Little Bros Bday :)

Today (April 30th) was my little brothers birthday. He turned seven today and he had a really nice happy day. All this past year I have periodically asked him "are you my buddy?" and every time he has replied "only on April 30th".  So today I remembered to ask him if I was his buddy and he said "you know it!" Then he gave me the biggest hug. It was just so sweet I almost wanted to cry :) I had to blog about it because I never want to forget it <3

rant

It's happening again..and again..and again..how do I stop? I'm literally addicted to procrastinating. There needs to be a self help group for this like seriously. There are are too many things I find more important and more interesting than homework. I need to figure out self control. That must be the only way to stop. On a different note, I have been playing the role of mommy a lot more lately. My moms job has gotten so much busier. I was already getting my two younger brothers off the elementary bus every day and she seems to come home later and later every day. She has also had to go on a business trip and she has to go on another one soon. I am finding this so annoying. and frustrating. I don't want to have to babysit my brothers every day. I'm tired of watching them and feeding everyone and doing all the things my mom used to be able to do. She has to work so we can afford everything but I wish she didn't have to work so long. There are so many times when she has to do extra work in the evenings/weekends too. I hate hate hate it. Plus, it's baseball season again, so my dad isn't around as much either. He comes home every day and then its off to baseball practice/game with my brothers. And then, when my mom does have free time, she is at the baseball games and I'm left at home all alone. Eating dinner alone. Cooking dinner alone. Always walking the dog because no one else is ever home long enough to do it. Right now, I just feel depressed, alone, and tired. Very tired.

Memories

On the surface this is an empty glass coke bottle. But to me it's more. A few years ago my mom and I visited the coca cola factory (the museum part) in Atlanta, GA. It was a really interesting experience and it gave me an appreciation for coke that I didn't know I had. At the end they take you in to a big room with all the coca cola products from around the world organized by country. Some of them were delicious and some were disgusting. (If you ever go, do NOT try Beverly from Italy)  Anyway, at the very end of the tour there is a conveyor belt loaded with glass coca cola bottles like the one above, except these were filled with coke. Everyone was invited to take one as a free souvenir. My mom and I both took one. The next day was our last day in Atlanta.
Now we faced a predicament, we wanted to keep the bottles but we couldn't take them into the airport (you can only take certain amounts of liquid in for security reasons) unless we drank the coke. Here was the problem: we had no bottle opener. We were stopped at a McDonald's off the highway in our rental car on our way to the airport with no way to open the bottles. Both of us would have been devastated to just throw the bottles out, so we made do with what we did have. First we tried the car keys, which failed immediately. So we opened the back passenger door, there was a little metal thing sticking out where the door goes. So my mom took the bottle and pushed it against the metal thing as though it was a bottle opener. It worked, but the coke went EVERYWHERE. This was in our rental car may I remind you. We frantically cleaned it up and needless to say, we did not attempt to open the second bottle. We just kept this one and threw the other one away. My mom was so embarrassed, she said I couldn't tell anyone when we got home. We told them anyway.
It was just so ridiculous and hilarious. I would love this glass bottle anyway because it looks cool, but I also love it because it gave me one of my favorite memories of my mom and I. Sentimentality is a wondrous thing. Who knew it would come from a coke bottle?
-Natalie <3

Harry Potter Memes

Two Harry Potter posts in less than a week! (You can read the other one here) I'm not completely addicted I promise!

Anyway, this is just a compilation of my favorite Harry Potter memes :)

 

Well I hope you that enjoyed that! I know I did :) It was fun just looking through all the memes on Google and picking some of my favorites. Let me know if you wanna see more posts like this!

-Natalie

Bad Day

So I'm just having a crappy afternoon. I had my wisdom teeth out on monday so really, I've had a crappy week. I can't eat or go out and do anything and I'm just really, really bored.

My friends went and had a really really nice time in town but I couldn't go because my mouth hurts and I look like a chipmunk with bruises on its face. Yep I have giant bruised cheeks. Here is a picture for your entertainment:

Overall, today is just one of those deyes (comment if you get it) where you don't feel like doing anything and it just sucks. But at least I know it will get better...eventually. Probably not tomorrow, but maybe the next day. Or the next day. Maybe. Anyway venting always makes me feel better so thanks for listening, er...reading...
k'bye
-Natalie

HARRY POTTER

So whatever reason, I have never, before these past two weeks, made an account on pottermore. Now I find this so weird because I LOVE Harry Potter. Like read the books ten times each love it. So I always knew pottermore was a thing, but I always thought it was just a game, which I wasn't super interested in. But it wasn't until recently that I found out JK Rowling posts new content on there. As in new writings about the wizarding world of Harry Potter!!! So I was like umm I need to get on this. So I did. I made an account and got sorted and it was sooo cool!!

Now I've never given any serious thought to which house I would be sorted into. So, like most people, I always just assumed gryffindor, because I thought it was the best. So when I was sorted into hufflepuff, I was a little surprised. But when I read more about the description, it seemed more and more like me. Here's the quote that really resonated with me:

"Hufflepuffs are trustworthy and loyal. We don't shoot our mouths off, but cross us at your peril; like our emblem, the badger, we will protect ourselves, our friends, and our families against all-comers. Nobody intimidates us."

When I took the little quiz to sort me, I was dealing with friend drama and I was in mother-bear mode. So these few lines really made me feel like this was my house and I could be proud of that.

Now, onto the new content. On pottermore you can go through different scenes in the book in an interactive way. This is where you can find the new content. In this screenshot, you can see that some of the scenes have little red feathers in the upper right corner. This means there is new content hidden in that scene somewhere. This has been SO MUCH FUN! Finding all the new writings and reading them is now my new favorite hobby. The new content gives me such a better understanding of the characters and the wizarding world in general.

If you love Harry Potter, and you haven't looked into pottermore yet, do it! SO, SO much fun! Also if you've been on pottermore for a long time, let me know other stuff about the site I might be missing out on!

-Natalie 

Procrastinating: part 2

*If you don't want to read this whole post, please read the last paragraph, I need your help*

So last month I wrote a post on procrastinating. You can read that here. I feel like since then my procrastinating has gotten worse. Much worse. So much so that on Monday night I got one hour of sleep. I practically pulled an all-nighter. This is something I had always told myself I would never do. Yet there I was, awake until four thirty tuesday morning. The worst part about it was that I had absolutely and completely no excuse. I was not busy over the weekend. I had no other homework. AND we had monday off for a teacher work day. Not only was I not busy, not only did I have no other work, but I also had an extra day to do it.  

At 3 in the morning my mom came into my room and found me still working. I was so ashamed. I was crying and telling her "I know I know I can't ever do this again!" "I never thought it would take this long!". You know, the usual excuses. But this time was different. What I did, or didn't do, has affected me this whole week. I am still yet to completely make up for all the lost sleep. I am unbelievably lucky and thankful to God that I didn't  get into a car accident this week. I was exhausted. Shutting my eyes at stoplights, feeling dizzy and lightheaded from lack of sleep. My simple act of procrastinating could have cost me my life. And because it didn't, I want to change. I never want this to happen again. If I ever get into a life threatening car accident, I do not want it to be my fault. Hell I'm worried about potentially losing my own life, I could have killed someone else too. This may seem dumb to worry about something so unlikely, but this is not something I want to joke about anymore. On thursday when this homework was assigned, I actually turned to my friend and said "you know I'm gonna be doing this on monday night." 

How would I have felt, if on tuesday morning on my way to school, I hit a car and someone died. And I would have known that it was because I was tired and my reflexes were slower. I would have known that someone died because I procrastinated. That I could have prevented this. 

I'm not writing this because I think that was likely to happen. I'm not even writing it because I feel guilty. Yeah, I definitely feel guilty. But thats not why I'm writing this. I am writing this to scare myself, my future self. This is for next time. This is for the time when I'm bored and I decide to check to see if someone commented on my blog instead of doing my homework. This is so I remember that actions have consequences that could be completely unforeseeable.  

There is one other reason that I'm writing this. Aside from the drama and scare-tactics, I need help. I do not know how to get out of this vicious cycle. I am calling it a vicious cycle for several reasons. One, whenever I procrastinate, I am under a time constraint so I am more motivated, I get it done faster. Two, I always manage to get good grades anyway. And three, I never see a reason not to do it again. For the few people who have read this post of gigantic proportions, I need your help. I want your help. I'm just going to assume that you have procrastinated at least once in your life. What I want to know is were you able to stop? If so then tips are greatly appreciated. If not then were in the same boat. It would be great to have some buddies in this boat. We can help each other, rescue each other when we drown. I don't know about you, but I wish there was a support group for procrastinators. Maybe we can start our own. Or maybe no one will read this. But thats okay, I'll start anyway. 

Hi, my name is Natalie, and I am a procrastinator.