Today Appears to be a Special Day

It appears to be Blogger's birthday. I made this brilliant deduction when I saw a piece of birthday cake on the Blogger logo.

Happy Birthday, darling. And may you have many more.

Griping

We had to work outside today. I hate working outside. Normally, I get all puffed up and defensive about "female rights" and stereotypes and prejudice, but the truth is: if, in a decade or so, I am married, I shall be perfectly happy to let Hubby
Mow the lawn
Tend the garden
Chop the wood
Any other activities, such as wood building. Like, rabbit cages. And garbage can holders.


I would help paint, though. I'm not the greatest artist in the world, but I did make a gorgeous mural on our outside fridge at our cabin. I think it'd be cool to have a muraled house. Or, like, one wall muraled. Or a door, or fridge, or something. If my husband's an artist like Laini Taylor's, maybe we could have one random wall with nothing on it and just continually paint it! wouldn't that be darling? I think it would.

The fact remains, however, that while some people prefer to be in the fresh air and feel alive, I am rather fine with being inside and cooking. Or dusting. Or reorganizing.

I have an obsession with reorganizing. It's weird. I'm not even neat. But at school, I reorganize my locker every ten-minute break. I recently moved some furniture in my room and banished my keyboard. I took it to school, so I could join Mr. M's garage band. Plus I wanna do some vocalage. That would be exciting.

Anyways, we did do some of my preferred housework. But then we went to the garden. We dug potatoes. UGH! I absolutely despise the rough, spine-tingling, unpleasant grating of dirt-on-dirt caked fingers. I kept my fingers far apart from each other, splayed like a high-five. Plus, I prefer not to crouch down, because my knees are somewhat screwed up. Patellafemoral syndrome, I may have mentioned it. It sucks BUTT. So my roll gradually became standing on the edge of the garden while my parents dug and my siblings lobbed the fat potato tanks at me. I enjoyed putting my fantastic ball skills and handeye coordination to work. I caught two in my left hand (glove hand) AT THE SAME TIME. It made me feel cool. Then we had to pitchfork weed piles to a big compost pile. It was not fun. Looking over the garden when we finished, I didn't exactly feel a lot of pride. Our garden, formerly...chlorophylly (I wouldn't call it "lush) and planty and busy and somewhat alive was now just savaged dirt. It looked like some kind of hellhole. I was glad only that it was over.

I'm making it sound worse than it was, though. My family and I had "stimulating conversation". Really, we did. It was enjoyable. And after a while, the only unpleasantness was when I forgot my state of hygiene and rubbed my fingers together, resulting in a creeping, restless spine. YUG. I was relieved it was over and could scrub myself. I like feeling cool and clean.

How do you like to feel? That sounds weird. But I hope you'll figure out what I mean. What I want to ask is, what makes you happiest? Do you like feeling warm and cozy and contained, wrapped in a blanket before a fire and TV? Do you like the hot, wrung-out, elastic exhaustion after a good workout? Do you like a bubbling hot tub, the cool tranquility of a pool or lake at night, the flexible relaxation after stretching? Personally, I like sort of a combination. Like, exercise/stretching and a hot shower ended with a blast of cool. I like the feeling of cool, damp, brushed hair.

I was reading Tati's blog today. I love her photos. I like taking pictures, too, but not with the dedication some people have. My favorite part of pictures is the editing process! Some people

take a picture and tweak a bit of the lighting and curves for optimum brightness. Like this.

Mr. Tina, our Squirrel Friend.

I might take a photo like this...

And make it into this!

See? Before it just looked like Carson, dude with eccentricities. Now it looks like Carson, universal manager. Better, right?

I would post more, but as you can probably see, I have an inability to post pictures without screwing up the rest of my post. I should do pictures first and work around the rest. I bet that would work. Frick, that would work beautifully. I'm stupid.

But what else is new, right?

Ha ha. My family is looking for an acreage. We want to live on an acreage. That might be nice. Kloey wants a horse. Carson wants a minquad. Landon wants a dirt bike. I want a goat.

What do goats do, you might ask?

Well.

I will just tell you.

They give MILK, gosh darn it. MILK. Plus they eat those little ice cream cones filled up with what looks like bird food that people give you at petting zoos. Plus they're so cute. Also, I figure, that if we live in the middle of nowhere, we can get kittens, play with them, and raise them. And when they're fat and big and not cute anymore, we can banish them to the great outdoors! Then they can drink goat milk. I ran this idea by my mother and she said we sould have an explosion of cats. Well now. Why don't we all get MALE cats? Male cats rarely become pregnant. Plus, they can always get into a fight and kill each other when there's too many of them. Female cats would not only get knocked up, but they would also never fight. Never. They're too ladylike. ;-)

Current favorite songs:

Billie Jean by Michael Jackson
Party in the USA by Miley Cyrus
Fireflies by Owl City
Bucket by Carly Rae Jepsen
You Belong with Me by Taylor Swift
All To Myself by Marianas Trench
I Write Sins Not Tragedies by Panic! At the Disco
Time Warp by Rocky Horror Pictures
Drive my Soul by Lights
Time is Running Out by Muse
Spiderman Theme (Junkie XL Remix) by Michael Buble

A great movie=Race to Witch Mountain. Seth is hot. He is a hot alien. Plus he can control his molecular density and slide through solid objects. Also he can withstand great impact. He slid through a moving car, landing on the road, and stood stonily in the middle of the road. An FBI van slammed right into him and kersploded, and Seth just stood there.

It was the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life.

Never mind what I said about screwed up posts. I fixed it. Now it is gorgeous.

I wanted to say something else, but I forget.

In Memory of Kane

I still do not have a Facebook account. But, on my dad's account, I went to my aunt's page. There, I found pictures of my cousin, Kane, who died recently. He is the cutest kid in the world. I want to edit them and make a collage. I was just gonna make a Kane collage, but when I saw my other cousin, Mathew, I think I need to make a Matt collage as well. Both my cousins are just so blessed in the looks area. Matt's gonna be a little heartbreaker.

Aw...he looks so serious.
Brotherly Fun!!

Is this not the cutest picture in the world?

Cutest little Halloween bat I've ever seen!

This is hands-down the best picture of all time.

Clubbin'

I'm going clubbin' tonight.



From seven until ten is my first HIGH SCHOOL DANCE. Different from the gimpy wannabes of elementary (no offense), there is to be a social involved. With cards. And cookies. And such. Plus they drag down the Coffins and have lights and an actual music system.



Today at lunch I bought tickets. I handed Kyra the money and forgot to take the ticket, so I had to come back and get it. Later.



I'm typing extremely carefully due to the layers of fresh, glistening cheap navy polish on my nails. No, I'm not a girlygirly who spends nine hours fixing herself. But I do enjoy primping myself up before big events. It goes like this.

• Pick an outfit


• Pick another outfit


• Carefully glue each individual curl into perfection


• Put on foundation


• Put on too much eyeshadow.


• Take it off.


• Do it again.


• And again.


• Then do it right.


• Line one eye


• And fix it


• Again


• And again


• Then the other eye


• Miss


• And repeat.


• Slather lips with beloved CHAPSTICK because gloss comes off


• Put on too much perfume and be embarrassed all night.

Ha ha. Kidding.

I did use hair gel and stuff, but I have good aim. Ha.

In drama practice today, we actually used a "stage". I have my lines memorized from pages 5-16. Mostly.

Tomorrow I have an orthodontist appointment, but I have to be back in town by 3:15 because we have an SRC meeting. I'm the grade 8B Room Rep, along with three others.

Thursday is Band, I think.

And Friday is Free Hug Day, brought to you by the Grade 8B!!! We wear stupid signs and run around and shell out the love in an act of proclamation. We are trying to promote that freshies are not shy and have good hygiene. We all need little signs taped to us. I have a Free Hugs shirt, as well, so I'm wearing it. I bought it with three other friends at the same time, then this annoying girl bought the same one to copy us. Loser. My sign that I made says:

"Hug the Ug

Ly Kid"

And in little letters at the bottom: "Out of Pure Sympathy."

~

Whoa. For some reason, three quarters of the gadgets are gone off the top of the blog posting box. That's strange. Plus, the font it types out in is courier new. I'm scared!

But guess what? When I was in Calgary, dealing with my family crap, I was shallowly torn up over the fact that I was going to miss auditions for junior drama. My dad worked out something with Mrs. W, and she said she'd have a part for me when I got back. I was only halfway okay with this. I mean, it would have been nice to have the audition and everything. The real deal. Plus, the part I would procure would be most likely lame. Don't mean to brag, but I'd probably have a pretty decent chance at getting a good part if I auditioned. Which I couldn't!

But the dear, sweet, kind drama teachers didn't cast till I got back!! How cool are they?? I vow to love teachers for the rest of my life. Forever. I have to. (My parents are teachers.) I did my auditions and they posted the list. I HAD A PART.

But I was confused. In the play, there's the main guy who does most of the talking. The complicated plotline is that a teenager Judson Watson, a GUY, lands in the Tulgey Wood between Wonderland and Oz. And of course he didn't do his book report. He tried to watch The Wizard of Oz, but his stingy dad kicked him out. He started to read Alice in Wonderland, but fell asleep. And is now in the middle of an "incredible dream!"

The other characters include: Dorothy, Alice, Scarecrow, Lion, Tin Man, White Rabbit, Mad Hatter, Dormouse (no idea where he comes in, but he's cool anyway) and the two rulers. The Queen of Hearts and the Wicked Witch of the West. And who did I get cast as?

Yep. Judson. The GUY.

When I first looked at the list, I was utterly befuddled. There I was, near the top of the list, but it said: "Jacey...Jacey." (They spelled my name wrong, those flying monkeys.) So I'm standing there, going all, I am MYSELF?? But then my friend Aaleah (the dormouse) goes, "Oh, you're JUDSON!!" And then I was pleased. I didn't want to use my actual name, cause that's weird, but I came around to the idea. He's--SHE, now--is pretty much the main character. I have a lot of lines. Like, four paragraphs at the beginning of the play.

We had rehearsal at lunch. But it was really more of a read-through. I felt a little awkward, though--the girls playing Dorothy and Alice, who are also main characters with lots of lines--are in tenth grade. I'm just a dipstick Freshie. So it was kind of uncomfortable. Weirdly, though, I never actually looked at them throughout the readthrough. I just heard their voices.

SOOOoooo I'm happy. Mostly. Because my iTunes is fixed for REAL. Since I downloaded it: like, six months ago: at inconsistent exits and restarts of my laptop my songs and playlists would be WIPED clean from it. I could dig them out of the computer, but it was annoying. I LIKE PLAYLiSTS! I was determined it was a Vista problem, but it turned out to be a Sony Vaio screwup. I bought, like, ten songs in the past few days. I'm running out of iTunes cash. Jehsyka, I bought half the songs on your playlist. LOVE THEM SO MUCH!!!

Plus I bought the Spiderman song.

Okay, blogger is being really weird. It's like oldschool. When I tried to do italics, a little HTML thing popped up. And there's no colors or anything. And when I inserted the link to Jehsyka's playlist, weird things came up.

HELP, I'M SO AFRAID. Is your Blogger acting up?

How can this be happening?

Really, it's hard to imagine that any of this past six days has been real.

This Friday, we went up to my cabin to spend September long weekend. I was excited for the next week back at school. I had a cross country schedule and a script to study for drama auditions on Tuesday. That occupied all of my mind.

Then we got a phone call. My 14-month-old cousin, Kane, was in the intensive ward of the hospital. They didn't know what he had. We didn't know what was about to happen.

Then we got another phone call. We learned that baby Kane, my sweet, darling, baby cousin, wasn't going to make it.

Those next minutes were the worst of my life. My whole family was crying as we hugged each other. Except for me. I wanted to, but somehow, I just couldn't cry. We had to go to Calgary immediately. Except we just had three days worth of clothes. Our new plan was to meet our aunt in Saskatoon, and then travel on to Calgary. Auntie Char would bring us more clothes. We all packed, sniffling and dazed. As I was lugging my stuff out to the truck, that's when it hit me. I started to sob. It was so horrible.





We spent a good nine, ten hours in the suburban that day. Lots of the way was silent and sad. Towards the end, however, we got a little silly. We made a picture depicting our love of salad. We also made a song. I'll post the picture.


After so many hours cooped up in the truck, it didn't seem real that our baby cousin was dying. How could he? It was Kane. Kane was the sweetest, most perfect baby ever.

Around ten, we got to the hospital. A big, colorful builidng that seemed ironically cheerful. We had to clean our hands with sanitizer. And we saw Kane, and he looked so small in the hospital bed. He had a tube in his nose and a breathing tube bandaged to his mouth. The rest of the tubes were covered by a colorful fish blanket. He had grown a lot since we had last seen him, in February. My aunt and uncle were holding up fairly well, considering, you know. That they were losing a child.

The trouble was in Kane's tiny brain. If you tickled his feet, he would twitch his legs or shrug his shoulders. He was still there. He was still with us.

That night we stopped at about ten hotels looking for an open one. But they were clogged due to September long and some skills competition. We ended up pulling up at some Best Western in Strathmore. We left the next morning.

For the next two days, we stayed in a Comfort Inn with a pool and waterslide. Our cousin, Mathew, stayed with us. We visited Kane during the day. In the morning and night, we swam in the pool.

Kane was increasingly non-responsive. You could feel it in the room, he wasn't with us anymore. His body was trapped in that stuffy room, but we thought his spirit was just above us, watching. It's like when people die briefly and come back to life. Kane wasn't really there. It was awful, but in a way, I wished he could be free.

The next day, he hadn't improved. We said good-bye to him for the last time. I couldn't help crying behind my stuffy mask. I kissed his sweet slack face, twice, and ruffled his soft baby hair. He was so peaceful looking.

My mom and I cried outside on the bench. My whole family is Catholic, and we strongly believe that Kane was going to be safe. Kane wasn't dying, exactly. He was being set free. He was going to be in a much better place than us. Also, in a way, he was much luckier than us. He didn't have to know all the bad things in the word. He'd never experience a crushed ego, or heartbreak, or face something horrific. All he knew was love and trust. My grandpa was going to take care of little Kane.

When we stood up to go for a little walk, we saw a rabbit. A huge, fat, gray bunny, just sitting plain as day on the hospital grounds. He hopped idly to the empty playground, and he just sat there. Then he ran off. This was an act of God. The sight of that sweet, fluffy bunny hopping around made me smile.

Kane Alexander Steenson died at 11:10 pm. They removed the respirator, and his heart beat only a few more times, and then he slipped off peacefully. My aunt and uncle held him. They were with him the whole time.

We moved to our second cousin's house. It's big and beautiful. Danna, my dad's cousin, is great. We hadn't met her before. Meghan is a year older than me, and she's hilariously great. Paul is twenty or something, and he lives at home and works. Even though the circumstances are horrific, I'm really glad I had the chance to meet my cousins.

Kane was cremated, and his funeral is on Friday at three o'clock. My uncle prepared a half-hour presentation with pictures and videos of Kane. My dad and Kane's aunt, Lisa, prepared a eulogy. It's so wrong that he was with us for only fourteen months, but most people would never even get that long with such a boy as Kane. So in a way, we're lucky.

I "interviewed" Kane's brother, Mathew, my cousin, about memories. Here are some that I remember:

• When Matt was showering, Kane crawled in and shocked him by peeking into the shower.
• Kane loved his two puppies, Sadey and Lelik, and would toddle over to Lelik (golden retriever) and grab his fur with two hands and bury his face into his side.
• He loved to splash in the hot tub.
• While Matt was playing video games, Kane would attack him by jumping on him.
• Kane loved to play with the garden hose and fill up his pool.
• If someone held his hands, he would jump on the trampoline.
• He liked to play/eat sand.

Sadly, we didn't know Kane very well, but here are some of my memories:

• At Christmas, five months old, you only had to look at him and he would grin.
• He loved all animals.
• We sat him up on the bread machine, and he loved the vibration.
• On media player, while I was playing a CD, he was mesmerized by the swirling patterns.

Kane was the best baby in the entire world, and it is so cruel that he had such a short time with us. I love you, Kane. Kanerinsky. Kane of the Jungle. Rest in peace: we love you forever.

Lesson Learned

Second day of High School. We actually did a little work, which I enjoyed. Too much, I think. A page of French notes was a little too thrilling. I need to expand my social network.

We have a class called Arts Ed, with my homeroom teacher Mrs. B. Our first project is decorating our portfolios, which is a fancy name for a big piece of paper folded in half and stapled in place. Mrs. B says she wants us to decorate it in a way that lets her know us, because obviously eighth grade is all about being buddies. Most people are slapping down things like DC logos and plates of spaghetti. I was struck with the brilliant artistic idea of making a swoopy thing, dividing it in half, and on one side putting old-fashioned stuff I like and the twenty-first century reflection on the other. For example, in the top left corner is a lovely envelope with a wax seal. In the top right corner is the two little MSN people.

I signed up for Cross Country running. I cannot run. I shall die.

I'm reading "The Book Thief" by Markus someone-or-other. I can't remember. I must say, it's weird, and I don't understand it. Have any of you read it? Does it get better?

My lesson learned today: don't take out your contacts after polishing your flute. The pre-silver-polished cloth will haunt your fingertips and burn your eyeballs out. Don't do it.