A Glowing Violet Aura of Epic Proportions

I have purple hair!!  (?!)  !!!  (!!)

Yes.  It's true.

I expected a couple of red streaks with some purple hair extensions, but no, I was given a healthy head of hair that is the interesting combination of platinum blonde, foxy red, and yes, purple.

I feel like someone has hit me over the head with a rather large mallet. I was not expecting this.  I did not like it at first.  I look like some kind of punk rock star.

But, seeing as I have no choice, I think I am going to go on from this and enjoy it.  I'm actually rather enjoying it.  I am looking forward to seeing some people's faces with a delicious sense of malice.  Ha!

And yet, people always commented that I looked so mature for my age- I looked like I was finishing up university.  No more.  People may now label me as a "punk" who enjoys spray painting and terrifying elderly ladies.  Ahh well.

I'm going to enjoy every minute of it, and the bonus is, after this, I shall never be worried about what others think of me again.

Besides, it'll be shaved off in a couple of months anyways :)

Happy Birthday... Abuse, Abuse!

June 24th

I love the way that things never turn out the way that I think they will.

The fact that last year I had my birthday on the annual school-wide camp-out made me think that I was in some way, shape, or form prepared for this year's birthday.  Not so!

My day started with a pledge to get up at four to see the sun-rise and ended with sleeping till the horn for breakfast at eight.  There,  everyone sang Happy Birthday *gasp, choke*  IN TUNE. For someone that does not know my school and its reputation for musical demolition, this might not seem like anything special.  It is.   I then got my first present of the day- a bag of skittles.

That morning I discovered that I had what I like to call Swelling II: The Sequel.  You see, the previous night, I had had a terrible reaction to some sort of bug-bite on my arm- my arm had swollen up almost to a third of its normal size.  Some benadril calmed it down, but failed to destroy the bite that I woke up to on my birthday- a lump the size of a golfball on my hand. 

After accumulating a bruise the size and shape of a doughnut on my thigh, and a lump on my leg from overzealously attempting to play Spoons, I decided that I was done physical activity for the day.  Sadly, my wish was not fulfilled, as my lovely friends decided that it was time for the birthday girl to be thrown in the lake.

I then received my second present: my friend Michelle caught me two frogs, which I named Matilda and Enrique.  Top off the day with perogies for dinner and ice-cream sundaes for dessert, and being a host of the grade eleven camp-fire and the day was perfect.

Orchestra and Geoffrey again

Sometimes I wonder if people have gotten tired of hearing about Geoffrey from me. Everything that I see reminds me of him, every hurt that I've ever had in my life is miniscule next to his death.

This is one of the reasons that I didn't tell anyone at Orchestra about his death. A few people eventually learned, but I certainly didn't make a public service announcement. Orchestra gave me a fresh breath from the cloud of sorrow that my school was buried in. I was able to at least pretend to be normal, pretend to be happy. In all honesty, I'm a pretty darn good actress, so nobody guessed that I was really suffering inside.

All this changed last Tuesday when I was on the front page of the paper, playing at the dedication of his memorial gazebo.

At my orchestra audition this year (everyone has to audition every year to determine placements) we were discussing ways that I can improve to be the best concertmaster that I can next year.  The panel's (conductor, head of strings, head of winds) main suggestion was to take myself less seriously, as I tend to get a little, what's the word, (perturbed, snappy, wound up?) when I get stressed.  This made total sense to me, and I agreed with them completely.  However, I made a terrible mistake.

I should have known not to mention anything to do with Geoffrey.

All I said was something along the lines of "I totally understand, and I can see why I was extra- tense this year as I wasn't... wasn't in the b-b-best state... em...em...em..." The last word, emotionally, was lost in a flood of tears that came and devastated like a monsoon- I wasn't able to coherently speak for at least two minutes.  Not too encouraging for a person who has said that she'll try to be less uptight.

However, they understood.  My conductor already knew the story, and the head of strings had brought along the newspaper article.  So, maybe it wasn't such bad thing after all.

I love teaching

It's been ages since I've written. This is because of many things: trying to catch up in my schoolwork, my various extra-curricular stuff, but mostly EXAMEXAMEXAMEXAM! Ah the joys of not being ready for a grade ten violin exam.

Anyway, this is a piece of fresh air to lighten my often-gloomy thoughts. Right now I feel a strange burst of maternal joy because of a boy named Wade. Wade is a shy, freckled little kid who seems like he could be in grade five. He is, in fact, in grade seven, and this is his first year of taking violin. And he is blossoming.

I feel such a thrill to see the love in which he picks up the instrument. His mother says that he practices all time- she'll hear him play for fifteen minutes, go and do something else, then go back to the violin. She says that this happens three or four times a night. It makes me proud to see that the things that he reluctantly learned in music class come to life for him when he picks up the violin. He said that he's never taken any music before, that he couldn't remember anything, but all of a sudden, he's remembering, and he's applying what he's remembered to the instrument. He's sight-reading things almost perfectly!

He makes me proud to be a teacher, but also a player.

Why things always happen while I'm painting my toenails

No, they don't really. But this makes a great title for a post about random stuff.

1. Aiden

He's possibly the cutest little boy you could ever meet. He's five, has big blue eyes and a shock of gorgeous red hair. He's so serious about violin, but he sometimes wiggles around on the ground like a little worm and giggles.

Today, he looked like he was pretty tired, but I kept gently encouraging him to keep playing. I was kneeling on the floor to be on his level, and just as he finished the last note, this look that I've never seen before came onto his face. "Great job, Aiden, you did it!" His eyes grew round and watery, and he looked this combination between shock and utter horror. Suddenly, I hear his father's voice say, "Oh no, Buddy!" I look down, and watch a large puddle of yellow liquid pool around poor Aiden's feet!

What followed was a lot of scrubbing and comforting poor Aiden, who was crying from embarrassment.

2.Play Practice

Jonas, you are possibly the randomest (is that a word, or just teen slang?)/funniest person in the school. :) Explanation: School Play

Jonas: Are you refusing me?

Kasia: I have a phone, you know! And guess what, it rings only once a week, on Sundays, which is when my mother calls! And...

Random Jonas interruption: (grabs phone) Ring ring, it's your mother calling!

Well, I suppose one had to be there, but it was pretty darn funny :)

3. Nightwish

My friend Jeff introduced me to an incredible band called Nightwish. They are absolutely phenominal! They're a Finnish band that doesn't stick to one genre of music but branches out and does everything from an 18 minute long musical to Celtic fiddle metal. They are beautiful, exquisite, and just plain musical!

Here we have The Last of the Islanders: Celtic Fiddle Metal

4. I was lying. Yes, things do happen when I paint my toenails. This time it was the phone and the doorbell ringing at the same time.

Hair Havoc

First of all, I was going to talk about music as well as hair in this post, so my original Title was Hair Havoc and a Little Singing. I don't have time for the music part, but I'd like to say that I accidentally almost titled this post Hair Havoc and a Little Sinning *chuckle chuckle chuckle*

Second of all, for this post to make sense, I would suggest you click on the link below and read the post titled Hair in my other blog first.

Third, I'd like to make a comment about my latest haircut.

So, I got a haircut last Thursday, and I must say, to be completely honest, I love it. However, it certainly didn't start out that way. I walked in to the hairdressing place, I said hi to my hairdresser, and she said, "Ok, today we're dying your hair." (Time for panic attack.) She then pulled out a bowl full of PLATINUM BLONDE (!) coloured chemicals and started putting my hair up in what felt like an alien headdress. Thankfully the potential platinum disaster turned out to be only a bunch of streaky little highlights, which apparently looks great when you chop half the hair off a person's head with what looks like butcher scissors (hurrah for short hair!). Rub in a ton of hair-gel, and VOILA, one sexy spiky haircut for a girl who's never dyed her hair.

However, the point of this is not to brag, although that might be a bit of an interior motive. My haircut just got me thinking about what we as a society value. I have gotten multiple compliments on my hair every day this week, sometimes more than once by the same person, sometimes more than once by the same person more than once a day. And yet Grace, Grace raises $7500 dollars for cancer by doing something that most girls would dread, but does she get as many compliments from our peers? No. So, what's more important, then? Shaving your head in memory of your friend, or getting highlights? Evidently it's the highlights. And I think that there's something dead wrong with that.

Death (Delete delete delete)

I've been meaning to post these guys for awhile now, but haven't had the occasion to put them up.  This used to be a post about how my March Break was a failure, but I hate whining, so I deleted it.

Anyway, this was an art project done back in November.  The assignment was to take something natural, something God-made, and slowly morph it into something man-made.  A lot of people were doing fast animals turning into vehicles, but I wanted mine to be reflective of the situation that I was in.  I don't know why, but I decided to choose fire.  My brainstorming went something like this...Fire... how did man corrupt fire?  Man used fire to create things, great things, terrible, but great.  Man uses fire to create weapons that kill and disease... fireball... nuclear weapon... death... skull...  Fire Turning into Nuclear Hazard sign.

I'm not such a huge fan of the first one, and the photo that I took for it is blurry, but I really like the fourth one.

Life in general

The generic greeting from one person to another is "How are you?" The generic answer is "Fine."

I have a problem with both.

See, around my school it can be a bit of a sketchy question to ask, as not only did we deal with the death of Geoffrey this year, one of the most-gone-to churches just lost a member of their youth group to (surprise, surprise) cancer.  He was the same age as Geoff, strangely enough.

The second problem that I have is how the hell I'm supposed to answer the question.  Generally when it's asked, I'm not in the depths of despair, so I could say "fine" with a clear conscious.  But am I really fine?  The answer is no.  So, I could say, "Well, actually, my life feels like crap because I think that I have depression resulting from my friend's premature death from cancer."  However, when a person says something other than the generic answer, it gets people unnerved.  So, then comes a lot of uncomfortable questions.  *Sigh*

~~

I am suddenly REALLY hungry.

Masquerade...

Masquerade,

Paper faces on parade,

Masquerade!

Hide your face so the world will never find you.

Ahh, a masquerade ball.  I always wanted to go to one of those, and last night my dream was fulfilled.  Sort of.

It was the theme for our Valentine's day banquet, and let me say that it was really well done, in a school dance sort of way.  There was red carpet (only a few meters of it), a clown for entertainment during dinner (my elementary school's old vice principal on a unicycle), karaoke (only country songs and High School Musical), and food (which not many people ate.)  However, these things made it all the more enjoyable, as we were able to laugh hilariously when people attempted to sing country karaoke, ate the chocolates that were thrown to us from the unicycle, and  gazed with suspicion on the large screen showing an unusual visualizer during the dancing part (buildings getting knocked down and such.  Odd.).

I wore my mask practically the entire night, even after others took theirs off.