Sexy Noses

I must say, I feel extremely strange writing this, but I have recently realized just how amazing noses are. It all started in ceramics... Currently, I am crafting an epic triple face vase (it is what it sounds like, a vase with three faces sculpted on) with my talented pottery partner, Mara. It's actually working pretty well! She's quite good at crafting mouths, as well as eyelids, and I specialize in eyeballs and noses. At first when I began sculpting the two noses I thought "Oh, this will be easy! They're just noses! All the same."

Oh, how wrong I was! The longer I worked on the noses, the more obsessed I became! I started with simple noses, but as I progressed I realized how much personality is in each nose. By the end of the day, one of the noses I was commissioned to do was severely hunched, with a wart at the nape between the eyes! It was extremely fun to make, especially the flaring nostrils... The second nose was lumpy and fat, with notably small nostrils and a thick Roman bump at the middle, quite fascinating actually.
Needless to say, for the rest of the day I was spellbound by the noses of my peers. I literally could not take my eyes of the noses! I spotted adorable button noses, bent and broken ones, and one especially attractive, absurdly straight one. In fact, I was literally checking out the latter nose, don't judge me... The possessor was significantly creeped out, but it's okay because guess what! My nose is cute too! I've got that stereotypical 5-year old nose, a ski-slope bridge and a button tip. Come to think of it, Clara Bear also has a great nose! It's a little Roman and its got a cleft tip! You go girl!
Yes, I know what you're thinking "Wow, she's a real nose-obsessed creep! I think I'll stop reading this blog now..." But stop. Do not act all high and mighty with me! I just happen to have noticed what many mortals have overlooked: Noses. Noses, noses, noses. They're beautiful. It sounds weird, but think about it: noses are planted in the exact center of our faces! Besides our eyes, our noses are the first attribute that people notice about us. And, contrary to popular belief, there is no such thing as an unattractive nose! Even if your nose is currently 'out of style' (psh, as if) that just means it has personality! And if your nose has personality, I envy you because I wish I could sculpt it.

Shuffle Three Steps to the Left

 "You, scoot over here!" and "Cross your arms! No-uncross them! Cross your fingers instead!" It's exhausting. The shuffling and stepping and scooting, and the arms around waists, I just don't know anymore.

I'd just like to take a moment to address the awkwardness that is group pictures. As a member of various teams, I am constantly put in positions where it is deemed appropriate to take a group photo of everyone awkwardly smiling at the camera. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for that photo op when everyone's really happy and it's a moment you want to immortalize forever.

Recently one of my favorite photos ever was taken at the conference track meet. For the first time in history, both the boys and the girls teams won the meet. As the results were being announced, none of us expected the boys to win and we were all just really happy that the girls had and that the boys were probably coming in second. The moment the announcer declared, "And in first place, we have..." everyone lost it. It's the happiest I can remember myself being in a really long time. That's a moment we should have forever so of course lets take a thousand photos. We all had really huge natural smiles and were standing close and hugging by choice, not because we were arranged that way by some photographer or well meaning parent.

Here we are, in all our glorious blurriness. 

The photos I don't like are group pictures. Imagine this: you're innocently doing an activity, such as sitting on the carpet of a hotel room, chatting with your friends about a certain member of the track team's amazing arms, when suddenly, someone's mother pop's up with her iPhone and says, "Oh, lets take a picture!" In this moment, a candid might be cute of us laughing and painting nails. Alas, this is not the case. Invariably we end up standing with our arms around each other smiling forced smiles and capturing a contrived moment forever. 

Still not feeling it? I can give you another example. There we were, innocently attempting to bowl, when suddenly someone decided to take group pictures of each team. We had to stop all the games and stand together in a line, posing for a camera with our bowling balls. In this case, the candids of me bowling were even worse than the team photo, which is quite unfortunate as it is. 

I think the real reason I hate group photos is because as a person, I'm not very photogenic. This is true to the extent that when I get a good photo of myself I'm tempted to stare suspiciously at it several times a day to try to determine how it got that way. 

I say this not to fish for compliments (Oh no, you're SO photogenic!), but to reason with myself as to why I hate group photos so much. It's just that whenever I pose for a photo, I seem to undergo a drastic change and start to look really weird. It's not the same with candids though. Usually I look like my usual awkward self, but once someone got a photo of me laughing which was cool. I was probably way overexcited about that. 

This problem is compounded by the fact that basically all of the people I hang out with are very attractive. I'm not sure what happened, but somewhere along the line I accidentally made friends with a group of highly beautiful people. In photos they always look perfectly on point, while I'm usually the one weirdly dancing in the corner of the frame or making some odd face since they caught me before I smiled. It's a struggle. 

Check out my secret code! It's a Caesar cipher and the clue is clearly hidden in this post. It's basically why I wrote this entire thing the way I did, sorry about that. (Not sorry).

Zrz, brx dfwxdoob wrrn wkh wlph wr ghfrgh wklv! Ru glg lw rqolqh, brx odcb olwwoh jhqlxv L olnh brx. Wkh zrug ri wkh gdb lv zkdfndgrr, ghvfulelqj pb eurwkhu zkr jrw rii wkh exv wrgdb, ehjdq wr vlqj derxw wrdvw, dqg surpswob uhpryhg klv vkluw ehiruh jhwwlqj lq wkh fdu. L olwhudoob kdyh qr lghd zkdw kdsshqhg wr klp exw L krsh wklv lvq'w klp ehfrplqj d whhqdjhu, wkdw zrxog eh edg. Edqdqdv dqg lfh fuhdp, qhyhu gulqn rudqjh mxlfh diwhu euxvklqj brxu whhwk dqg dozdbv vwrs wr vphoo wkh olodfv. 

Much love! 

ATTENTION!

I would like to take a few moments today to appreciate perhaps the best holiday in the world: Mother's Day. Yes, my unsuspecting readers, this is a Mother's Day post. Deal with it. Along with Father's Day (which is coming up shortly!) Mother's Day is one of the two best holidays EVER. My mom is actually the coolest person in the world! Truly. This week she braided my hair into a headband. 7 girls asked me how I did it. That's right, my mom can do the best hair ever. She can also cook the best pies on both sides of the Mississippi, teach middle school demons, paint flawless portraits, and even handle a high school sleepover that spills into Mother's day (heh-heh). She is amazing. I love my mom, and I'm sure you love yours too! That's why today, I challenge you to appreciate your mother as much as possible. Here's a few things you could do to show her how much you care:

1. Mow the lawn
2. Make cinnamon rolls
3. Write a heart-felt card
4. Walk the dog
5. Walk the cat
6. Walk the hamster
7. Make soup!
8. Get a tattoo of her name on your back (in calligraphy lettering)
9. Run a marathon topless so everyone can see your kickin' tattoo
10. Bake three different varieties of cupcakes
11. Give her a foot massage
12. Take her to a salon for a pedicure to remedy your bad foot massage...
13. Breakfast in bed!
14. Lunch in bed!
15. Dinner in bed!
16. New sheets for the food stained bed
17. Paint her nails
18. Send her flowers
19. If you're a girl: Don't wear a halter/crop/tube top, booty shorts, mini shorts, or shoes with a heel exceeding 1 inch
20. If you're a boy: Button your shirt so I cannot see your belly button. Wear a tie!
21. Text her small compliments over the course of the day
22. Tell her you love her

  If you're still reading this post, then get off your butt! You should be off frolicking in meadows appreciating your mothers! Oh, and please, someone do numbers 8 and 9.

Oh, Referees...

Oh, what a wonderful day I have had! My beautiful, iridescent unicorn of a soccer team just won our first tournament! Currently, I am incapacitated by a real bugger of a cold, but did that stop me from driving all the way out to nowhere land in the cold, wind, and rain to play three games back to back? No! You see, I am of that fortunate mindset that illness can be ignored and it will just disappear. This uppity attitude has never worked well for me in my sixteen years on this earth, and today was no exception. With a disgustingly mucus-filled nose, a cough that sounds suspiciously similar to a Great Dane's howl, and a lung capacity of about 0.3 milliliters, I trudged through 150 minutes of soccer. Ow. The injustice of this tragedy was lightened only slightly by my teams resounding victory (to which I contributed a grand total of NOTHING), and I will tell you why.
Referees hate us.
I don't know why this is, but it's true. Referees hate my team with a burning passion. They have no reason to be: we foul very infrequently, are quite polite to them and the other team, and are  never obnoxious on the sidelines. But they still hate us. Throughout the three games of this morning, a gross amount of incorrect fouls were called on us. For example, in an especially unfortunate circumstance, two girls from another team both ran at the ball in our 18-yard box, both obviously wishing to score their first goal of the game. They collided with a loud smack and lost the ball to one of our defenders. TWEEEEEEET! The idiot Ref called a foul on us! My poor coach tried to tell him that no, in fact the collision was caused by the stupidness of the other team, but apparently the Ref was both deaf and mute, because he took no notice and proceeded to hand the opposing team a free kick. Eighteen feet away from the goal. Voila! She scored.
This was only one of the numerous ridiculous calls on our team, but it gets worse! We were repeatedly fouled by the other teams and the Ref never called a single one. One poor talented member of our team was everything but beaten-up by angry defenders - still, no call. There was even an instance when a girl literally palmed the ball down to her feet in order to trap it. Guess what? Apparently her fingers magically don't count as part of her hand because NO HAND BALL.

So, my dearest Referees whom I have had the pleasure of encountering today, I'd like to thank you. You, my dearest Refs, have shown me that there is love in this world! Because you obviously must love the other teams a TON to ignore so many fouls and fabricate even more.
Hugs and Kisses!

A Plea to the School Board

Dear School Board,

I must warn you, by simply reading this post, you are subjecting yourself to a possible contraction of my disease. But, no! Don’t stop reading! That is why I am writing to you, I must warn the public of the endangering and very real malady that has manifested inside of me. I shall refer to it as “Tuberculonctitus-Ameniatic-ulomy”, as there is not yet a name for this deadly virus.

Sure, doctors claim that I reside in a body of health, but they are mislead by charts and tests and false-information. Sure, my family believes I am feigning my symptoms, but they are merely in denial (which is understandable, due to the looming possibility of my death). But I swear, by my life (that shall soon be no more, because of this cursed virus), that I am telling the truth.

Let me relate to you my symptoms: Cold sweats, sore calves, dry mouth, raspy throat, runny nose, smelly feet, a double ear infection, spells of dizziness, home-work induced nausea, fingernail fungi, a rapid beating of the heart, brittle hair, a large appetite for cheetos, a pinkish-purple rash on my hip (which is not a bruise from soccer), and itchy eyes. I also seem to have contracted a rare form of chemistry-exam allergy.

I pity the poor soul who is subjected to this torturous disease. I would not wish this sorrow upon my worst enemy! As an exemplary student, I can attest to how this affects my learning abilities. I can not focus, my vision blurs when attempting to concentrate, and my mind is in a permanent fog. As you can see, even if  you did send me to school, it would be in vain for I would derive nothing from the usually stimulating curriculum.

If any other students contracted this illness, I would never forgive myself! Their grades would most likely suffer, not to mention their happiness and well being! I can’t even begin to imagine the catastrophic effect this virus would have on our school if a TEACHER caught it. Our brilliant learning facility would fall into ruin! Educators would be unable to teach, resulting in the undereducation of the students. The wrath of Tuberculonctitus-Ameniatic-ulomy would no doubt prove apocaliptic.

In your best interest, I urge you to let me remain at my home today, and not attend school. I will surely infect other students who wish to learn (not that I don’t wish to learn...), which would be absolutely devastating. Please, disregard the physicians, educators and familial members who try to convince you to force me to attend school. They do not understand the magnitude of this illness. I do not wish to be a hazard to my peers health, I want to preserve West’s student’s health!

Please, dear, healthy School Board, allow me to stay at home today. I would like to recover quickly from this malady, or if fate decides, die in the peace of my own home.

Most illy yours,

BluE umbreLLA chick

Life Punched Me in the Eye

Just when I thought I had life down pat, I walked through an entire day of school with eyeliner only on one eye. This was only magnified by the fact that I was an hour late and wearing pajamas. I thought, Man, I'm so sneaky wearing this eyeliner so no one can see how tired I really am! 

You guys... I think they knew.