Posts Will Be Written

I've got four half written posts and four completely free days. I'm going to make shit happen starting tomorrow. No worries. 

Happy whatever it be you're celebrating today. Have a fabulous day. 

That One Time I Forgot I Had a Blog

I'll admit I took a month and two days off of blogging. I'll admit I should have left an occasional post saying I was still here and not murdered and cut into a 13 pieces by a serial killer. I'll also admit it was nice to drop this for a little while so I could focus on other things that were as equally important to this, but needed a little bit more of attention.

Between my parents going out of town and me going out of town and trying to find a cure for AIDS and getting that book on the theory of relativity done, I needed a short break from here.

Alas, do not worry as ironically during this blogging hiatus I've had a burst of ideas and thoughts and things that I've started working on, so hopefully we can all get back on the same train track.

Have a fabulous day.

International Women's Day (And Why I'm Slighly Against It)

These Sunday/Monday once a week blog posts are beginning to become my thing. And they'll probably be my thing for the next few months, but hopefully eventually this phase will come to an end. I'm just doing a ton of things at the moment and soccer is literally and figuratively consuming my life (it's a good thing I really love it), but I'm slightly taking pride in the fact that I'm still posting at least weekly instead of dropping this little old thing for a few months and re-starting during a less busier time.

Anyways.

I've got a good bit of well thought out blog posts and stories and opinions and ideas sitting in the drafts tab but these posts require a lot of attention and typing and a good chunk of time that I must fully devote to writing which I don't often have. Somewhere along the lines I'll get to them and things may or may not become normal. Fingers crossed normal comes before I lose my sanity.

We got snow. Not at a lot, but snow nonethless.

Saturday was International Women's Day, which I slightly thought about not mentioning. We have the International Day of the Girl (which I totally wrote about here) and International Women's Day and rallys and movements and topless book clubs all trying to desexualize and bring equality to the women population, aka everything I stand for. Yet, when I found out there was a day devoted just for women, I was slightly irritated in a way I'm almost ashamed of.

I wondered to myself if this was just another holiday that was "nationalized" by a group of upperclass white men in Congress who didn't want to be seen as sexist. I wondered if it was just a day where men can make fun of women and our movement a little extra (believe me as it did indeed happened, I saw numerous examples on Twitter). I wondered if by singling out and bringing attention to women, we were only creating an opposite enviroment that we wanted.

Don't get me wrong, I was all for the International Day of the Girl, but the more I thought about this in our world of holidays, I wondered if this day had lost its purpose in the Facebook statuses and blog posts where every woman was suddenly a feminist. It seemed like a day where we could all simply tweet about how great it was to be a woman. It seemed like a day where all of a sudden men cared about how we get less than equal pay or even worse they saw it as an opportunity to deface our project even more.

Then out of nowhere, what seemed like a huge accomplishment for women everywhere (as having our own holiday is pretty fantastic), had lost its meaning. I didn't see much on the news about how the female population seized the day and broke down barriers and put funds into organizations that would bring equality to our gender.

And I'm sure it did happened. I'm sure women took the opportunity and made things happen. Great things and glorious things and fantastic things. And I'm going to be totally open with you all, I didn't do anything. It seems hyporcritcal for me to sit here bashing women who simply posted a status while I did nothing, but I hope this post is my something. I hope this challenges everyone to take every day and opportunity to embrace women. Let's make everyday International Women's Day.

As I read my Day of the Girl post from a few months ago I came across something I had written that puts my current feelings into words:

"It's almost sad that we need a day to celebrate us. Every day should be spent empowering girls and bringing hope to those who feel limited by their gender."

I guess I'm slightly pissed that it's taking an international holiday to get people jazzed about women's rights. Nonetheless, I'm grateful we have overcome enough within our male orientated society to get this kind of appreciation and honor. I just wish everyone didn't hop off the bandwagon so quickly.

Have a fabulous day.

P.S. Any other bloggers out there have ideas for regularly getting blog posts published? Maybe at some point after this time lacking hiatus finishes I too can be the knowledgable one in this area and could beautifully weave together the numerous tips and tricks I will possess into a blog post. Until then, I need some help. It would be greatly appreciated and embraced and loved and used. Thanks.

Periods and Poverty {Don't Ask, Just Read}

I keep unknowingly putting off reading blog posts until it's an unusually empty Saturday morning where I try to read a week and a half of blog posts in one sitting (which fyi isn't exactly possible when you follow numerous blogs). But here I am (or was since I wrote this on Saturday), still behind on reading posts, but I'm down to two day old posts which is quite the accomplishment.

I also keep swearing to myself that I'll write something really fascinating on here, but I'm still waiting for that to happen. I keep making a list of books to read on my phone as well, yet that hasn't happened either. I'm dreaming of writing more in the book that may never get finished, but I'm hoping spring break will provide such a time. But I am listening to music and getting lost in the abyss of the Internet which is always fun.

I'm a little too intrigued in conspiracy theories at the moment after an AP government class turned into copious amounts of "whose really behind 9/11" and "did we really land on the moon first". I'm interested in finding a book written on such theories so if anyone has any suggestions, throw 'em at me (I'll be sure to put them on my list of books to read).

I'm also taking a new interest in politics and the Beatles. An unlikely combination in the least. 

On an interesting side note, after getting sucked into one blog post followed by link after link after link I learned a few intriguing things about African girls and as one woman to the next, I couldn't possibly ignore not sharing what I stumbled upon. 

It's common knowledge that children in Africa don't receive the education that they rightfully need and just as well known that girls face an even more disadvantage because of the inadequacy of resources and lack of value that's placed upon them as females among other things. But surprise surprise there is one simple item that is putting the barrier between African girls and education that one might not know: pads. Sanitary napkins, feminine products, however we want to say it (we're all girls women here).

Did you know that only 40% of girls enrolled in primary one finish primary seven opposed to 70% of boys who do? How about the fact that 155 girls in every village drop out of school because they can't afford nor are properly educated on the use of sanitary napkins. Girls simply skip school for four to seven days at a time to take care of this common woman ailment. Four to seven days every month adds up to multiple missed tests and assignments and weeks of valuable education. Most girls drop out because they simply can't keep up. 

All this over pads. Who even knew.

And I'm not going to ask you to donate to some organization because let's face it, we're all young and don't have paypal accounts and money upon money to give away. This is all just knowledge. Food for thought. Something to let your mind wrap around.

A cause to let your feminist self vegetate on.

It's been a fun weekend and I can only hope you can say the same. Do some laundry and read a book and watch the Oscars before you go back to no sleep and a work load that you didn't even think was possible.

Have a fabulous day.

It's already Monday? Whaaat?

Holy goodness where did time even go? I think this is the first time in a week I've had time to just breath. Breath in. Breath out. Although I had to power through an interest group project, schoolwork had luckily vanished during the weekend which should have translated to blog posts and a mass creation of creative thinking, but alas no such thing happened. (Not sure if this is a common thing outside of America, but interest groups are essentially groups that represent a certain idea or group of people such as civil rights, retired persons, pro-choice/pro-life, etc. that lobby politicians and support legislation that would help the people they represent or support the ideas they have.)

Although we had a pretty cold beginning of the week last week, the weather is currently warm and cozy. I'm in the middle of my ENO with a newly purchased album playing in the background, but we all know you didn't come here to read about the weather. 

I had a pretty shitty week within my life last week, but it's boring personal issues that may or may not translate into a blog post. I've been trying to write more than life updates, but that's about all that seems to be happening around here: life. 

But the weekend is over and I've got to get back to slaving to homework and soccer but hopefully we'll meet again some time midweek. 

Have a fabulous day. 

Liebster Award

Ages ago (or maybe it was a week ago, who really knows), I got nominated for the Liebster Award by Rebecca Maria from Rebecca Maria Photography. I've seen blogger upon blogger write posts about receiving this fairly common award whose name makes me cringe when I pronounce it for some reason (tell me I'm not the only one here).



Without anymore stalling, here we go.

Rebecca under the obligation of the rules that were set up for this award (if you for some reason aren't familiar with them, they're on the blog post I linked under Rebecca's blog), wrote me eleven questions that I indeed must answer or I'm at risk for the blog award mafia tracking me down and killing my family.

1. Why did you start your blog?
It was an extremely at the whim decision that I made a year ago. I was on Thanksgiving break and at the wit's end of boredom so I was kinda like, let's make a blog. And I did. Very anti climatic, but that's how this little thing got started.

2. Favourite nail polish colour?
First of all, I love the fact that color is spelled like colour as my American self just loves this kind of European stuff. To answer the question, I tend to enjoy either a turquoise or a dark purple or even black if I'm feeling risky. The down side with black is that I always have to repaint them when family gatherings come along as I don't want my aunts to think I'm going through some teenage crisis by going goth or something. It's quite the struggle.

3. Country or City?
From a photographer's point of view, I enjoy the country. But I'd rather be in the city if I was going to have to live the rest of my life forever and ever in one.

4. What would be the first thing you'd do if you won the lottery?

Probably something really useful like one of those one way tickets to Mars. Or open up a Swiss Bank account as I always hear those things are just fantastic when you get a large sum of money.

5. Best girl's night treat?

A guy.

Just kidding. Probably reading Tina Fey's Bossy Pants and discussing the fight for women's rights or something empowering like that. I just hope you weren't specifically asking for a food, but in that case I'd go with hard shell tacos.

6.What's your all-time favourite movie?

Juno definitely goes on the top of my list for favorite movies ever. I want to buy a dog when I graduate college and I'm naming that little mutt Juno because of this rad movie. It's hilarious in ways I can't even describe. Continuing on with my top favorite movies National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, The Perks of Being a Wallflower (along with any movie Emma Watson has ever been in), and probably a lot more that I just can't seem to think of at the moment.

7. Cat or Dog?

Definitely a dog just because I want to spend five years post college backpacking and sleeping in my ENO with a dog that I'll train to do all those super obedient things like how to roll over and walk with me without a leash.

8. If you could live anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Within the U.S. I'd say California just because I hear they've got some rad state parks along with hipster cities and such. Within the world I'd probably end up somewhere in Europe, because that's basically every teenager's dream in America.

9. Favourite quote?

Be known for what you stand for, not for what you stand against.

10. Favourite Youtube personality?

I'm not really into YouTube and I'm not positive I know what you mean by 'personality', but I'm guessing it means YouTuber in which I'd have to go with Josh Sundquist.

11. What's your favourite thing about blogging?

Writing and taking pictures and reading other people's blogs and meeting other people who like to do all these super awesome things.

Within the rules of this award (who knew awards entitled so many rules?), I've had to nominate 11 other bloggers and give them 11 questions to ponder over.

My nominations (I have seen some rules that claim they must have less than 200 followers while others claiming they must have less than 3,000 with more even claiming there is no follower stipulation, which seems to be the easiest one to go with and the one I'm choosing to follow):

F @ Quirks-and-Irks

Signe @ A Classy State of Grace

Hoda @ Joo Joo Azad ~ Free Bird
Makayla @ Imperfect Fables
Kinga @ Kinga's Photography

I'm extremely short on time and nominations are taking a lot more time than I imagined, so we're going to stick with five and call it a day. Good thing I found my pocket knife the other day in case the blog award mafia comes after me. 

My 11 questions:

1. Favorite author?

2. If you had no clue as to how old you were, how old would you think you are (based on your life, activities, favorite movies, etc.) ?

3. Favorite blog post of your own?

4. Star Wars or Star Trek?

5. Your top pick(s) for the most timeless movie(s) ever?

6. Favorite thing about the country you live in?

7. Best name for a fish?

8. Ellen DeGeneres or Oprah?

9. If you were to write a book, what would it be about?

10. Favorite post from another blogger?

11. Google or Yahoo (or plot twist: the library)?

Also if I nominated you, don't feel like your under the obligation to do this whole shin dig, because being obligated to do something is never any fun. 

Have a fabulous day.

This Post is Literally About Nothing

I cut out blogging/reading blogs last Sunday for the sake of my AP Government and Politics grade. The class involves a lot of reading and note taking and court cases and government, but luckily now that the week has ended I can return to reading posts and writing and such. Unluckily, I found that refraining from Blogger and other internet sites resulted in quicker homework completion, but I might just have to over look that.

Because of my radical idea, I've been reading blog posts that are the equivalent of five day old milk aka posts that were published last Monday (although the metaphor doesn't reflect the quality of the posts, only the timing in which I read them). I'm still trying to comb through all the posts I've missed, but decided to take a break so I could write everything down.

As I mentioned ages ago, we got snow like every state in the US (except for maybe those darn Floridians with their oranges and sandal weather). There's this big "Polar Vortex" that's sweeping our nation in multiple waves, multiple times. Like most southern states, poor little North Carolina can't handle a lot of snow which meant a half inch of flakes translated to an early release, two days off of school, and a three hour delay. And lots of pictures of course.

Same picture except this one doesn't lack color. I couldn't decide which one I liked better, so I included both. A rational decision if you ask me.

In other exciting news, we're expecting even more snow later this week which is making me doubt the 'mild winters' description that tags my area of North Carolina. But it's quite obvious you all don't care about the weather of my region, let's be real here.

It comes with a heavy heart that I really have nothing exciting or meaningful or really cool for you to read about. Which kinda sucks for you all considering I've been gone for seven whole days and have nothing even remotely awesome that would somehow make you forgive me. Sorry dudes. Just pictures.

Although, thanks to Rebecca from Rebecca Maria Photography, I was nominated for the Liebster award which makes me think I might be doing something right. But I'm not going to even tackle that post until tomorrow/Tuesday-ish. I pinky promise I'll try to make it interesting and not super boring and basic and actually be worthy of your precious time to read.

Maybe. Or maybe I should stop making promises.

So go forth and live life and try to make blog posts that are a lot better than this.

Have a fabulous day.