Swimming Etiquette

I know we've posted almost too many posts about swimming, you are all probably getting bored, but that is what our life consists of right now, so thats what we post about.

Swimming has many etiquette rules. In a lane, there are ten to twenty people, so its rather crowded. Sometimes it even gets to the point where the lane leader is back from a fifty before half the people in the lane have gotten the chance to go, so as you can imagine, it gets quite clogged up.

And then there are those people who were on vacation for the first two weeks of summer swimming, so they are still out of shape, so they sit out on a lot of fifties (I'm not gonna try to say that I don't often sit out on a lot of fifties), and so when you finish a fifty, and there is someone standing on the wall, adjusting their goggles to make it look like they aren't siting out of a fifty because they are tired, and you don't know weather to pass them, because there are a lot of people on the team who are very picky about passing. In fact, there are a few kinds of these people.

1. The people who won't pass you when you ask them too, because they want to pass you when you are swimming, to show that they are good swimmers, but since there are so many people in the lane that you are bound, at one point, to be squished up a lane line and a person. This involves being kicked quite a few times.

2. Then there are the people who you want to pass, because they are slow, or more often, goofing around, but every time you try to pass them swimming, they start speeding up and doing what they're supposed to be doing.

3. Then there are the people who are good about passing all around. They will pass you if you ask them, they will let you pass them, and they are good at passing while swimming. Thats most of the people on the team.

Then theres a lot of stuff about getting hit while swimming. Everyone gets hit, so you rarely ever stop to apologize, because it would get your lane even more clogged up than it already is. If you can believe it, you hit more people in other lanes than you do in your own, if you are a lane rider, which most people are. Usually, like in backstroke, your hand will hit their hand at the bottom of your cycle, or your hand will hit their leg, or vice versa, you usually don't stop for those. There are few different times you apologize.

1. When you are a crooked backstroke swimmer, and you hit head with someone coming the opposite direction, you both instantly go head up and say "sorry!" at the same time.

2. When someone is constantly touching your feet, they usually apologize. If it only happens once they don't. Or they don't stop, and they don't say sorry, and you begin to wonder if they are trying to tickle you or something equally creepy.

3. When you are coming out of streamline crooked and shoot into their head or stomach.

4. When you are doing butterfly kick and your feet come out of the water too far and they come down and slap onto the persons head behind you.

5. When you are doing backstroke kick, and the person in front of you has a low kick, and you go on top of their legs without even feeling the jet-like currents that usually happen if the person is a higher kicker, and before you know it, they lift their stomach and your head is practically resting on it. Thats when you both go head up, and you say sorry as many times s you can and they either laugh their head off or get all wide-eyed and stay away from you the rest of the season.

And thats all the swimming etiquette you need to know.

-michelle

AquaBears

On Friday morning I was shocked to find that Coach Kyle had signed me up for a 200 IM for the meet on Saturday against Butler (the smallest team on the league). For those of you who don't know, a 200 IM is death. IM actually stands for individual Medley, which means a little bit of all four strokes, or as I like to put it, a lot of all four kinds of torturous death.

You start with Buttefly, which is the coolest looking stroke, but the hardest to do. It is made up of the dolphin kick, (or as they used to call it back in my day, the mermaid kick) and a pull that involves bringing your arms up from your sides, out straight, and back into the water in a dive-ish position. (wow, you guys may have thought that was a terrible explanation, but I'm very proud of it.) And you do a fifty of fly. (a fifty is fifty meters, or two lengths of the pool.)

Then you do backstroke, which is pretty fast, but I mostly like it because you can breath all you want. And you do a fifty of that.

Then there is breast stroke, which is probably the funnest. If you don't know what breast stroke is, its the one you naturally do when you are trying to swim up. (like if you happened to be being drowned by mermaids!) And you do a fifty of that.

Then theres freestyle, and this is what you do naturally when you are panicking because there is a shark after you, except your head goes in the water. Not flailing around like another arm. And you do a fifty of that. And then you are done. It was death. I got disqualified because I did my backstroke turn wrong, but it was worth it I guess.

That meet was against the former Butler Torpedoes, which, as of this season, are known as the Aquabears. They changed it because torpedoes are too violent. OH YEAH, LOTS MORE VIOLENT THAN A FREAKING BEAR. wow. Some people.

On other news, my parents are out of town today, to some other far away place in Missouri.

AAAAND I'M GOIN TO OHIO ON THE NINTH! super excited. Super. Super excited.

-Michelle

Fringe Fashion Week

Fringe, the designer line that Amy and myself have had for the last couple of years has just had its first fashion week, and we are hoping to be able to have one every year. around the third week of June.

I wanted to show you all the best shots I could (sorry that like half of them are sideways, I tried to fix it like five times, but it just went back.), But there are just too many. So here are a couple good ones.

Amy, being shot for her dramatic prom scene.
This is my Beach Music album cover. The album, The Sand, includes the best seller single, As We Walk, don't miss out on this one!
This is my awkward home school eighth grade dance picture.
This is something special fringe came up with just this year, the shline, which combines colors, styles and emotions. (Harhar, that red thing is something that Amy sewed for one of the Lord of the Ring movies that my family went to opening day.)
And last but not least, we welcome Indian dress back into the fashion world.

A Teenager's Thoughts On Her Brief Glimpses Of Adulthood, &c

If it's to awesome to fit on your page, it's awesome enough to open in another tab to read.

Here's the lowdown on being an adult: it's pretty lame. You know that knowing look that adults get in their eyes when they say something like "You'll understand when you get older"? It's complete bull. Being an adult, according to my humble observation of the species, is like being a teenager except, congratulations, now you have to deal with more paperwork.

What can I say? This week has been highly frustrating in the paperwork department.

Here is what I have read since I posted last: The Red Pyramid by Rick Riordan. For a book by rick Riordan, it was very disappointing. It didn't even become enjoyable at all until the last quarter, and even then it was super confusing/implausible/frustrating. I know there's going to be a sequel and I just don't have that much hope for it. However awesome Percy Jackson was, I think it may be time for Riordan to venture out of the genre of gods who are just as petty and frustrating as people are and try to write some other, more readworthy genre of YA fiction. There are so many possibilities.

Here is what I have watched since I posted last: Prison Break and Karate Kid. Actually it's been weeks since I watched any Prison Break since Mom blocked Netflix, even though I was halfway through the first season finale. Talk about a cliffhanger. Stopping in the middle of a cliffhanger is doubly suspenseful. My thoughts on the show are tainted by a haze of respect for the writers for making a show that really makes you think, and I mean that in a good way. Not like Lost. Thinking about Lost just hurts your brain and never gets you anywhere. Here are things I like reading about/watching: martial arts, photographic memory, intricate planning, strong silent heroes, really creepily awful terrible bad guys, manipulative people, etc. Because Prison Break had at least four or five of the above, it almost goes without saying that I will love it. Yes, I am predictable in that way. And yes, I am also shallow. Old news.

Karate Kid was awesome. Go watch it. That's all.

-Amy

Swimming

Well we had a swim meet against Harrisonville to day, the arch enemy team. They have won the finals every years since the beginning of this little league. Harrisonville has been the bully and the showoff, all of these years...until last year when we toootally left them in the dust at finals, where they got third (W00t W00t Got team!).

So now that we have a fighting chance, we had more hope with the meet today. Until it started lightninging (wow, is that a word? Its amazing!) and we had to call it off two hours in. I was SO close to swimming breaststroke, I was on the second row of chairs! (Yeah. That means close, in swim lenguaaaage.(that last g was supposed to be pronounced more like a J. Yes, It is important that you understand how I pronounce things.)

So, chances are we are either going to reschedule, say its a tie, add up the points that we did have, or just say that we won, because all of the years they have won meets and finals is totally more than we have, and we just deserve it, because we are so cool, and our mascot is a really real looking barracuda, rather than a cat that looks mad in a splash of water, supposedly the extinct Aquacat or something. And, our color is purple. Cha-ching, we totally win.

No but seriously, their whole town is somehow connected to these weird lookin' cats. The Wildcats (football, baseball, golf, ect.), the Lady Cats (softball. Wow. WOW.) and the Aquacats.

Which is totally dumb, because Luisburg (the Barracudas. Us. The awesome ones.) highschool are also the wildcats, but they are WAAAAY too much of an awesome team to name themselves something like the Aquacats, or the Aguagatos (Spanish. Learn it. Love it. Live it. But mostly learn it.) or the Catsthatdon'thatewater! (I'm pretty sure that's impossible, I mean we have three cats, and don't think we haven't tried the whole 'give the cat a bath' thing. As if they can't do it by themselves. Because they can. And they do all the time.)

So yeah the meet was pretty cool. The part that was actually existent.

And only six more weeks of getting up at six to go jump in a cold pool and swim for two hours! Huraaah.

-Michelle

June is the month

Oh my! Its June! The month of many posts! Or at least I hope.

Heres the deal, I started picture-a-day, and I'm not gonna do anything crazy like upload a picture on here every month, but hopefully, as I put them on facebook at the end of each month, I am also going to put them on this beby, and write the coolest thing about every cool thing that I did that month. Yeah. Its gonna rock.

Many things are happening this month. Swim team started this month, Amy is going to get a car this month (or something) I'm going to worlds of fun for the first time and a billion other cool things that I will be doing. EVERY. DAY! And you get to hear about it all! Its stalking made easy!

-Michelle

Yeah, That's Right

Yeah, it's Amy. Long lost and all that.

Though there's a lot of other stuff I could talk about (starting swim team, going to Europe in a bit, getting a car, piano, Life in General, insomnia, Justin Bieber, etc.), I know that whoever reads this really isn't interested in hearing me whine about my totally awesome life that I totally take for granted. Instead, I'm going to jot down some thoughts I have about compelling writing.

I was thinking about it today, since I'm about to finish reading the last book of the Percy Jackson & the Olympians series for the second time and am still amazed at how effectively Riordan can narrate the world and its events from the point of view of a teenaged boy. Books like it have been done before, but you could tell that most of them were written by adults. Reading about Percy Jackson, it's hard to imagine that the person who created him is the same age as my dad. Just think of how much imagination, research, and experience that would take. I can't remember my thought processes as a 12-year-old. When I think back on them now, they seem hopelessly foolish, petty, and arbitrary. It takes a real gift to convey the point of view of a preteen mind realistically without making it seem silly and immature. When I was twelve, I thought I was as mature as any adult. The world was at my fingertips. Because he himself seems so real, Percy Jackson makes the whole mythological storyline seem a little more real, too.

I was going to talk about Shadowmarch too, but my bedtime draws near. My bedtimes shall waver to no blogging needs or insomnia! No sir. Swimming in the morning.

Tonight Michelle and I watched Where the Wild Things Are. It was sad, and another one of those odd little gems of the entertainment industry that makes you realise how complicated life and people and family really are, even if you're a little kid.

Hm, seems like a really can't tear myself away from here without sharing at least a bite of the Life News that everyone no doubt finds really dull. I'm going to have an interview at the writing lab sometime in the near future. I'm so nervous, you can't even imagine. If I get the job, I will have the means to survive the fall while supporting a car, my now-rampant addiction to Jolly Ranchers, and probably the busiest schedule of my life. Crossing fingers here.

-Amy