I really just want to be alone at this point.

I think I might have made a mistake. Which would normally be totally fine because I make mistakes all the time. We all do, we're only human. Except it's not okay this time because it involves someone else and their feelings.

You know how some people say that a guy and a girl can't just be friends? That eventually one of them will end up falling for liking the other? I think I've finally come to this realization. You see, I've been pretty good friends with this sophomore boy since last year. We used to be in band together, before I quit, so we got to know each other through all the band stuff. We've hung out with a few times, with other friends present, and text each other. I should have stopped it though. He's told me multiple times that he likes me. Every time I've told him that I don't feel the same way about him. I just want to be friends. After I'd tell him that he would stop texting me, and then start again. I don't know, maybe he thought that some day he would have a chance. I know. I should have stopped it. But we were really good friends.

For a while I honestly did think that we could just be friends. That he'd finally accepted it or stopped liking me that way or something. So when he asked me to go to homecoming with him, I said I would. [Are you cringing yet? I am.] I really didn't think anything of it. Two of his friends were going with mine so I thought we were all going as friends. Now I can see this was not the case at all. The whole night he kept hitting on me. I obviously won't lie to myself, every girl likes to be hit on. But I knew this was going no where. It got to the point where I was just trying to avoid him. I mean, it was my senior homecoming, I really just wanted to dance and have a good time with my friends.

This whole time I've never wanted to be with him. There's no iffy feelings or maybe possibly I do. Trust me on this, when you know, you know. He keeps saying we should hang out sometime. He also keeps tweeting about it. Which kind of peeves me because I hate when other people know about my business without me offering it. I feel horrible about the whole thing. I never wanted to hurt him, I still don't. But I'm thinking that I have to tell him we can't even be friends anymore. It's just not possible. There's no way to do this without hurting him or making his friends hate me. Besides actually being with him, which isn't an option. I'm not going to lie to myself, him, and everyone else. In the end, that would hurt more than cutting it off now would.

I hate this feeling of regret and guiltiness. I hate how one person can make you feel so awful. I hate knowing it's mostly my fault. And I especially hate having to be the bad guy and do the dirty work.

What is a lobster, for 100.

As of right now, this is me.

Allow me to explain myself. This summer I managed to land myself a pretty sweet babysitting job.When I say land I mean my best friend Kayla got her license suspended for the whole summer and was forced to work at her mom's orthodontist office therefore giving me her babysitting job. Bad for her = good for me. The kid's name is Reese and in 13 days [he informed me this today] he will be 9. His mom, Daphne, works with Kayla's mom, so when Kayla had to give up the job Della, Kayla's mom, suggested me. Reese has two older brothers, one's 18 and the other's 15. I say it's sweet because he's such an awesome kid. He talks nonstop and is really easy going. I babysit Monday through Thursday, 9-5ish.

They have a pool membership to a private pool literally 2 minutes away from their house, so I go for free. We went Tuesday and Wednesday this week for the first time. I didn't do much swimming, mostly just read the newest Sarah Dessen book while on the layout chairs. I swear I put on sunscreen! I promise! But my skin is so fair that it really didn't matter. So I'm burnt all over and it hurts to move once I've been in one position for long enough. I woke up this morning and I guess I got up too fast. I started feeling light headed [I've never fainted but I can only guess that's what it's like], pukey, my lips and face were chalk white, and to top it all off my burn was killing me. Thankfully, it's gotten better. Which is fantastic because tomorrow afternoon my mom, dad, brother Conor, Aunt Patti, and I are leaving for Colorado until next Friday. Yep, I sure picked a good time to get burnt.

I realize I've taken a pretty long sabbatical from blogging as it is. But I promise to be a better blogger when I get back. I promisepromisepromise. While I'm at it, thank you to everyone who complimented me on my last blog!

One more little slice of life, I met with my guidance counselor last week. Know what this means? For the first time since the 5th grade I won't be in band. GASP! It feels weird, yet slightly liberating. And sad, so many of my friends are bandies, but I can't take it any more. Simply put, band has gotten out of control. There are so many underclassmen that the director is constantly trying to discipline them. But he's so laid back, he lets it go and lets it go until it's finally gone too far. Long story short we spend more time dealing with immature freshmen than we do playing. Band politics, I know, I know. So instead I'm taking Intro to Business. And I will most definitely spend my school year being stalked by the band director.

Hope your summers are going good so far!

WAH WAH WAH.

WAAANT.

My life since Sunday:

• Got home at 7am from post prom. Sleep until 2 pm. Woke up with a cold.
• Battling this cold with tons of coffee, clementines, and cold meds.
• Still haven't made up on lost sleep from the past 3 weeks. Kate is zombie.
• Army recruiter came to P.E. class and made us do PT exercises. Kate is zombie with sore muscles.
• Every time I sneeze my abs feel like they're trying to give birth.
• Ran the mile today. On the track outside in 50 degree, windy weather during 1st hour.
• Because of the extreme coldness it felt like my thighs were being pricked with needles before I ceased to have any feeling in them at all. [Or that bitch Cassie who's been talking about me has a voodoo doll and decided to torture me as I ran the mile. No resentment there. As my friend J.B. says, she's just mad because she looks like a cheeseburger. Don't ask how it's possible, it just is.]
• After running the mile it felt like I was breathing in thumbtacks while trying to stem the river that was pouring out of my nose [that's gross, but it's the truth.]

So as you can guess I'm a pretty sight right now.

• I'm walking like an idiot right now because on top of having lost a bunch of sleep I'm sore from the PT exercises and running a mile.
• I walk around school with that awkward face one makes when about to sneeze. But of course I don't acutally sneeze that often so I just look like a dumb ass.
• I have bags under my eyes [see first bullet].
• My hair needs to be trimmed. [This has nothing to do with my week, but still.]

Not that I'm complaining or anything! The plus side? No school on Friday because of the band trip to St. Louis. Wooh! And I promise promise promise that I'll post my prom pictures soon. I just haven't gotten around to uploading them to my computer.

Twister!

I got a dollar today when I got to school. Apparently it's safe driving week, or something like that, and the SADD members were in the parking lots giving a dollar for every person who was buckled up. Woo! But, sadly, that's pretty much the only good thing about today. Nothing bad really happened and I'm in a good mood. It's just been one of those blah days. The good part of this week? Tomorrow's a half day and we don't go back to school until next Tuesday.

Yesterday was insaaaane! We had a jazz band spaghetti dinner at the civic center last night and the whole time the weather was getting crazy. It got cold and then hot and then it started to rain. Then the sky started changing colors. Like 3 different tornadoes touched down last night. One of which was about 4 or 5 miles from my neighborhood, 15 miles from where I was at the time. Thankfully, no one got hurt. A couple houses in a town an hour away got leveled. Isn't that insane? I can't imagine what it would be like for your house just to be completely gone. Not there anymore. My uncle swears that one of them touched down by his apartment, which is downtown. We're pretty sure he's making it up since it wasn't on the news. I think something like that would be a major story, just saying. While we were at the dinner my friend A.J. was working himself into a complex. It was pretty funny, he kept running to the doors to check what it looked like outside. We're never going to let him live it down.

The craziest part is that 15 years ago yesterday another tornado ripped through downtown. The town where I live in is about 80,000 people [I live in the suburbs so I go to a school out in the country], so it's pretty crazy that there would be a tornado downtown. I sort of remember the day it happened, too. My family was eating at Burger King when the sirens started to go off.  My dad went out to the car to listen to the radio when he heard where the tornado was, right down the street that Burger King is on. So he comes back inside and a minute later we look out the windows and see it. It didn't look how the movies always make them look. It just looked like this huge black thing moving down the street, it was sort of funnel shaped, but not completely. My brother started screaming, "The world's ending!" over and over again. For some reason, my family was the only ones in Burger King to take cover. We ran into the bathroom to wait it out. Nothing happened to us, but it destroyed part of the town. [Some of these facts are from what my parents told me. I mostly just remember the huge black shape, my brother screaming, and hiding in the bathroom. And even then it seems more of like a dream than anything else.]

Home Sweet Wal-Mart

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to live in Wal-Mart? I mean, its got everything you could ever want. [For the most part.] Some of their clothing is actually pretty nice. You could camp out in the camping section at night with a sleeping bag and tent. They've got a plethora of food. All the entertainment you could ever want. All the personal hygiene stuff. It'd be perfect! I think I might substitute Wal-Mart with Target, though. When my town finally got one I thought it was just the best thing ever. 

If you've ever seen the movie Where the Heart Is starring Natalie Portman, then you can probably see where I got my inspiration from. I saw that movie once and for some reason it made me really want to try to live in Wal-Mart. Never mind all the uncleanliness of it all. What I can't imagine, though, is having no place to live. No place to call home. I was pretty young when I first saw the movie and it devastated me that she had nowhere to live. It just blows my mind that some people don't have a place to call home. No place where they can just curl up and hide from the world on a bad day. Whenever I see people living on the streets I'm always reminded of how thankful I should feel to be blessed with a home.

Another thing I'm thankful for is contacts. I really cannot stand to wear my glasses. Which I had to do today. I use to never have allergies, at all. I considered myself pretty lucky since both my mom and brother have terrible allergies. I thought that I was going to be like my dad and have none at all. But I've noticed that around this time of year my left eye gets bloodshot and starts to burn. I can barely keep my eyes open. So I was forced to take them out and wear my glasses. Of course, I could be completely wrong. I never do take out my contacts, ever, even when I sleep. Maybe it's both.

And as for a third random topic, I'm going to speak briefly about boy troubles. [Why do I suddenly have so many?] Well, you see. There's this freshmen boy, we'll say Dawson, who I became pretty good friends with, mostly because of band. Don't think I go around making friends with freshmen boys. But next thing I know he's got one of our mutual friends asking if I like him. As in like like. Sigh. Why can't I ever just have a guy friend who's not interested in dating?! I was trying not to be mean about the whole thing, because I still wanted to be his friend. But I think I made matters worse.

I told her I didn't like him like that, but she's a little scatterbrained and never told him that. So I'm thinking that he knows I don't like him, and we can still be friends. But then last week I find she never told him and he texts me saying, "Do you see this becoming more than a friendship?" !##%^#% I knew it was too good to be true. So I said I didn't think so. And now things have gotten awkward. My life, I swear to God. Why do the ones I want to just be friends with want to date me?! And why do the ones I actually want to date act like they have no clue?! The bright side: I've gotten good at letting guys down easy. As easy as it can be when you're telling them you don't want to date.

May the force be with you! [God bless Star Wars marathons.]

My Hectic Week

I know this might not technically be "very soon" according to regular time, but in Kate time I think I'm doing pretty good. Last Tuesday was the WYSE Sectionals at EIU. EIU's about an hour and fifteen minutes away, so we had to catch the bus before school at like 7:30. Not too bad, that's usually when I leave my house in the morning. We did terrible, everyone kind of expected that though. My friend Caleb finished 3rd in computer graphics, so he'll go to the state competition at the U of I. One plus was the guy sitting to my left. He was very good looking. (Maybe that's why I didn't do so good? I try to give myself more credit than that, it was hard. But still. I'm only human. Plus the guy on my right was annoying. He'd get done super early and just stare at us. I don't care if you're a genius, that's no excuse to be rude.)

We got done with testing around lunch time. So we went to the food court in the student union for lunch. I saw my cousin Kelsi there (she goes to college at EIU). I didn't get to talk to her for long, unfortunately, because the band members had to get on the bus to go back to the college in our town for the band festival. Which, I have to admit, sucked. We played last so, of course, everyone had left. My grandparents came, though, and my mom, too, since she works there.

Mass band

On Thursday we had the all county mass band. Basically what it is is 7 bands from the same county all get together at one of the high schools. In the morning the honor band (about 50 students) rehearses with the guest director. We eat lunch and then the rest of the bands come (about 250 including those from the morning) and rehearse all afternoon. We eat dinner, get changed into dress clothes, and have a concert at 7. The way our band director does it is he takes volunteers to do honor band. Except this year there weren't enough to picked people. I was picked. Yaaaay, not. Because of this I played for pretty much 12 hours straight. This is extremely tiring, more than you would think. The guest conductor was kind of a jerk. He kept throwing mini-tantrums. Of course, you know how they are, so at the actual concert he was Mr. Personality. The good thing was that the girl sitting next to me in honor band was hilarious. She was so sarcastic, we bonded over the fact that neither of us wanted to be there.

Now we get to the good part of my week. The St. Patrick's Day Parade! As you may or may not know St. Patty's day is March 17. Well our town, like most, has the celebration the Saturday before. My family is of Irish heritage and takes extreme pride in it. (We're not like recently descendant, our family's been here since the Civil War. But hey, we're still Irish!) My dad also belongs to the local KC Hall (he's one degree from being one of the head honchos) and so about 10 years ago they approached him about organizing the parade. And, of course, he jumped at the chance. My dad looooves St. Patty's Day. So the month before we spend our time contacting groups and sending out messages to papers about finding people to be in the parade. This year we had 55 groups enter (well over 900 people) and since the weather was so nice (it can get iffy) a lot more showed up unannounced.

A company downtown has a massive parking lot so they let us use that to organize all the people. We break it up into 6 sections. A bunch of my aunts, uncles, spouses, cousin, my brother, mom, and I all volunteer to help organize. The KC Hall pays for us to have breakfast, so we all have breakfast at the Downtown Cafe at 7:45 and get ready. It gets so chaotic when people start showing up. My mom and her friend Sue guard the entrance and tell people where to go. And then the various family members are split up between the sections and tell the people in what order they go. A local Verizon store loans us walkie-talkies and the park district loans us 4 golf cart. It's chaotic, but fun.

Bagpipers at the KC Hall

The fire engines and police cars always lead the parade. Well one of the firemen asked my dad if he had anyone who wanted to ride. That way we could tell them to slow down if there was too much of a gap. My dad told my aunt Mary and me that we could do it. (Originally he asked my cousin Michael and me, but Michael, Conor, and my cousin Aaron were taking a golf cart in the parade and throwing candy.) It was so much fun! We waved and I even got to make the siren go. Basically all my childhood dreams came true. (I sat up front with the driver, who was middle aged. My aunt sat in the back with others. The other young, hot firemen. Not fair Aunt Mary. Not fair.) Then when it was over we went down to the KC Hall for the big celebration. We ate lunch, there were carriage rides, and of course anyone over 21 got drunk. Typical St. Patrick's Day, but it's my dad's favorite day of the year.

Well that was nice and long. I promise the next one will be short, and soon. Soon in normal time, not Kate time. Have a good week!

This is not a post. This is my Trig homework.

Or not. I'm trying to multitask by catching up on my YouTube subscriptions and doing my Trigonometry homework at the same time. As you can I've become distracted. I don't know why I always try to do my homework this way. I almost always end up here or on Facebook. (Usually Facebook, it's too addicting!)

This post is mainly going to be me complaining about one of my frenemies at school. So if you don't like complaining or ragging on people, I'm sorry. But it's just one of those things you can't get over! She just bugs me so much. I'm thinking that maybe if I write it down I can put it out of my mind. I guess we'll see if it works.

Well, in my class at school there's four of us who have maintained a 4.0 all throughout high school. So we're all in the running for valedictorian. (I say in the running because one of my former friends was too, but she got a B last semester so she's not any more.) It's me, two other girls, and a guy (one of my friends). One of the girls, we'll call her Jeannine, is what I consider to be a frenemy. We actually used to be pretty tight, she took me to a Green Day concert our sophomore year. But we kind of have that underlying tension thing where we always one to do better. Okay, I didn't really feel that way until I could tell she did. And I, having a naturally competitive nature, joined in the madness. Except instead of saying things to get under her skin, her tactic, I just ignore whatever she says about her grades. I can tell that gets under her skin. She loves to brag and have people talk about it.

We're both in band together. Luckily we don't play the same instrument so there really isn't a possibly of competition there. But we are in WYSE together. I don't know if you know what WYSE is, so I'll quickly explain. It's basically competitive test taking (nerd alert!) and there's six different categories. We're both in the English category. She got first at Regionals (our whole team did actually) and of course bragged. (Regionals were last week when I was sick so I couldn't go.) Well Sectionals are in a few weeks. And they just happen to be on the same day as an all day band festival at the university in town.

There's four of us who are in both band and WYSE, and at first we were just going to skip the band festival. But the problem is that our band is so small and we're all first chairs, so if we leave our band director thinks we shouldn't go at all. Which is, apparently, a problem. So he and our WYSE coach worked it out so we take our tests in the morning and the bus takes us to the university in the afternoon to play. The problem there is we'd miss the awards ceremony at WYSE, which is in the afternoon. So everyone threw a fit, and it was this huge deal.

Jeannine's dad wrote this kind of ass hole-ish email to our band director basically saying that she wasn't going to go to the band festival. The email ended with 'That you so much for your cooperation, as always." We-e-ell, looks like someone won't be getting the MVP senior award in band (the band director loves me, I'm a shoe-in, anyways). So then the band director threw a fit and told everyone they were going no matter what. And the WYSE coach told us all that we had to go to the festival, she wasn't going to let us stay.

Honestly, I really have no problem with this. I like band. I mean I signed up for it because I wanted to. I knew when I signed up that there were probably going to be conflicts. I mean we've all been in band since the fifth grade, we all know this by now. But ever since this was decided on Tuesday little miss perfection has been complaining. "It's just band, it doesn't even matter!" "This is so dumb, academics are more important!" Okay, not to some people. And how is academic to sit around for an hour waiting to get find out if you even placed?! She always says things that offend people, and she doesn't even realize it. Grrrr! She just pisses me off so much. If you don't like it then quit. That's my advice. And don't get all offended and huffy with me when I don't agree with you. Your opinion isn't necessarily always right. If it was some basketball or track thing you wouldn't be complaining at all. In fact, you'd be super pissed if they didn't work it out for you. So get off your high horse, the world doesn't revolve around you.

Okay. I've vented. I feel slightly better. I just hope she never finds this. I take that back, I really don't care either way. Oh, and tomorrow we're supposed to take our pinatas home. We still haven't decided who gets to take it home so things could get interesting...

Have a happy Friday tomorrow!