Apparently, people want me to post...

so here y'all go.

:)
--Sarah

I'm now recovered.

At least, enough to explain what happened. It was very traumatic. I walked in the house from swim practice Thursday, and 2 of our cats were sitting and looking somewhat interestedly at something. If you know our cats, that should alarm you. Interested-ness in them is never a good sign. Since they regularly bring us birds and small rodents (yes, IN the house! That's what we get for having a cat door.) I started looking around suspiciously. And then I noticed the snake.

Believe it or not, that's not the traumatic part. This is the third snake that made it inside our house alive. One of the previous snakes that made it inside was about a foot and a half long and was coiled in the middle of my bedroom. (Whenever I tell the story of the black snake in our room, Sarah likes to demonstrate how loudly I screamed when I almost stepped on it, and then how fast I jumped on my bed. Fortunately, that can't be demonstrated over the internet.) So a fairly small garter snake in the living room wasn't a big deal to me.

When it decided to head for our 114 year-old upright piano that's only about an inch of the floor, I got broom duty. We opened the front door (we enter our house through the garage door thankfully, or we probably would have stepped on it) and tried to "encourage" it to leave. Touching it with the broom didn't work well. It just coiled up and stuck it's head up at us. It reminded me of the little "ankle-biter" dogs, who bark ferociously and try to chase you. As if you aren't 10 times bigger than them.

I did get somewhat tired of holding a broom between it and the piano while we decided what to do. Mom called Daddy and he was on his way home from work, so we decided to wait for him. After all, he's the one who yanked a black snake out of our blue bird house (saving the eggs!) with his bare hands.

But then, as if the crazy snake knew we were hoping he'd just sit there, he started challenging the authority of my broom. He slithered directly toward it! I smacked him in the face, and he stopped. He was next to the wall. I was sitting as far away from the wall as possible, but still blocking the path along the wall to the piano with the broom. So he sat there for a few seconds, and then came directly AT ME! Way too quickly for my taste. I really regretted sitting. I jumped up, ran and screamed.

Just then, Daddy came in. He put a paper bag in front of the snake (who apparently was scared by me jumping up and running and was still just sitting there) and then the snake quickly slithered off.... under the piano. He's been under there since Thursday. Yeah, I know. We should try to get him out. We've been pretty busy though. I think we're going to try to get him out tomorrow.

I think my pride is wounded. That tiny little 6-inch snake came right at me... and I was scared to death. *sigh* Why wasn't he scared? I could have stomped on him if I'd been wearing shoes. Hmph.

~Lizzie

Heil Hillary!

Hillary Clinton is at Wake Tech today. (It's free! Who wants to go throw rotten food with me?) I'm too disgusted to start ranting about how much I dislike her. I'd be here all day and no one would read it anyway. So I'm going to let this pic speak for me.



~Lizzie

It's official: I'm pathetically gullible.

So we'd just been talking about how gullible I am and then Kara says that they're going to take "gullible" out of the dictionary.

I was horrified!! "Gullible" is one of my favorite words!

And then Kara started laughing. It actually took me a few seconds to realize that she was taking advantage of my gullible-ness. *sigh* Like they'd actually take a word OUT of the dictionary.
I hold firmly to my opinion that being gullible is better than being skeptical. So there.

~Lizzie

I was on TV.

I'm pretty sure that was the first time in my life. I'm glad they just got my back. No one would recognize me.

Link

It was kinda disturbing, having a camera man there while we were swimming. But I guess it's cool. :P

~Lizzie

Goooooo HAWKS!!!!!

We actually drove all the way up to Liberty University yesterday to cheer on the Raleigh Hawks in the East Coast Homeschool Basketball Championship games!!!! I'm SO excited that we got to go! And Varsity won! It was really close the whole game. At the end of the 4th there was like 12 seconds left and the other team tried to make a shot.... that was so scary. But they didn't make the shot, and the Hawks won in overtime. Woooo!! I was so excited I was shaking. That was an awesome game! Congratulations, guys!! GO HAWKS!!

Sarah got almost 200 pics so maybe she'll post some. :P

~Lizzie

Spring break is boring me....

This week was supposedly "Spring Break." A couple of classes missed the memo and we still had to show up for them, but other than that, we've just been doing school. (Yeah, school during spring break. Did I mention we're bored?) Swimming left a huge hole in life this week... I can feel myself getting fat and out of shape.... ugh. So anyway. Since I'm really bored, I decided to fill out this quiz-thing.

1. What is your occupation at work? I don't have a job right now really.... except teaching piano lessons to my family.

2. What color are your socks right now? I'm not wearing socks. (Yay for spring! Just not spring break....)

3. What are you listening to right now? "The World" by Brad Paisley

4. What was the last thing that you ate? Mango and Raspberry sorbet.

5. Can you drive a stick shift? I dunno... never tried.

6. If you were a crayon, what color would you be? Green. Undoubtedly.

7. Last person you spoke to on the phone? Uh.... Daddy, I think...

8. Do you like the person who sent this to you? Yes....

9. How old are you today? 16 and 10/12 (or 5/6..)

10. Favorite drink? Root Beer and Izze (carbonated fruit drinks)!

11. What is your favorite sport to watch? Water polo, swimming, gymnastics, ice-skating, basketball and baseball.

12. Have you ever dyed your hair? Does Henna count? If so, then I confess. My vanity has driven me to restore the red color of my hair. Chlorine and all the sun from last summer made it not as red as it used to be... but I didn't actually use dye.

13. Pets? My cat, Twila.

14. What was the last movie you watched? "Rudy"

15. Favorite day of the year? Oh, I have lots of favorite days. Any day I don't have to do school generally qualifies.

16. What do you do to vent anger? Hm.... actually I haven't really been angry recently. *winces in anticipation of a flood of incredulity from family or a sudden onslaught of angry emotions*

17. What was your favorite toy as a child? Oh, lots. Sassy (the name of the cat in Homeward Bound, and thus the only acceptable name for a cat) a stuffed cat who I lost at Well Spring, a stuffed elephant, stuffed bear, my dollhouse, my baby dolls and my Elsie Dinsmore doll.

18. What is your favorite season? Summer!

19. Hugs or kisses? Hugs.... generally.

20. Cherries or Blueberry? Cherries.

21. Do you want your friends to email you back? Ha, well, since I'm blogifying this, no, not really.

22. Who is most likely to respond? See above.

23. Who is least likely to respond? See above above.

25. When was the last time you cried? I dunno. I don't like crying.

26. Who is the friend you have had the longest and sending this to? See above above above above. lol.

27. What did you do last night? Bible study.

28. Favorite smells? The beach, pizza, chlorine, coconut oil, frying onions and the fair.

29. What inspires you? Inspiring stuff! Just feeling peaceful. When it's a warm day and the grass is green and the there's big fluffy clouds....

30. What are you afraid of? Failure.... the future....

31. Plain, cheese or spicy hamburgers?! Cheese, I guess. I really like the works.

32. Favorite dog breeds? Labs.

33. What would you have for your last meal? Spinach-artichoke dip and chips, pizza, macaroni and cheese, a bean burrito from Taco Bell, cheese cake with raspberry toppings and a X-large root-beer.

34. Favorite day of the week? Usually Wednesdays, when we have water polo. Or Saturdays, when we get to do nothing. But we usually don't get to do nothing, so Wednesdays.

35. How many states have you lived in? 1

36. Favorite holiday? Resurrection Sunday. I guess.... I like Christmas too, but that's such a stressfully busy time of year.

37. Ever driven a Motorcycle or heavy machinery? Lawnmower count?

38. Your favorite NFL team? Don't have one.

39. Do you have a house phone that is NOT cordless? Yeah, because when our power goes out, it's the only phone that works.

40. 10 inches of snow or 100 degree weather? 100 degrees.

And yeah, this IS the quiz that went around a while ago. So maybe I'm a little late... but it relieved my boredom. :P

~Lizzie

I changed a lightbulb!

Two, actually. :P It took longer than usual because I was laughing the whole time at the guys who told us that girls don't change light bulbs, we "just sit around and whine about it." So, anyway, this is dedicated to you guys. You know who you are.

I was actually extremely happy to finally be ABLE to change the light bulbs. We haven't had any in the house for a long time, and we kept forgetting to buy some. (Or maybe someone managed to find a pack that I didn't find when I last looked and we still need to buy some. But whatever.)


~Lizzie

Politics and Religion

Back when we had a decent selection of presidential candidates, I was hoping Thompson would make it. Now that it's basically between McCain, Obama and Hillary, I'm just hoping for a male.

But I was just thinking.... while it's definitely good for Christians to try and keep this country the way it should be.... this is a fallen world. God's already decided to destroy it. There's really no hope for this world. And that's fine, because this is not anyone's eternal home anyway! I'm here...... for what? To give God glory. And sometimes God's glory shines better when circumstances aren't that great.

That said, I certainly don't mean to say that Christian shouldn't care about the state of this country. I'm very opinionated about a lot of things, my top being abortion. I cannot stand to see all the animal-rights tree-huggers who care more about animals, inanimate plants and the environment (not that it's wrong to care about them! They just have a misplaced importance in my opinion) than they do about all the tiny innocent humans who are killed every day just because they inconvenience their selfish parents. Yes, the Twin Towers attack was horrible. But at least those 3000 Americans were killed by our enemies. 4000 Americans are killed every day by American doctors.

Another thing I can't stand is when Christians compromise their beliefs to fit with this secular culture. The Bible should be every Christian's top authority, yet there are so many Christians who will try to explain how the Bible fits with science instead of considering that maybe science should be fit to the Bible! There are so many compromise theories about Creation that it's not even funny. My least favorite is Theistic Evolution. This is the idea that God "started" the world and it evolved as evolutionists claim after that. This is definitely the easiest way to fit God into evolution, but it's also completely against how the Bible says Creation happened.

So anyway. That's just a really unorganized rant about some of my views. If anyone wants something clarified/elaborated upon, a friendly argument, or to share their views, I'll be more than happy to explain, debate and/or listen (or rather, read). :D

~Lizzie

The Moment of Truth

I stumbled upon a show of that title yesterday evening. Fortunately I didn't see the whole thing, but from what I gathered of the few disturbing and horrible minutes that I did view, apparently this show is paying people to get up on stage in front of the world, with their friends and family there, and answer questions that shouldn't be asked, and definitely not answered; at least not in public or on TV!

The question I saw them ask this man was, "Is your wife the most attractive woman you've ever dated?" He beat around the bush, and finally (trying to soften the blow, I guess) said, "She's attractive and beautiful and I love her, but no." I have 2 points and a wishful comment.

1) Attractiveness is an opinion, so they shouldn't have had the robotic voice announce that that answer was true. (It seems that they think they are capable of determining the truthfulness of answers.)

2) That question should never ever be asked, especially in front of the wife and ESPECIALLY if the answer is "no"! I'm not sure why, but women desperately need to feel attractive. Not super-model-gorgeous, but at least attractive. And I imagine that it would be somewhat important to a woman that her man think that she is the most attractive woman he's ever seen. Obviously I wouldn't know for sure though. And once again, she doesn't have to be the PRETTIEST or most beautiful, but most attractive. There's a difference that I'm probably incapable of intelligently explaining since I should be asleep right now.

Wishful comment: The absolute perfect answer to that question (that the woman would love to hear) is this: "She is the most attractive woman on earth, I love her with all of my heart, and she's the only woman I've ever dated/courted."

So, for those of you who are curious, the wife was indeed present, and she looked close to tears at his answer of "no." And just for the record, she was extremely beautiful. Aaaand, I don't recommend that any of you view that show because the next question made me scramble to turn the TV off.

~Lizzie

Good news and bad news....

So the good news is that my ankle was a lot better this morning! The bad news.... it hurt to swim but I swam anyway because I really wanted to swim the 1000 yds of free that Coach gave us, and now my ankle is hurting really bad. Again. And I'm definitely stupid enough to try to swim tomorrow too. Even if it almost kills me. :P It's the last day of water polo before spring break! I HAVE to swim....

School is horrible right now, as is typical of school in the spring.... and winter.... and fall. And definitely summer, if you're like me and somehow manage to drag out the torture and make it last almost all year long. This year I might be able to keep from doing math during the summer... but probably not, since as soon as I finish this book, I can start the next one! Yay.

I'm extremely excited about all my new piano pieces. I've got a lot of really fun pieces this year. My teacher just gave me one today that is called "Cat and Mouse" or something like that. Sadly, I think the mouse gets caught in the end... but it's still cool! :P


~Lizzie

I feel clumsy.

Wednesday I sprained my thumb throwing my 50 lb swim bag into the back of our Suburban (how lame is that? [pun unintended, but funny anyway :P ]) I managed to swim and play water polo, but when I got home it started hurting worse (swimming probably wasn't an awesome idea) and I had to do my math and Chemistry homework with my left hand. I'm not exactly ambidextrous, but I was desperate to get caught up in schoolwork. And now I haven't practiced piano for 2 days. Ick.

My thumb got a lot better after swimming Thursday. It kinda hurt for the first 2 laps of butterfly but then it completely stopped hurting! So that was cool. But then......

At theatre Thursday night, we were learning this really cool (and really scary!) dance move where the guy bends his knees, the girl does a cartwheel on his knees and he holds her waist to keep her from falling and help with the cartwheel. It's very fun, but I still can't believe it works. It seems to defy some laws of science. I was wearing socks, and the floor was somewhat slippery (bad idea) and I landed wrong once and sprained my ankle. It didn't feel too bad at first, but it got worse and worse at home.

When I got up this morning I couldn't even walk on it without pretty bad pain. Daddy was wonderful and went and got me a cane in time for me to go to Chemistry.

So now I'm just hoping that my ankle will heal in time for me to swim Tuesday. I wish this could have happened to me when I was about 7.... I really wanted to hurt my ankle then. I thought it would be cool. Now it's just inconvenient and definitely not cool. =D

~Lizzie

I'm OCD all the wrong ways....

I just finished updating a website, where I spent an extra unnecessary 30 minutes cleaning up the messy HTML because it was bothering me. Then I sat back and looked at my room. It's a wreck, quite aptly described by a phrase my dad used to use frequently, "Looks like a tornado went through here." But does it bother me? Not really. I cleaned out my documents and deleted a whole bunch of old "stories" that were about a paragraph long, but my closet - which is about 50% full of clothes that I'll never wear again - doesn't even slightly prick me with irritation. Unless I can't find a particular article of the 50% that I do wear. I'm very picky about the neatness of my homework, but I'm only fussy about the correctness of my answers if I've recently been impressed by the lowness of my grades.

I could continue with my obsessive-compulsive issues, but I need to go do schoolwork. Math, in particular, has taken me an extraordinary amount of time recently, since showing my work used to take 4 pages, but I counted the pages left in my notebook and I need to squeeze 4 pages of work per lesson into 3 pages to avoid only using half of an extra notebook by the end of Algebra II. And if that didn't make any sense, that's fine. You're not missing anything.

~Lizzie