A Major Sleep Problem

I'm going to be honest with you. Our family's always been sort of messed up in terms of sleep. There's no schedule that anyone adheres to, and even after my dad tells us all to finally go up, everyone has their own routines and doings that take up their own time and there's no one time that I can guarantee that all of us will be fast asleep.
Take that, thieves.
I'm sure that's one of the reasons they haven't tried anything despite the large tree that conveniently leads right outside my window. They're scared that they'll enter my house and find my sister eating spaghetti or something.
I don't know what's happening at four a.m.
I myself spend weeknights up until 2-3 a.m. Unlike my siblings, I actually have a genuine reason for staying up so late. I study and finish my homework for school.
My brother's in his room on his phone. I know he's on his phone because he doesn't actually use headphones. It doesn't actually make any sense because he has headphones and they're functional. In fact, he uses them on his laptop every single day of his life. It's only at night that he feels is the perfect time to blast audio, when everyone's in bed trying to sleep. I feel like that's his way of protesting. Let me know if you have any sort of idea about what he might be protesting. Help a sister out.
My sister who's thirteen finds sleep unappealing. She lays there for God knows how many hours. Nobody is available to entertain her at that time, so she often stares at me while I do my homework. It's absolutely terrifying to rest your head for a minute and open them to see eyes staring at you. I try telling her that she has it great and to take advantage of her opportunities because when I was thirteen, no one told me to appreciate sleep as it was.
She still resumes the staring, so I'm not sure she got the message. I'm counting on fate to teach her a lesson.
When you're younger, I get it. Sleep is for the weak. It's boring, it takes forever, on and on. When you're older, however, you praise God for inventing something like sleep. A time where it's acceptable to knock out of the world. Imagine if we didn't have the need to sleep. We'd just be awake twenty-four seven, and life for robbers would be a lot more difficult. I can just imagine one trying to pop in through my window in broad daylight. Even if I wouldn't be there, my sister would probably be, eating a bowl of spaghetti with a look of blank, pure boredom.

Sometime in February, this actually became a problem. My brother left for college like he usually does on Mondays. He comes home late because he decided evening classes were cool. (In reality, evening classes mean that you don't come home before seven, eight p.m. My dad picks him up on Mondays, so that means coming home even later. Anyways. It's not like he minds, so. There's no room for pity here. That comes later.)
My dad called to say that my brother hadn't come to the car that day. Normally he's late, so we were like, "ok, just wait some more." But after waiting a good forty-five minutes, people start to worry. Even unemotional, unattached people who don't hug their siblings.
I'm talking about me running around making phone calls that aren't getting picked up. I'm talking looking at his last snapchat update. I even went so far as to contact his friend.
I don't know my brother's friends, okay. This isn't a normal sibling relationship. He may know the names of some of my friends, but I haven't an inkling about who he hangs out with. My parents presumably do, so I'm okay with not knowing who his waking hours are spent with.
What this meant was scouring the people he follows on Instagram for some sort of familiar name. Now, trying to distinguish a friend from someone's following list on Instagram is a terrible way of going about it. For one, half of them are people who are friends of your friends, which basically means you forget they exist until they post. But I was the only link in my family who had a sort of a connection to his friends because for some reason we don't have even one of his friend's numbers.
I ended up finding some random dude who my mom then sent a message too. Poor dude, honestly.
He replied later on that he didn't know.
By that time, I had scoured up the number for the college's Lost People number. My brother wasn't answering his calls, my dad had walked the streets of the university, and went to the nearby buildings to ask if they had seen him. The whole evening in the house became a fluster of panic, crying people because it's college and college is a dangerous place and it's like, nine p.m.
I had just sent my dad the Lost People number when my dad texts us to say my brother had finally come in contact. Guess where this genius had been "missing" for a good two hours?

Dead asleep, in the campus library.

Now, everyone started crying again, because it was just something innocent like sleeping. I, on the other hand, was like of course he was sleeping! of course!!

God. It was a stressful day for everyone.
Except him.

I Made Fruit Tart and It Went Fine

I know what you're thinking: "How dare she start with clickbait in the title! First it was the youtubers, now it's the bloggers?!?! Outrageous!"

Really, though. I mean it. I didn't screw up. It's hard to believe, so I took pictures.

It started off with realizing that if I didn't get off the computer soon, I was about to get yelled at. So, in order to prevent Disaster, I went and did the work before It could occur.
I had midterms last week, which resulted in a four day break to relax and remember that nothing actually matters. (That's what breaks are meant for. To pretend you didn't have a mental breakdown in the middle of the week because Chemistry has taken over your life to the point that you dream about it.)
During that four-day break, instead of mourning grades, I decided to be productive and bake. And Fruit Tart it was.
The significance of Fruit Tart is that no one has objections to it. (Besides my older brother, but nobody asked him.) It isn't too sweet, isn't too bland, so the kids and adults make peace with each other over one dessert. Fruit Tart.
It's pure, smells great, brings together the family. Take that, Sara Lee. I'm pretty sure you guys don't even sell Frozen Fruit Tarts. *

Initially, while one searches for Fruit Tart recipes on the internet, they may say something like, "Oh, look at this! A ten-minute tart! Perfect for my busy schedule!"
And that may be true, too, until you open up the recipe and realize that the only reason it takes ten minutes is because all the ingredients are store bought by the baker and they simply spend ten minutes decorating the damn thing.

Now, I have nothing against pre-made items. They make life simple. The profit gives money to the people who are running a business on pre-made crusts. It makes the world spin a little faster.

Except I had to make everything. The crust I usually make by myself anyways, but for pudding I make exceptions. So, for the first time in my life, I made homemade pudding. It made me feel like I was in the nineteenth century, churning corn starch and egg whites, but it wasn't bad, I mean.

So, when I saw recipes for "Ten-Minute Fruit Tarts," you may understand, I was not amused. That thing took me two hours.

(Side note: It takes me forever to bake stuff. Whenever I see a recipe that says something like, "Prep time: 25 minutes," I know better. I automatically double the time because that's the time it takes actual humans. Am I saying that professional cooks aren't human? Yeah, kindofsortofmaybe.)

The crust called for "softened" butter. One thing you should know about me is that I completely ignore all prerequisites  of baking. I don't preheat the oven to three-fifty, I don't take the eggs out of the fridge, (Lord knows that cold eggs have the potential to ruin stuff.) and I certainly don't take the butter out of the fridge the morning of so that it can achieve a room temperature by the time I start baking.

Thus, when the recipe said "softened," my brain transmitted, "throw it in the microwave, for pete's sake."

So, that's what I did. Did I pay for it later on? Yes. Will I change the way I read prerequisites in the future? No.

I overheated the butter, causing a portion of it to completely liquefy. Which was supposed to not matter, by the way. I just learned about the Law of Conservation of Mass, which states that during a reaction, matter is neither created nor destroyed. Thus, the butter liquefying did not alter any of my measurements, which is one thing I'm better at. But it did ruin the crust forever and make it greasy. And delicate. And terribly un-photogenic from one side where I kept ruining the scalloped edges by pressing against the crust. But it's okay because I just took a picture from the other side.

Ah, technology.

The pudding itself wasn't difficult, except I obviously wasn't the ideal demographic in mind. They merely brushed over the process,  like, "yeah pour the milk in the egg mixture and spin a spoon  in there," while I tried to analyze where in the recipe it said to get out the milk. Then again, I do require extensive detail to semi-decently complete any given task. So, don't go hating on allrecipes.com. They do their best.

Then, I finally topped it off with some good ole' fruits. My family loved it. They praised my baking skills. One cool thing about being totally mediocre is that the mediocre tasks you accomplish look fantastic to people around you, since they've learned to keep their expectations incredibly low. It works great for everyone.

Thank God for Fruit Tart.











*Disclaimer: Sara Lee Apple Pie is amazing and this was simply a joke. My family is indeed brought together by the delight that is your pie. Please don't sue. I want to go to college.

Writer's Block

Writer's Block is like the neighbor on the block that coincidentally shows up when you're getting ready to relax and not move from the same position for a solid three hours. They're like, "Hey! Thought it's been a while since I last saw you!"  (It's been like, five minutes. Ten if we're being precise.)

I'm on winter break now, all ready to write and everything! Guess who decides to show up? The neighbor, that's who! I've been trying to write stuff for this blog and I might as well hand it to my imaginary cat to write it for me. At least people will find the nonsense cute.
(Seriously, I don't understand the world's obsession with cats??! A post for another day.)
See, many people think writer's block is where your brain literally shuts down and your hand is unable to move to make any progress, thus-

I'm just kidding. Nobody thinks that.

In reality, writer's block is sitting for hours trying to piece together some semblance of a paragraph. It often goes like this.

Me, typing: "So, like, I was on my bike the other day."
Brain: That's the most boringest opening sentence in the history of literature.
Me: "Boringest" isn't even a word.
Brain: You're the one who thinks that the brain is a separate entity from yourself.

The computer screen: *continues to remain blank*

It can take a very long time to overcome a case of Writer's Block. If you're one of those rich bloggers who have a view of the ocean and are currently writing your autobiography whilst listening to Mozart, you can easily overcome this disease by taking a week-long vacation halfway across the world. You'll have the ideas by the time you get back!

For nobodies like myself who have a view of the decaying landscape as the snow melts, transforming into brown slush and/or aren't old/interesting enough to be writing an autobiography, we resort to other cures for this dreaded case.
Cures like:

• Staring out the window.
• For an extended period of time
• Not being able to sleep because of all the ideas that come to you at 3:24 A.M
• Writing down these ideas in the "notes" app
• Trying to make sense of the note when it comes to actually writing
• Having a midlife crisis

Sigh. 

My First Detention

Detention really isn't my thing. I haven't even ever had one (well, until now, as you can see) and I'm a sophomore in high school. I have no idea why I'm making it sound like a mighty accomplishment, but I guess now it is, since I couldn't avoid getting one myself.

Sigh.

It was great while it lasted.

Before telling my friend exactly why I got the detention , I told her it was because I scaled the new school being built beside the current one to replace the former one. She genuinely believed this happened and I could be so rebellious. She was proud of me for showing a wild side.

I need to get better friends.

The real reason was much more anticlimactic; I was late to school by three minutes and the principal was standing right by the door so I was caught red-handed. I had a plan for this kind of situation, too! But it all backfired as soon as she stopped me to ask why I was late.

My school has assembly every morning, except for Fridays. Attendance is required, and it lasts around 10-12 minutes. My plan was to skip assembly and hang out in the basement classrooms or in the bathroom. IT DIDN'T WORK! Then I saw the principal go into the office, and I thought, "Aw man, she's relaying the names."
BECAUSE THE PREVIOUS DAY, I WAS LATE, TOO! A couple of other people walked into assembly late, like me,, and the principal said that she'd give us a pass that day, but the next day was lunch detention.
DID I HEED THE WARNING? I DIDN'T!

Look where that got me.

That was the reason I had a sinking feeling that she was in the office to relay names for detention. Anyways, I forgot about it over the course of the day. Lunchtime rolls around, and I go to the bathroom. I come back to find the lunch duty teacher telling me that I was asked to go to the Computer Lab. It was then that I knew.

I walked into the computer lab to find at least ten other kids all there already for the same reason. Can you believe that? I was late to my own detention. That I got for being late. The teacher was like, "Aina, why are you late?" And I told him, "I was late by three minutes." He looked really done with everything. Sacrificing lunch hour for a couple of kids who were late by three minutes. He had this...defeated look in his eyes as he said, "Okay. Sit down."

Detention was honestly...extremely chill.

It was like, study hall, without your friends asking you why you only bring a sandwich for lunch. ("I'm not much of a lunch person, that's why!") Add in a teacher who's telling you why you shouldn't be late, and that was detention.

I got my Geometry homework done, though. I'm going to admit, it was a pretty cool experience. 10/10 would do again.

Kidding, kidding.

Not really, though.

Can we talk about why I was late by three minutes, though? It's ridiculous. I totally understand what road rage stems from now.

The drive to school is thirty minutes in the afternoon. At the hours that come with going to school at the crack of dawn, the ride becomes nearly forty-five to fifty minutes long. Outrageous. The traffic is so much. Everywhere. Everywhere! I can't even express in italics how much it irks me that I have to leave my house earlier than I should have to because of the barriers on every road. Literally, my mornings consist of frantically waking up twenty minutes later than I should, throwing water on my face, changing so fast I practically transform, dunking cake rusk in hot tea and burning my mouth, slapping peanut butter with jelly to make a decent lunch, and running out the door with three textbooks in hand because I don't want back problems.

I didn't deserve detention.

I Accidentally Walked into a Haunted House

You know how in scary movies (well I don't know, I'm not exactly a fan of horror movies) the characters always do the dumbest things possible? Like, make the intruder a sandwich and play bingo over a conversation about the weather? I did one of those things.

I was there with my family and school friends on an apple orchard trip. In our defense, it didn't explicitly state it was a house of horror. It said something like "Mine Entrance" and we thought it was some tour exploring mines. Why we were interested in that either is beyond me, but hey. If it weren't for accidentally walking into a haunted house, I would probably still have never been in one. It just goes to show you, face your fears - accidentally!

Even after entering the cave-like structure, I didn't find anything suspicious. I genuinely thought the reason they were sending us in groups was because of issues surrounding the size of the area, and not that it would take away from the scare factor if there was a large group of people. There was a coffin shaking behind me, and random men appearing from behind doors, and I still thought it was a tour about mines. They sent my sister in along with her friends, and I heard their screams, but my brain did not register anything much at all. I had never been to a mine tour, so I didn't know what to expect. That's my excuse.

Sigh.

It wasn't until I went in with my group that I realized it was not an exhibit about the underground world. It was dark and frightening, and a really large man kept scaring us out of nowhere. My descriptions will never be able to express to you how genuinely terrified we all were.

Plus, I was in there with my mom. If mines haunted houses weren't scary enough, they are ten times as much scarier when your mother is thinking all sorts of things, and you can feel them through her mind. Things such as:

1) This isn't really a haunted house. They want to kill us. Like, in actual.

I already knew from previous knowledge (this is when knowing random facts comes in handy) that the actors aren't allowed to touch you to scare you, but that didn't help me in that moment. They were after me with a chainsaw that had no chains but I had to run.

I was with my mom and my friend's older sister. One thing I should tell you is that haunted houses definitely make the list for bonding trips. Don't know somebody so well? Feel awkward around them? Confused with what to do with your hands? Go to a mine tour with them.

We went in there as a mom and a daughter with a stranger of sorts, but we came out as buddies for life. I don't think I've ever held anyone's hands as tight as I did that day. The only reason none of us broke down crying for an exit was probably because there was no breathing area between ourselves. I guarantee you, you go in there as a germophobe, you'll come out a hugger.

A dimly lighted area displayed mine carts (where I realized, oh. That's where it gets its name). We initially thought we were supposed to go in that area and ride the carts because it was a part of the maze. After jumping out of our skins, (courtesy of the large man who really didn't want us to go in there) we were directed elsewhere.

Everything is really, really dark. It's unnecessary. You want to proceed further? STUMBLE AROUND SOME MORE! My mom quickly thought of using a phone's light to illuminate our way (the only reason phone lights are even useful anymore) but it was quickly stopped when the Really Large Man (i'm sure they had a shortage of actors and the same guy had to run around following us) growled, "Turn that OFF!"  
No amount of italics or bold lettering will indicate how his voice made you shriek. Let me try again. "Turn that OFF!" 

Nope, still not working. It just looks like I've only recently discovered the boldness feature.

"tuRN thAT OFF!"

Okay, that's the best I can do. Now it looks like I recently discovered the many versatile ways you can express emotion on the internet. You'll just have to accidentally walk into a  mine tour to find out what I mean for yourself.

I have a theory that haunted houses were first built upon after a group of twisted individuals decided to survey a population on what their biggest fears were. They then combined those fears and charged people money for getting face to face with the things they were most scared of.

Humans.

Are you a claustrophobe? Simply walk into a mine tour, where they'll  include a section where you have to crawl through a dark passageway, with no idea where you're going. Cured!
Arachnophobe? Watch your step!
Scared of death? Try not to look the guy coming out of the coffin in the eye!
Afraid of heights? You'll love walking around in a place where you can't see where you set your foot!

Enough of this enthusiasm. It was a terrible experience. I didn't learn anything, except for the fact that you should never trust people who hand out mine tours at an apple orchard.

Yes, I'm still mad at myself for making it that far without suspecting anything. Another one for the books.

We're Living in a Fantastic Age

We as humans love to complain. It doesn't matter how good something is, there will always be someone in the crowd who will find something wrong with a situation. 

The twenty-first century is an amazing time for humans to complain, because everything is recorded for the world to see.

A hundred years ago, you would rarely hear complaints about where the Olympics were being held, because you didn't have the resources to know! Nowadays, all we're doing is complaining about the Rio waters, because we read about it. A hundred years ago, you would probably never know of the water situation because by the time it got printed in the newspaper, there weren't newspapers around anymore. 

A hundred years is a long time. 

Though lately, I've been realizing. That as much as we complain, we never take the same amount of time to appreciate how good we have it! I only recently realized this as my father's currently on an overseas trip for three weeks. Ever since his departure, all we've has been doing is calling or texting him about what are you doing now? are you asleep yet? can you hear the roosters in the morning? do they still have those green birds? And because of how advanced everything is now, he'll just send a picture of the bunnies they have now, the green birds are gone. If it's not interacting about what's going on, it'll be interacting at the clothes store where we basically just say no, those clothes aren't the right color, or yes that texture is perfect except I don't like the embellishments on the side or that kind of fabric really ruin the crisp look after it gets washed once.

And it made me step back and look at it all for a second! I was born in this century, right as these new technologies were being discovered. It's simply ingrained in me to be so used to it all, which requires me every now and then to take a picture and sit there for a good ten minutes pondering about the wonders of life.

Sometimes I'll just have to sit there and think about it a little. I'll send off an email, and I'll get the notification that it was sent. A few hours later, I've got a reply.

mIND BLOWN!!!

You couldn't do that fifty years ago! Not even forty! You'd have to send letters and wait ten days for a response, or pay three dollars a minute for every call made across the Atlantic Ocean. By the time you talked to your family again, the Olympics were back! And the swimmer dude had won his thirty-eighth medal! 

It's a lot to process, it really is. 

This quickness that comes with the modern day also took away our patience, I've noticed. We can't sit there and do nothing. We have to be doing something. Our minds are just programmed now to constantly be whirring. Our phone dies and takes five minutes to regain power again, and in those five minutes we've booted up the laptop! We simply don't waste time in wasting more of our time! 

You can send an email and have an epiphany about how far mankind has come, but appreciating patience is a lot harder to come by.

In fact, it usually takes a power outage for us to realize that we have absolutely nothing to do anymore! So, we sit there. Stare at our families as our mothers light three candles and our sisters look for the flashlight. The flashlight is never in the right place, of course, and the one day it is, the batteries are dead! So, what do we do? We take out our phones and shine the light around. We're thankful that the light doesn't require internet, or what would we do? Use candles like some nineteenth century villager? Of course not.

In conclusion, we complain a lot, we don't think about the advances in our world as much as we should, flashlights go missing quicker than hair ties, and I hope everyone who participated in the Olympics kayaking is doing well despite the rumors. 

An Explanation

After 7 months of trying to find my way out of the Sahara...
I have finally made it back.

Just kidding. I just didn't post at all in seven months! Time to tell you what I've been doing.

In February, I transferred schools. I became quite busy in that, with deadlines and extracurricular nearly every day. I've started about three different stories that I've barely worked on.

Summer vacation has started. I decided to switch schools again (I am a wandering soul) for the fall. I took the placement test two weeks ago. I've been caught up in admission processes, exiting processes, and finals. I'm glad it's all over because now I feel like I have all the time in the world to do whatever I want. It's a really nice feeling.

In fact, I baked for the first time in months today.

One of the things I look forward to most on breaks is the amount of time I can sleep in. Every week  of school, I would only have the motivation to keep going because the weekend was a day nearer. Now I have weeks and weeks and weeks and I don't have to wait for the weekend.

The funny thing is that my school ending has seemed to take a load of stress off everyone in my family. My dad no longer has to wake up an hour earlier to drop me off, my brother doesn't have to make two stops to pick up me and my sister, and there seems to be so much extra time for everyone.

 I also feel like my writing has rusted a bit, in terms of humor and sentence structure. I've been out of practice; the most I've been writing has been for school projects, so, like, the Columbian Exchange. It's pretty hard to incorporate jokes about the exchange of vegetables and cattle. To get back in the flow, I'm trying to add more to my stories.
This summer, I also want to read more, because it improves writing apparently. The problem is, I literally find it so difficult to finish a book nowadays. My attention span lasts about three chapters, and if I don't like what I'm reading, I do these two things.
1) Force myself to read more and try to get into it.
2) Realize 36 chapters later that I'm in too deep and might as well just complete the book now.
So, yeah, I finish the book, but I drag through it and treat it like a chore. I've read through a couple books lately, so I'm also thinking of starting book reviews!

Also, Ramadhan and Eid passed recently, so that's my thirtieth excuse.

Basically, all this stuff happened, and I also started focusing on writing short stories, taking my time away from blogging. And I've been figuring out how to change the url of this blog while also redirecting it.

Anyways, I'm back to it! :)  See you soon with some real content.