If right is leaving, I'd rather be wrong.

She lives in a daydream where I don't belong
She is the sunlight and the sun is gone

"She doesn’t judge you, though. Also in her free time, she is a vital part of the campus ultimate Frisbee team."

I found this article amusing. I also liked how, at the end, he didn't have a jaded tone; instead, an appreciative one with some humor thrown in. This is social commentary I admire.

Bagpipes! Dancing! Knives! Kilts!

After some reckless horsebackriding and a long morning outside with my little siblings, critters and the forest, I'm off to the Seattle Scottish Highland Games. I've been waiting all year. I'm really just venting excitement, I don't have anything of note to say.

Can a day get any better than this?

I DINNA KEN WHAER I KIM FREM, BUT I BELONG EN SCOTLAND!

Sigh.

I feel a sort of a desperation to wear this dress right now.

That is all.

The Inspiration Pad

I would love to buy all of my creative writer-ish friends this marvelous notebook.

Not that you ever need inspiration or anything.

The very last final has come and gone....

....and I turned in my last exam of my high school years!

Total, utter bliss. There have been times where I've been scared of moving from one stage to the next, where leaving high school behind has seemed daunting....

But not today! No! Today I am free! Today I am proud!

[today I hope I get a 4.0 on that Chem. exam, but even if I get a B, I'm really beyond caring right now]

Let the activities of summer commence! Let preparations for a trip to Spain begin! Passports! Novels! Summer reading list! Volunteer work! Starting a job! Loving my family! Actually hanging out with my friends! Preparing artwork to sell the farmers' market! Senior portraits! Graduation party! Horses! Grass! My big untrained dogs! Getting freckles but not a burn nor a tan!

I have felt like a zombie for the past several months... how lovely to feel that the shackles of homework and exams and classes are gone.

How lovely.

I'm gonna steal your heart

Meet me at the water
Where all your dreams come true
Tell your sisters and your brother
Well I'll be waiting for you

And when all of this is over
When all your silver turn to gold
Say a prayer for each other
Someday I'm gonna steal your heart

I'm gonna steal your heart
Gonna steal your heart away
Gonna steal your heart
Gonna steal your heart away

Now love is like an ocean
Take it down to the depths
Yeah I'm taking you with me
Taking every step to steal your heart

I'm gonna steal your heart away
Gonna steal your heart
Gonna steal your heart away

Life is like a shadow
It never stays in one place
I'm standing here anyway
However long it takes to steal your heart

Hey look! A song in English. All Grace can do these days-- link to people, post their videos and quote them

Stay dangerous,

Gray

One crazy awesome Polyvore....

Libby is allowed to find and buy all my clothes.

Breathe Me -Sia

This song was introduced to me by my good friend Gabby, who has been staying at our house for the past crazy week.

The song reminds me of my heroine, Murie... and all of the things she will never, ever admit to herself. One of my favorite parts of Murie is her blindness to her own vulnerability.

Help, I have done it again
I have been here many times before
Hurt myself again today
And, the worst part is there's no-one else to blame

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Ouch I have lost myself again
Lost myself and I am nowhere to be found,
Yeah I think that I might break
Lost myself again and I feel unsafe

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

Be my friend
Hold me, wrap me up
Unfold me
I am small
and needy
Warm me up
And breathe me

"He was a fiddler, and consequently, a rogue."

Jonathan Swift- "He was a fiddler, and consequently, a rogue."

Rosemary Urquico: Date a Girl Who Reads

I've fallen in love with this charming passage by Rosmary Urquico. I found it posted by the authoress of Meant for Silence. Speaking of which, you really should explore the blog for a moment or two. Her tumblr-esque page marked "the exquisite" really was exquisite enough to capture my imagination several times [specifically the ships/harbors quote... you'll know it when you see it].

But this passage... this selection made me tingle with delight because Urquico captured the girl-reader so well. She's very romantic, certainly, but it adds to the passage's whimsy, I think [and psst! You should read the whole post, not just the bit below].

You will smile so hard you will wonder why your heart hasn’t burst and bled out all over your chest yet. You will write the story of your lives, have kids with strange names and even stranger tastes. She will introduce your children to the Cat in the Hat and Aslan, maybe in the same day. You will walk the winters of your old age together and she will recite Keats under her breath while you shake the snow off your boots.
Date a girl who reads because you deserve it. You deserve a girl who can give you the most colorful life imaginable. If you can only give her monotony, and stale hours and half-baked proposals, then you’re better off alone. If you want the world and the worlds beyond it, date a girl who reads.
Or better yet, date a girl who writes.

I'm having so much fun....

Check it out: http://flip-for-love.tumblr.com/

Let's get one thing straight, friends: life is just oisome.

[Image by Keilah Engstrom]

Don't know what's overtaken me, but I'm posting on my blog. ::Gasp:: Don't fall out of your chair, now.

Life is oisome.

There are a few things you need to know. For starters, I'm eighteen. Call me predictable and antiqueted, but I feel that this is significant.

Brennan: Grace, you're turning eighteen. I'm so sorry. We cool sixteen-year-olds won't allow ourselves to associate with you. [Brennan is chuckling and elbowing me teasingly]

Grace: Brennan! You look like you're about to cry!

Brennan: [looks surprised] I do?

Grace: It's okay, though. Someday this awesomeness will happen to you, as well. There is hope yet. And I know it's going to be hard for you, not associating with the eighteen-year-olds, but your day will come.

Being awesome, Brennan laughed.

I think that only three or four or so posts down, I was almost lamenting turning seventeen [yes-- I've really neglected this Locket o' mine]. If Brennan [who totally rocks my socks off, for the record] had teased me then, I would have been the one bursting into tears, or at least, "looking like I'm about to cry."

But this crazy roller coaster that is life! This adventure-- it's going to be thrilling. It's going to leave me breathless [I'm already panting, I don't know about you...] and it's nothing to be afraid of.

The novel is finished.

Sixteen Going on Seventeen: My Apprehensions

I'm the first one to admit: Liesl Von Trapp (from the Rodgers and Hammerstein movie) is not my role model. Something about the way she sings, "timid and shy and scared am I of things beyond my ken," I think.

Nonetheless, I consider it my right, as a sixteen year old girl, to sing "I am sixteen going on seventeen to my heart's content... and maybe even a little more.

Despite the fact that I've sung it constantly all year, now that I only have four more days to do so in its most truthful sense, I feel cheated. It can't really have been a year, can it?

I turned sixteen at WA state TeenPact (shameless plug!) last year. All my cabin friends sang to me and surprised me with streamers. In the morning Ophie came into my cabin (we had to sleep in different cabins... it was tragic) and gave me a copious bag of Reese's and handed over a present bag that mom had instructed her to give me on my birthday morn. Starting a day off with presents is always good.

I was astonished to find a beautiful birthday cake waiting for me in the dining hall. Three of my fellow students (all male) came up to me very sweetly with a piece of said cake. It had large quantities of white frosting.

The boys offered me the cake so cordially that I was taken aback by their consideration. I took a bite and made a big deal over how scrumptious it tasted.

Later I found that I had disappointed the boys: they had dumped salt in the middle of the piece(which I hadn't eaten all the way... you can only have so much cake for breakfast) and I didn't "get" to taste it. Thank you, gentlemen. You know who you are.

Someone got up a group card and all the students signed, each leaving me a personal message. At the capitol, the entire group sang me happy birthday.

Mom came to pick Ophie (who was also attending TeenPact) and me up. I hooped in the car to find brightly frosted chocolate cupcakes, one for each of us. After lots of hugs (I hadn't seen my family in four whole days, mind you =D) we munched them down. Each one had a paper parasol and a decorative glass button. I think mine was a ladybug.

We returned from Olympia (and TeenPact) at around twilight. Rain was hitting the ground with the force unique to Washington drops.

I remembered feeling very... whimsical (Oh, Gray never feels whimsical), feeling that every moment is so precious. I felt old, which is, as LM Montgomery says, the first indication that you are actually very young. I didn't really wanted to leave fifteen behind, because fifteen seemed like a number with lots of extra growing room. Nonetheless, I was sure, to quote LM Montgomery again, that I was coming to "an epoch of my life" (needless to say, later in the evening I read my favorite passages of Little Women and even Anne of Green Gables. I'm afraid I'm in a sort of an "Anne" mood right now. My "Jo" spirit will come to me presently.)

So I went for a walk in the pouring rain and was otherwise sentimental. I wore my green trench coat and probably my cream beret. =D I won't bother telling the thought processes of a sentimental fifteen/sixteen girl taking a birthday walk in the pouring rain.

I still feel old. Seventeen feels big and ridiculous.

Twelve months ago I didn't think I could possibly grow into a number as big as sixteen. Now sixteen seems normal. I'm still not sure I want to grow into seventeen... but I don't really have much choice, do I? Now I know that I will grow into it, and then eighteen, and then nineteen.

Sixteen has been an adventure, which is about as good a thing as can be said about any year. I'll come up with a list of marvelous things (and hopeless misadventures) I've done at age sixteen when I'm in a list-y mood, but we've already established that I'm in an "Anne" mood.

Back off and let me revel in it. It hasn't happened in a while. =D

To finish the "Birthday day," I came back inside delightfully wet to find yet another cake. Gabby and Audrey and Ophie were all there. Dear, dear friends. We stayed up too late and watched Brigadoon. Good, good movie.

And I was sixteen. It was old.

Seventeen is old.

I just remember that LM Montgomery quote. When you feel that you are very old, it's a sure sign that you are actually very young.

I felt old last year and I feel old this year. It's okay.

I'm marking my calendar...

What about you? If you ever need a place to actually wear your forest green cloak, then I'll see you at:

Northwest Folklife Festival (The fiddles! Oh, the fiddles! And a swing dance this year, I see.)

Seattle Scottish Highland Games Festival (This one was just.... worth sighing over. I got lost on purpose. The pulsing of a Pipes and Drums band pounds into my very being like nothing else. Maybe that sounded melodramatic. I'm sorry. I didn't mean it to.)

Spread the word!

Get folksie,

Gray

Whimsy

This one definitely wins the whimsy award.

[I had it on the below post, but blogger dropped it, for some reason, along with the captions I wrote under each treehouse]

If Hobbits weren't scared of heights....

Life goal no. 1: Live in a tree house.

From my novel: In my Sherwood forest, the outlaws' hideout is atop a giant oak. Marion has to majorly build her upper arm strength for the daily rope climb and is aided by natural hand holds: shelf fungi.

If you are a person (I'm assuming that most of you are) what does your dream house look like?

If you are a writer, how do your favorite hideaways show up in your works?


^ This one looks like a good ole hideout.


A tree house, a free house,

A secret you and me house,

A high up in the leafy branches

Cozy as can be house

A street house, a neat house,

Be sure and wipe your feet

house

Is not my kind of house at all.

Let's go live in a tree house.

Shel Silverstein

Below: Very Medieval, yes?

Lately I've been dwelling on these dwellings (Ha! How's that for a LAME pun/thing, QUIP?) and I decided to share them a bit.

In ten years, you can find me in my tree house.

On the mend...

Thank you for your prayers! Keep it up! Paul Julian will not be in the ICU much longer and soon we will be able to hold him!

His neurological test results were very encouraging. We're just anticipating his hearing test now.

I've been so blessed by your words of encouragement. Thank you, everyone.

What a relief to be able to put this post under that ever-growing label, "Things I Love" --unlike that last one.

Leaning on Him,

Gray

CUSTOMERS ONLY

As a wee munchkin, I was once at a restaurant with my mom when I saw a sign on the place's bathroom door.

"NO PUBLIC RESTROOM," it said. "CUSTOMERS ONLY!"

"But Mom," I queried, looking up at my mother, "where do the waitresses go to the bathroom, then?"

Come to think of it, that wasn't that long ago. Dearie me.