a bitter pill to swallow

i have a confession to make. for all of my life, up until about 2:30am last night, I, Charlotte, could not swallow pills. "how absurd!" you must be thinking. "a 15 year old girl who can't swallow a teeny little pill? now that's just silly."
well, it was the truth.
now, before you go thinking i have some sort of disorder that i'm going to rant about that won't allow me to swallow pills, allow me to correct you. it's not that i physically CAN'T swallow the pills, it's that i mentally won't do it. you've heard you parents or friends talk about that "mind over matter" issue that nobody ever listens to, at least i know i don't. well, that's really all it was. i psyched myself out to believe "im trying to swallow something that i haven't chewed, i'm going to choke, and I WILL DIE." my mind is a very powerful object, and when i lead myself to believe something, you best believe i will cling to that with all my might until i can convince myself otherwise. another example of this is i could never ride splash mountain in disneyworld because i had convinced myself it would be me plunging to my death and completely irrational to ride such a thing. with this mind set, when i tried to get on it once last year, i had a panic attack and nearly fainted. yeahh, i get pretty intense. but then once i told myself "hey, this is stupid, just get on the little kiddy ride" i was fine and i realized that splash mountain was indeed NOT a plunge to my death.
but anyway, back to pills.
so the other day i went to the dentist to get a filling done. you know how when they do that stuff, they have to encase it with a glue of some sort to keep it safe or whatever? well, my dentist obviously wanted to be SUPER safe so she put approximately 597 layers of glue on my tooth, give or take a few. so, as you may imagine, this made that particular tooth a lot larger than the rest. so what happened was, when i'd bit down, my teeth would be uneven because the large tooth touched my top teeth on the right side before my teeth on the left side could touch together. this made my jaw crooked and cause my great pain. but wait, there's more!
because of the somewhat ceramic encasing of my tooth, when it hit against other teeth when i chewed food or simply open and closed my mouth, it caused my upper teeth extraordinary pain, which gave me an incredibley horrible headache.
so here i am, with a sore crooked jaw, hurting teeth, and a sharp headache that just won't go away. what would be anyone's solution? swallow a few tylenol, of course. and here's where the problem was.
so first i tried to swallow these tiny tylenol with the old fashion drinking the water method. didn't work, i swallowed all the water, the pill got stuck, i panicked and spit it back up.
Pill Wasted Count: 1
then my mom had the idea to put it in ice cream, because you don't really chew that, you just swallowed it. this seemed like a fool proof plan! so, i tried the ice cream, and what happened? my tounge seperated the pill from the ice cream, swallowed the ice cream, the pill got stuck, i panicked, spit it back up.
Pill Wasted Count: 2
at this point i was extremely disheartened. i felt like an idiot. everyone can do this, why can't i? my dad can swallow horse pills with no water, how come i can't swallow a thin round pill the size of a tic tac?
i went to my room for a while and tried to sleep. it was around 2 am i realized i couldnt sleep with this pain. after hours of research on tips to swallow pills, i set out to the kitchen to grab 4 tylenols, a bottle of water, and some crackers. i was going to swallow one of these pills or i wasn't sleeping.
first i tried to chew up a cracker, then right before i was going to swallow, put the pill in and down the hatch. i figured this would trick my brain into thinking i was just swallowing some food i chewed, not a pill. so what happend? my tounge felt the pill, i panicked, couldn't swallow anything, and spat everything out.
Pill Wasted Count: 3
then i tried putting it into the bottle of water and just chugging that until the pill went down with the water. this backfired when it sank to the bottom and dissolved.
Pill Wasted Count: 4
next i tried the old fashion stick it wayyy down you throat and then just drink. my gag reflex kicked in and up came the water and the soggy pill.
Pill Wasted Count: 5
finally, i was getting aggravated. what the hell was my problem? i went to the mirror and looked down my throat. there was more than enough room for this puny pill. why couldn't i do it? then i realized: it's because i can feel it. when i know the pill is there, i freak. is there a way for me NOT to be able to feel it? that's when i got the idea...
i sipped some water to get my mouth wet, and then took a fair sized gulp over water, enough so my mouth was pretty full. then, with my lips pressed together tightly, i stuck the pill in and paused a minute. it seemed to be floating in the water in my mouth because it didn't feel like there was a pill in my mouth at all. i then pretended i just needed to swallow this normal gulp of water, and by the time i realized there was a pill in my mouth, i could feel the little circle sliding down my throat. I DID IT! i swallowed the pill and it didn't even hurt.
now i'm not afraid to anymore, and i decided to write about it here, because as silly as it is, i'm extremely proud of myself :)

nobody's perfect

rumors are an interesting thing. even more so when they turn out to be true. the question on everyone's mind is: "who's side do you take?". i encountered this question in the past few days. at first i thought i knew, but it turns out i didn't. let's take the example from last post, which has quite a lot to do with the situation. the player and the former best friend. after hearing one side of the story, the generic one, you might think you know who you side with. the truth is, you don't until you've heard both, and i've come to a conclusion; side's can't be taken. everyone in a situation like this did something wrong, and also had something wrong done to them. nobody is perfect and makes the right decisions all the time, and when you judge someone for a making a wrong decision, you're being the biggest hypocrite ever. why should you torment one person because she made a stupid choice? for all you know, you could be the one being tormented next week about a dumb choice you made. what goes around comes around, and if you can't forgive and forget today, then you can't expect forgivness and forgetfulness when your time comes. and the time will come. for everyone.

what's underneath

it's funny how you can view a person to be someone who they completely aren't. it's strange that we can put up a front for people to percieve us one way, when really we're a different way entirely. it's odd how you can spend years getting to know a person, sharing supposedly everything, and yet you realize that you may not know them any better than a person walking down the street. the girl you thought was your quite and kind best friend could actually be a sinister and menacing enemy, one who you thought would do anything for you but who is really plotting to stab you or anyone else in the back at first chance. the guy who you thought was a player with no real compassion towards anyone indeed turned out to be the caring and truthful one who is just as voulnerable as any other. then there's the girl who blocks her emotions out and acts like she doesn't care about what anyone thinks or says, only because she's been shown at home that if you let someone in too close, all they do is hurt you. she acts tough because she's scared, but no one on the outside, without any interest to dig deeper, would ever realize it. the truth of the matter is, people only allow you to see what they want to portray themselves as. no matter how close you think you are with someone, there's always a secret person--the real person--underneath that even the closest of friends or relatives don't know about. everyone's entitled to a secret, including these hidden identities. i guess what it comes down to is whether or not your true self is good or bad, because that's all people will see when worse comes to worse, and not even the most talented actress will be able to hide it.

an obnoxious fluctuation of personalities

there's not a day that goes by that i do not secretly question myself if my parents are bipolar. well, actually just my mother, i think my father has either split personalities, anger managment problems, or a combination of the two. it just puzzles me how two human beings can be so...well, for lack of a better term, obnoxious.
if you've kept up-to-date on my blog until now, you'll know that my parents and i have nothing near a pleasent relationship. but don't think they're bad parents, because they are absolutely loving, caring, and understanding...to my sister. oh yes, in the twisted reality that is my parents mindset, darling chelsea can do no wrong, and even when she doesn, it's never her fault, but mine. if you are an older sibling reading this you will know EXACTLY where i am coming from, especially when the sibling is in the toddler/small child stage. come on, we all know that infinite saying which older brothers and sisters all across the globe grind their teeth to hearing: "but he/she doesn't know any better." i think we can all agree that these children do indeed know better, perhaps even better than our parents, because not only can they pull of this young and innocent demeanor, but they use it to their advantage and to the demise of the older sibling. my sister in fact has gotten so good at it, she doesn't even have to do anything anymore. she's won the automatic favoritism, a favoritism which i believe is rightfully mine.
i'll never forget what one of my classmates in my AICE Marine Science class said one day in a classroom discussion: "Any older child who is successful academically without having to be pushed it automatically favorited." to my surprise, everyone else agreed. this got me to thinking, "hey, she's right. i'm successful academically, where the hell is my praise?"
i've gotten close to straight A's all through middle and high school. i'm very near to becoming in the top 5 percentile of my soon-to-be junior class. i take all AP classes wherever and whenever possible. i'm in my school's national honor society. i passed on of the most difficult AP classes in high school with the highest grade you can achieve. i know this sounds like a lot of bragging, but i'm just trying to make my point. not once have i been pushed by my parents to study or do my homework or anything of that sort. i deprive myself of sleep and social time because i strive for academic acheivement. i'm obsessed with it. i NEED those grades. i feel stupid and useless if i don't. so why is it that my 8 year old sister who hates to read, needs to be forced to do her homework, and brings home low marks comes out on top next to her constantly reading for fun, homework perfecting, grade A sister? well, your guess is as good as mine ladies and gentlemen, because i for one have not the slightest inkling.
but let's get back to what this is about: my parents and their atrocious personalities. what irks me is not that they are constantly discouraging me or yelling at me or ignoring me because i've "done something wrong" (which in my parents mind is shutting the door to a room where there isn't a lot of air circulation), but the way they switch from these angered, spiteful personalities, to these "oh we're all friends again" personalities. honestly, with my parents it's like being in high school filled with a room of a bunch of bitchy girls who all have a problem with you. as soon as you leave the room, they discuss just what it is is wrong with you and how annoying it is. normally i wouldn't care, but they say it just loud enough so i can hear every word with ringing clarity. i'm sure you could imagine that if every time you walked into your room, you could heard two people in another room discussing your laziness, selfishness, and appalling attitude, you'd get kinda tired of it, am i right?
but here's where i draw the line; after hearing all of these lovely synonyms of selfish and lazy used to describe myself, i walk back through the living room to get to the kitchen, and i hear my mother say "hey char! wanna go to the library with me?" wait wait wait, time out on the field-- what happened to selfish, lazy, disrespectful, and stupid? for a while i used to think "maybe they don't know i can hear them", but even they aren't that thick. it's as if they think "well now we got all those incredibley hurtful insults out of the way, let's pretend like we actually like her!" "brilliant idea honey! now she DEFINENTLEY can't call the social worker and report verbal abuse! ah ha ha!" this is what makes me lose my mind. either be nice to me like you're supposed to, or talk amongst yourselves and leave me alone. one thing i can't stand is fake people, and my dear mum and dad are about as plastic as they come.
but what compelled me to write this you may ask? well, after bitching me out at the dining room table while my demonic sister just sat and smirked, my mother worked up the nerve to kindly ask me to pick up all the dishes for her. i then decided to quickly let out all my anger here before i was compelled to tell her exactly where she could stick those dishes.

The "Charlotte Is Not Picking Up Her Phone" Song

Sang to the tune of Thunder by Boys Like Girls
created by my good friend Lily

Charlotte is not picking up
I really wish she would because I have to ask her a question
I do (I do, I do)
Charlotte should pick up the phone
It is really nice out and I would like to know
Iffff sheeeeeee
Wants to ride bikes to my house so that we can go ride around boca town la la...yeah yeah yeah yeah
She's gotta find a way to
Maybe there's a way tooooooooo
CHAAAAAAAAARRRLOTTTTEEEE! is not picking up her phone
I really wanna talk to youuuu
It's not fair I should talk to your voice machine
CHAAAAAAAAAARRRLOTTTTTEEE! we should really ride bikes today
Have you been outside, it's really nice out
So Charlotte you should pick up your phoooonee.

makeupz

so lately i've been addicted to doing a lot of different makeup styles, but only for my eyes. if i did my whole face, it would take like an hour. besides, that's the only thing i ever put make up on anyway. so today i was bored and it was raining, so i did a bunch of different styles with the makeup that i currently have.

gold shadow, blue shadow, liquid black liner, black mascara. here's the cleopatra look, because i just recently found some black liquid liner, so i thought "hey, why not" ^^^

pale yellow, blue, pale green, and pale pink shadow, black mascara, navy liner. i think i look like a butterfly. ^^^

pale yellow and pale pink shadow, pale pink liquid liner. i wanted to be not quite as obnoxious with my color usage, so this is what i came up it. because i was trying to make it possible to see the pale pink liner i had glossed my lower lashes with, i ended up looking stoned. you win some you lose some. ^^^

pale green eye shadow, purple liner, brown mascara. one of my personal favorites. it went with my whole face better than the others...if that sounds weird. ^^^

dark grey shadow, black liquid liner, black mascara. the smokey eye. it had to be done. ^^^

sooo if i do anything else remotely cool with my eyes, i'll post them on this blog below here:)

best night of my summer

i finally got to see the new harry potter movie, and my verdict (for anyone who cares) is that it was the best one yet. the book is my favorite book, and i think they did it brilliantly. it had just the right balance of seriousness and funny moments. the best was when harry took the felix felicis potion. it was like he was high, it was absolutely hysterical. daniel radcliffe is the most adorable thing ever. i also loved the romance between ron and hermione, it was so cute, i can't wait to see that blossom in the next two movies. i cried at the end, which i knew i would, but it was a good sort of cry. i really loved how they ended it too, so subtley. and ginny and harry never really "got together" so they couldn't break up either, which i liked because they're so cute together :)
there's some pics of us in the theater on the night of the midnight premiere. we had to sit all the way at the front, but it was worth it. i can't WAIT to go see it again. hopefully soon!!

today's the day

this is it. the day i've been waiting for since the last release into theaters. today is the day i get to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince in theaters at midnight.
the day has been going pretty rocky so far, what with my lovely parents and all their glory, who i'm positive seek out days like these just to be complete and total assholes. they seem to have a pattern of taking days which are meant to be some of my happiest and turn them in to days that make me want to crawl into my room and sleep away, hoping it never happened.
a perfect example of this is the day i got my braces off a week before the start of 8th grade. i'd had my brace since the beginning of 4th grade and it was finally time for them to come off. after the whole procedure was said and done, i stepped in front of that mirror and smiled to see my mouth metal-free for the first time since i was about 5. it was perhaps one of the happiest moments of my life. but what do dear mum and dad do? they take the time to discuss how the braces probably permanentley tarnished the color of my teeth, but it's okay because "the kids at school probably won't notice...or if they do, they won't bug you about it for long." thanks daddy! thanks mommy! you've officially turned this experiance from a joyful one to one i spent crying in the bathroom, scrubbing mercilessly at my new teeth because i thought i was going to get ruthlessly made fun of! how fabulous.
so i think you've got the general idea of what kind of parents i have, right? the kind that can never be happy for you, because there was always something MORE that you could have done that you didn't do. but i woke up this morning determined, they are NOT going to ruin this day for me. it has certainly been a tough goal to accomplish. i don't know if they realize how happy today has made me, but they are really bringing out the big guns: college and the future. mainly about how i probably won't end going to it and how i'm not going to have much of one. why this random outburst you ask? because i wouldn't go with my mother to an old people's home. now i know what you're thinking, "charlotte, you must be joking, there must have been SOMETHING else you did." oh no, dear readers, i am being more honest with you then i have been with anyone else.
perhaps i should explain?
well this morning i woke up with a smile on my face because of what is going to happen tonight. no more then 2 seconds of being in my mother's sight and she says "get dressed charlotte, we're going to mae volen (the old people place)." "i really don't want to," i replied. "i just woke up." she pretends she didn't hear that (she likes to do that) and continues on with her business. so i'm laying on the couch reading a book, and about 20 minutes later she's standing in front of me impatiently. "come on get dressed." "no, i told you i don't want to go." before i knew what was even happening, the book gets snatched out of my hand and i hear a variety of sentences using the words disgusting, lazy, and shocking all very frequently. so, as you'd imagine, my initial reaction was somewhere along the lines of: WTF? then my dad gets home, which is never good, no matter what's going on. me and my father don't really have the most civil of relationships. but i'm pretty used to his yelling rants, and he's pretty much 95% of the time always mad at me, so at this point i'm pretty indifferent to the situation. but here's where it gets out of control: my mom starts to explain to him what happened, and she starts CRYING. because apparently, the fact that i don't want to accompany her to mae volen is worth hysterically CRYING over. so now i'm thinking either A) my mother is bipolar or B) she is seriously out to get me and is a verrrry good actress. from previous experiance with my mom, i'm gonna go with B. although there is always the possibility of A now and again.
so i start getting lectured about how horrible of a person i am, blah blah blah, i can't count how many times i've gotten that one from him. but then he goes into the forbidden territory: he says "you'll amount to nothing." now, when you're as passionate about school and your education as much as i am, that REALLY pisses you off. i know damn well i'll amount to more then him, so who is he telling me what i will and will not do in the future? this sort of thing from my dad usually ruins my entire day, but then before i open my mouth to quite rudely retort to him, i had an epiphany; this is what he wants. he is trying to ruin this day for me, he wants me to get myself riled up and upset for the rest of the day. well no sir, that is not going to happen!
so to my ignorant father's shock, i just get up calmly and leave. i waited in my room until he left for work, and now everything is okay. tonight i am going to see a brand new movie based on my favorite book ever. how can i be upset today? the answer is i can't, and no amount of my dimwitted parents rambling about me and my life is going to change that.

dark blue, dark blue!

for the first time in months now, i dyed my hair! i haven't done it in such a long time and i was getting bored with the monotonous blonde hair i was waking up to every morning. so i decided to put some blue in it :]it's technically blue black, or onyx something-or-other according to the bottle. but i quite like that because i've wanted to dye the under part of my hair black for the longest time but i never thought my mom would go for it. so it's kinda like i got to do that, except in a smaller section, and with a little blue added to it. i think it's a good contrast to how blonde my hair is getting, and i'm really glad i did it!

too obsessed?

so as most people know, the new harry potter movie is due to come out into theaters on July 15th, and i am almost 3 days away from seeing the midnight premiere at my local movie theater. now, this is a normal routine for me, but every two years, as the fateful day gets closer, my deep obsession for harry potter starts to emerge from where i've hidden it away. i mean sure, i'll have my moments here and there, when i hear a question being asked about the movie, or someone challenging harry potter by saying twilight is better (but you don't want me to even remotely begin with that debate, i am in no mood). but for the most part, i give off the demeanor of just being a normal girl who enjoys the movies. most of my friends, if they aren't close enough or even interested enough to find out, probably don't even know the extent of my infatuation with this series of books and movies, let alone the main actor himself. but you can bet that as soon as the new movie is emerging around the corner, the "harry potter fever" begins, if you will.

but where am i going with this, you ask? well, i've been getting a lot of the same comment recently. "charlotte, you are just TOO obsessed with harry potter." and i'd like to explore that statement; am i or am i not really TOO obsessed with harry potter?

first i'd like to draw the line of my obsession, for anyone reading this who is unclear. i do not dress up like a wizard and go to conventions. i do not paint a lightning shape scar on my head when going to harry potter related events. and for the love of all that is pure and holy in the world, i do NOT carry a wand around with me at all times, pointing it at people i don't like and shouting "avada kedavra", or something of that sort. that is weird and unnatural. i am a fan of the books, the movies, and the actors; i do however have a life and don't believe myself to be a magically gifted witch that hogwarts just happened to misplace my letter when i was 11.

perhaps i should explain how this all started?

you might be surprised to find that when the first harry potter movie came out, i had not read the book, i wasn't even aware of the books, and i had no desire to see the movie. but my best friend had a birthday party at Muvico to see that movie, and i went purely out of our friendship. i don't know where she is to this day, but i would really like to find her and thank her for forcing me to go see it. it turned out to be one of the best things i ever did.

after seeing the magical masterpiece that was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, i was fascinated with it. i forced my mother to take me to buy the first book and breezed through it in what was about a week (keep in mind, i was about 9 or 10 when this happened, so my speed reading skills have greatly improved. i can knock the 5th book out, the longest one in the series, in a matter of 1 and a half days, but that's besides the point.) i became even more enthralled with the series when i discovered the books were even better than the movies. i then proceeded to read the rest of the books that were available to me, anxiously waiting for the next movie to come out. i went and saw the 2nd movie on opening day and was once again completely in love with anything and everything about it. excitedly i awaited the third movie, and that's when it all happened.

now, i know that a crush on daniel radcliffe (harry potter, for all you dimwits out there who honestly don't know) isn't the most common thing for an american teenage girl to have, but i've never been very normal and this comes with my taste of guys too. we all know that in the third movie, harry certainly grew a bit, his voice was deeper, and he got a nice new haircut. well, as soon as he stepped on to that screen, my love for harry potter intensified more then ever imaginable. i was now a complete crazed fan with the daniel radcliffe love affair to match. don't get me wrong, i would have kept seeing this movies no matter if harry was handsome or not, but it certainly does add a certain enjoyment to seeing a film when you can't help but smile and suck in your breath every time you see the lead on-screen.

for the past years, i've gone to the midnight premieres of the new movies, and also the midnight releases of the new books. yes, i did cry when dumbledore died in the 6th book, i did cry when sirius died in the 5th, and i did cry when i finally finished the 7th book, because i realized it was all over. i'm not a very emotional girl, but this has always been an exception. over the years of repeatedly devouring these books, purely because i don't find much else interesting to read anymore because i'm adapt to j.k. rowling's superior writing style, i have come to gain a wider harry potter knowledge then i'm sure any of the actors in the actual movie even have, and they're actually DOING IT.

to be frank, i really don't find it geeky that i know and understand fully everything that goes on in this series. when you know as much as i do about these books and movies, it makes watching/reading them all the more enjoyable. i'm sorry that most people my age find it weird that i know what i know about this series, or that i'm so infatuated with the lead. i'm quite proud of how absorbed i am in these books, because they are good enough to warrent such an absorbtion. if i was this way with the twilight series, for instance, i would understand why an obsession would be strange. to be honest, i'd rather never read another harry potter book again than every become one of those twilight obsessed girls who are in love with a static fictional vampire with no personality. stephenie myer can't write. yes, i did just say it, and i don't care who it upsets. she tried to copy rowling's idea of a series for teens and failed miserabley. myer wishes she could hand j.k. rowling the pen with which she writes abstract ideas about harry potter. the harry potter series is a completely different level of writing, and i'm just appreciating how well done it really is.

so to answer the question i started out with, am i or am i not too obsessed with harry potter? no, i don't think i am. if enjoying a series of books so much that i insist on understanding them to a great depth and reading them repeatedly is a crime, then sue me. sorry i'm not your typical teenager who wants to waste my days away at the beach during the day and mizner during the night as i feel my lexile dropping and my vocabulary becoming more elementary. that just doesn't really appeal to me.

so really, if people like to categorize me as "obsessed with harry potter", i'll take the title glady. i don't find it insulting. i mean honestly, who cares if i know just exactly how many staircases there are in hogwarts castle? which is 142, in case anyone was wondering...

and no, i did not just google that.

candles make good lip balm?

so what happens when you take the flavor of a Vanilla Lime Yankee Candle (as seen below) and use it for a lip balm flavor? I'll tell you what happens, you get the most incredible lip balm that the world has EVER known.so lily and i are shopping in the mall on her birthday with her aunt, getting little goodie bags if you will, and we stumble into the yankee candle store. not only do we each get two candles and a candle holder (i got beach walk and lemon lavender, or something of that variety, and they smell fabulous, let me tell you) but we also get to pick from three flavored Yankee Candle themed lip balms at the counter. they look as if you took one of the regular yankee candle containers (like the one above) and shrunk it and filled it with lip balm, not candle. so i pick the vanilla lime one. for the first few days i didn't use it because i like my Burt's Bees lip balm, but then lily comes to my house and exclaims about how fabulous her Buttercream lip balm is. since she seemed so enthusiastic, i figured mine can't be much worse, so i tried it. I now apply it regularly every...oh, i don't know, 1 minute? it's positivley delicious. i'm addicted to it. i was actually applying it while reading harry potter...and i NEVER interrupt my harry potter reading for anything ever. so, i'm sure this gives you an idea of how truly amazing this lip balm is. speaking of which, i need to go re-apply right now! i shudder to think of what's going to happen when i run out of this stuff....

do you know what i hate?

being left home alone, responsible for watching not only my sister, but her 3 friends. see, my sister chelsea is friends with this girl down the street named Shelley, but the thing is, Shelley has two other sisters; a younger one named Elizabeth, and an older one named Annabelle. for some reason the mom has some serious problem with splitting them up, so i get landed with watching all three of them plus my sister because my parents really dislike the lot of them. Shelley I can deal with. she's pretty soft-spoken and her and chelsea get along really well and can play for hours not causing any trouble. Elizabeth, the little one, doesn't talk. ever. like, you think i'm exaggerating. i'm not. she DOES NOT SPEAK. she only talks to her mom, so you walk in the room and ask her if she wants something to drink or how she's doing, and she just looks at you. it's incredibley creepy. then there's Annabelle. this is the one that really sends me over the edge. for lack of better words, she is a manipulative bitch. i mean, she's only 9..or 10...like i know, i dont care, but she is just the most awful and strange type of person you will ever meet. she has to tell you EVERYTHING that's going on with her, like she expects you to be impressed or jealous. then she manipulates my sister into getting stuff from my parents, or playing games she doesn't want to, or making her be a brat towards me. every time my sister comes out and asks me for something, it's 99% Annabelle's idea or wanting and my sister could really care less. it doesn't really bother me so much that she does it, but that she's doing it to my sister and she lets it happen. i try to tell her not to but she just gets angry and insists that's not how it is, even though i know it is. i just don't want my sister to grow up getting walked all over by people, getting commanded to do things she doesn't want to do, and eventually losing all of her friends because of it....oh wow, sounds like a girl i used to be friends with...yeah, i don't think chelsea could possibly end up THAT bad.

hp5 rant

so apparently my blog is enjoyed by many...and by many, i mean lily and her multiple identities.

hmmm so what do i want to talk about? oh i know, I want to talk about the 5th harry potter film, because i was watching that last night and i have a few things to say about it.

so after watching it last night, i started to realize, i REALLY don't like that one! and i mean, don't get me wrong, i'm about as big of a harry potter fan as you can get, but i suppose that's why i don't like it very much. i mean first off, there's barely any background music. now, i know that doesn't seem like a very big deal, but when you watch one of the previous movies and then watch the 5th one, you'll realize how much of a difference it makes. it adds all forms of emotion to the movie, which i think is a big part of the reason why the 5th one didn't appeal to me. it just seemed like a lot of sitting around waiting for stuff to happen. even the ending, the epic (or at least it was supposed to be epic) battle between voldy and dumbledore was just unexciting. it was a lot of crashing and woosh noises and fireballs coming out of Ralph Fines mouth. i mean sure, it was cool, but when you compare it to voldy's return in the 4th or the werewolf scene in the 3rd, it really doesn't have you on the edge of your seat now does it?

i think the director is mostly to blame for how this movie turned out. the book itself is over 800 pages long and i've read it at least 6 times. trust me, it's NOT a boring book. but whatever genius they hired to pick out which parts they wanted to do certainly made it seem like a boring book. it was a whole lot of standing around and an overdose of harry's teen angst. i get it, the boy who lived has some emotional scarring here or there, but can't we just through him on a broom and pretend everything's all happy-go-lucky for a couple minutes? that's another thing that was wrong with it, NO QUIDDITCH! i mean how often do you get to watch people flying around on broomsticks chasing after stuff like a quaffle and a golden snitch using imaginary sports equipment? not very often, at least that's how i'd imagine most people would respond to that question. in the 5th book there was a fabulous scene where the weasley twins and harry gang up on malfoy and start beating the living daylights out of him on the quidditch pitch. are you telling me that didn't have any appeal to go in the movie? because it seems pretty appealing to me. then again, maybe i'm just a violent person overly obsessed with watching others suffer. but i'd classify most of america and 95% of the republican government in the exact same way, wouldn't you?

anyhow, here's my final reason as to why the 5th movie wasn't so great, and in my opinion is the biggest one of all. two words: cho. chang. i think any daniel radcliffe crazed girl in the world would agree with me, let alone any human being in the world with a taste for good acting. starting off at the beginning of the movie, i knew i'd hate this girl no matter who she was. why? because she's moving in on my future husband, that's why! but that's not important. first off, she comes out with a scottish accent. maybe it's just my naturally prejudice english nature, but scottish accents annoy me unless they are possessed by oliver wood (as seen above) or desmond from lost. strike one. then, she rejects harry's unbearabley cute invite to the yule ball because she's going with the hufflepuff wonder Cedric Diggory. any girl in her right mind who turns down the chosen one for a hufflepuff...well, obviously isn't in her right mind. strike two. and then, the icing on the cake, her boyfriend goes and gets murdered, so now she decides it's a good time to go for harry. not because she decided that she likes him more than Cedric, but because Cedric is DEAD, so she's got no other alternative. strike three, and your out "ho" chang.

but really, even with it's little flaws here and there, the 5th movie is still brilliant if you think about it. the special effects are fabulous, all the actors are great, and they cast probably the only guy in the world who can wear those round geeky glasses and still look do-able. so really the moral of this story is "no matter what goes wrong in a harry potter movie, it still kicks twilight's ass any day of the week." am i right?

swimming day

today was a good one, even though i'm completely waterlogged now. i went over to lily's house with emily and we went swimming, did pilates, tormented random people over the internet...you know, the usual. we took lots of cool underwater pictures as well, they came out relatively well.

tomorrow we're going to mizner to watch the 4th harry potter film, and next tuesday we're all going to see the midnight premiere of the 6th harry potter film! i'm so excited, i've been waiting for so long! can't wait until tomorrow :)

hmm blogging

so my friend lily made me this awesome heading up here. she makes lots of cool stuff like that. she's good at that, you know? this got me to thinking...what am i good at? and after much due consideration, i came to the conclusion that i'm good at complaining and writing; especially when the two are combined together. so what does one do when one wants to rant through writing? hmmm...blogging? annnd here we are.
here's my first little ranting story. i drove to michael's craft store today with my mom and my sister to get some string to make these bracelets i've been addicted to making lately. so we get in the store, i find the string, and we're waiting in line to pay. the total, with everything else we got for my sister, came up to be 11.50. my mom handed the guy a 20 dollar bill and he started ringing that up in the cash register before my mom could pull out two quarters because my mother has some form of OCD about having an excessive amount of change. but keep in mind, mr. personality behind the counter has already entered 20 dollars into the cash register, so now that he has to factor in the 50 cents my mom gave him, instead of having the amount he needs to distribute up on the screen, actual math is involved! god forbid. now, if it wasn't enough hilarity watching this poor soul scratch his head and try and figure out how much change he owed us, einstein over here decides to pull out his phone and use the calculator on there to figure it out, because apparently simple math is just overqualification nowadays. it really makes you think about what the world has come to, doesn't it? the only positive part of this whole thing is that i felt no remorse laughing outwardly, because in my opinion, if you aren't sharp enough to do 1st grade subtraction, you really can't be sharp enough to realize when people are laughing AT you, not with you.