Good Morning, Human!

Getting up every morning seems so pointless.

My bed is warm and inviting…and then my alarm clock goes off. As I roll over to turn it off and then fall back asleep, my fist pounds down on an empty space on my bedside table. I roll back into my warm sheets and glare hatefully at the spot on my windowsill where I remember putting the dreadful contraption last night, now masterfully hidden by my thick curtains, and consider waiting it out. The blasting birdcall finally gets the better of me and I determinedly fall out of bed and stumble over to the hateful thing, imaginary sledgehammer in hand. Finally having rid myself of the component of morning torture, I realize how dangerously close this has brought me to my clothes I’d put out the adjourning night. Faced with the decision between maturity and a warm bed, my brain begins to bend. Half of it warns me that if I fall back into the temptingly-preheated bed, then it’s one set closer to lazing around on my computer all day and getting nothing done. The other half is much more reasonable in reminding me of the luxury of lying in bed and having lucid dreams that make a total of 0% sense and promptly forgetting them when I wake up. However, as soon as I take my first hypnotized step, my mature side of my brain plays its last card by reminding me that I have theater today. What’s theater? Those sheets look awfully warm…gosh it’s cold out here…THEATER!

The word echoes through my sleep-ridden brain, kick-starting it into action. Now frantic, I grab my clothes and shoes and trip over my robe cord in my haste to get to the door. I slam head-on into it, the fact that I’d locked it the previous night completely forgotten. I fumble stupidly with the doorknob until I hear a rewarding clock and shuffle down the stairs. One of the numerous problems with my room is that it literally couldn’t be farther from the bathroom if I’d tried (unless, of course, you count the roof as an acceptable option). I weave through the furniture in the front room and am faced with another steep, treacherous staircase. Once I heroically mastered this terrible deed, I face the washing-room. It’s usually adorned with the stray pile of clothes, further barring me from the coveted bathroom. Not only am I made to either jump over (if I’m feeling adventurous), or laboriously figure out the labyrinth, but I have to squeeze through a poorly-placed table and chair. The table is good enough at blocking the tiny hall in which the beloved bathroom is located, but Brother’s computer desk chair is constantly being left pulled out and completely blocking the hallway. I am forced to slow my long-suffering mission once again to shove it ungraciously to where the blasted thing belongs.

Finally, nothing stands between me and my bathroom, now slathered with rainbows, sun glares, and unicorn-ponies, except a door. A locked door. Hopefully, I knock on it, only to hear a chipper, ‘just a minute!’ float out. I’ve been beaten. Bathroom privileges are anything but fair, especially since my mother is right next-door to it. I slump against the wall for what seems like hours. Finally, a happy-go-lucky Mother with full make-up and scattered jewelry pops out and smiles triumphantly at me. It’s probably not near as smug as it seems to me, so I manage a groggy half-smile, which probably looks like a dead clam that’s been soaked in vinegar for a few days.

This is how most of my mornings go, only sometimes I get a lucky Friday and get to legally sleep in, or I get up early/late enough not to run into Mother at all. Being early almost never happens…late is much more promising.

Thanks for reading, guys!

In an Itchy Costume and Wearing Stage-Makeup

Being behind the scenes of a musical is complicated. It can be fun, boring, monotonous, or bothersome and there will always be some who are doing nothing, and those who are running for their lives to get on stage. In my case, it’s mostly boring. Being an extra in a musical is harder than it looks. I’m always attempting to put expression on, but it’s much more difficult when your character doesn’t have any backstory and is crammed into tiny corners and expected to dance. However, when it all comes together on stage, it seems worth all of the boring, extra hours of sitting/standing and doing nothing. It’s refreshing to see some of the scenes that I’m not in be perfected, and it seems worth it to work my way up from being a slightly useless extra to having a part, someday.

Moreover, the costumes and stage-makeup make things almost unbearable at times. The inability to even rub my nose at times drives me half-insane and the itchy feathers don’t help. After half an hour of pains-taking stage-makeup and painful bobby-pins securely keeping my hair in place, I go to CYT and carefully eat my home-made meal as everyone else puts on their makeup. After I eat, I wiggle out of my everyday clothes and carefully squeeze into my costume and put another costume on over the original one. After this, since I still have about ten minutes of spare time, I realize that I’ve forgotten my kindle (once again) and have to borrow some paper and a pencil from a friend to ease my easily-provoked boredom.

Finally, I’m out on stage. I run as quietly as I can up the stairs with everyone else, and scurry out of the wings with the rest of the crowd. After the first song, I remove myself from the glaring lights and down to the changing rooms, only to realize that I’m on for the next song; and I’m late. Giving up on it, figuring that they can live without me, I carefully lift my outer costume off and put a hat on for my next time on stage. I’m constantly moving so that others can reach their bins which have necessary articles in them, so my drawing goes slowly and I don’t accomplish much except for the fact that I’ve managed to get my mind off mind-controlling boredom, for a few minutes.

But despite the itchy costumes and unbearable makeup, being in a musical is worth it just to be on a stage and in front of other humans is worth it. And in case you’re interested, here’s the link to buy tickets the Seussical the Musical! Buy the tickets under my name (Emily Smith) and be quick! There’s not much time left!

http://www.cytsantacruz.org/shows/

what happened behind the scenes

Dickens lived in the 1800s. He was born in Landport, Portsea, England on February 7, 1812.  He had seven siblings and at age 11 was taken out of school to work at a factory.  He was paid six shillings a week. When his father and the rest of his family were thrown in jail, Charles was left in the city, alone.

After situations improved, he went back to school; then became an office boy, then a freelance reporter, and then an author. He published The Pickwick Papers in 1837 and gained immediate fame.

After publishing many other books, he married Catherine Hegarth. He had ten children when they split up. Sadly, he died of a stroke on June 8, 1870.  The books that he wrote were mostly about poor people’s situations. Dickens is very sarcastic in his books and he shows people’s situations without them coated in sugar and honey.

In Oliver Twist Dickens shows how children were treated in the poorhouse.  Careless and hard-hearted women accidently smothered children when making beds, they scalded them to death when they washed clothes, and the children were almost never washed. They were clothed in the thinnest clothing, beaten and starved. Oliver asks for another tiny bowlful of soup as he was still starving when in the poorhouse, and would’ve been hanged for it if not for a very narrow escape.

The rich people spoke of the poor as though they were whining, overfed dogs. They closed their eyes to the people dying on the sides of the streets and it didn’t even cross their minds that they should maybe help.

Certainly, people were left to starve in the streets, but at least some of them were given jobs!  Some boys could be chimney sweeps, so that they could get stuck in the chimney and have the fire lit while they were still inside. They were only smothered by the smoke or had the bottoms of their feet burned so they couldn’t walk properly for the rest of their lives, but who cares?  They’re replicable! Well, so thought their privileged abusers.

People were often put in prison for no reason. The judge casually assumed that a person who happened to be passing by the scene was guilty, and had them thrown in a cell without a proper trial.

Charles Dickens was one of the only people who wrote about the poor. He lived his books (quite literally) so he could really tell what was going on behind the scenes.

Life

Hello, Person!

Today, I will be talking about life.  A lot of people don’t appreciate life as it is.  I once (well, maybe about a week ago on a youtube video with Seananners) heard that to really enjoy life, you have to work for it.  And I(might) know what you’re thinking.  Well, maybe I don’t but anyway!  Sometimes, maybe on lazy Sundays when the weather is almost uncomfortably warm, you think about thinking of taking your rabbit, dog, or fish on a walk.  But then you begin to make a pretense of getting up, and all of your muscles and toes groan in protest and you sink back, defeated, onto the warm and fluffy couch.  Not so, fellow gerbils!

  You know how there are some times when you force yourself to do something?  They aren’t that often, but you know the feeling afterward.  You are either thinking, ‘Wow, I’m so awesome!’ or ‘Wow, I’m not doing that any time soon.’  You just have to take that risk that you’re going to regret doing it.  Also, doing things you dislike immensely grows you.  Once, I got up early (well, early for me which is about 8:30 a.m.) and I forced myself to get up…and then I went back to bed; I really need to work on my getting up schedule.  But most other times, I’m very happy that I did something like that.  So, basically, life isn’t all about watching Doctor Who or playing Civilization V.  Or maybe playing five hours of Battlefield III straight.  It’s about getting up early and NOT going back to bed!

  Thanks for reading, please post your thoughts in the comments below, and as always, have a great day! J

the little breeze

Hi, Everyone! I would love to know your thoughts, so please comment below and tell me what you'd like me to blog about.

I recently wrote a personification about the breeze. I wasn't going to publish it, but a good friend of mine persuaded me to do so.  In case you don't know, a personification is something that you write about (like a tree or anything really) and make it into a person. At least, you give it characteristics like a person.  You can make a conversation between a computer and its desk if you want!  Anything to give something human characteristics.  Here's my personification:

The breeze is a little girl.  She dances and plays with the sun. Jumping and spinning, she teases the papers that were carelessly left about. Her hair is as white as the dove as it flies and down at her feet it twirls. Her eyes are as blue as the midday sky, and they glisten and gleam like stars. Her dress is as green as the fields at the time when the sun rose for its first morning light. She leaps and flies with her races with time and she laughs at the people below.  It is heard at far above the trees and carried by the birds alone. Or else it is heard at the rocks in the sea, and then it is heard by none.

Tell me what you think of it!  It'd be nice to know how people like it.  Thanks for reading, and have a nice day.

Water!

Hello, All!  I haven't been posting for a while, so I thought that I'd write a post about water.  It's more of an essay, though.  So, here it is!

Water is one of the most unappreciated necessities on Earth.  Without it, everything (including us) would die and our planet would become utterly useless.  Rain is the most important ways we get water, while glaciers only sit there and look amazing.  The rainbows are remarkable and need to be learned and respected by all people.

I’ll start with rain.  With the amount of rain falling in even only one acre of land, if it rained a simple 1 inch, there’d be roughly 27,154 gallons of water.  On the acre only!  And if it rained one inch over California (its 840 miles long) there’d be a ridiculous amount of water.

Glaciers are nature’s way of saying, “Start small, think big.”  It starts out as a snow build-up and as more and more snow falls, the weight of it all compresses it into ice.  And, of course, it melts once a year, and every time it melts, it flows like a river, and freezes again.  More snow falls, and the process continues.  If you want to see some amazing photos of glaciers, than go to this website! http://www.travelsupermarket.com/blog/glaciers-that-look-like-art/

Rainbows are some of the most beautiful things that are created by rain.  They are only the sun shining through raindrops but all of the colors are amazing.  Sun dogs are more common than rainbows but are equally beautiful.  They’re formed by light refracting in ice crystals in cirriform clouds.  Their official name is perihelion.  Go to this website to see some amazing pictures of sundogs!  http://www.w7ftt.net/sundog1.html

Water needs to be more appreciated, and I’m hoping that this article will help with that.  Have a good day, and thanks for reading!  I'll be trying to blog more, but I've been pretty busy, so keep an eye out for more blogs!

Good Books for Pree-Teen Girls

If you know me, you know that I love to read.  I’ve got plenty of suggestions for them and I’ll write a post about all of the books I love some time later if you’d like.  And here are some of the books that I love!

Lord Dolphin (Book)

At first, I thought that this book was just for young kids about 7 years old.  But I thought, “What could possibly go wrong?” and I read the book.  I was in a trance the entire time I read the book.  If I didn’t already have a book that is one of the best books ever, I’d say that this book is the most amazing book I’ve ever read.  The author really brings you into the book.  I was not reading the book.  I was living the book.  I think that that says it all.

Ballad of the White Horse (Ballad)

This book is amazing.  Amazing isn’t quite the word though.  If you don’t like ballads then don’t read this book.  But for those who do, this book will become your favorite.  I don’t understand most of it, but it’s so beautiful.  I wrote a review about it on Amazon, and I expressed what I thought of it there.  I really think that this is one of the most beautiful books ever written.

The Little House series (book series)

I have been reading the little house books since I can remember.  I have reread all of them at least 5 times.  Some people won’t like them but as you can guess, I think that they’re wonderful.  I won’t tell you what it’s about but I will tell you this: these books are great for children of all ages and all adults.

And that’s pretty much it!  If you want more book reviews, please post in the comments below.  Thanks for reading and have a great day! J