Camping last weekend.

Been a while since my last post, so here’s a general update on what’s been going on in my life.

I went camping last weekend with pathfinders, somewhere way up north in Ontario. (I live in southern Ontario.) The ride was more than two hours and on the way there Tigger (pathfinder leader which I must’ve mentioned at least a gazillion times) made me “navigate” since I got stuck with shotgun seat. (I didn’t want shotgun since there were other two other pathfinders getting a ride and I wanted a backseat closer to where the conversation was.)

It didn’t make much sense, Tigger having me “navigate.” Navigating was reading a list of directions she’d printed off of MapQuest prior to the trip, and reading and re-reading and re-re-re-re-re-re-times-infinite-reading these instructions (especially at every turn we took through towns and stuff along the way), even though she had a flipping GPS telling her where to go. Really, all this extra work was not necessary.

Normally I don’t trust in GPS machines in cars since I’ve heard bad things about what happens when somebody relies too much on it. (Like a driver being led right into a lake and not even questioning it until it was too late.) But this thing echoed me.

TIGGER: Okay, Alex, what do the directions say?

ALEX: [Reads complete directions word-for-word, punctuation for punctuation in a rather flight-attendant-sounding voice.]

TIGGER: [Insert random segment of the directions here, like turn left at whatever route number], right?

ALEX: [Repeats.]

TIGGER: What’s after that?

ALEX: [Reads out next direction, word-for-word, punctuation for punctuation.]

GPS: Turn left at [whatever street] in approximately [whatever] [kilometres/metres/whatever].

TIGGER: Is that what it says on the directions?

ALEX: Yes, Tigger, that’s what it says.

TIGGER: How far until the next turn?

And I’m hardly sensationalizing. It got annoying and everytime we had a pit stop, the GPS would be all, “Off route. Recalculating.” And then it would give us directions on how to get back on the road to the camp.

After we got back in the car, Tigger would basically have me read out all the directions we had yet to fufill, word-for-word, punctuation-for-punctuation.

We eventually arrived at the camp late. (Side note: Pathfinders in my group that came consisted of Brianna and a girl I’ll call Kitty- which was her nickname when we were in guides together. She doesn’t seem to be called that usually anymore though.) There were two guide groups there, and two of the girls were special. One of them had fetal alcohol syndrome, barely said a word, and quickly grew attatched to Brianna. The other girl we didn’t know had any issues until the next day when she wailed about having to go last to wash her dishes and dumped her hot chocolate in the still-being-used dishwater. (She had autism.) No one but one guide leader seemed to know how to react, so we mostly just stared or walked away while the leader chastised the girl.

We’d expected to meet a pathfinder from Madoc who’d be camping with us, but she didn’t snow. I mean show. Maybe that’s because she heard about what the weather would be like on the weekend.

That’s right.

It was pouring rain and freezing non-stop for the whole weekend until Saturday when it decided to SNOW. IN MAY.

The first night we slept in tents. Large green tents (enough to easily or maybe not-so-easily fit 14 people) with velcro-shut doors. They were pretty much built-into a hardwood plank-type thing which was elevated something like a foot (or a half) off the ground.

We kept waking up in the middle of the night (as in the wee hours of it) to the door being blown open and ferociously waving in the wind while a rain puddle was forming (the worst of the rainstorm must’ve been the night) at the foot of our tent. All of us were too freezing cold and half-asleep (don’t blame it on regular teenage laziness) to get out of our sleeping bags and shut it. We figured it’d be blown open again anyway.

I wore two layers of fleece pajama bottoms, two layers of socks, regular undergarments, a tank top, a t-shirt, a heavy sweater (the kind they sell at Zellers that say Canada across the chest), and my winter coat to sleep. A winter hat, too. Tigger also lent me a heavy fleece blanket and I had my sleeping bag and an improvised pillow (my yoga bag stuffed with clean clothes) and held my stuffed lion for most of the night. I was surrounded by the other pathfinders on one side and my suitcase on the other. I still couldn’t feel my feet and my fingers were almost purple most of the time, and felt too cold the next morning to change out of anything that wasn’t fleece. So I wore my pajamas for the next day. When I got my wash-up stuff altogether, I realized my deodorant had frozen in its container thing. That got a few laughs.

I didn’t need it anyway.

The next day we spent most of the time inside the building (where even after a LONG time of the maybe-twenty-or-fifteen of us sitting there, we could still see our breath prominently in the air) making crafts and stuff. No one wanted us to leave and there were rumours spreading around about all the guides moving into one tent since the autistic girl had peed on another girl’s stuff overnight and the tent was unbearably smelly. We left the building mostly just to do tie-dye (it was a time-travel themed camp) and cook grilled cheese for lunch on buddy burners (buddy burners = a small fire covered in a coffee can with airholes to let the smoke out) when it wasn’t so bad out. I still got raindrops on my cheese though.

One of the oldest girl guides told us about some guides apparently sneaking into our tent at something like 3 AM.

“The Pathfinders are sleeping like BABIES!“

“No duh, it’s like, 3 AM. I’m jealous of them.”

We ended up spending Saturday night in the first floor of the building accross the street where the Brownies and Sparks were staying. This building was HEATED.

As soon as we walked in all of us could feel our bodies beginning to thaw and when Tigger (who was on the side of having us sleep outside in the snow to earn our “Winter Camping” badge in MAY) wasn’t looking, a couple of awesomazing Brownie/Sparks leaders snuck us (just the pathfinders, I think) some mattresses. The mattresses were about two inches thick, covered with leathery fabric and the best cushioning I have EVER felt in my LIFE.

Memory foam would’ve been jealous.

Dropping onto the mattress and in the same comfy fleece clothing, (minus the extra blankie) I slept like a baby.

Naw. I don’t think babies actually sleep well.

I slept more like my dad does watching animated movies. (He told me he’s been caught snoring in the theatre before.)

Or like I used to in French class last year. (I did it very subtly and skillfully- pick a comfy position with your eyes invisible from the teachers and head buried deep into your work, like you’re concentrating on reading. Don’t do that during a lesson or when you’re supposed to be answering questions, though. That’s stupid for your grade and you’ll get caught.)

Anyway, I slept GREAT.

Until Tigger woke all the pathfinders up at like, REALLY SUPER-DUPER early (six-ish) telling us to get ready before all the guides did. (OMG I almost typed ‘die’ there. :S)

Of course I kept insisting I didn’t care about waiting in a line-up for the bathroom and just leave. me. be. When she asked if I was even listening, I said yes, and that listening and obeying are two very different things. (Which is true.)

I didn’t have to wait for a line for very long either since most of the guides were getting their bedding all together and stuff before changing and washing up. Also, there was INDOOR PLUMBING (!) for the bathroom we were using and plus a bathroom upstairs for the brownies and sparks we could use in case of emergency. (It was the kind with several stalls in it.)

Before leaving, I got basically every one of the guides and leaders to sign my autograph book (which was a craft we made at camp) and recieved a button-on-a-string craft from one of the friendly guides. (The one that said about the girls sneaking into our tent.)

(I’ve got her on facebook now.)

On the way home I figured out a card trick. I also won several times playing cheat on the first night. (Because I have the best poker face in the world and am very good at strategies for games that involve lying. Not that I lie on any occasion other than games like cheat.)

I had a BALL.

Alex Violet

PS I’ve got this new friend who moved to my school from a couple hours away. We’re going to be new BFFs, as I said to her. Today some girl asked “So are you guys like, twins?” She was a hundred percent serious and shocked when my friend said she just moved here. “It’s just that you guys look so much alike and you have the same haircut and everything.” I thought that was cool. Later, she suggested we go shopping and buy the same outfit just to freak people out.

Like I said, we’re going to be great friends.

Later note: Long story short, we didn’t work out as friends.

Free Cupcakes. :)

Yesterday was magnificent. Best day I had all week, pretty much.

The morning was okay, English was good, but forgettable.

DRAMA: Before I get to what that class was like I’d better explain the assignment. Two weeks ago (or so) we were handed these sheets of photos of people from other places in the world. The layout looked like yearbook pictures but no one was smiling. The teacher told us they were passport photos. We were to cut out the picture of one person we felt we could relate to judging only by their appearance, then we were to make a backstory for them. She gave us the year they were leaving: 1932. They had to have a reason for leaving their country and coming to a more developed place in the world, but we weren’t allowed to be specific. (The teacher just implied it would be either Canada or the United States, or something similar.) After we had their backstory, we had to prepare a skit (the teacher emphasized that it was supposed to be serious and not comedic) where they told someone in their life that they were leaving, or that someone found out. Everyone was supposed to have a skit for their character and we were supposed to grab other people to play the other characters in our scene. The teacher advised we just get into groups and work with the people within those groups.

My character was a nanny for a family with abusive (yet wealthy) parents and a six-year-old girl. (My character is something like thirteen.) I was trying to leave since the only family I had left (brother who was a child labourer) was beaten to death by his boss. Since my character gets beaten regularly, she is afraid to go down the same path.

So on the very first day we were supposed to practice our plays/skits/scenes/whatever I just called out to anyone within earshot, “Okay, I just need one person.” (For the little girl I’m nannying.) And then one of the new girls walked over. (Let’s call her K.) She only needed one person in her group too.

Her character was a young woman who grew up with a physically abusive father and rushed into an unhappy (and verbally abusive this time) marriage to get out of the house. When my character (the meanie-pants husband) hits her, she leaves.

Yesterday, the teacher had everyone take turns with their skit/play/scene on the stage in our classroom. (The stage= basically foot-high wood boxes covered in carpeting.) She wasn’t marking them since she felt most of us still had some work to do on them, but we were performing only for feedback. (From both her and the class.)

I performed mine while she was there and she said I needed to work on building up to a climax. I thought I already had, but I guess it wasn’t obvious enough.

A while after that the teacher had to leave for an appointment or something and my art teacher came in to supply. Which is great, my art teacher is my favourite teacher. While the drama teacher is difficult to please (not that I have a big problem with it much anymore; it just gets annoying sometimes and I usually blame it on the fact she’s pregnant and sometimes pregnant ladies are irritable), my art teacher thinks everything is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Even when she does notice something that could be better, she’s always really friendly about pointing it out. I also get the impression I’m one of her favourite students because of that art award last year and those constant ten-out-of-ten on homework assignments and her trying to recruit me for the art council until I joined.

So when I got up there to act in K.’s scene, I felt like I had something to prove. And that’s not ALL I’m good at! So when I sat back down I still felt that huge adrenaline rush and I got fantastic reactions from all present. I love proving myself. (K.’s character was supposed to be meek until the end when she decides to leave. She got good reactions from that, too.)

ART: If that alone wasn’t enough to make my day, art class after lunch was great too. We were working on clay masks. (Last year when we were working on clay I didn’t do so well. In fact, I blogged about it. Try looking at some of my earliest entries back in June for the story. This year is different though.) When we had something like 15 minutes left, one of my best friends knocked on our classroom door to invite the whole class (of about fifteen; I love our small art class) to visit her business class where they were giving away FREE CUPCAKES AND COOKIES! Ms. T (art teacher) told us we had to clean up first. So we cleaned up in something like half the time it usually takes us since everyone was cleaning. And we were more enthusiastic about it, too.

While we were cleaning, one of my other new friends, J., told me she signed up for yoga club this week. I was overjoyed since I signed up, too. She told me she didn’t go to the first meeting.

“I didn’t either, but that was because I was supposed to be somewhere else. I sign up for too many extra-curriculars. Mondays are Students’ Council, Tuesdays are Pathfinders, Wednesdays I have Art Council at lunch and at least once or twice a month I have Youth Advisory Council after school at the city hall, Thursdays I just signed up for Yoga Club and Fridays I have Students’ Council again. On the weekend I may or may not have a Pathfinders or Youth Council event-”

Her eyes widened. “You know Yoga Club is on Tuesdays, too, right?”

“Yeah, I know, I just forgot to say it.”

I think I have a problem. I’m addicted to extra-curriculars. But I just like to feel like I’m doing something for the world. Or maybe even just myself. I spend too much time on the computer, maybe I’m trying to make up for it. Anytime I’ve got to spare I feel bored. I feel terrible whenever I’m not doing something productive, it seems…

Once I got into the business class I was immediately given an empty ballot where I’d write which cupcake/cookie display I liked the best and offered a cupcake. Who in the right mind would turn that down?

So I loaded up a paper plate with every cupcake available (and as many seconds as I was allowed, which was one or two). I got to this one table where one of my friends who’s really more of an aquaintance offered me a cookie and rambled on about how they had a cardboard display and they help save the tigers. “Tigers for tigers!” (Tigers = school mascot) I thought it was genius. At the end he gave two thumbs up and smiled, “So yeah, vote for us!”

“But I don’t have a pen.”

So he tried to give me one but my hands were full with cupcakes and cookies. “Do you want me to write it down?”

“Yes, please, that would be great!”

So he did and I handed in my ballot. I realized the hallways were empty and as I walked down the hall to my history class, I saw another friend.

“Hi, Alex!”

“Hi, did the second bell already ring?”

“You mean the bell for class starting? Yeah.”

“Oh, poop. I’m late.”

I walked slow though. If I’m already late, then what difference does an extra minute make?

HISTORY: I walked in and immediately, “Oh, Alex [insert my real last name here] is here!” The substitute teacher came over and asked me to repeat my name. She asked me if I was in the business class. (I still had cupcakes and cookies with me.)

“No, just distracted by it.” I laughed and went to sit in my unassigned seat by my friend (she wants to be called Kira when I mention her on the blog) who’d invited my art class to the cupcakes.

The guy in front of me said, “Whoa, Alex, didn’t see you there.” He eyed the pile of cupcakes and laughed. “Well, that won’t give you diabetes or anything.” I laughed too.

I love history. We learned how the stock market works (the student-teacher who teaches us instead of the real teacher wants us to know that before we move onto the Great Depression unit) with short explaination and then a game. The teacher explained we had each a thousand dollars to invest in three companies. He explained the risks of the different companies which were mostly The Simpsons themed.
After playing that game, I finally understand how the stock market works after all those times I’ve asked one parent or the other.

TODAY: Pretty calm, I woke up at something like noon-thirty and was told to get ready because we were going to the theatre to see Clash of the Titans, which was, indeed, a pretty good movie.

Long and detailed entry, but what the hell. I had a good yesterday. Students’ Council was cancelled, so I got to go right home. I was way more social than I usually am, and it left me feeling great.

Alex Violet

This is when you know what you’re supposed to do.

It seems that almost everyone who feels like they belong somewhere (by that I mean in general, but a certain career in this context) has had a moment of reckoning. They have a epiphany where they realize all at once that this is where they belong. This is what they are meant to do in their life. This moment, this dream, is worth every single effort you have to put into to acheive it. It is for the better of mankind.

I had my reckoning today at pathfinders.

We were working on our citizenship badge, a badge we have been working on for a very long time and in almost every spare five minutes we had at meetings and such.

In this particular challenge, we had to describe our ideal society/community. There were three groups:

1. Tabitha and A.
Their community was environmentally-friendly (no one was allowed cars if you were able to walk somewhere) and loved animals.

2. K. and Lily
I’ve got to be honest, I wasn’t totally listening… But I get the impression that theirs was generally about equality, generally similar to what the average Ontario community is like, or at least looks like.

3. Olivia and Brianna and Alex (Me)
Equality in the EXTREMETIES. No polititians, there’s no need. No one should have to boss you around and tell you their opinion is better; that their way goes, it’s law whether you like it or not. Because people with the it’s-my-way-or-the-highway persona are the epitome of injustice.
No matter who you are, where you come from, how old you are, etc. EVERYONE gets a say. EVERYONE gets a say in the way things are run.
There is a set of laws that need to be there for those who have it in them to abuse the power of being free. (Hitler, for example, abused his power.) When they’ve abused that power, they no longer have equal say because they’ve proven they can’t handle it, or that their say is biased in some way.
If a law-abiding citizen wanted to change a law, they’d be listened to and heard out and I guess we’d have a vote if at first civil compromise or a little talking-it-through-with-all-parties-that-would-be-affected didn’t work out.

Olivia had to leave early so we were all standing in our little groups of two and had to sum up our ideal communities in a word or two. Group 1 said environmentally-friendly; Group 2 said equality; My group, Group 3, said “Anyone who has a voice gets a choice!” I swear it might be my political slogan one day. (Don’t steal it. I’m serious.)

After that explaination, our main pathfinder leader, Tigger (we had 2 there, one of them was the founder of our pathfinder unit who also used to be my next-door-neighbour for all years until second grade and the other is the main one that organizes events and calls people up on the phone) told us to walk over to which community we’d rather live in. (As in where that group was standing previous.) We weren’t allowed to pick our own.

So do you want to know the final verdict?

Everyone chose my group.

‘cept for me and Brianna (we weren’t allowed) as well as Tigger. We all were standing in Group 2′s community.

The founder of our pathfinder unit (we call her Mrs. P) was sitting down in a chair on the other side of the room, not wanting to vote.

Tigger asked why and Mrs. P said she was waiting to choose my group (“Alex’s group” she said) since I’d mentioned about equality for all ages. But then instead of saying the whole “if-they-break-the-law-they’re-not-allowed-the-same-say” thing, I said “extensive phsyco-analysis,” (sp?) since I tend to view people with the lack of moral capacity as truly insane.

I tried to explain further but then we went into our closing ceremony (singing Taps) and I didn’t get enough chance.
Once mostly everyone was gone or at least left the room, it was just Mrs. P and I packing up our stuff.

I then explained further what I meant and then she said about how she knows what I meant now and that it’s all in good fun. She said she truly thinks I have many great ideas and that she can really see the gears in my head turning.

“I think you’ll really go far in life.”

And those are the words I think have changed my life.

I told her “Thank you, that really means something to me.” And I gave her a hug and she said she was glad it meant something to me.

And she told me she hopes to be able to see me do great in the world. She said that Tigger and her really do see us pathfinders as if we were their own daughters without getting too mother-like because some things mothers are there for. (I hope that makes sense when I say it.)

I’m glad, and I left pathfinders with a happy feeling inside. As soon as I got home I sat down to write this entry because I want to look back on it years from now and remember this.

I’m going to go far in life.

Alex Violet

Awkward…

At pathfinders tonight, I was raving on about how excited I was for Retro Day at school tomorrow.

I told them how I was going to dress “so 80s” and described everything I was going to wear. Neon blue leggings, shorts over them, a rugby shirt which has relatively puffy sleeves, legwarmers, my flats, and then I was exceptionally excited about the scrunchie. (Or is it scrunchy?)

I’ve been telling a lot of people about the great scrunchie/scrunchy idea and have gotten a couple of chuckles. I thought it would be the same at pathfinders, and it sort of was.

When the pathfinder leader gave me a face and pulled a scrunchie off her wrist and put it in her hair.

“I’M SORRY, I’M SORRY! I meant that in the nicest possible way! I had no idea!” I said immediately when everyone was laughing. (Everyone including me, admittedly.)

“I actually like scrunchies,” said one of the girls sitting beside me.

“I do too, but they’re out of date, retro.”

So when I got home I finished doing what was mandatory of my homework (which was none except for typing up YAC minutes) and found a scrunchie with no problem. It was on my dresser, out in the open. Way easier to find than I thought and I put it in my hair immediately where it ramains.

I really don’t have anything against scrunchies. I don’t wear them to school nowadays since they sort of, well, ARE ten years (at least) out of date. I used to wear them all the time when I was littler.

So no hard feelings to all you scrunchie-lovers out there.

Did you hear? Vintage is the newest thing.

Alex Violet