In The Presence Of Presents

My mom likes to do this thing where, if I'm with her while she buys a present for me, she will keep that present hidden until she thinks I've forgotten all about it and then can surprise me at the next present-giving occasion.

The thing is, I don't usually forget. I'm just waiting for it to happen. But sometimes, my mother will keep it hidden past like 3 to 4 gift-giving occasions. And I'm stuck with the dilemma of wanting to remind her and not wanting to because she'll keep it tucked away for even longer.

Right now there is a DVD of Fantastic Mr. Fox (which I've never seen but it is one of my favourite Roald Dahl books so I really want to see it.) somewhere in my house and it has been there for at least a year and I'm dying.

Say NO to Mind Reading

If you are randomly asked which super power you'd want if you could have any one, chances are that mind reading comes to mind. And who wouldn't love to know exactly what your friends thought or all the deepest darkest secrets of your coworkers. In theory, it's pretty sweet.

Now, think about what this actually means. You will be able to hear in your own head whatever is running through the minds of however many people who are within a certain radius of you. All those thoughts will be piled up on top of each other as each person's separate inner monologue takes place within your brain. And they never go quiet, do they?

Here's an example of what is literally running through my brain while I'm in the middle of typing this:

what if I have don't have anything interesting to say I mean think obviously cause it's in my brain but anyway oh snap I need to study for my math test it's in let's see today is friday because I have youth group tonight and we're doing something with toilet paper kinda interesting sounding I hope Jason is there but then the next day is saturday then sunday then monday so technically three more days and I totally forgot what happened before christmas break was that trig functions or maybe rates but we did rates with every type of function but we had to learn it at some point wait wasn't there that thing with an h that equaled zero what if it's on the exam and I can't remember how to use it

This has probably gone on long enough for you to get a glimpse of how you just literally think things non stop and they run into each and overlap and jump all over the place. And that's just the main part, there's other things like the song you have stuck in your head plus maybe a part of you that's processing what's going on around you.

I really don't think a person could stay sane with all these intimate thoughts from so many people they might not even know happening inside their head. Would you even be able to distinguish your own thoughts amidst the foreign ones?

ALL the words

Not to be the party pooper, I was just thinking of how seriously unfun that super power would be when it comes down to the finite details that no one actually thinks to think about.

The Christmas Haul

It's Christmas! Luckily, no one in my family is crazy and we all woke up at a reasonable enough hour this morning. I never see the point of getting up at 4am or something like that since you don't notice time go by while you're asleep. It's not like you're bored and doing nothing, you are completely unconscious and unaware that you are missing out on time. So that's my reasoning for getting a decent amount of sleep on Christmas morning.

But no one cares about that.

So here's an extensive list of what I received this Christmas along with any commentary necessary. Be happy for me, be weirded out by what kind of things I enjoy receiving, or be jealous, whatever you wish.

- Fuzzy socks. For those cold winter nights when my cat is hogging all the blankets.
- Multi-coloured socks. Something you should know: I don't ever wear matching socks but I do make sure that the colours and patterns go together. It's actually a lot of effort!
- A purple shirt.
- A sweater that looks like it's inside out BUT it's actually supposed to be that way. Bonus because the itchy side is on the outside.
- Chocolate. Our tradition is to have those chocolate oranges for Christmas every year but we couldn't find them this year. We remedied that by eating a clementine at the same time as the chocolate. Genius, right?

- The Journal of Awesome. Kind of like a DIY Book of Awesome. I will definitely be sharing some of my AWESOME things here.
- Ice cubes in the shape of guitars and basses. Don't worry, there's an actual reason, my family is not just crazy. This is to commemorate me learning the bass this summer, coupled with my love of ice cubes.
- A pack of assorted blue and green office supplies. You may think this is a boring present but it's NOT. I like those things.
- A notebook. I have dubbed it my beside table notebook to write down all those spur of the moment ideas I tend to have right before dropping off to sleep.
- Burt's Bees chapstick.
- A book called "The Christian World of The Hobbit". Really looking forward to reading this since The Hobbit is one of my favourite books and it'll be cool to see all the Christian elements hidden inside!
- A phone. I know, I'm in my last year of high school and I'm just getting a phone now? It has saved us a ton of money to not have one but now it's pretty necessary with all the extra-curriculars I do and university looming ahead.

I'm not very easy to shop for but "Santa" pulled through! I am extremely happy and plan on enjoying all these things to their full potential.

I'm surprised there was room under the tree for presents
since the cats decided to take up permanent residence there.

My Holiday Life

I was supposed to make this post BEFORE all this stuff actually went down, you know, to warn you that I'm am out and about, going places and seeing people, and won't be online. Well that went very well. I'm so good at this.

Anywho, let me tell you about my life for the past couple of weeks!

We'll start with the last day of school.

Mine was less pretty

I gave and received my Secret Koala gifts. What were they, you ask whilst screaming at my through the computer screen in anticipation. Well, I gave my person a giant cupcake (it used a whole cake batter but definitely was in the shape of a cupcake. I was very proud of it.) and some mustache earphones. From my Secret Koala person, I got some nifty homemade bracelets and the Percy Jackson and the Olympians DVD. Can't say that I'm a fan of the movie but I adore the books plus Logan Lerman is in it which more than makes up for everything.
It was a snow day plus the last day before the holidays so all my teachers completely gave up on the idea of trying to stuff some information into our heads. So, in chem, we decorated our door, making a paper chain Christmas tree and modifying the title of the room to Chemis-tree. (I actually enjoyed that pun very much.) For math, all we did was watch Youtube videos. Cat Person, Dog Person was a highlight for me since the cat person was spot on in acting the way my cats do. Data consisted of us playing telephone pictionary which made for some major laughs, especially when our exchange students didn't know what some of the words were and just guessed. I usually have a spare last but I decided to drop in to my basketball coach's class where there was food and a movie. A good decision on my part, I must say.
And finally, on that same day, my school had our annual talent show which was pretty spectacular. The good ones were amazing and the bad ones still got lots of support from the crowd. I love my school.

A couple days later was Christmas. Now, I'm originally from Brazil even though I live in Canada but that means that most of my family is still over there. That means we don't do very big holiday get-togethers. It's usually just my mother, my younger sister and I. And I like it this way. Yes, I'm sad I don't get to wrestle in the snow with all my guy cousins but it does majorly reduce stress seeing as we don't have to prepare anything at all. With Christmas comes Christmas presents! Which I will tell you about in detail at a later time.

Finally, to end my holiday travels, my friend and I bussed over to Kingston to see another friend of ours from the summer camp I worked at all summer. Many ridiculous inside jokes were created and a total of 7 movies were watched in the span of two days plus one night. Don't believe me? Ask me anything about the following movies:
- The Hobbit (YES I shall do a review later on)
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Meh, it was okay)
- Pitch Perfect (Is there a more perfect movie?)
- The Odd Life of Timothy Green (Liked it more than I thought I would)
- Easy A (Oh Emma Stone, how awesome can you get?)
- What to Expect When You're Expecting (Very droll)
- In Time (Didn't like the concept too much)

 

We then all commuted to the very same camp for the staff reunion where our time was divided between eating that amazing food and collecting bruises on the ice rink while playing broomball. The New Year was counted down right on the rink actually! We paused it at 40 seconds to go, counted down, hugged a minimum of 7 people each then got right back to playing.

The night after I came home, I barfed. At least 11 of us that were at that Staff Reunion had the flu when we got home. Such close quarters would do that to a person.

That is the end of my saga! To be honest, it is one of the way more exciting Christmas break's I've had in a while seeing as I am not a social butterfly in the slightest. Thanks if you actually read the whole thing.

Secret Koala

So me and my group of friends (my group of friends and I?) have decided to do a gift exchange this Holiday Season because buying a present for every other person can get stressful both on the wallet and on the deciding process.

The thing is, we are an extremely diverse group, including Jewish, Jehovah's Witness, Atheist, Pagan, Muslim and then me rounding it out with Christian. And even though Santa has NO direct connections with Christianity, some people thought it was awkward to call it a Secret Santa.

So my very creative friend came up with the idea of calling it a Secret Koala. And we all agreed. Cause we're cool like that.

We drew names this afternoon and I got someone that I haven't known for very long so I don't really know what to get her. All I know is that she adores One Direction so I'm going to go for there. A good idea that smacked me when I was walking home from school was to bake something! No one can hate food.

Also regarding gift exchanges, I'm the kind of person that really wants to know who has me but really doesn't at the same time. So I always firmly tell everyone involved that even if they know who has me and even if I'm begging them to tell me that they should AVOID DOING SO AT ALL COSTS. I will always spoil any surprises for myself so it is up to other people to stop it.

It's a secret koala...