friend (frěnd)
n.

1. A person whom one knows, likes, and trusts.
2. A person whom one knows; an acquaintance.
3. A person with whom one is allied in a struggle or cause; a comrade.
4. One who supports, sympathizes with, or patronizes a group, cause, or movement: friends of the clean air movement.
5. Friend A member of the Society of Friends; a Quaker.

tr.v. friend·ed, friend·ing, friends Archaic
To befriend.

Can any one person really define what a friend is? For some people a friend is someone who's at their side no matter what they do. For others a friend is a kind and sincere person that likes the same kind of things they do. Some people think their friends are simply the people that they are around. To me a friend is someone who will stick with me when my decisions are right, tell me when they're wrong, and help me when I'm stuck.

It's taken me a very long time to figure out what a friend is to me. When I was little a friend was simply someone who was liked and would let me follow them around. When I started Junior High a friend became someone who shared the same interests as me, was in some of my classes, and sat with me at lunch. Now I've come to realize it doesn't matter where your friends live, when/if you see them, or whether other people like them. What matters about a friend is that they like you, you don't keep unnecessarily secrets, it's not hard to have fun with them, and, no matter what bad decisions you make, as long as you're still a good person, a good friend will still be there for you.

My friends last year were not this type of person. They didn't/don't care about my feelings about things, they get angry at me for no reason, they'd betray me the second they got a better deal, and it was so hard to just be myself around them. Sadly these people were some of the nicest people I've ever met, but I can't be friends with someone who can't say they'll be my friend even if other people think I'm weird or stupid or whatever.

Now my friends are everything that I could ask for. Sure they don't like/do the things I do all of the time, and they aren't all one tight little group either. I have friends from every single clique you could think of outside of the SBO's and the Cheerleaders. They don't make fun of me for the groups I'm in, they don't make me chose between on or the other, they don't make fun of my other friends, and even though sometimes they aren't the most popular kids at school, they aren't the ones who are ruining their lives with drugs or alcohol.

Although it's taken me a long time to decide who my real friends are I think I've finally got it figured out. My real friends are those that would help me through any situation that they didn't have to get involved in to fix. They are the people I could tell anything and even though they may judge me for it the judging would not be false. They tell me when I need to change the way I'm doing things, and they don't worry about hurting me to badly when they need to.

My friends are some of the best people I know, and even though I've decided my old friends aren't my close friends I still love them.

Next year when we all split into two schools I'm lucky to say that almost all of my close friends and most of my old friends will be going to the same school as I am. I think that we'll be friends for at least a good portion of our lives. I don't know what I'd do without them now.

Inspiration? Or lack thereof?

So I've been sitting here reading other peoples blogs for about an hour now. I have no idea what to write and so I thought I'd get inspiration from someone else's blog. So far that hasn't worked very well. I don't really know what I should blog about today, but I'm sure within the next hour I'll come up with something decent.

Within Its Pages

If there is one thing I love most about books other than their stories is the smell. You know, the smell that comes from the pages of almost every book that exists? Something about that smell makes me feel. I mean there's nothing better than picking up a book you haven't even began reading, opening it, and just smelling the pages. It's like the smell holds a story of it's own.
The story of that smell differs for every single person. Mine tells the story of a thousand characters loved and hated; it tells of songs heard, pages read, questions asked, and knowledge gained. The story tells of young girls who are lost in the woods, of people running from the most unheard of dangers. The story reminds me of the stories that I read long ago that I used to love more than life itself; the stories that get lost in the corner of my mind and can only find their way back when I'm not thinking about it.
The smell reminds me of nights I spent reading in the front yard when I was young, and summers spent pondering what will happen to your favorite character by the end of the book. It's as if the story documents every book I've ever read and what happened in my life while reading those books. It's the story of my life. The smell is my story. The smell is my life.
I know this is probably one of the weirdest things for me to say, but I'm sure there is at least one other person in this class who honestly loves the smell of books as much as I do. The smell of the page of a book is one of the most precious smells in the world. Not one thing could replace the feeling that the smell gives me. All my life I'll be able to open a book, smell the pages, and remember stories and experiences that I haven't thought about in a long time.

So there you have it. My favorite thing in the world lies within the pages of almost any book you open. :)

The Most Random Ramblings Ever

It's finally here. The end of the first quarter of my last year at Fairfield Junior High. I don't know what I was really expectng it to be at first, but this was not it. I wasn't expecting to be this busy this year. I wasn't planning to be having so much fun that I hate going home everyday. I did not expect to be hanging out with a whole new group of people and almost never speaking to those people I have been friends with since my very first day at our beloved school. There is nothing more surprising than finding out that the people who you've been closest too for the longest time are not the people you really want to be around.

Everything is changing now. Everything I've known about being a student at Fairfield since before I even started going to school here has been changing. All my classes are harder, and I'm actually finding that I need help understanding things. This has never happened to me before. In the past I always understood what was going on in class.

My friends have been changing even more than my classes and expectations have. My best friend, who will be known as Panduck for this entry, who I met during HP summer camp before seventh grade isn't my best friends anymore. I'm sad to say that she's not really my friend at all. We talk to each other sometimes and I see her at lunch and everywhere else, but we don't hang out anymore, we don't write notes to each other, and the story we started writing over a year ago is now over. It's incomplete, but we're done writing it. The thing about the whole situation is that I don't mind. My friends now are people that I wish I'd been hanging out with all along. They don't fight as much, and they don't cause as much drama as my old friends did. Don't get me wrong I love all my friends. It's just so much easier to hang out with people who don't cause much drama.

As well as things that have been going on at home lately there are a lot of things going on at home. I've been spending a lot of time with my family on my mom's side lately. The Thomases are great people, but like any other family they have their issues. When your with them it's always a different experience. Their are always so many people at my grandmothers house. The house is never lonely, and its chaos is my favorite thing about going there.

My Grandpa and Grandma Thomases' house is the best place in the world to me. It's the only house that I've ever been in that almost always remains the same. Every christmas they put out their little ceramic village and the big lighted trees. When you go inside you almost always hear the chatter of people and you're always warmly welcomed. I always go straight to my grandma and hug her. There is not a single person that makes me as happy as my grandma does. I've been at least a foot taller than her for years now, and my little sister are almost reaching that mark as well. My grandpa is a very great man. His smile is so great that when I see it I can't help but smile too. There is nothing that I love more than being at my grandma's house.

Wow. I've really gotten off topic here. Haha.

Well since this blog has turned into more of a collection of a bunch of random thoughts I think I'll continue.

I had a friend when I lived in Salt Lake whose name was Jessica. I called her Jess, because Jessica seemed like more of a girly type name than Jess did. Jess was definitely a tom boy. The only one I had ever known back then. Jess' favorite thing in the world was playing soccer. I hated it but I played it with her anyway because I knew that it was something that she liked to do. Hers was a friendship I will never forget. Jess was a very confident and intimidating girl. She was always up to something, and half the time it was daring other kids to go into the "men's room" or the "ladies' room" which was what the teachers called their bathrooms which kids weren't allowed to go in. No one ever did except for a few, and usually those kids pretended they hadn't. Or so I heard.

I can't tell you how often I think about Jessica and what type of person she is now. Through-out the years I've seen a lot of my old friends from when I lived near Salt Lake, in Sandy. I've seen so many of them that it's not even funny, and when I do see them I love to see how different they are from what I remember. I haven't seen any of them in a couple of years now, and I wish I had. I like to think that they remember me as I remember them, but I don't think very many of them do. I think many of them would hate my guts now if we still knew each other, because as alike as we were then I'm sure we're all very different now. Even saying that I'd love to see some of them again.

Lately I've been thinking about a lot of different things as you can see by this very unorganized blog. I've been thinking about next year and what high school I'll go to. I have two possible options open right now. One says I go to Fremont High school out in Plain City and get car privileges along with Izzi. Another says I go to Layton High school and walk everyday. I'm not sure which school I want to go to yet, because both are really great. Both schools' art programs are decent from what I've heard, but I'm not interested in art. I've heard very little of anything else about either school, but I do know that Layton's orchestra is really small. I'm not sure if I'd like being part of a really small orchestra.

I've also been thinking about pets lately. My cousin had to sell her dog on Saturday and it tore her apart to do so. Both mine and her dog are great pets, and both of them are somewhat of a nuisance sometimes. The dogs' barks are both incredibly loud for their sizes. My cousins dog is large, and mine is small. Both are pretty loud and not like very much by neighbors. When my cousin had to sell her dog it made me incredibly sad because I thought about how I'd feel if I lost my dog, Koda. I don't know what my cousin will do without her dog. They've practically grown up together.

So there's been a lot on my mind lately and that's just a little bit of it. I've also been thinking about writing a children's book/story. I'm not sure if I will or not, but I've come up with some great ideas about story lines for it. I don't know. I've gotten a lot of ideas for things I can write and I've never really finished any of them.

Well I've spent enough time writing this now I'm going to go get working on this terms assignments.

Country Love For Lily

Wow, what a long weekend I’ve had. I can’t believe I don’t have to go to school in the morning. Nope. Tomorrow I get to sit around the house and relax, or at least that’s what I want to do. I am so tired right now. I’ve spent the last three days working on the benefit concert for my cousin Lily. The concert was yesterday, but today we had to go and clean everything up. It was stressful, and I am really worn out, but we did some great things for a great little girl and I believe that Lily and her family will be doing a little better after all of this.

I doubt anyone who reads this knows of a guy named Brenn Hill. He’s a country singer. He was the one who did the concert for my cousin and I have to say he is a great guy. His songs are amazing, though I think they’re a lot better in person because of the sound of his guitar. I’ve been listening to his songs all day, but it isn’t because they’re my favorite songs in the world or anything. The reason I keep listening to Brenn’s music is because it reminds me of the precious day I had yesterday. The best part of the whole thing was seeing me entire family get together to make it possible. People I haven’t seen in months were there, and the whole thing just made me wonder how the world could give a disease like Leukemia to a 3 year old little girl.

At the end of the concert, as Brenn was finishing his encore, Lily came up onto the stage and started walking around. I don’t think he even noticed she was there. Everyone started clapping and cheering and Lily started to bow. This made the crowd get louder and it was just so cute to see my cousin up on the stage bowing to an audience while Brenn smiled at the crowd. “One last song for Lily.” He said. Lily then ran to the other side of the stage to the basket of apples that was part of the décor. She picked one up and, with her head down, ran towards Brenn. She handed him the apple, went to get off the stage, and then decided to hug him.

The whole thing was so sweet I couldn’t believe she came up with it herself. Later we asked my two aunts, Lily’s mom and my mom’s oldest sister, if they had told her to do that. “No,” My aunt Missy (Lily’s mom) said. None of us could believe how cute it was that she came up with it on her own.

Last night was a night I will always remember for the rest of my life. Even though there were times I just wanted to throw things at people, times I felt like I wanted to scream, most of the night I felt something I had never really felt before. I don’t know for sure what it was. Something between love, amazement, joy and generosity. It’s difficult to explain. Lily has shown me that it doesn’t matter what kind of hardships you have to go through, there is no excuse not to be kind to people. Sometimes you get frustrated and get angry, but it’s the times that you show how kind and generous you can be that really count.

We all love you Lily girl. Stay strong. You are definitely a fighter. With all of us, your family, by your side you can do anything!