It All Lines Up

These are the last 24 hours that I will spend as a 16 year old. Tomorrow I turn 17, which would have been unthinkable just a year ago. My experiences in this past year have taught me that in life, things don't have to happen until you're ready. Every year in school they tell you "you'll have to learn this method now, because you will have to do a lot more next year." And every year they make us nervous by saying that. Even guidance counselors call us into meetings to freak us out about college, telling us that if we don't do certain things we won't be accepted (Okay, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration, but I swear it's not that far off). But what I've come to realize is that, once we make it to that next year that is supposed to be harder, we have been prepped and taught how to handle the greater workload. Those methods that we were taught have become second nature, so that we are able to move forward in our abilities. One year ago during winter break, I was spending the days taking Driver's Ed. At that point in my life, driving was just something in my imagination. In any dreams that I found myself driving, it was really just me sitting in the car while it moved itself, because I didn't yet understand how to even operate a car. My entire awareness was so different from what it is today. When I was 15, I couldn't even handle the idea of turning 17. It felt like I was growing up too fast. But now, I feel perfectly ready for it.

This also works for anything in the future that I may be worrying about. I know now that I don't have to think about it now because by the time it actually comes, I will be ready for it. No matter what it is, the universe will allow it into my life experience at the precise moment that I will be able to get the most out of it. It's really fun to know that life is perfectly lined up for you as you allow it to be.

So Christmas went well. We visited my grandparents and my grandmother cooked a fantastic meal. We watched that movie 3 Idiots again, which we now own. I got Ina Garten's new cookbook Barefoot Contessa: Foolproof, which has a lot of recipes and tips so that each one can be made perfectly the first time, and will hopefully be delicious enough that I will want to make it many times after. My brothers are happy because there's a recipe for caramelized bacon. It looks easy to make and fun too. I hope I have a lot of fun with this cookbook.

The Book Thief

Today is my dad's birthday. Incidentally, it's also the day we got a half day in school, which really only lasts three hours. We are back home by 10:30, so to many it hardly seems worth it at all to even come to school. Especially when it snows a lot on the night before, making you think that possibly there will be a cancellation, or at the very least the day would be postponed. But alas, as every student awoke this morning, they found that they did indeed still have lessons to attend. But I digress.

So many years, I worry that my dad should do more things that he wants to do, instead of just spending them at home as he would pretty much any other day. The only thing so far that I have witnessed him do is stay home from work, and then there was the movie.

Around noon, my dad drove us to the movie theater to see the new film The Book Thief. I was interested to see it because I absolutely adore the book by Markus Zusak. What I love best about the book is its characters, and how the whole book is from the point of view of Death. It's cleverly written, an it took Markus three years to complete, which shows me how much he cared to make this book something special. No matter how many times I read it, the ending always makes me cry. Death even tells you the ending multiple times before it occurs, and yet it still gets me every time. That being said, the movie was pretty well done. It was very true to the book, obviously with a few short cuts to make the plot go faster than it did in the book, where the author could be more laborious with his descriptions and the thoughts of each character. This film was definitely cast brilliantly. Many of the characters appeared exactly as I had pictured them in my mind, and the same for the settings. I don't think I would see the movie again, only because there were too many differences from the book that I was scrutinizing it too much and it wasn't as good as it would have been otherwise. But still, I have to say they did a fantastic job. One thing I think everyone can pull out of the book and the movie is that it really accentuates the importance of books in our lives. Their popularity has not diminished over time, even with the advancements of cinema. You can get so wrapped up in a book that you're turning pages and you don't even realize it, and that's a wonderful thing.