A Slight Case of Jet Lag

Ever since I have returned home, I have been staying up pretty late at nights. Understandable, given the time difference. I really did enjoy the chance to experience Hawaii and once again see California. You see, my grandparents used to live there when I was young. They moved closer to us, but we used to go down there for two weeks over the summer, at which time it never rained, as California is apt to do.

I find myself, however, reverting to something I will call jet lag. I call it that because I am not completely familiar with the actual definition of "jet lag," since I used to think that it only had to do with the fact that while you are on a plane, it is almost like your body is on pause. Then, once you get off, the exhaustion hits. I am now beginning to feel that it is much deeper than that.

It started in 2010, after my family returned from a 17 day trip in Florida and Disney World. When I came back, it was winter and where I live, winter always seems dark and remote, whereas Florida was like HD in comparison. A night after we had returned, I was in bed wishing that we were back in Florida where it was warm and sunny, since I had felt that I was just starting to get comfortable before being jerked back on a plane. I will admit, it was with such awareness that I was not where I wanted to be that I began to tear up. The door to my mom's room opened, and she called my name. I went into her room and we talked for a long time. I felt better after that and even closer to my mom. We had always been good friends, even when I was little and still in elementary school. All throughout my life, I have found that my mindset has been the same. I would come to think in the same manner, as though I have been the same age my whole life. I enjoy the fact that my parents and me were more friends than one in charge of the other. I have seen households where the latter has been true, and it saddens me to see the disrespect the child will hold for their parents. I see this most in parents that have been divorced and are living more difficult lives taking care of the kids and holding up a steady job. I can understand the stress, but kids need to know that they are loved. I suppose that's true with anyone. We all want to be appreciated and admired for who we are. What we first must find out is that we all have to believe that we can be admired. One does not gain appreciation when their mindset is one of disliking their body and hating themselves. You will find that it cannot get you anywhere. Confidence is your friend. Embrace it, since it feels a hell of a lot better than believing that you are not worthy for something that you could easily have otherwise.

So what was I saying before? Hang on, let me read back a bit...

So, back to my jet lag. Right now, I need to come up with a solution. Perhaps making a list of what I find useful and happy about where I live, both location and residence. I could always read a book. I have some summer reading to complete and the stories are interesting so far. I am happy to be reading The Book Thief, which is a book that has been recommended to me numerous times, but I have never quite gotten around to it. For history, I have been given a book called Outcasts United. I cannot tell you exactly what it is about, but I like it. Usually, the history classes will land you with a book that is depressing, and one you would really rather leave alone, but yet you are made to read it. I have standards when it comes to books, although I rarely leave a book before I've finished. I am happy to say that this year is different. Perhaps I will like my sophomore year after all.

The Flight Begins

Here I am, on an airplane traveling to California before taking another plane to Hawaii. According to the time now, there are about 3 more hours before we land. Could this flight GET any longer??! I have to wait until I can get into a wifi zone so I can copy/paste this onto my blog.

Not a lot of eventful things have been going on. I had to wake up at 6 AM so we could finish packing, plus the usual morning routines of showers and breakfast. Speaking of which, I'm kinda hungry. It's just an hour earlier than my dinner. Because of the time difference, my internal clock is just about to become confused, and just when it thinks it has got everything all sorted out, it will proceed to get all screwed up again.

And then there's the return trip. According to my dad, this is the longest flight we will to through, even counting the way back. I wish I brought another book. After the first 3 yours, I managed to get about halfway through. It won't last long at that rate. Luckily I managed to choose something that peaks my interest from my bookshelf. I chose this book called The Dark Hills Divide by Patrick Carman. It is the first book of a trilogy.

I also brought my summer reading book for history along, but that involves a lot of note-taking and paper, so I am going to save that for a time when I have more space to spread out with less turbulence.

On the plus side, I've got my music! Recently, my iPod had problems with my Rhapsody app. I could still listen to my songs on shuffle, but not if I wanted to find a specific song. My dad tried to fix it and soon concluded that the only way to fix things was to delete and redownload it, thus erasing all my songs. I was a little pissed about it for a while, and am now pledged not to use Rhapsody again. I have switched over officially to iTunes and YouTube. So far everything seems to be working fine. Right now I am just wishing I had thought ahead as much as my brother and downloaded a couple movies.

Returned from Italy

Today was the last day of this week's cooking. So for the last day, we had a cooking challenge! We were given a box of various ingredients that we had cooked with throughout the week. Our objective was to use all the ingredients in the box in at least one dish making a main dish, an appetizer or side dish, and a dessert. While we were allowed to follow some recipes that we used throughout the week, we had to change it in some way. We were split up into two groups. There were 11 of us, so there was one group of five and another group of six. I was placed in the group of six. I have to say that the other group was given the easier box. I mean, they were given a container of Nutella! There's a lot you can do with that! (they ended up making a crostata with peaches. Real pretty). For an appetizer, our group decided to make some Polpettine. I guess that's Italian for 'meatballs,' cause that's what they are. To change it up, instead of using ground beef, we used ground sausage, which was luckily one of our ingredients. Then some other people on our team made a sauce using onion powder, garlic powder, Italian spices, and seasonings to taste. When I tasted it, I absolutely loved it! I enjoyed the fact that they were bite size, which made them easier to eat. For our main dish, we made some gnocchi with a pesto cream sauce. It took a while to make simply because we had a great quantity. For dessert, we made Amaretti cookies, some of them sandwiched together with orange ganache, and others with an almond ganache. I apologize if I spelled that word wrong, I don't know how to spell it and neither does my computer. We added one other dish as a side because we had some ingredients left over. We made a Caprese salad. Our creativity overall won us the contest. As a reward, we were given each a ceramic paring knife. The other group got non-ceramic knives (so hah!).

This week has been very fun. Next on my agenda is Hawaii! I will be sure to take a lot of pictures, by request of my family. At some point, we will be horseback riding and zip-lining! I've always wanted to do both those things!! Plus, I hear the food is gonna be great, and I'm all about the food.

I hope everything goes well and it's as amazing as it is said to be!

Day 2: Florence

Day 2 of Culinary Underground is complete. Today we cooked food from Florence. As described to us all at the beginning of the class, Florence is a place that is a bit poorer than Venice. They are the only place that makes bread without salt. When we made our dishes, though, we did use salt. We learned how to de-bone a chicken and we stuffed the with pesto. We also made some gnocchi, if I'm spelling it right. I just used the spell check on that word. Along with that, three different kinds of cookies, along with their glutton-free versions, were made. It was really good and it filled me up enough so that I didn't need dinner!

Well, that's all I have to say for now!

Traditional Vienna

Today was Day 1 of my cooking class Culinary Underground. If you check out their website, you will see a picture of the kitchen that they worked in. This week is a tour of Italy and the dishes they traditionally cook there. Today was Venice. The very first thing that they taught us was how to dice up an onion. Now I know which part of the onion releases the juices that make you cry. Along with that, I know how to mince some garlic and make it into a paste, in case I want to make garlic bread at some point. Then we moved on to making a crostata, which is basically a tart. Overall, we made cristini, some risotto, and some other things. They all have Italian names, so I forgot some of them.  It was so much fun!

When I cook, I feel like I really know what I'm doing. Even though I had never made any of these recipes in my life, I felt like I knew what it would end up looking like. If they asked me to get something up to a simmer, then I would know exactly what that looked like. Maybe it comes from my history of watching cooking shows and seeing how relaxed they all are when they are in the kitchen.

So this morning I was reading an email form my good friend Sue, and I found out that my mom had worked in her aunt's restaurant for a part of her life. This is something that I had never known before. If I'd known, it would have been a great thing to talk about, and I would have felt more confident becoming a chef. Then she could tell me firsthand what it was really like.

Still, these classes are exciting me for the future. I know now that, with my current desires, being a chef would be perfect for me.

Tomorrow's class is Florence!

Going Live! As soon as I figure it out!

Life is good. It is, and will always contain, a sense of majesty. It's all a bunch of wonderment. What we go through each day has its own purpose. Not the purpose of some greater being guiding us towards some predetermined destiny. On the contrary, we guide ourselves towards the goal we had set for ourselves that is born from our wanting. (I figure that since this is my blog that I can sprinkle my beliefs in here as much as I want).

As far as going live, I have decided to do it! However, I have searched this entire site and have absolutely no idea how to do it. I can't find the button that allows this to come off the privacy setting. I may have to make an entirely new blog and re-invite my followers. That's fine and all, but it would all be so much simpler if I just had the one that I could update. I'm sure my computer expert of a brother Taylor will be able to help me out. He added a "reply" button onto his own, after all.

Tomorrow, I start cooking classes. I will be learning my way around different Italian dishes. I expect to have so much fun, and I will hopefully take the lessons I learn with me through my life here. I mean, it's making FOOD! How boring can that really be? Even if the instructors were doing all the cooking and we just watched, it would still be just like a cooking show, and I really enjoy those.

I want to brush on that for a bit. The fact that I like cooking shows, that is. You see, it makes me pause because when my mom was still around, she would always be on the cooking channels recording some shows and other times just as a nice background show while she played games on POGO. I think the reason I have turned so willingly to cooking as a career is because when I am in the kitchen, I am brought back to my memories of cooking alongside Mom; helping her out with dinner. I remember that on those nights, no matter what we made, it would always taste especially delicious.

I think so often about my future, whether it is the time I will spend in college or when I am done with that an onto my career. I have my own ideas for how everything will turn out (happily, of course). Right now, I am remembering how fondly I used to place my parents, especially my mother, into that lifestyle. I have been on the fence about whether in the future I will have kids. I feel I would be able to succeed as a mother, but I just don't want to have to go through what has been described as the most painful experience a woman would ever have to go through (thanks for that, by the way, Mr. Reynolds). I always thought that, if I were to have kids, it would all be okay, because Mom would be there to help me out. I know my dad will be there, but he doesn't understand me as much as Mom did. Plus, she gave birth to triplets! I would know that she was telling the truth when she told me how painless and simple everything could be. If a doctor tells me these things, there is no possible way I could believe them unless it is my second child or something.

But I don't have to think about that now. It's not like I plan to get pregnant in my teenage years. Hell, I don't even have a boyfriend.
It is so weird to think that I will be a sophomore in this upcoming year. Man, I'm getting old. It all happens so fast. I remember my first day coming into the high school as if it were just last week. More responsibility will be thrown onto my shoulders. I'm ready for it. I was born free, and that is how I will live. I will be laid back, expectant, and free as a bird (a bird that is not in a zoo, that is). It's just like that poem I wrote She Lives. I think I put that on here, so I won't type it up again. I wrote that because it is how I would like to be 10 years from now. By then I will be 25, a few years out of college. I've heard that those are the scariest times in your life because you have to support yourself, and even though you can trust some to float you a few bucks, you are dependent on yourself. You can take it one of two ways. You could think of how scary it is and just pray that you make it, or you can take it as an exciting challenge and see how wonderfully it feels to be out in the world, just like your parents. So many people are successful, so there is no reason that I can't be myself.

Going Live

I have been battling in my mind the decision to perhaps make this blog less private and let the world read what I write. I know I'm no poet, although I do write the occasional piece. The fun of it would be that I would have fans that would willingly read what I have to write. I have no idea what that feels like, so it would be nice to find out. It's just, the last few posts I have written have gotten no views. The reason I put things on here is because I would accept people to read it. It might be time to expand to a broader audience. I mean, if my teacher can do it, then so can I! Who knows? It might be fun.