans, and sometimes that's the best kind.

I quickly donned my new T-shirt (see above) and grabbed a fistfull of George Washingtons from my wallet (it's all I've got right now), squabbled with my mom over whether or not I had to bring my own sandwich, and got out the door.

The drive was to be two and a half hours. When Kate showed me how we'd be making this sojourn, I laughed in disbelief.

In my naivety I was excited for it too, at the prospect of something "adventurey".

Their trunk was a small flat space behind the back seats. Big for a trunk, small for two teenage girls with blankets and books and a mini cooler besides. My muscles ached with stiffness and my whole body yearned for relief from the engine heat, saturated by the thick blankets, by the time we got there.

But we managed. It was actually kind of fun.

We stopped at a river-side area for a picnic dinner and afterwards made our way to the church at which this Family Band of Perfect White-Toothed Talents would be performing.

We got a seat up in the balcony and waited. Kate had been to a music camp these people put on and actually got to be good friends with the youngest member, Jeremiah, and was hilariously jittery to see him again. She fanned her pink face with her hand and said "it's not funny!" as I laughed, but it was. Quite so.
There was a harp on stage like a golden boat it was so big. Violins, a cello, guitar, drums, keyboard. Meanwhile Kate mimed her heart about to burst out of her chest with a flapping hand.

Then they came out.

Their fingers flew over the strings, as un-followable as a street performer with that elusive ball underneath one of three cups. I expected to see smoke streaming from their hands, a microphone combust into a cascade of flames, perhaps the instruments to spontaneously disintegrate from overuse. And the man on the cello looked visibly angry with passion, swaying back and forth with the bow.
It was really cool.

And the whole time Kate was just trying to make eye contact with that guitar-strumming Jeremiah boy. She got up and walked to the stairwell and back in the hopes his eyes would flick up at the motion. Eventually he did glance up and his gaze fixed for a second, but he had other present obligations and had to look away.
Kate never did get to talk to Jeremiah though. After the performance he remained conveniently distant from the meet-and-greet table, but wasn't on the stage either, but seemed to have vanished in a cloud of magical purple dust or an instant transporting laser.

Kate claims his parents don't like her at all because he once put his arm around her at the table. (Now, they seem like lovely people, but this does reinforce my subconscious stereotype. xD) This also may explain his abrupt disappearance- his parents may have given him orders to not even greet her and held him hostage backstage.

Oh, tragic love.

The ride home was eventful. In that I mostly slept and got even more stiff in that "backseat" of theirs.

Kbaifo'now! :3

~Elizabeth

Remember that "nice paper target" I mentioned in my previous post?

Akhmed took quite a beating the other day.

* * * * *

I got saved on Sunday!
I'd been saved for a while, I think, but God wanted me to walk to the altar and say so. It was absolutely terrifying and looking at it in hindsight I can hardly fathom I actually worked up the courage, but I know it was only the fact that I was in God's will that I was able to. I prayed the night before that if He wanted me to walk up there to give me some kind of sign at the sermon. And so then the sermon was all about tests from God and faith needing to cost you something, because if it doesn't it's worth just as much. I knew then I needed to swallow people's image of me and just do what I needed to. After all, if He could die on a public cross for me, couldn't I take a few steps in front of the church to acknowledge it?

~Elizabeth

P.S.

...Man. A printed-out terrorist blown full of holes and God in the same blog post. I imagine I'm seriously reinforcing those stereotypes about the south.

Ah well. There are definitely worse reputations!

P.S.S.

The ending to Avatar: The Last Airbender. IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL. ;_;

I'M TEAR-BENDING.

Guns n' Thangs

Today I went shooting with my dad, his friend, and his friend's son.

I'd never gone before, despite the enjoyment my dad and brother get from it. They even go out to our neighbor's plot of land they use as a shooting range on a semi-regular basis, but for whatever reason (perhaps that perpetual laziness of mine, which grip I have to shake off every day to be a semi-functioning human being) I never acted on my dad's suggestion that I go with them sometime.

I was excited and, I won't lie, a wee bit nervous as we rumbled down the woodsy road and bone-dry creek bed toward the range. The last time I'd shot a gun was in our backyard with a little pistol my dad had and thought I might like to try out. It looked like a toy. It felt like a toy in my hands. If someone had painted it neon orange I would have thought it a squirt gun. But when I pulled that trigger and a sonic boom rang my ears like church bells and sent the world spiraling around me, I quickly made a leap to the opposite conclusion.

On the way there we stopped at a gun store, grabbed a nice paper target and some earplugs, and got on our way once again. I liked that place (the employees were such characters with their camo and drawls) but I didn't at the same time. The walls were lined with all kinds of taxidermy, casting their shadows on you as you walked up and down the aisles, their dying expressions erased and placed with ones of blank solemnity.

Creepy.

We pulled into the stretch of ground and started unloading the sleek weapons. It's a really pretty piece of property actually, and because they hardly do anything with it its got a really nice rustic feel with its slightly dilapidated barn and knotted rope swaying from a high tree branch. I love my own house, don't get me wrong, but the surrounding land is overrun with dead plants, spiky plants, itchy plants, and bugs. (And every time I run into one of the cobwebs, whether or not its the third one in two feet, I do a unique little dance which involves flailing wildly, smacking people in the five-foot vicinity and bellowing "Gerreroffmee!")

So after we set up the target and everything I actually got to take a shot at shooting. (...I'm so clever with puns.)
Boy, were those things loud. I hated sticking the little orange earplugs in, because sticking things in one's ear is rarely a pleasant sensation, but it was necessary for sure. It was super fun, though-- I loved the feel of the shotgun in my hands as opposed to the pistols, and strangely enough, the recoil felt GOOD against my shoulder. My dad said I'd really enjoy skeet shooting, and if I get the chance I definitely want to give it a go.

It was a bit awkward, though, because my dad's friend's son was my age and so we were together for a couple minutes while our dads shot, and he was uncanny in his impression of a lamp. Or a brick wall. Or something else that doesn't speak, because he was unbearably silent. Any attempt I gave at conversation sputtered and nosedived, because whether or not it was a yes-no question he'd give a one-word response and say nothing else.
"So what school do you go to?"
"---- school."
...
"So have you ever been shooting before?"
"No."
...

So long for now, fellers!
~Elizabeth