There’s this great poem that was in my English Review book, and I liked it so much I decided to put it up here. But you should know first that this is by no means my own work. Having said that, here it is!

Homework for Annabelle

A + bh over 2.
3.14 is π.
But I’d forgotten, if I ever knew,
What R’s divided by.
Though I knew once, I’d forgotten clean
What a girl must study to reach fifteen-
How V is Volume and M’s for Mass,
And the hearts of the young are as brittle as glass.

I had forgotten, and half with pride,
Fifteen’s no field of clover.
So here I sit at Annabelle’s side,
Learning my lessons over.
For help is something you have to give
When daughters are faced with the Ablative
Or first encounter in any school
Immutable gender’s mortal rule.

Day after day for a weary spell,
When the dusk has pitched its tents,
I sit with a book and Annabelle
At the hour of confidence
And rummage for lore I had long consigned
To cobwebby attics of my mind,
Like: For the Radius, write down R,
The Volga’s a river, Vega’s a star,
Brazil’s in the Tropic of Capricorn,
And heart is a burden that has to be borne.

Oh, high is the price of parenthood,
And daughters may cost you double.
You dare not forget, as you thought you could,
That youth is a plague and trouble.
N times 7 is 7n-
Here I go learning it all again:
The climates of continents tend to vary,
The verb “to love”‘s not auxiliary,
Tomorrow will come and today will pass,
But the hearts of the young are brittle as glass.

-Phyllis McGinley

Edit- Tara, the reason I like this poem is because it reminds me a lot of the way Mom and I work on school. She’s constantly telling me that she has to learn some of the stuff over again.

…For Dave! If it weren’t for my big bro, I’d have next to nil comments on my blog. Yay for you and your commenting, Dave! =)

I’m going to try to get into the every-couple-of-days blogging like Tara does, especially since I’m going to have a lot more time on my hands. Well, at least for a while, anyway. And if I don’t, I’ll try and make time. I like writing, and I like telling people what’s going on in my life.

Since I don’t really feel like doing school right now, I thought I’d blog about the Happy Hands Club at our church. It’s actually the same group that got together and did signing for Easter, composed of moms, one younger married woman, and three teenagers (Megan, Arlene, and yours truly). I like learning the signs, but I’d like to do more contemporary songs. We meet on Mondays, so we’re going tonight.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that Peter, our youth leader, got a puppy of his own. He’s a cute little beagle by the name of Jake, and when we asked how much Peter paid for him, he kind of had this pained look and said, “Let’s just say he was more than any laptop I’ve ever owned.” He’d been looking for a dog in the shelters around the island on the Internet (with our help, of course) but he couldn’t find a puppy that wasn’t a pit bull and didn’t have heartworm, so he just gave up and bought a purebred. Peter actually brought Jake in to youth group before he was even named, and we all got to put in suggestions for his name. Angie and I both thought he looked like a Sirius, but of course Peter didn’t agree. Ah well, Jake’s not too bad. Much better than Bailey, anyway.

Wow, I wrote a lot about Peter’s dog. I must be bored or something- imagine that! I suppose I should get busy on my schoolwork, then… no use in putting it off.

Or maybe there is. I can write about my schoolwork! It’s the thought that counts after all, isn’t it? So I guess you could say school’s going well. It’s not interesting at all, but then again, when has it ever been? I feel like writing a list, so I’ll do that 1-10 rating thing like I did in last year’s posts.

Geometry- 6: Kinda boring since I’m still in the beginning stages of defining terms and writing postulates.

World History- 6: Again, boring and tedious since I’m still in the beginning. I’ve only gotten up to the great flood.

Chemistry- 4: One word- ugh. And the guy I’m supposed to be on the same module with happened to start a week before I did, which means lots doubling up.

Chinese- 9: I’m learning Chinese! It doesn’t get much cooler than that, even if it is ridiculously hard.

Wordly Wise- 9: I love Wordly Wise because, well, I love words.

English Review- anywhere from 1-10: I know that’s a really, really broad rating, but the review book has everything from proper capitalization to recognizing different parts of a sentence. The mechanics and vocab I enjoy, the other stuff not so much.

Reading- 4, surprisingly: The only reason that’s rated low is because I have to read Mere Christianity by tomorrow. I had two weeks to do it, but I kept putting it off… so now I have to read the rest of the book in a day, which is like more than a hundred pages. And it’s a pretty hard book to read at times, too. But I still like it, and C.S. Lewis’s writing style cracks me up.

Yep, school. Not rated very high at all right now, but I’m hoping that’ll change once I get out of the beginning stages.

Bleh, it’s been really hot and muggy lately. Certainly not as bad as PA, but then again, we have air conditioning there. I wish it would just hurry up and rain instead of being all cloudy and humid!

Guess I won’t be getting out of the beginning stages of my school if I don’t get it done, so I’ll go skulk off to do my homework now.

Like the new theme? I was looking through the ones this site has to offer and found this little gem of a blog theme. It’s more original than the other one, which is good- I like original. Or maybe not, since there are probably tons of other people using this one. *Shrug* Ah well, still cool.

So World Impact Night was last night. Turned out to be cool, actually, and a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. I didn’t really want to go, but I knew better than to complain. Pretty much every time the doors are open, our family is at church, and it’s no use to try to avoid it. Besides, I like Cornerstone, and it’s a lot more involved than Blue Rock. But anyway, World Impact Night. There were about seven or so people who came up and shared their particular ministry and what they’d accomplished there. Most used Power Point presentations, some used videos, and some didn’t use any sort of aid, but they were all really interesting to listen to. It’s kinda cool to be able to hear what’s going on in the world and how God’s people are getting things done. And -get this- here was even Turkish Delight to sample afterwards, too. I can see why Edmund liked it so much… Mmm!

Heh, I’ve been reading through all my old posts, and it’s hard not to laugh at some of them. I’ve grown a lot since I’ve started blogging, so a lot of the posts actually aren’t true anymore. For instance, the favorites list I posted a while back,the post about how I didn’t want friends in HI, and my [incorrect] descriptions of the people in my youth group. It’s interesting to see how much my different my impression of Cornerstone was than it is now. But then again, some things never change. I’m still a lazy bum when it comes to school, and I still get apathetic spurts that come pretty much out of nowhere.

I don’t think I’ve yet mentioned this, but a few months ago, I discovered the best show in the world besides M*A*S*H- Danny Phantom. This show is seriously awesome! It’s a cartoon about this kid my age named Danny Fenton, whose parents are ghost hunters. After an accident with one of their inventions, he becomes a half ghost superhero and battles the ghosts in his town, Amity Park. Really cool show. Even if you’re not a cartoon watcher, I still recommend. Oh, and by the way, Nickelodeon SUCKS for choosing to cancel it next January.

Can’t think of anything else to say. I don’t think there’s going to be anything special going on this week. Could be wrong, though. Something interesting usually happens often; this is Hawaii, after all. Usually normal, never boring.

Katie and her family were here last week. They were so much fun! They’re always a lively bunch, and we had a great time doing the touristy things around the island. I also really enjoyed being able to spend time with Katie like I haven’t been able to in a long time.It’s been good to get back into doing things with our church since we’ve been back. I’d really missed going to youth group and the teen girls’ Bible study (which is where I’ll be going in about an hour) while we were back in PA. And now things are a lot less awkward between my friends and me here, especially since I know I won’t be leaving here again until May. I went to Arlene’s birthday party with Elizabeth on Friday night, and we had a blast! The three of us, Liz’s brother and sister (Mark and Hannah), and one of Arlene’s brother and her sister (Allen and Abby) went to Waikiki to an arcade we had gone to a few weeks ago for an end-of-summer youth lock-in. The place is pretty cool, but the main reason we went there was for the laser tag arena. We played two games, and after we were done, we headed back and the three of us tried to watch The Return of the King. ‘Tried’ is the key word of that sentence, because we ended up falling asleep about an hour into it. Fun stuff. =)

We’ve been busy lately doing things with Debbie, Bianca, and Kyle lately, as well as a few others from the church with husbands in Iraq. It’s been fun hanging out with them, but I’m so tired from all the running around. We never really got to rest much after the Bumbaughs left. I started school two days after, but I suppose it isn’t too bad yet. After all, it’s only been ‘Why are we studying this subject?’ introductions- easy stuff. Of course I’d like to answer them all with ‘Because my mom’s making me!’, but somehow I don’t think that would go over well with my teacher. Or the principal, for that matter.

I suppose that’s it, then. Not really much else to say except for this: Looks like things are back to abnormal.