what i learned from harry potter:

• happiness can be found, even in the darkest of times, if only one remembers to turn on the light.
• no post on sundays.
• if you want to know what a man’s like, take a good look at how he treats his inferiors, not his equals.
• never trust a rat.
• it takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends.
• never combine fizzing whizbees with puking pastilles.
• humans have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.
• it is possible to be nearly headless.
• don’t trust anything that can think for itself if you can’t see where it keeps its brain.
• mistletoe is often infested with nargles.

the most awkward first impression i've ever given

okay, so there’s this girl who i’m friends with, marleny, and she’s always talking about how amazing her friend isabel is. isabel 2 years younger than us, and i’d always wondered who she was. so i was at the middle school play and saw this girl with a sweatshirt on and it said erhardt on it and i didn’t really think anything of it until i heard someone behind me yell “hi izzy!” so i spun around into her face and was like “you’re isabel erhardt!” and she just kinda stood there like, “uh, yeah..?”

luckily for me, she doesn’t think i’m a complete freak…just a little weird.

first love never dies, but true love can bury it alive.

we met at rehearsal for our middle school play in early february 2009. i was in eighth grade, he was one year younger than me. we started talking via whiteboard, soon exchanged phone numbers, and he asked me out after only a few weeks of (nearly constant) communication.

although my feelings for him were mutual, he was the first person to ever make any sort of move in my direction, and i declined, mostly because i was afraid of my parents. i quickly got over that fear, and in the late night/early morning hours of february 13/14, we became “officially unofficial,” which quickly turned into “in a relationship.” we held hands, we cuddled backstage, we exchanged kisses and i love yous.
being in the awkward teen-aged transition stage, having a hand to hold and a shoulder to cry on was exactly what i needed, and what he provided. but he gave me so much more during those six months. he gave me confidence i never thought i would have. he gave me knowledge in areas i was completely ignorant of before i met him. he gave me a reason to wake up every morning, a reason to smile all day, and a reason to stay up all night. but most of all, he gave me friendship; something i had never truly felt before.

as the relationship progressed, our feelings continued to grow more and more passionate. poems were written, memories were made, and sparks flew. but, as i’ve learned, time turns flames to embers. after weeks of constant attempts to rekindle that fire, we both kind of realized that we had gotten too serious too fast, and it was time to let it burn out.

i still care for him, a lot more than i should, and i wish he could say the same about me. i haven’t felt anything close to what i felt for him since it ended (and believe me, i’ve tried). but i continue to remind myself that the oh-so-cliched “mr. right” is out there for me somewhere.

blogging about blogging.

"blogging: never have so many people with so little to say said so much to so few."

-(i wish i knew where that quote originally came from.)

i think good blogs are hard to come by. anyone can create a blog, but it takes someone special to be a blogger. blogging is so much more than some sort of online diary; you have to write about something that people care about. no one cares what you had for breakfast. a successful blogger is someone who writes something intelligent and relatable on a regular basis, not someone who rambles on about their life and how much it sucks. you can't just randomly sit down at your computer and type feverishly about your day. it takes a blogger to write a good blog.

i'm not one of those people. i'm not a good blogger at all. i blog--in this case--because my teacher tells me to. but honestly, a bunch of high schoolers talking about their teenaged lives...every once in a while you get something good. but in general, it's not the greatest reading material.
oh yeah, and i'd be a lot more comfortable blogging if i didn't know that all my classmates and my english teacher were going to read it. it just makes me feel weird. like i have to censor things.

bucket list.

• give blood 2-23-11
• ride a unicycle
• paint a dog/cat's toenails
• learn another language
• sing karaoke
• ride in an airplane
• visit another country
• spend a day at the smithsonian
• volunteer at a soup kitchen
• write a letter to the editor
• visit the holocaust museum in washington dc
• make an origami crane
• have a star wars marathon
• have a harry potter marathon
• buy lunch for a hobo
• adopt a child
• write an interesting christmas letter
• attend an abortion protest/pro-life rally
• go to time's square on new year's eve
• watch a broadway play
• witness an eclipse
• get a poem/photo published
• participate in a flash mob
• read the harry potter books back-to-back
• see taylor swift in concert.

this is not a love story

this is a story of boy meets girl. the boy, tom hansen, of margate, new jersey, grew up believing that he'd never truly be happy until the day he met the one. this belief stemmed from early exposure to sad british pop music and a total misreading of the movie 'the graduate'. the girl, summer finn, of shinnecock, michigan, did not share this belief. since the disintegration of her parent's marriage she'd only love two things. the first was her long dark hair. the second was how easily she could cut it off and not feel a thing. tom meets summer on january 8th. he knows almost immediately she is who he has been searching for. this is a story of boy meets girl, but you should know upfront, this is not a love story.

-500 days of summer

when i think of love, i think of cheesy, redundant chick flicks with identical story lines. boy meets girl, boy/girl falls in "love," boy/girl meets an obstacle, boy/girl overcomes the obstacle, boy and girl get together, boy and girl live happily ever after, the end.

personally, i'm kind of sick of happy endings. i'm sick of wasting 2 hours of my life watching people meet, fall in love, and live happily ever after.

i want a realistic story of boy meets girl.

what would you do if you weren't afraid?

i have the worst aichmophobia. having a pin pointed at me or a knife within my sight makes me cringe and want to get as far away from it as possible. they scare me the most when someone is handling them. seeing something sitting around with no chance of being handled doesn't bother me at all. i'm totally fine when the object is in my own hands, but if a person were to attempt to hand it to me, i'd quickly back away. you'd have to set it down and step away from it before i'll touch it.

my aichmophobia started out as a more common trypanophobia, which is a specific form of aichmophobia. trypanophobia is a fear of medical procedures involving injections or hypodermic needles. aichmophobia is a fear of pins, needles, or any other sharp/pointy objects. even pictures of hypodermic needles make me cringe and have to look away for a moment to compose myself. i cry at the doctor's office when i have to get a shot. they always tell me it won't hurt; but i'm not afraid of the pain. i'm afraid of the needle. i'm not really sure why.

this week, i did something that i've always wanted to do. i signed up with my high school to give blood. i've always wanted to give blood for some reason, but i've never been old enough. this month, i'm going to overcome my aichmophobia and give blood at our high school's blood drive.

there’s only so many times you can allow someone to let you down before you can’t handle the disappointment anymore.

when things change, people change, and it doesn’t mean you forget the past, it simply means you try to move on and treasure the memories. letting go doesn’t mean giving up, it means accepting things that weren’t meant to be.

there’s a point in life when you get tired of chasing everyone, trying to fix everything, but its not giving up. you’ve got to do what’s right for you even if it hurts. i’ve come to realize that in the end, everyone turns out to be the exact person they swore they’d never become. and i’ve learned that even the one person that wasn’t supposed to let us down probably will.

a home away from home

on saturday, i went to solo/ensemble contest with a bus full of band and choir students from my high school. we've spent the last few months preparing solos and ensembles for this contest. the bus was filled with anxious air. i personally was involved in three performances that day; a show choir ensemble, a mixed woodwind trio, and a vocal solo.

when we finally got to the contest site, lakeville south high school, i was amazed at how big it was. i mean, i'd expected it to be bigger than our high school, but this place was huuuge!

after i performed the show choir ensemble and the woodwind trio, i had about 3 hours of free time before my solo. i spent most of this time walking around the school and listening to other performances. i loved just walking through the hallways and hearing music from every corner. a violinist going through their solo, a group of saxophones warming up, a soloist singing scales.

i found that, in the most unfamiliar of places, i felt very at home. in the blanket of music that surrounded me was one of the most comfortable, welcoming, and beautiful places i've ever been.

the impossible

on december 23, my best friend's dad was cleaning snow off their roof when he lost his footing and fell onto their concrete sidewalk. he was rushed to mayo hospital, where he was almost immediately brought into surgery. the doctors had little hope that he would survive the next 7 hours of operation. he had 7 broken ribs, a stretched spinal cord, and a shattered vertebrae. he has 22 stitches in the back of his head, and 2 titanium rods were placed in his spine. he's paralyzed from the waist down. but he's alive.

my best friend has been the strongest girl for the past few weeks. she never gives up on her dad, and she's hopeful that he'll be able to get up out of that wheelchair someday.

there's no such thing as hopeless,
if you believe...

unsinkable ships; sink.

unbreakable walls; break.

sometimes the things you think will never happen

happen just like that.

unbendable steel bends.

if the fury of the wind is unstoppable.

i've learned to never underestimate

the impossible.

-joe nichols.

where can i find some work ethic? ...sorry, we're sold out.

my choir class really made me mad today. our director is out of town, so naturally, we have a sub. but it's not like it's just any sub. mrs. heaney puts enough planning into her life that she is able to get us a musically inclined substitute teacher nearly every time she's gone, which should mean that we actually get something done in choir on those days. i can totally understand her giving us a worksheet or something when we don't have a sub who can do the choir-y stuff, but when we have a sub who can play piano and is experienced in directing a choir, one would think that there shouldn't be a huge change in what we do in class, besides that we have a different teacher. its no big deal.

but the choir as a whole gets absolutely nothing done when we have a sub. and that makes me mad. yeah, mr. tavis isn't mrs. heaney, but he knows enough about what we're doing that he can teach us. but no one will do anything. we sing like we're 8 years old. we slouch. everyone reverts back to the melody. we're half the volume and tone that we are when mrs heaney is here. that just shouldn't happen. some people say they don't do anything because they don't like the way mr. tavis teaches, but i don't see how that's anything near an acceptable excuse. its 40 minutes. deal with it. and i'm sure that he'd be a "better teacher" if people would listen. i wouldn't even try if i was in his situation. someone told me today that she couldn't sing because we didn't warm up. she never even opened her mouth and tried (well, actually, she did open her mouth, to talk to the girl behind her).

the lack of work ethic makes me want to slap these people. i do my best in these conditions to sing and at least try, but i usually end up being stared and laughed at because i'm the only one making any recognizable sound.