Butterfingers

Hey guys! If you read the title (which I am expecting you did, because that would just be silly not to read a title), sorry, this post isn't about my favorite candy, which by the way, is swedish fish.

The reason the title is what it is, is because that's the only way I could describe the varsity girls' team tonight. Butterfingers. Normally we’re not that bad (I don't think we could be necessarily called good...) but tonight was just a fail. A big fat one.

Pause

I play in pep band, and it's absolutely a blast. We get the game 10 times more riled up than it ever would be with just basketball, and we encourage some... Uhhhh... Not-so-friendly confrontations with the other team. But yay! We get the people to focus more on us than they were focusing on the game! One point to the Park City pep band! Anyways, we watch the whole game, and provide the real entertainment.

This would be us, except we had a lot less people

Un-pause

Since we were up in a loft watching the game, we had a nice easy view of the whole court. So basically, we had our losing team up in lights being displayed very nicely for us. How thoughtful. Plus, barely any people come to see the girls’ games, so it’s almost depressing.

Mmmhmmm, yeah no.

You think it would be easy to always play and sound happy, but playing for a hopeless cause game, it's very draining, it's more like a chore, and there isn't nearly as much energy behind it as there should be. On the girls' team, everyone just had butterfingers (thanks Amelia and Morgan for the term ;) ). They always lost the ball, couldn’t make any free throws, their defense wasn’t prime, and to top it all off, the other team was having a really good night.

Well we lost that game by I think at least  28-44 (or something like that. I stopped paying attention and I don’t remember the score, I just know it was in that range and we were losing badly).

When it came time for the boys' varsity team, well that was a blast! The team was so pumped when the first quarter started, that we couldn't help but play stronger than before. Plus they had tons of people show up too, which helps. The game was really intense and everyone was riled up. In the fourth quarter of that game,  the lead switched teams, and within the last two minutes, we got up one, and we held it the rest of the game. 

Very intense game, with lot's of this

You can imagine the screaming, stupid uncalled for moves by the players, fouls, sore throats, and angry coaches and refs.  Basketball games are fun. Especially when you’re in pep band. Yay band!

We saw this a lot too

Crazy Things I've Come to Love

Well first of all, long time no see! Sorry I haven't blogged in a while!  I have been super duper busy, but also I've been really lazy and only doing the absolute necessary things: sleep, eat, school, ride, music, and fit homework into all of it. Basically, my excuse for not blogging is that I have been a busy couch potato. I have not blogged in more than a month because I have been too busy being an oxymoron.

Any who, if you read the title you should know what I am about to fill your brain with for the next ten minutes. By the way you should watch How I Met Your Mother.  Funny story, I watched a full season and a half in one day. 

My Friends

I've always loved my friends, but they are crazy. The world has conspired against us, and made sure we either have one or zero classes with each other, and totally opposite lunch schedules. Thank you, whoever decided we did not get to see each other! I really enjoy not seeing the people I actually like to put up with (all said very sarcastically). Between the puns we began to put up with and now love dearly, the strange sneezes and loud voices, the over-organization, the crazy competitiveness, the uptightness with school, and the obsessions over different people, this is what brings all of us together. Most people probably think we’re pretty dang annoying.

Horses

They’ve either given me a life, or taken one away from me (that would be a social life they took away) depending on how you think about it. They are my life and I can communicate with them better than I can communicate with humans. That might not be saying too much because half the time I don't even make sense to myself...

Right after a workout

The amount of fabulous in this picture is unbelievable

Bipolar Chihuahuas

My friend has this Chihuahua, and let me tell you, that dog is the definition of evil (at first). But now, two years later after we first met, I love that dog, and today was a huge milestone; he let me pick him up! Then later, he wouldn't let me touch him. And now, as I'm writing this, he's playing with my socks (ADORABLE).

Tak the Chihuahua

Mexican Food

I was a messed up child, and I didn’t like Mexican food when I was little. But now, OMG, it’s the bomb.com! Delicious!!! Fabulous! Heaven food on earth. It's like culture, yumminess, and a salsa dance all inside your mouth.

Memory Foam

I cannot live without my mattress. It’s absolutely amazing, so in the mornings I say, “Five more minutes,” then I get up 20 minutes later than I needed to. Nothing good happens after that (messed up makeup, uncoordinated outfit, that really important piece of paper needed for English, yup, that's on my bedside table). Maybe it's called memory foam because when you sink into its lovely, evil fingers, it steals your memory.

Band Concerts! Yay!

Rockin' On Top of the World! That's how I feel right now! We had two band concerts in a row. Let me repeat myself, TWO! I'm like super duper excited and I'm feeling really rejuvenated (and nap-worthy). I feel so Christmas-y right now because of listening to so much Christmas music and seeing so many Santa hats! I didn't get to go to the barn again (ug!) but the band/orchestra/choir festival and smooth performances more than made up for it! By the way, when you put a good orchestra, a good band, and a good choir together, it is the most heavenly sound and music you will ever hear.

There was a "little" incident in our band concert. First of all, let me explain that the whole two days were pretty much complete chaos because we've never done a concert like this. The bands playing were just as confused as the audience. Mr. Taylor, our band director, told us to not do what the eighth grade band did. And that was to not go on stage too early and sit there without any idea what to do. Anyone, can you guess what we did? Yup! We got on stage too early **facepalm.** Even earlier than what the eighth grade band did. We can skip the fact that we were all sitting in our spots on the stage, cracking up and sharing equally puzzled looks with our fellow band people.

As things got even more awkward, someone stood up to tune us because it could be pretty nasty playing without tuning. We then tried to do an exercise to check if we were in tune. Well, the person who tuned us had no idea how to conduct (it's easy! Floor, door, window, ceiling, people! Floor, door, window, ceiling!), but thank goodness for him anyway. If he hadn't shown up, it would've been a multiple-train-trainwreck rather than just a singular-train-trainwreck. After we tried to tune, someone gets up to apologize to the audience for our band director not being there yet (he was still conducting another band in a different room). He starts his very speech with, "Well I'm probably going to flunk this class for doing this..." Classy. What was even funnier, no later than thirty seconds after that person sat down, someone else came from the hall and apologized to the audience, again. Once Mr. Taylor walks onto the stage, he looks to us, laughs and smiles, then shakes his head. Go Thursdays!

One last thing, my good friend, Molly, well she and I listened to Varsity Jazz Band (they are amazing) together on Wednesday. When they started their last tune, Baby, It's Cold Outside (probably our favorite tune), she and I turn to each other and give each other the most priceless looks of creepy happiness.

We smiled smiles very similar to this one.

I hopefully will be posting a video of me on Gambit on Saturday so you can finally see me ride!

Last Sundays

Before I start, happy (late) Thanksgiving! How was yours? Mine was great, I did dishes all day. 

You know those Sundays after a break and you have the overwhelming doom of having to go to school the next day? You know that depressing feeling you get when you have to pull out your homework after your backpack has been in the closet for a week growing dust? Do you know that awful feeling when break is over? Yes, yes we all do. Every. Single. One. Of. Us. 

I know I'm still getting over the Post-Thanksgiving-Dinner-Hangover. I'm still living in the dream of no school, going to bed at whatever time I want, knowing that I'll be able to wake up the next morning, and lay in bed, snuggled up like a burrito, then close my eyes and go back into burrito sleep. But that dream is over. When the alarm rings tomorrow morning, I'm probably just going to stay in my burrito. 

This morning, I pulled out my dusty backpack and the uncharged laptop, and sat for a while, refusing to believe that tomorrow is school. After sitting around for an hour, I just started homework. Woohoo, what fun it is to laugh and sing in a homework-induced coma! My mind is already on Christmas and gifts (this is the kind of thing you might be getting from me).

Come on Santa! We're waiting!

This break, has been amazing. Even though I only had one burrito morning this break, I'm more rested than I have been since summer, and I finally had a sleepover with some friends. 

PAUSE

Let me tell you a bit about that sleepover. My friends and I, oh, we are such rebels. Do you know what? At eleven that night we snuck some items in the room: water and pretzels (GASP!!). Yes, we know, we are such rule breakers. Even worse, we spilled one of those five glasses of water (oh we're in trouble now!). Okay, after sharing with the world what rebels we are, I can continue.

UN-PAUSE

I don't exactly remember where I paused, and you probably don't either, so we should start on another random tangent. Agreed? 

At the barn this week (here I go again), nothing really eventful happened. I did have a really good dressage lesson where I realized my horse does understand leads and can actually do dressage well, and then the next day when I tried again, I was nearly bucked off. Also during that same day, we decided to take a jump (bad, bad decision, Pauline) and my lovely steed took the jump about eight feet away from the jump and jumped about a foot and a half higher than it had to, so it probably looked something like this: 

Not with too much over-exaggeration...

Sorry it wasn't a picture of me, I lost my video camera. Whoopdee-doo. 

And to make my day even greater, it’s raining. Since I’m too busy sitting on a chair procrastinating, have a lovely day for me!!

Crazy Dressage Interpretations

Well, people who have been following since my first post (if any of you exist), you should know that I switched horses fairly recently so I could do a sport I love: eventing. This consists of jumping, cross country, and dressage. Gambit, my horse, however, prefers the jumping and cross country part of it much better. That's not to say I don't either (I definitely like jumping better, I mean, who gets adrenaline from making your horse bounce and do unnatural movements, sitting, and smiling and pretending that you are doing what you should be doing? I don't! But it's necessary, so whatever), but dressage is definitely a main part of eventing.

After today's lesson, I realized dressage was going to be much harder than everyone originally planned. Yes, Gambit is very good at looking pretty, and is fairly good at listening to instructions but he hasn't mastered these things called leads, and so that means no matter how good we look, dressage will be impossible. Well maybe not impossible, but the art form we would be doing would not be called dressage, but more like let's-prance-around-the-arena-and-scare-the-crap-out-of-my-rider-and-make-her-cry-because-I-wanted-to-eat-those-flowers-instead-of-trot-from-k-through-x-to-m. Yes, I'm not over exaggerating. I also would go into much more explanation, but I would bore my few readers of this blog away from this URL for unhappily ever after.

Back to riding, if I were to go into competition right now for dressage, my test would look like this:

This is not what a dressage test should look like.

Well what happened today in the lesson? It wasn't a bad lesson, but I definitely wasn't a star today. Let's say we were supposed to be cantering in a circle, a 30m circle, and picture this: A teenage girl on a huge black horse racing all over the 200m riding ring, speeding around on the wrong lead, changing directions every few seconds, and the trainer telling the poor teenage girl to calmly to toggle her reigns, sit back, think slow thoughts, breathe, and think what she wanted to look like. Ladies and gentlemen, Pauline and Gambit. Yes, because these are things humans love to do when speeding around crazily on an ex racehorse.

Who here knows what dressage is supposed to look like?

I promise, I really can ride, I'll start posting videos soon when I actually remember my video camera has a working battery and can take videos. Well in the meantime, if any of my readers (like five or ten of you) are actually riders, here's a short survival guide about how to relax and have a dressage test go well. Go riding!