Another Update...

I set up blogging via iPod. Who's tech savvy now? Yeah, not me. This is old news. And I don't even have a smart phone. Who needs it? Not me.

I haven't been posting very often lately because school has just been consuming my life. I can never think of what to write.

As an update, I haven't seen the lady who works at the ranch recently. I wonder if she even thinks of me ever. The school orchestra started a more exclusive chamber orchestra, and I am in both. We hope to play the Pearl Street Mall in Boulder. My math teacher keeps pulling me after and before class to give me pep talks. The math class is hard, and I'm not sure if I can handle. She thinks I can, hence the pep talks. My "best friend" and I are no longer best friends. I saw it coming, but the words are a bit hard to believe. There was no fight. I just don't exactly have a best friend right now. I don't think I need one to be happy.

I should read some of my book now. I'll try to write more often now.

Homecoming?

So I've been sitting here for a little while, trying to come up with a topic to write about. It just felt like it was about time to update my current position on this fancy lil website. So, I strummed some chords on my ukulele, and I glanced around my room, and I drummed my fingers against the keyboard, but absolutely nothing came to mind. That's a lie, some things came to mind, but I've decided a few things: what I blog about has to be interesting, and it also cannot be negative. I don't blog about things for attention or sympathy, I blog because the things I think of often need to be shared, or at least written down so I can come back to them. I don't want to forget these thoughts.

I apologize for rambling like that.

So, if you're in high school currently, or have been in the past, or know much about high school, you probably also know that it's that special time of year again: homecoming. Sigh, why does everyone get so excited about homecoming, and I just sit here and think the word is slightly.... I don't know, nothing at all. No, I am not upset because I haven't been asked to homecoming. It's true, I haven't been asked. Do I care? Not one bit. I don't want to go. I don't want to worry about it, I really don't. Everyone can have fun, that's cool, but dancing with sweaty people in a high school gym that plays music I'm not fond of? I'll pass.

If someone really, really awesome asks me to go, I might. I don't think that'll happen though. It just seems like an excuse for people to flaunt the fact that they have boyfriends or girlfriends, when I, on the other hand, don't. No, I'm not upset that I don't have a boyfriend. I don't need one. I'm fine without. Oh, and then there's the friend groups. I went with one last year, my freshmen year. Yeah it was cool, except they all hung out and I went off to find other people. When all of your close friends either go to a different school or have dates, or have better things to do than homecoming, these friend groups are hard to find.

I don't mean to talk trash about homecoming, and I did have a good time last year. But, I think there are other things I could do that Saturday night. Maybe. And I don't think it's necessary to go all 4 years of high school. It can't be much different, besides the decorations. Right?

Simple Things, & a Llama.

I’ve realized over the past few days how easy it is to make someone’s day better. I wouldn’t have realized this if a long chain of events hadn’t happened, but lucky for me, they did. I walk home everyday. It’s a long walk, and it is often hot by the time school gets out. So after I’m done saying goodbye to the people I like most at school, I take off. I cross the football field (which is often awkward due to the fact that sports practices are sometimes going on after school), I walk down the street onto a path, through two tunnels, and then I’m released into a neighborhood that’s somewhat near mine. Well, yesterday, I decided to walk home this way, and I was in the neighborhood. A lot of the houses in that neighborhood are older, and they have large yards. There’s a ranch that I walk by. And just yesterday, I saw a woman, probably in her forties or fifties, and decided to simply say “Hello.”

She was working, so I was unsure if she’d say much back. She greeted me. “How are you?” she asked. I was a little surprised that she’d asked, normally people barely look at you when you walk by. And so I stuck around for a bit to talk to her. She told me about the animals they have one the ranch: a llama named Thunder, an alpaca, a yak, and two sheep. She was very nice, and I think she was glad to have gotten to talk to someone while she chopped up some branches and stuffed them in a garbage can.

Today I saw her again, as I was hoping. She was working on the branches, and stuffing them into garbage cans. Thunder chewed on some of them, because they were close to the fence. She told me a lot, and asked me a lot of questions. I learned a lot about her. I think it’s nice to be able to talk to someone during my walk home. It makes it less lonesome. She didn’t go to college, so she told me she has been doing lots of odd jobs.

After a while, I felt I should leave her to her work, so I said exactly that. Before I left, she asked me my name. “I’m Alex,” I said to her. And she told me her name: Kathy. Kathy is a nice woman, and I’m happy to have met her. She said that maybe she’ll see me again when I’m walking home from school. I think I would be happy to talk to her again. She told me to have a great weekend, and I hope she has a great weekend, too.

Simple things like that can make your day better. Anytime I’m walking home and someone says hello to me, it makes me feel a bit better, and less alone. There’s a boy that goes to my school, and I really like him. Days that I get to talk to him have me go home smiling to myself. I wonder if he knows that the things he says to me can make me happy for the rest of the day. Simple things, I’m telling you, can really change the outcome of your day. I hope I change the outcome of other people’s days, as they do mine. From now on, I think I’ll start going out of my way to make my friends’ days better. I owe it to them.