L. O. V. E.

With Valentines day just about a week ago, I've thought a lot about junior high and the love aroma that surrounds the school at this time. It seemed to me that as soon as I first stepped into the junior high walls of Fairfield, love was in the air. When my parents were growing up they said that their junior high experience was so much more different than mine is. Society, it seems, has made sure to portray that your growing up experience isn't worth living. Young people are wanting to grow up so much faster than they can help. The practical teenage questions are always “Who are you going out with?”, Who do you like?” and so on. It's always about who's hooking up with who, who cheated on who, etc. And then when it comes around Valentines Day everybody enjoys going extremely overboard on that one day for love.


Yes, the world changes, but I wouldn't think that after twenty years, people wouldn't have that much of a change too. When my parents were young going to junior high meant learning to them. Of course boys and girls were involved with each other, but that wasn't what going to school meant. Unlike right now, that's the only thing that occupy the teenage mind. Once you hit junior high all of the sudden hormones start running around like crazy turkey's on Thanksgiving. Us teenagers are trying to grow up way too quick. And when we all look back at these years, we'll laugh at the crazy thoughts we had thinking we were in love in ninth grade.

The week of February fourteenth, Valentines week, is the week of love. But when you're married or you've got a boyfriend, everyday you're supposed to show you love, right? But in junior high, Valentines Day isn't that important. Valentines, as we know, is for who you love. But if there isn't anyone special in your life at the time, it's the worst day of you life if you 're young. Which is why I think that the youngsters in this world need to lay off of growing up too quickly. It's not worth the stress.

As a junior high student, I wish that my fellow friends would quit trying to grow up at the speed of life. Junior high love is just a an extra worry for teens, along with all their school work and life itself. Lets live a little and quit trying to speed up life. Live life like you mean it and enjoy it!

Bite My Wallet

So earlier today I was walking around the mall with my mom. We went to the mall to simply get my mom some of her ridiculously expensive hairspray, and to find me a swim suit and a pair of shoes that I died for at first sight. This shopping trip would, on average, take around forty five minutes. But, of course, our shopping trip took around three and a half hours. Not only did we get my mothers hairspray and my shoes and swim suit, there was twenty nine other pieces of clothing that were bought(I counted). I knew what swim suit I wanted but it was in my moms favorite store, Buckle. As we approached the store, her eyes went straight to the jeans and that is were she stayed most of the time. I went to the back of the store, found the swim suit I wanted, tried it on, gave it to my mom to buy, and on our way to the cashier she saw a shelf of shirts that seemed to be screaming "Melanie! Come look at me and buy me and spend all your money on me!". Seriously, she immediately changed her direction, handed the clothes to me without even slightly turning her head, and kept walking. It was almost as if she was hypnotized by a piece of clothing! So there I stood in complete awe just watching her sift her way through every piece of clothing while gathering three fourths of the clothes she was sifting through. By the time she realized her arm looked like a Mt. St. Helens, an hour and a half had already passed. But at this point, she still has all the trying on to do. This is kind of how her trying on clothes act goes; she'll put on an outfit study herself in the mirror to decide if she likes it or not, and if she liked it or not she will still have to walk out of the room and ask whoever helped her pick out the outfit and me, if we like it. And she'll say something along the lines of "well there's this little dot that I'm not sure I like. Do you think this little microscopic dot looks alright on me? Or should I pass it?" And my response ever time is "DO WHAT YOU WANT!". She drives me nuts sometimes over the strangest things! And after all her trying on is over with, she will usually end up buying almost everything she tried on. I get a few things out of this but usually it's all her. She asks me if I want to get more but I find it the biggest waste of money and time. So we always end up walking out of Buckle having just spent somewhere around one billion dollars on clothes. My dad is picky about clothes like her, but they definately are very different when you shop with them both. And there will always be a "few" stores she'll want to "look" in and see what's there. This is how every mall experience is with her. I don't think she's figured out that you don't buy your way through life.
I feel like there are so many things this world does to get you to go broke! For instance; our world has come up with the strangest holiday's. And each holiday everyone feels like they need to spend a fortune. Christmas I can totally understand, but like Valentine's day or Easter or holidays like that. And stores make this big deal over the holidays and get stocked up with a trillion hearts and chocolates or eggs. Things that have to do with that holiday. I always wonder what our world would be like if money wasn't around. Would we be in as much competition with our neighbors for the nicest things or the nicest clothes? It really all seems pointless to me, and I could really care less. But unforunately money isn't going to disappear any time soon, so we've got to learn how to control ourselves and our emotions when we decide to go out and shop.

Live your dreams

Dance is one of the most important things in my life. Every time I step on the dance floor I feel like I let out every bad emotion I have. I've been doing dance since I was three. As soon as I started walking, I started dancing. I began in a ballet studio that my mom put me in to see if I would like it. And I ended up loving it! When I was five I was already on the same levels as the first graders and second graders. And I kept progressing from there. In the midst of this, I was also doing gymnastics to help along with dance. As I was growing up my life pretty much revolved around dance and gymnastics. By sixth grade I was a dancing and tumbling machine. But I also really had no life. I was missing out on the normal things that regular sixth graders were doing. In the summer of seventh grade I decided I needed to cut back on what I was getting myself into. I literally never had any time to do anything. Every once in a while when I did have time, I would be doing whatever homework I had. As school started back up I decided to keep doing ballet and just get a personal trainer for tumbling. I joined Ballet West's school of ballet and it was like I nothing changed. I still had every day of my life booked up with dance. But I thought it would be different. So Eighth grade I dropped out of ballet and went to a pointe school closer by and joined a competitive dance crew. This is still my weekly schedule. I tried so hard to give one of them up, but there was something about dance that I couldn't give up.
I always  hear about people whose parents make them go to dance or something, and I always feel so bad because I can't imagine any parent who would make their child do something they didn't want. It was like their child was living the parents dream, and to me, that's wrong. A dream is a dream, and nobody can live someone elses dream.
My thought for a blog post this week was dreams, and living something that you've wanted to do and yearned for your whole life. I've had a lot of crap come from people about me not having a life, but what's a life without a dream? I'm living the dream I've wanted since I could walk and I'm happy about it. I still have time weekly to do other things that I want, and doing something I want makes all the difference. No one can live you're dream, and a dream shouldn't be lived by someone else. I had a dream and now I'm living it.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal."

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

-Martin Luther King Jr.'s I Have a Dream Speech-

A worldwide Landgrab!

As rising temperatures melt the polar ice cap, five countries race to map their claims to a new energy frontier. Nearly a quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas may lie beneath the seabed around Greenland. The article I read is about some men who go out and discover something that could change the world. But, there also is a lot of opinion towards this particular subject.


In three decades the retreat of sea ice has freed more than a million square miles of ocean for research and commerce. The creation of oil and gas deposits requires the right mix of organic material, heat, rock, pressure, and passage of time. It may be hard to look at the Arctic today and imagine that it ever had enough organic life, enough heat. The floor of the Arctic appears to be rich in petroleum, home to nearly a quarter of the world’s undiscovered supply. Sea ice is melting drastically opening the sea to shipping and the seafloor to mineral exploration. The countries in the fight for triumph are Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia, and the U.S. And all of these are hoping to claim a piece of this discovery, if not all.

My opinion towards this specific article is very broad. I think that it is very cool and useful that this particular part of the Arctic is being studied. And it is even better to know that there might be something at the bottom of the Arctic that could solve the small amount of the world’s problems. But I also believe that first; we need to find a solution to our loss of oil problem. We can’t always rely on what we think might lie ahead. Researchers don’t know for sure that there is a third of the world’s oil lying beneath the waters of Greenland. The keyword in this is may. There may be a massive amount of oil around Greenland’s waters. But it is definitely not definite. I almost feel like we’re trying to rely on the fact that we could possibly not have to worry so much about oil. But it’s not a fact yet. I believe that we should be fixing the problem with oil first, and then start thinking about the future possibilities.

The race for the Arctic may be about oil, but it is about the oil, but it is about the oil that government’s hope is there, not the oil they know is there. So according to our own government, they are aware that they have no real clue if there really is that huge amount of oil at the bottom of the Arctic. They just infer that there might be. Studies may show it, but they have said that as far as their concerned it is not a for sure true fact.

In conclusion, this article is basically about five countries fighting to be able to have a part of this massive discovery, which they aren’t even sure is there. But in my own opinion I think that we all need to settle down and figure out the problems that are necessary, rather than the ones we don’t even really know exist.