A Blast from the Past: Sophomore Year

Today, I want to do something a little bit different. Recently, I looked back at my planner from sophomore year and found all sorts of wonderful little snippets. I hereby present to you...Lydia's Sophomore Year.

Stickers and jellyfishes=a fairly typical overly-decorated planner page. Highlights include "Boris: The Tortoise that Just Keeps on Trekking' and "What if soy milk is just regular milk introducing itself in Spanish?".

More stickers! Highlights include "Put your heart in the art"  (I think my choir teacher said this.) and "'I don't steal dreams; I crush them'", which is a direct quote from one of my friends. (My friends are so great, you guys. Like, you don't even understand.)

Highlights of this page include "Es un buen idea le haces la tarea el tiempo primero" ("It is a good idea for you to do the homework the first time") and a really long quote from Hobbes' Leviathan (I thought I was so deep.)

A quote from one of my classmates from when we were studying European history.

I have a weird way of dealing with stress. In 10th grade, this weird way included putting pictures of babes in my planner.

A tribute to Valentine's Day! I made the sticker using an image of fireworks from a magazine. The slip of paper reading "I wanna hold your heart in both hands" was found near the middle school boys' locker area at my school. The bottom image is a Princess Leia made out of balloons that I cut out from a magazine. 

If anyone ever makes a documentary about my life, I want these words to be used for the opening sequence.

There was this one time when I took a really intense history-based final with a lot of short answer and essay questions. After passing in my final, I played a game of Tic-Tac-Toe with the person next to me. Notable details include the cats I drew over the Tic-Tac-Toe boxes to indicate when it was a cats' game. 

In my sophomore year, I didn't just focus on doing homework, making stickers, and writing down goofy things people said. I also worked on self-improvement quite a bit. Here is a list of short-term life goals I found: 

This list of goals is interspersed with advice from my classmates; at one point during the year, we had a really long Facebook comment discussion that turned to giving me helpful life advice. I'm proud to say that I have finally completed most of these "short-term" life goals. 

I came into my sophomore year thinking that it was going to be the best year of my life. Um...it wasn't. Still, it was one of the years where I grew the most as a person and as a student. Although I struggled through the year at some points, I became a better person as a result. Thank you to all the people who made sophomore year amazing! You are wonderful. 

~Lydia

The Very Funny Bear: On This Day in 2005

Some of you may have seen this one on my Facebook, but I feel like it deserves to exist here anyway. This is a short story I wrote in my first grade journal on this day in 2005. I hope you enjoy it!

Transcription:
May 16, 2005
The Very Funny Bear
The bear is very funny. His name is John the Bear. I like him a lot. He is eating the little girl. Isin't the girl cute. He is selesh. You can't beleve all the things he eats. His wifes name is Sera Bear. She is funny too. When they fight they have funny fights. When they dance they do a funny dance. When they sing a song its a funny song. They are relly funny. And I like funny.
By
Lydia

The journal entry was written based upon this picture:

 

Analysis:
I would like to start by quoting the commentary I wrote when I posted this on my Facebook: "And I was beginning to wonder why I tend to befriend funny people (with weird senses of humor) and poor spelling". Additionally, I would like to point out that my little six-year-old brain went for the most violent route possible, rather than choosing the equally rational interpretation that the little girl was brushing the bear's teeth. I also made him a selfish bear who I strangely found funny. I don't know what exactly first grade Lydia was thinking...

<3 Lydia

An Icy Confession

I have a pure, unadulterated love for Disney's Frozen.

There, I said it.

This results in a surprising amount of problems, such as:

1.  a visceral negative reaction the moment I realize that someone likes Frozen because "Olaf's so cute".
2. feeling sad that Olaf stole the show, when Kristoff and Sven are obviously better.
3. getting really offended whenever anyone says "Elsa's so mean". Even if I really don't care what that person thinks on a regular basis, I want to say "Hey, that's me you're talking about!" because Elsa's relationship with Anna closely represents my relationship with my own sister.
4. wondering when people got tired of listening to and singing along with the Frozen soundtrack.
5. resenting Tangled for somehow, inexplicably, being fairly universally considered better than Frozen by most of my friend group.

Basically, my love for Frozen turns me into an antisocial monster most of the time. However, sometimes it is wonderful, such as:

1. when someone gets stuck partway through singing Frozen, and I can help BECAUSE I SPENT WAY TOO MUCH TIME MEMORIZING ALL THE LYRICS!!
2. being interested in something everyone else knows about for once. (I have to shove books from the Anne of Green Gables series at people in order to "find" other people who are familiar with Lucy Maud Montgomery's work.)
3. being able to instantly make myself happy by listening to a little bit of music.
4. knowing that there is always more merchandise I can purchase {especially considering the fact that somehow the only Frozen stuff I own is the soundtrack ):}.
5. experiencing the lovely drawing challenge that is attempting to draw Frozen characters. 

So, there's my confession. Many thanks to the Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who composed the soundtrack for the film (and thus are indirectly the reasons why this post exists). Here's a jellyfish to describe how the music makes me feel:

Best wishes!

Lydia

 

Short-Term Life Goals (Mid-April 2015)

Hi! I just realized that I haven't posted anything on this blog in forever. (Oh my goodness, I am so sorry; life has been crazy, and I have been trying to read like seven books at the same time and it hasn't been working.) Anyway, another thing that has fallen off the deep end has been my short-term life goals, so I decided to write some and post them here.

What are short-term life goals, you ask? Here's an infographic to help you out.

 

Now, with no further adieu, here are mine.

1. Complete all homework, every night. Really, how hard can this be?
2. Get a decent amount of sleep every night. At least 7 hours would be nice.
3. Respond to emails within 48 hours (provided that a response is necessary).
4. Write in philosophy journal at least once a week. I'm trying to use a Plato-inspired pre-sleep routine every night if I can finish it by 11 PM. As I wrote in said philosophy journal, "I need to be on my philosophy A-game right now". (It isn't a very serious philosophy journal.)
5. Update my blog at least twice monthly. (Remember to PLAN AHEAD!!)
6. Have at least one actual conversation daily. (Rather than eavesdropping on participating in other people's actual conversations and making non-committal agreement sounds while people talk to me.
7. Draw more jellyfishes.
8. Research future opportunities for a little bit of time every weekend.

I guess that's about it for now!

Best wishes,
Lydia

Frogs: On This Day in 2005

I wrote this story in my first grade journal on this day in 2005. Before you read this story, I would like you to look at this picture I drew to accompany it: 

Can you tell what this is? What sort of story would you expect to go with it? Now, on to the story:

Transcription:

January 31, 2005

The boy snuck the frogs in his backpack. Then, before she got to her desk he pote the frogs in her scool box. When she got to her desk she opened her scool box and she screemed. She hats him. And he hates her.

Analysis (I didn't think much translation was needed here): 

Isn't that such a sweet, original story? Not only does it include the theme of hate, it also seems to be fairly directly based upon Matilda (Roald Dahl) and possibly Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery). In Matilda, the title character and her best friend Amber plot revenge against the evil school principal by hiding a salamander in one of their school boxes and putting it in the principal's water pitcher. In Anne of Green Gables, Anne hates Gilbert, and, in the eyes of a young listener, Gilbert hates Anne as well. Oh, well. I guess you have to start somewhere...

<3 Lydia

The Moosey Christmas

Hello! It's Christmas Eve, which means it's time for "The Moosey Christmas", a story that I wrote on Christmas Eve (or Christmas Eve Eve--I'm not 100% sure) when I was nine. So, with no further ado, here it is, in all its unedited glory:

    Once apon a time there lived a moose with green and red striped socks on his antlers. He wanted to be a reindeer, and those socks were the best he could do to be Chrismasy. He really wished he could just ask Santa to be a reindeer.   

    Finally, he got his courage and asked Santa for him to hire him as a reindeer. Santa was delighted because he needed a reindeer hired. So, that Chrismas each child got a moose stuffed animal and an illaminated sign that said "Moosey Reindeer was here". Merry Chrismas, Santa.

This was written while we had guests at our house, in a few intense moments of thought. On Christmas day, my uncle typed up my story and helped me to pick out clip art images to make it into a book. I was very surprised to discover that there were clip art images of a moose wearing red and green striped socks. 

Merry Christmas! (I was going to include all the holidays, but I ran out of room. So, happy whatever-holiday-you-celebrate!)
<3 Lydia

Coming Soon...

I have been working on blog stuff a lot today. In case you haven't noticed, I will point out to you that this blog happens to have a new header (with a Lydia jellyfish, Priscilla the jellyfish, and a George Fox jellyfish) and a new background. The header was made using a template from Shabby Blogs, an awesome website with lots of blog-decorating goodies, and the background comes directly from Shabby Blogs.

I have also started typing up things I wrote when I was younger. Those blog posts are on a timer so that they will be automatically posted at 12:30 PM on the dates they were originally written in late 2014 or 2015. This is an ongoing project that I hope will: 
1. showcase some funny and/or interesting things I wrote when I was younger
2. give my blog enough pre-written material that I don't have to worry when life gets crazy and I don't have the time to write new blog posts. 

Since I haven't finished this project yet, I can't give you all the blog post dates, but here are the ones I have so far:

• January 31, 2015: Frogs (a journal entry I wrote in 2005, when I was in 1st grade)
• May 16, 2015: The Very Funny Bear (another 1st grade journal entry)
• November 24, 2015: Thakfle (yet another first grade journal entry)
• December 3, 2015: I Love My Famaly (Can you guess?)
• December 15, 2015: Biting Mshen (ditto)

I'll try to inform you of these when they roll around, but in case I don't, you can always check back here and see if they've been posted yet.

Best wishes!
Lydia