Your mind is like a parachute, It doesn't work if it's not open.

We can complain because rose bushes have thorns, or rejoice because thorns have roses. You decide.

The worst battles we have to fight are between what we know and what we feel.

Sometimes the most important lessons, are the ones we end up learning the hard way.


Wednesday, February 29, 2012

CONNECTIONS

Author's Note: In this essay I tried to explain why the people you think can help you sometimes always can't. Also I was trying to work on my goals of transitioning between paragraphs and developing different sentence begins.   

“I know all those astronomers I’d watched an hour earlier on CNN can explain just what happened and how and why and they’ll be explaining on CNN tonight and tomorrow and I guess until the next big story happens. I know I can’t explain, because I don’t really know why.”[…] “But the moon wasn’t a half moon anymore. It was tilted and wrong and a three-quarter moon and it got larger, way larger, large like a moon rising on the horizon, only it wasn’t rising. It was smack in the middle of the sky, way too big, way to visible. You could see details on the craters without the binoculars that before I’d only seen with Matt’s telescope.(19)  Some people think they know everything, whereas there are people that know they can’t help you but try anyway. It always seems to turn itself around on you, and the people you relied on the most are useless and the unhelpful people turn out to be the ones that take charge. Sometimes the “helpful” people in the world, like in this case, the astronomers, could not help anything, and the citizens had to live with the moon and try and just figure out what’s going on. Life as we knew it by Susan Beth Pfeffer. To the readers always try to succeed in the things that you do and try to be successful but even though you do have a big scientific job where you think you can help you will never be perfect at it. 

In this book Miranda and her brother live in northern Pennsylvania with their mom and an asteroid hits the moon and brings it a lot closer to Earth. In their little town this was really cool and everyone on their street was out to watch it. When the asteroid hit there were some cheers and then as the moon started approaching earth there were screams and people were running all over the place like chickens with their heads cut off. No one knew what was going on. I feel this way sometimes when I’m given directions and don’t know what I’m doing. When I have to run a machine that could kill someone while were splitting wood I feel a little uneasy. These people were unsure of the unknown and were scared. 

Even though being scared was a big part of this book second guessing yourself was another. Their where people second guessing God because of what was going on, and their own choices because they didn’t know what to do. But the biggest thing was when people in the town started arguing with each other and eventually everyone was second guessing their actions. I have second guessed myself every since I was really little. But what seems to be the biggest thing I’m doing know is second guessing whether my bowling ball will curve or not on the ally. So I swing my arm across my body but the people of this little town had bigger things to worry about.

This was a book that I really had a chance to connect with it was hard at first but as I read deeper into the story I could really understand what was going on. I never could understand why I second guess myself or feel scared when I know I’m doing something right. But in this book it really helped me to understand those things, and it’s all because I want to make sure everything comes out perfect in the end which is never true because nothing and nobody is perfect. Everyone is like that, not only me it is hard to just understand why. But now I know so don’t ever try and make anything perfect because it will never be but you can always try your hardest to succeed the best that you can.

Friday, February 3, 2012

CHANGE

Author's Note: In this essay I tried to work on how change not only affects you but everyone around you. Also I tried to work on my transitions between paragraphs to give it a better flow to the paper.


Your left all alone in a city where everyone is turning mad and you have to fend for yourself and your two younger sisters, you would be scared. Which is what happened to Alex in Susan Beth Pfeffer’s book The Dead and the Gone. Now and then life throws you curve balls and you have to catch them and run with all you’ve got and on the way you may change.

 Change is a big thing that different people experience in different ways. Slow change is easier to adapt to than fast change. Leisurely change consists of something along the lines of you take something and slowly change it to something you like. In this book slow change happened not as present as fast change but it was still there. The main characters realized that their parents were never coming back. That was hard to adjust to at first and then the realized that they had to live with it and move on. Occasionally things like this may happen and you have to move on and deal with the consequences.

Even though slow change is hard to deal with fast change sometimes hits really hard and you almost don’t know what to do. Alex, the main character, was hit hard like this when he realized that he had to keep himself alive and his two younger sisters. Even imaging this would be hard, on how this could even happen. Often in the way; that you have to roll with the punches and not let anyone or anything get in your way.

Even though slow and sudden change is hard to deal with personal change hits home in this book. This is because the main character Alex changed so much from the beginning of the book. Even though in the beginning he was just a normal 17 year old with a job and a family. But then when his parents disappeared he kind of took on the parent role of his two sisters. It was really hard to connect with this book though because I have never been put in a situation like that. I’m the youngest in my family and have no siblings.

This book showed me how change affects the lives of not just you but everyone around you. You can just be stubborn, and want everything but you have to give a little to get. That is a hard lesson to learn because when you want something you want it and then when you can’t have it you don’t want anyone to say or do anything to you. So sometimes when you catch that ball and run with it you still have to remember the curve ball was thrown at you first before you got to where you are now.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

GENERATIONS

Author’s Note: I wrote this piece to tell people that every chance you get to spend with your family you should appreciate and this is because not everyone has a family like mine that is together all the time every day. Some families are small and live in different states and sometimes even countries. So when you get to talk to them you need to treat it like it’s the best thing ever.

Everyone knows of things that happened before they were born and are still going on now. Like Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving dinner. Their family has been doing it since before they were born and now are still doing it. Well my family has just that, yes we celebrate Christmas and Thanksgiving. But the biggest thing I think we do is Hunting season which always falls right over Thanksgiving. My family has been doing this since at least 1975. There were 25 people who hunted, and then there was my grandma and aunt and a bunch of other people. When I was born a couple of people stopped hunting because they became too old. Others just stopped hunting with us because they started to move a little slower and didn’t want to hunt with us if they couldn’t do as much as they used to. The saddest part though was a couple of people died and then obviously could not hunt any more. Now we’re down to 8 people. It’s still a lot of fun because all the people who used to hunt with us still come around every year for hunting season. My favorite part of hunting season is that when someone does get a deer and not like we’re trophy hunters we just like the meat in are freezer. But when someone gets a really nice deer you’ve got to take pictures and we hand out trophies. We have three of them BIG BUCK, SMALLEST DEER, and HEAVIEST DEER. It’s the favorite part when someone gets to put the trophy up on their mantle all year long and hope that it stays there till the next year.  I look forward to hunting season every year I get out of school for two days and I get to relax up north with my family and friends. So appreciate every chance you get with your family at your annual events. My families is really strange I know but I love it for what it is and I love them for what they are and nothing can ever change that.  

Sunday, January 15, 2012

FAMILY


Author’s Note: I decided to write this paragraph on a song that has a very funny story in are family. In this piece I wanted to work on my goal of developing a variety of methods to begin sentences and paragraphs. 


Have you ever heard a song that just made you start laughing every time you heard it because you have so much in common with parts of the song? Well in my family there’s this country song by Jason Aldean called my Big Green Tractor. Some of the lyrics are really funny and it’s not just because the song is so weird there’s a little bit more to it. We have tractors up north on are farm, one of them is blue and this was the only one we had before we heard this song. We were sitting at the kitchen table up north playing cards, and this song came on over the radio. We all stopped talking at a random time and just heard on my big green tractor. It was so funny and we all started to laugh. We only have a blue tractor right now but we still think it’s funny. Now that we have this song in our heads all the time when we are up north we will catch each other while were splitting wood or cutting down trees and start laughing really hard. So that’s pretty much it we like to have fun and laugh at each other we can always have fun like that. But the best part is we do everything together. As a family and we need to help each other not trying to do the hard jobs of cutting wood and splitting wood and keeping our land up there running alone.

Thursday, January 12, 2012

DIFFERENCES

Author’s Note: I wrote this paragraph on the point of view of different people on the same thing. I have never done this before and was trying very hard to make you see the point of view of different people. Also in the paragraph I wanted to work on my goal of developing a variety of sentences beginnings. 


Some people see things one way and others see things different. I decided that I was going to test this out and see just what other people thought of this picture, this is what I found. My aunt told me that see thought that this was a picture of the woods. She told me excatally what the picture was and told me what she saw. Then I asked my dad and he said it reminded him of when his family and him went up north every year the week over his birthday. This picture reminds me of my familys land up north in fall, while were out in the woods on the four-wheelers for our last time out there till spring. I thought this was very interesting on how many different people see just one simple picture in many different ways on what it reminds them of. If you looked at this picture what would you get out of it? What would your parents get out of it? What would other family members get out of it? It just depends on what you see, if you have a deep imagination you could make a lot out of this. But, if you see everything in the laterally sense than your not going to get as much out of it. Don’t try to see things in ways everyone else does, do things your own way.

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

SUCCEEDING IN LIFE

Author’s Note: I picked this quote be Albert Einstein because I had put it on my blog a couple of months ago and decided that I should write what I really think about it. I’m not the greatest at interpreting things into what I really think of them. So that is what I’m working on and I’m also trying to reach one of my goals of increasing my use of complex vocabulary.

“IF A IS A SUCCESS IN LIFE, THEN A EQUALS X PLUS Y PLUS Z. WORK IS X; Y IS PLAY; AND Z IS KEEPING YOUR MOUTH SHUT.” ~ ALBERT EINSTEIN

This quote means a lot to me there is a lot of different meanings to it in different ways. I’m going to break it down and tell you what each individualized part means to me. “IF A IS A SUCCESS IN LIFE” this means that if a certain thing means that you succeed reach for that goal and reach for the others but try harder towards this one. “THEN A EQUALS X PLUS Y PLUS Z” this means that just because that one thing makes you successful it’s not the only thing there are many other parts to it. “WORK IS X” you have to work hard in order to succeed and not just say I’m going to this when I grow up you still need to work for it. “Y IS PLAY” you still have to be a kid and play. “AND Z IS KEEPING YOUR MOUTH SHUT” this means that even though you still have the skill level you need to make sure not to push the wrong buttons on anyone. So keep your mouth shut unless it is something really important to make something better. This quote by Albert Einstein means all of these things to me, and is pretty much what I think for myself. So be a success in life but keep your mouth shut when you know you should.

Thursday, January 5, 2012

POINT OF VIEW

Author’s Note: I’m writing this creative writing piece in perspective of a gift I received or bought for Christmas. I’m going to work on putting my commas in the right places.

Packers, have you ever seen a better season. Well I didn’t get to see any of it on TV, but the people who came into the store would always talk around me about how well the Packers were doing. I never thought I would get bought and taking home to be worn by someone, and then one day I was. Some girls’ mom came into the store looking for anything Packers. Then she stumbled upon me. I knew what Christmas presents were and that Christmas was on its way. I knew this because people were always talking about it. So once my new owner purchased me I was wrapped up and put under a tree. I was so excited and couldn’t wait until someone opened me. Once Christmas day came I was really excited when her and her family got home from their Christmas somewhere else they started opening up all the gifts. I was one of the last couple to be opened and when she ripped off the paper and started to open the lid of the box: she started screaming. I was so happy that she was so excited to see me. She put me on right away and didn’t take me off till she went to bed that night. I was so excited to have a new home and an owner that I will always keep warm. Merry Christmas!