Hair

So, I'm kind of annoyed with Blogspot. Why was there a white background on the majority of my last post white? I DON'T WANT WHITE. I WANT DARK AND MYSTERIOUS BLACK. FASJDKFSALDFHF- /explode

So I'm getting my haircut today. As usual, I'm nervous as hell. The only time where I've gotten my hair cut and it looked the way I wanted it to without having to wait a few weeks to grow it out was when I went to my mom's friend's place. Usually people cut it too short but turns out awesome after a few weeks.

Yeah, I prefer shorter hair. Above the shoulders but below the chin. I should get it cut more often than I do so I can maintain the style, but I dunno. I'm getting fringe again but not sideswept bangs. It will be hanging over my eyebrows with the sole purpose to make me a little more blind.

So I don't exactly get it plan on getting it cut too long. Or getting it cut too short, for that matter.

So yeah.

One of my closest friends got her hair dyed blonde while I was gone at camp. Blonde. Blonde. I have nothing against blonde. I used to dye my hair blonde. But I could never imagine Dorothy blonde. She has dyed it black for the last decade (ok maybe not) and she is gloomy and sad and it just DOESN'T SEEM LIKE DOROTHY.

Dad says it makes her look more cheerful. So does mom. It suits her face more.

I looked at the picture and I thought of those scene whores who pose in front of mirrors too much. I felt bad for thinking that. But then I agreed with myself. She looks too much like those stupid kids on the internet. Well, she is on tumblr a lot so-

And despite what my parents believe, she is still as gloomy as ever and never fails to put a damp on my mood when talking about her cruddy life. I still love her, though.

It's her head though so she can do whatever. It looks nice, it just doesn't suit her. I just hope that if I ever dye my hair blonde in the future she won't claim that I'm copying... as always.

There's a few reasons why Dorothy gets under my skin despite being one of the truest friends I have, but this isn't rag-on-your-besties day. It's Saturday. And Saturdays are awesome.

I can't believe I got up at 9AM. I blame camp. They made me get up at 6:45 but the people were so loud I would wake up before them. Now I wake up early on the weekends. Sobbu.

Carrots and Volunteer Work (Youth Conference: Day Two)

Service is good. Service is very, very good. There is nothing wrong with being charitable. Nothing wrong with volunteer work. If I'm fortunate enough to be walking on two legs then I sure as hell better return Gods' favors by helping out the needy. What kind of person would I be if I simply didn't want to go?

I'll tell you what.

A tired one.

All I'm saying is that when you spend the night like this:

And you wake up to this:

You end up turning out a bit like this:

My attitude gets better, but it didn't start out all that sunshiney.Mom was awake before me. I think she tried to go back to sleep a few times, but she was making frequent trips to the bathroom and told me several times she wasn't feeling well. I responded with a sympathetic "dasdjlhfdhafdjghnfhhhnn."

Starting at seven thirty or so, she began saying, "Maybe we should get up, I'm hungry, we should eat breakfast." I replied with a slightly indignant "afgljafghfghsfkghgsdhfg." The whole point of skipping Devotionals (I still don't know what those are anyway) was so that we could catch up on our sleep. She suggested this several times I lied on my bed fully awake but trying to convince myself that I wasn't, and each time I answered my replies grew more and more annoyed and more and more incomprehensible. We could wait for breakfast. We didn't have to go anywhere until ten.

At about 8:30 mom's alarm went off (she tried to sleep again as well and was about as successful as me) and I had no choice but to drag myself out of bed and dress myself. I wore skinny jeans, faded and marred with those holes that are put in there so you don't have to, and my new shirt I got just from attending Youth Conference. I opted for a small ponytail instead of pigtails today. Rare occurance.

 

And so we were off. My poor mother was ill before we started this trip, but seemed to get better. Now she was feeling sick again. Which really sucked. I ate a huge breakfast of eggs that seemed to be premade and a various assortment of meats and pancakes (what? I eat like a bullimic pig, don't you judge me) until I was pretty much ready to vomit. We were told we could probably stay at the hotel for our service project instead of going to the Food Bank, but President was like, "Sorry guys, we're going to the food bank." I had to run up and get my tennis shoes so that the bus didn't leave me.

 

Which, by the way, were nifty city buses, not school buses. I was totally expecting school buses. I was also expecting it to be a ten minute drive. It was a 45 minute one.

Anything before 9PM is just freaking ridiculous. Guess what time I've woken up the past two days? Like 7 AM. Just what the hell is this.

I don't think it's just because of early rising, though, even though I finally understand what the "2:30 feeling" is (hard to understand it when that's the time you wake up). It might have something to do with the fact is that I. Don't. Get. A. Second. To. My. Self. Here. Activities this. Activities that. Get up do this do this eat that do this do this prayer sleep. It's probably best to keep some of us occupied because while we're a big group of Christians and all, we're still a big group of... teenagers.

Even with this justification, I was not happy.

We arrived at the food bank.

I stumbled out of the bus, blearily inspecting my surroundings.

Buildings. Buses. Teenagers. Heat.

Mom, Deena, Anna, their friends, and I went inside.

It smelt like food. Bad food.

We sat at circular tables. They picked random ones and assigned us to random tasks. I didn't hear what we were assigned. We walked downstairs. I blindly followed the trail of children like an obidient ant.

Baby Carrots.

We were assigned packaging baby carrots.

Our equip consisted of the following items:

I'm glad I didn't do anything to dress up or anything, because I saw kids who were wearing their cool emo-goth clothes and equipped with hairnets, they looked miserable.

Actually, we were all miserable

 

Several of us would scoop frozen baby carrots from this giant vat of them. We'd pour them into plastic bags. Then someone else would set the bag on this scale (there were probably seven of them) and take/add baby carrots until it weighed exactly two pounds. They'd throw extra carrots into this plastic tub set by the scale. Then they'd give it to the person in front of them who would seal the bag. And then they'd set it in a different plastic tub. And then someone else (who didn't have to wear gloves or a hairnet WHY) would grab them, set them in a cardboard box, and disappear mysteriously.

　

For a while, I scooped the frozen carrots into the baggies. This got very old very quickly.

You see, I do not have a significant amount of muscle, or anything on my upper arms. And using the same arm to scoop the same carrots over and over again quickly wore it out. Eventually I took up mom's offer to do her job, which wasn't exactly assigned but I wasn't complaining. I just helped Deena add and take away carrots from the bag.

I think some guy works at the food center a little too much.

My group (several dozen kids) were just bagging the baby carrots. There were other people doing different things. Someone was packaging SLICED carrots, and some other people were packaging SHREDDED carrots. In total, we were 120 Mormon kids doing volunteer work. It was boring but it felt pretty good to be helping people.

Then this guy began walking through the rooms.

He was a very enthusiastic man.

He would walk in between the scoopers and the weighers and poke us on the shoulders as he passed, making us turn around and go "who wha?" like confused fish. But more noticably he'd walk in and out of the work rooms shouting "CARROTS!!!"

CARROTS!!!

CARROOOOOOOOTSSSSSS!

First we simply stared at him like he was crazy and went back to work. Later, though, we would call CARROTS right back. Like Red Robin, Yum! or something. But this was just "CARROTS? CARROTS!!!"

Also, on the baggies, there was a label. It read "Carrots, Baby."

The guy made a song out of that.



I will never look at carrots the same way again. We sang along.

Well, I've returned home obviously (that's how I wrote and drew most of this) and that was pretty much the highlight of my time at the Food Bank. Which we totally kicked ass at. I don't want to tell you just how many meals we got ready for people to eat because you'd be totally depressed because you're not as awesome.

It turned out to be a good experience. I wasn't thrilled but as I worked I didn't feel like complaining and actually felt good about helping people. I wouldn't mind helping people again like that.

But please don't make me stand for four hours, okay?

This was long. And not as funny. But I had to write it out before Girls' Camp tomorrow.

Sister Dinosaur wants me at her house at 6:30 AM. She is not getting us breakfast. If we want lunch, we have to buy it at Wal-Mart, where we'll be stopping. I have to buy disposable cameras, snacks, and chapstick for myself while I'm there too, but I still kind of hate her for waking me up early when I've been waking up early all weekend.

I look forward to Girls' Camp though... the heat, though.... yeah. Look at my last post. Just yeah. I have a feeling after this, I'm gunna be a little sick of church related activities for a while.

This was an abormally long post. Not all my posts will be this long or stupid. Promise.

Camp Anxiety

One word: YAY. Okay, so I wasn't exactly EXCITED to go initially, but I'll be going with my brother and my mom so it should be bearable if and when I end up a social clam, unwilling to talk or interact with anyone. I'll be coming back on Saturday only to have a one day break before, you guessed it, ANOTHER church related activity! At least this one I am sure it it will be at least somewhat fun if I can base my first year in Girls' Camp off of it.

Yeah, I'm going two two church "camp" things. First Youth Conference tomorrow for a few days, where I'll go to all these stupid religious workshops and dances and help out organizing canned foods at the Food Drive. Well, I wouldn't have to organize cans, but I refused (as in, nearly had a mental breakdown during practice) to do a two person dance with somebody. It's simply humiliating. So I'm stuck with the cans.

But there's going to be a pool and I'll be sleeping in a hotel... with one bed in the room. With four people. Thanks a lot, church. Maybe if you asked to pay money for our own rooms, I could have an excuse not to go.

Then I'm going to Girls' Camp, which is this camp for the young women in the church. We go out in cabins and do rafting and eat smores and have a grand old time. I know it's going to be at least a little fun, considering my first year there was a blast. Let's ignore the fact me and two other girls snuck out and chugged three litres of root bear and destroyed a whole pack of cookies and laughed and went "star tipping."

For any of you who don't know what star tipping is, it's when one person spins around with their head looking up towards the stars, and they spin 'round and 'round and 'round until someone suddenly flashes the light of a flashlight in their eyes and they stumble and fall to the ground. Hilarity ensues.

But this is a different ward, so I don't know. I like them though.

I'm just really worried about the heat. Heat is awful.

I'm not kidding. It's reached 107 degrees here, and no rain. For anyone that doesn't know, heat + me = dead. I get extremely hot, extremely irritable, and extremely sick. It's like a bad case of PMS, but all because of the sun. I swear to god it's mocking me.

There's going to be AC in the cabins and one of the Young Women's leaders said it was totally fine if I went inside if I got sick because she was the same way, but it's not her that I'm worried about. It's about, hmm, let's call her Sister Dinosaur. My parents aren't exactly very fond of her, and very recently she's been assigned to teach the young women. She's a self proclaimed "camp nazi" and promises not to be like how she was when she was in camp because she understands "the purpose of girls' camp today is a little different than how it was when I was a young woman."

But I know her type. Some nasty, nasty little voice inside my head is telling me, that if I even take a few steps towards my cabin, or if she finds me in there attempting to cool down, she will surely disapprove.

If you couldn't read that, that was me sitting helplessly on a bed in the cabin while Sister Dinosaur barged in and yelled at me for not living the true camp experience. I wrote "way" but my hand hurt, so "experience" was just too much. Yeah.

They say we're going to go rafting. Not Extreme Sport rafting or anything, we're just going to get into our little canoes and float along the river. But I really don't know about that.

Like I said, there have been days where it has hit 107 degrees. And a significant lack of rain.

Only time will tell... only time will tell... /leery glance at lonesome puddle