WHAT THE ELF?!

somehow, my Facebook literally just deleted all of my friends... i am Facebook friendless. did this happen to anyone else, or just me?!?!

Sub-4-Santa Part 1

it's that time again. time for Sub-4-Santa.

for anyone that doesn't know what that is, i will tell you. to shorten Mrs. Kelly's tear-jerker story about how Sub-4-Santa came to be, i'll just say that basically, our school librarian (Mrs. Kelly) realized like 25 years ago that not everyone in Kanab always gets to have such an awesome Christmas. so she started this program, which involves the entire school donating money to raise enough to buy things for families in town that can't really afford nice things for Christmas. this is my first year being on Student Council, so this is actually kind of a new experience for me.

Sub-4-Santa usually lasts about 2 or 3 weeks, and this past week was our first. we did three fundraisers this week, one of which was new to KHS. we put the four milk jugs in the offce (one for each grade. whichever one gets the most money in it by the end of Sub-4-Santa gets like $200 in their class account), the early-out lunch (any 4th hour class that can raise $25 can get out 15 minutes early for lunch), and the all-new Sub-4-Santa Winter Formal Dance.

our Student Body President, Rhees Jackson, always has these great ideas, but then forgets to tell the rest of the student council. he'd had the idea a while ago for a winter dance, and maybe having it for Sub-4-Santa... but we never discussed it in a meeting until last Saturday. the idea was that we would use the leftover decorations from the Christmas Festival (more on that later) to have the dance, but that meant we'd only have a week to advertise this dance. this is where i came in.

i spent about 10 minutes on this poster. yet somehow, it looks almost identical to the one i spent an hour and a half on. ugh.

by Thursday, i'd only heard of one guy that had asked a girl to the dance, and that was my friends Dustin and LaRisa. that's it. but then right before 6th period, i was telling my other friend Carley about something embarassing that had happened in 5th hour. then she said "well it's okay... your day is going to get a lot better... bye!" and then she left. i just stood there and was baffled. i caught on eventually though, and ran out to my car to see what she was talking about. sure enough, there was a metal popcorn tin by my driver's door with a big silver bow on it and a note.

since i was already late for 6th hour, my teacher made me wait until after class to even find out who asked me to the dance! it was awful! anyways after class, i had some friends help me. i opened the popcorn tin, took out the cardboard divider that kept the buttered, caramel, and cheese popcorn, and proceeded to methodically pour the popcorn into some plastic bags to find the name... i wasn't in the mood to dig through all of it. in the middle of the whole thing was simply a Reese's Chocolate Christmas Tree. har har har... it was Rhees. clever.

to answer him, i chose to use an old inside joke between me and Rhees. one time in Sociology last year, we spent the whole class playing with those pink and white Circus Animal cookies, so that's always been kind of a joke. so i went and bought some of those cookies, and made a punny poster that said "It would take a pack of WILD (circus) ANIMALS to keep me from going to Winter Formal With You! ♥-Jennifer". i then used the Animal Cookies and, with the help of Rhees's sister Calli, left a trail of them leading from the garage door to his room. then i left the poster and whatever cookies were left on his bed, and my job was done.

part of my trail of cookies going down the stairs... ha.

so that was all Thursday. Friday night was the Christmas dinner that X-Press always sings at with the Symphony of the Canyons. this year though, they decided that if people are paying $35 a plate to come eat dinner and see the concert, they don't want to have to go through a buffet line. so what does that mean? KHS music students got to serve. :/ it wasn't too bad though, in retrospect. but i did get butter on my new formal dress. haha

the concert itself went alright, nothing to go down in history. but at the end, when X-Press sang the classic Christmas song "Breath of Heaven", i was in tears and i couldn't sing a part of it. when it was all over, i turned in shock to my friends Chelsea, Chanelle, Carley, and Tyrell and said "We're done." never again will i sing at the Christmas dinner... it's weird. even freshman year when i wasn't in X-Press, i was in band and back in that day, all of the music groups played/sang at the dinner. so basically, i've been doing this for the past 4 years, and now it's like... over.

Saturday was the Christmas Festival, which is always in the same place as the dinner the night before. it's got booths for all kinds of things, including a lady from Cedar City that was selling her jewelry and the Arizona Girl Scouts. i helped sell raffle tickets and baked goods with Chelsea, because all of the music students are required to help for at least 11 hours for this whole thing. yikes.

the festival ended at 4 p.m., then i stayed unti like 6 helping to clean up. fortunately, we were having the dance in that same place that night, so we didn't have to take down all of the decorations (we got to leave a bunch of the Christmas trees and all of the hanging decorations), just the tables and the tarps that covered the floor. so then i came home, took a shower, and started getting ready for the dance.

i ended up driving to town to meet Rhees at his house, since he doesn't really know where i live, and i just didn't feel like it was necessary to make him an hour late for the dance just to pick me up. so i got to his house, then we went to the dance... where there were like 10 other people. sound familiar? an awful lot like Sadie's? haha there was really not a huge turnout like we'd hoped for (we tried to advertise it as a winter-version of Homecoming), but we ended up making about $300 towards Sub-4-Santa, so that's good. also, Rhees's mom Julie was the photographer, and she donated her services. whoo! i'll try to put those pictures up when i get them, because they're actually pretty funny.

all in all, that dance ended up being more fun than i'd anticipated. after the dance, Rhees took me and Dason back to his house (i had to get my car, after all), we we all hung out for a little bit with Calli. finally, i deemed myself too sleep-deprived to have any further human contact. i was saying the stupidest things, then finding them hysterical. how i considered myself okay enough to drive half an hour home, i'm not sure. good times, though... good times. Rhees and Dason never fail to make me laugh until i am crying.

Me and President Jackson at the dance. I'm not sure what he's looking at, but what a guy. (:

next, i get to be auctioned off as a slave for a week to who-knows-what kind of people. we'll see how this goes.

Current Heroes.

Thought of the day:

last night, X-Press had a practice with the symphony for the Christmas festival this weekend. at one point, my friends Rhees and Dason were playing with my phone (because, in their words, my phone, an EnV Touch, is "dynamic," whereas Rhees's phone, an EnV 2, is "semi-dynamic," and Dason's phone, a 5-year-old generic one, is "anti-dynamic."), and they put a silly picture of the two of them as my internal screen. the picture itself made me laugh until i was crying, because it was just the two of them on a bus trip that Rhees had sent to my phone just for this reason. in it, they're both smiling, but they ended up looking certifiably insane. once i got past the picture, i saw that they'd changed the banner to say "Happiness Is A Choice." knowing those two, i know they just put that to kind of match the picture, but it really struck a chord with me, whether they meant it to or not.

after the several unpleasant posts recently, i realized that i've been in an extremely foul mood for like the past month. and i really don't like myself that way, you know? i mean, i know the real reason behind such a mood, but that doesn't help me any. so on my drive to seminary this morning, i decided that happiness really is a choice... i just haven't been making it. and it took a silly little joke from two friends to make me realize that.

Rhees and Dason don't actually know this, but that little banner really made a difference to me. plus, that picture makes me laugh every time i open my phone. so as of this moment, this one where i am choosing to let go of the little things and just be happy, this moment where i am choosing to come out of my constant state of self-pity and join the world... this moment, these two friends are my heroes.

This isn't the crazy picture on my phone. This was actually taken right before the whole phone scene, and i think it portrays their heroic-ness very well.

thanks, boys. i owe you.

B100D Donor!

if you can't tell, i stuck a little "100" in my "Blood", because this is my 100th post. (: anyways, i had the opportunity to donate blood today at the high school, and it was such a great experience. i was talking to the lady that was taking care of me the entire time, and while she was pricking my finger we were talking about in "Elf" when Buddy is like "my finger has a heartbeat." haha

favorite story of the day: after i was done actually getting my blood drawn, Dana (the nice lady) told me i was done, and she said "Four minutes, forty-six seconds. Not bad at all! Anything under 6 minutes is considered really fast." So i said, "Do i get some kind of medal for having really speedy blood?" just joking. Well, after she bandaged up my arm, she stuck a cute little pink gauze bow on there and said "Here's your badge of honor." it was awesome! however, i apparently made everyone at school very jealous, because there were little bows all over the place for the rest of the day. oh well, i was first. (: also, i am proud to announce that i did NOT pass out or vomit. i have a tiny bit of a bruise on the tip of my finger where she pricked me, but that's okay. i just want to say that i feel AWESOME about donating blood.

I tried to get a picture of my face, my sticker ("I MAKE A DIFFERENCE") and my bandage all at once.

I thought the "A." stood for Anderson, duh. But really, it meant "Appointment", as opposed to a "W" for "Walk-In." I learned this after i saw Dason Ott, Chanelle Johnson, and Carley Barber with stickers saying "Dason A.", "Chanelle A.", and "Carley A.". haha

My cute cute bow. (: I threw away the green bandage (of course), but i kept the pink bow.

on a side note, here's something interesting: me and my mom are the only people in my immediate family that have O negative blood type. meaning, our blood can literally go to anyone. the rest of my family is O positive. well, i was just talkin to mama about this, and we were all celebrating because we're universal donors, but then she said "but i'm sorry about all the shots you're going to have to get when you're pregnant." "...........what?" then she went on to explain that if my babies have positive blood types, my blood will try to attack them and then we both get very sick. so i guess i have to get like a buttload of extra shots when i have babies, just so my actual blood doesn't have a freak out. bah.

You don't have to read this.

i am losing patience. i don't like this feeling. but i just am really frustrated, and nothing is working out the way i want it to. i wish i could customize my entire life, every little detail. just go through and build a little Sims life for myself. i want to be passing all of my classes like i have been for the past 12 years, i want to not wreck my car on wildlife, i want my best friends to actually live near me, i want to be able to do wrestling cheer because i love it, i want to have enough money to pay for my cruise and to afford clothes that aren't falling apart, i want to go on the music department's trip to California for the final time, i want unlimited texting and service at my house so i can communicate with my far away best friends, i want to go back to Lumberton and see all of the kids i grew up with, i want to be certain of which college i want to go to, i want a normal-looking haircut, i want to stop being constantly exhausted all the time, and i want the only thing that can always make me smile for weeks on end without fail. materialistic as this may sound... i kind of don't care. because my toes are cold and i have no bedsheets and i have weird dreams. thus, i am exempt from your judgement.

And then some.

following yesterday's awesome awesome experiences, i hit a fawn this morning on the way to seminary. it is dead. fortunately though, Missy is not. i was pretty proud of myself though, i didn't even cry. (which is what i usually do if anything bad happens to my car. like... at all.) i've got some photos of the damage, but there's also some other stuff that you can't see. like, how something happened to the thing that holds my washer fluid, because that was full a week ago, and it's been leaking out all over the place all day, so i'm down to... well... none. i considered taking a picture of the deer for like .2 seconds, then i realized that that is sick and morbid and plus i didn't even want to look at it, let alone document it. you're welcome.

i'm actually not as mad about it as you'd think, because i can't really blame the deer (i guess i could, but what's the point? as i type this, it's being eaten by scavenger birds. i just can't bring myself to put the blame on dead Bambi, you know?), and i don't blame myself because it just blind-sided me. it's not like it was chillin in the middle of the road when i wasn't paying attention and i just mobbed over it or anything. it came barrelin at me from a blind slope on the right side of the road. i did try and avoid it by steering left, but that became my downfall, as i later found out when i realized that if i had just hit the brakes and kept going straight, i would've missed it entirely. oh well.

My fender is all crazied up. And there's deer hair stuck in weird places.

Just a different angle so you can see that HUGE dent under my headlight. Hmm... i wonder if i can get new headlights out of this...

When i was driving home from school today, i came up over the hill just before where i'd hit the deer, and i saw that i left some massive skid marks. So i turned around and took a picture.

also, Dad pointed out that my car isn't even supposed to leave skid marks. but as some of us may remember, Missy's ABS system is... well pretty much nonexistent. hence my 2 accidents involving sliding off the road in snow, due to locked-up brakes. poor poor Missy... she's blowin light bulbs all the time, her headlights have no distinction between high-beams and low-beams, she's got a banged up fender now, some of her paint is chipping (due to the deer. awesome.), her average MPG has been suffering lately, and she's pretty dirty. sad. :(

well folks, it's about 4:00 in the afternoon, but i'm going to go to bed. why? because (don't judge me) i am going to the midnight showing of "New Moon" tonight in Hurricane, but i still have school in the morning. so i'm going to attempt to get some sleep in before i have to head out for that. whoo!

P.S. i took those pictures on my new phone. pretty dang good ones, i'd say. (: haha

Jennifer's No Good Horrible Very Bad Day

WARNING:
The following content consists of a huge rant of a 17-year-old girl that has a tendancy to overdramatize things that, in all reality, are not that big of a deal. It also may contain the words "PMS", "menopausal", and other possibly traumatizing phrases to those who are not expecting it. Plus, this is kind of long. You're welcome for the warning.

today was one of those days that probably would have been normal, were it not for just a couple of things that went badly. and because of those things, you begin thinking about the rest of the day and all of the other things that went wrong, and then it strikes you that it was just a horrible, horrible day. and like i said... today was one of those days.

to be fair, there were only 2 things today that just made my mood drop fast, and everything else was just kind of fell into place to make this a bad day. some of the little things included:

--Waking up just late enough to think i had time to get ready, then realizing that i couldn't do my make up and still be on time to seminary. Plus my hair turned out looking funny.

--On my way into town, i saw a deer that was kind of in the left lane, and there was an oncoming vehicle. i tried to do a courtesy by beeping my horn to kind of push the deer the rest of the way off the road, but what does it do instead? Double back directly in front of me. Duh. (But my plan worked... the other car didn't have to worry about hitting it.)

--A kid in my seminary class (that gets on my nerves anyways) said something to me at the start of class, so i turned around to answer him. But before i could say anything, he got an honest-to-goodness look of shock on his face and he said "Wow, Jennifer. You look... uh... tired."

--Later, before i had a chance to actually put on my make up, one of my best friends (who is an extremely unobservant boy, bless his heart) said to me "Jennifer, where are your glasses today?" "What?" "Oh wait, you don't wear glasses, huh?" (He couldn't figure out why i looked so radically different.)

--i learned that our boys basketball team doesn't even play Millard at all until January 26th. That is really, really far away. Hopefully the girls play them sooner.

--Since today was a half day, i went to X-Press feeling like i should go to lunch afterwards... but i didn't get to.

--i was reminded (once again), this time by Mrs. Terry, that i am completely broke and that i need another job desperately.

--One of my best friends has been throwing a hissy fit for the past couple of days and absolutely refuses to talk to me for an unknown reason. Mainly, he (yes, "he") is just being a chick. Nothing is better than a overdramatic teenage girl... except for maybe an overdramatic teenage boy that is acting like a girl.

--I had no one to go eat lunch with when school got out, and i didn't want to go by myself, so i didn't eat lunch.

--I had like an hour and a half to kill between school and my first appointment of the day, and no one to kill it with, because all of my friends were either in dance practice, preparing for Sterling Scholar interviews, or in EdNets. Or being menopausal.

--I spilled my $.32 Coke on my shoes. :(

--When i went to the dentist, i got the World's Most Aggressive Dental Hygienist trying to shove that vibrate-y cleaning pokey thing BETWEEN my teeth, mostly in places that i can barely get floss through, let alone a shaking metal stick. Good one, guy.

--Well, i'm kind of PMSing.

now for the 2 big fat stupid things that ruined my Wednesday. first of all, i think most of you probably know of my recent Chemistry struggles. if not, i'll give you a quick rundown: i struggle in Chemistry. my first term final grade was a C+, right smack in the middle of otherwise straight A's. i attempted to drop that class--as in, i had the form signed, turned in, and was already moved on to performing a new class schedule--but then the principal stepped in and we had a nice little afternoon of him and the school councelor telling me i was a failure if i dropped Chemistry. sooooo i got back in after one day. back to the present. i got my midterm report for that class today, and i currently am running at a very, very low C-, because i got a 34/57 on an exam that i studied with the teacher for. obviously, something here isn't right. so after i got that, and after holding back my fury and disappointment for the rest of the class period, i stormed to the councelor's office and showed him the report. then i said "look what you made me do."
"did you study for the exam?"
"for hours."
"did you study with Mrs. Titus?"
"for as long as she could."
"well maybe you should go in every day after school."
i couldn't handle that nonsense, so i walked out with my ugly report, while he called out his door "You know Jennifer, i really do think you're a great student. You can do this." bad deal.

next extra bad thing: i usually tend to love getting haircuts. i get excited for them, because my hair will get to a point where i just think it looks gross and shapeless, so i like to go to the local salon and say "cut it short with lots of layers" and it turns out adorable. however, through a series of unfortunate miscommunication, i ended up getting a hair appointment with a local lady who works out of her house (not the salon that i like), from whom i have never, ever come away with a good feeling about my hair. i ended up having her cut my hair anyways, and... well... i kind of think i look like a cross between Julie Andrews in "The Sound of Music" and my friend Austin from Freedom Academy. it was worse when i very first got it cut, but only because the lady not only didn't style it at all, but she parted my hair almost directly down the middle, so it just looked bad bad bad. but then i came home, straightened it, parted it in the right place, so it's... better. i think i'll get used to it.

however, since this is in the top ten pissiest posts i've ever done, i decided to give put some light to good things about this haircut:

This is how i'll probably wear it most often...


...unless i'm feeling particularly emo/urban that day...


...or maybe even like wearing a barrette that i can't wear with longer hair...


...and where is the rule that says you HAVE to part your hair?

but in all reality...

...maybe i should just wear a hat and solve my problems.

also on a slightly brighter note, i have 3 of the best friends i could ever ask for. unfortunately... those 3 best friends all happen to live very far away from me. to Ashton, Nikiah, and Rendon... thanks for helping me through my No Good Horrible Very Bad days, even though you're far away. (: keep it real.