Today Was The Craziest Day...

I sing in the choir at my church. I think I've told you that before. 

Today was the beginning of a Catholic homeschooling conference here in my state, and there was going to be a graduation mass for the class of 2013. 

It was my mom's idea and so she had to set it up, which meant finding a pair of priests, altar servers, a Eucharistic minister, and a choir, as well as transporting an altar, crucifix, vestments, and various other things necessary for a Mass. 

So, I had to sing for this mass with my choir, and since our choir director is sick, we had to draft someone from another parish to accompany us. 

Which meant that I had to copy, print, staple, and deliver a dozen copies of the songs we were going to sing, AND help my mom set up the altar, crucifix, hymn books and pamphlets. 

It was a total hassle, but the mass was celebrated by the bishop that confirmed my brothers and I, and it was an absolutely beautiful mass. 

Afterword, we had cake and lemonade at a reception for the graduates. 

My brother is severely allergic to nuts. And you'll never guess what. 

There was almond extract in the cake icing. 

So on the way home, he started swelling up, and he was having trouble breathing, and he had hives all over his body. 

Needless to say, my dad took him to the emergency room. 

So I had to babysit my little siblings until my parents got home. 

(That would have been my Friday post, but I fell asleep while putting my youngest sibling to bed, so I didn't post. This would have been the post from Saturday.) 

My dad woke me up at 12:30am and told me to head up to my own bed, where I promptly collapsed. 

And, because my body likes to torture me, I woke up a little before 6am. For some stupid reason, whenever I wake up in the middle of the night, my body decides I need less than eight hours of sleep to function. Genius, right?

My brother was fine. He'd had an IV in and they'd pumped Benadryl into his bloodstream, so he was out of there relatively quickly. I found him sleeping on the couch in the Living Room that morning. 

So I got my chores out of the way and got dressed, and then waited around for a couple hours until we left for the second day of the conference. 

It was actually pretty good. They had a speaker talk about what to expect in and about college, and then after a half-hour break, they had several religious of varying stages come in and talk about vocations. 

Then we had pizza for lunch and after that, I had a gig watching the elementary school-age kids for three hours. 

So I basically calmed down a few rowdy kids, watched Veggie Tales, helped a few kids tracing and coloring their hands, watched more Veggie Tales, and got paid $15 for it! :D

And then...after the day was done I bought some jewelry and headed home to freshen up a bit for my very first high school dance! 

It was held at a dance hall a little ways out of my city, and I went with my older brothers and a few friends. 

We were taught a bunch of line dances, and then we basically just did whatever to a specific playlist until the last song. 

It was really fun, and I can't wait for next month when there will be another one! 

I went swimming at a friend's house today, and we spent an hour and a half in the pool before drying off and getting dressed for mass. 

And that was basically my day. 

Oh, and I had three chocolate-chip cookies. 

Now that you've caught up...yay! 

I'm sorry if it's ridiculously long. And I'm sorry I posted two days late. But, you know, my brother was kind of in the hospital, so...

I promise next Friday, you'll have a post. As long as nobody I know is mauled by a monkey or run over by a trigonometry book, I swear on my favorite hat, I'll post on Friday. 

Keep Calm and Endeaovr On, 

~Adalyn

Excuses, Easter, and Everything in Between!

Well here I am again. For the third time. Trying to write this post. Safari has decided to make like Sebastian and crash all the time. I will explain.

Excuse #1 for why I haven't posted in weeks and weeks: My ancient and beloved laptop Sebastian committed suicide and murder all at the same time because he took all of my novels, ideas, lists, bookmarked websites, and passwords to the technological graveyard with him.

And I don't like using Safari for Internet because its slower and harder to type by a million and because of reasons stated above.

The first time it crashed, I was trying to insert a picture. And then it crashed and I lost everything. The second time, I had given up on the picture and was trying to insert a link. So I went to go copy it from YouTube and when I came back, there was this little error code and it said something about looking for a group of bloggers with similar problems.

For moral support, I guess?

But now I'm using my brand-spankin'-new blogger app! And if you're seeing this, then it worked!

So that's one excuse. Excuse #2: Holy Week and piano and school and friends and really just life in general have been moving so slowly and so quickly at once.

Lent seemed to fly by, and it's already Easter Thursday! I sort of miss Holy Week. It's the most eye-opening time of the year, I think. The beginning of a new life, a life open to God and life eternal.

I seem to be moving pretty quickly. Usually I'm slower than this. Maybe it's just the fact that I'm text-typing instead if real-typing.

It's harder to punctuate and spellcheck this way. And I can see much less of my post, so it seems like my sentences are really long, even when they're not.

Oh, well, it's better than leaving my beloved blog to die in that cybernetic graveyard we talked about earlier. At least I can salvage it.

But anyway, on to Holy Week! It really started for me on the Tuesday before Easter. My church had an absolutely gorgeous service called Tenebrae (pronounced TEN-eh-brey), which involved singing, readings, and the symbolic putting out of candles. We sang my favorite Lenten song, maybe my favorite choir song, period.

It's called Miserere Mei Deus by Allegri. It translates to "Have mercy on me, God." It's a beautiful piece with five parts, and it's got the sort of bittersweet sound to it that sends shivers down your spine when it's sung a certain way. That's how we sang it.

You can look it up if you want. I won't put in a link because the ones on YouTube just don't sound the way ours did. Standing in the middle of the action, in media res, so to speak, you hear things differently. We took it slower, softer than all the ones on the Internet. It was more sorrowful, somehow. More...repentant.

Tenebrae was probably the best way to start Holy Week, the Easter Tridium.

Then, on Holy Thursday, I sang with our choir again at the evening mass, and it was also beautiful, although in more of a serious way. The Eucharist was removed from the tabernacle and we all processed in to the Hall, the fellowship area, where our priest led a short benediction and then left. The Hall was a place of 24 hour Eucharistic adoration after that. You could come at any hour of the day or night and pray there, in front of the Blessed Sacrament.

What the priest does at that point of the liturgy is reposition the Blessed Sacrament in a different tabernacle and place a veil over it. When he positions the veil over the door of the tabernacle, it is a sign that Jesus has left the earth. It always stabs at my heart when I see the veil over Him. It really makes you feel that he was gone, dead.

Can you imagine? After seeing who you believed to be the savior of the world, the Christ of prophecy die suffering and pitiful...can you imagine still trusting that he would rise again in three days time? What faith you would have to have! It's nearly unbelievable!

I don't know what I would have believed. After following Jesus the Nazarene for three years, maybe knowing him for longer...can you imagine watching him tortured, scourged and beaten, forced to carry his murderers' tool, the wretched and blessed beam of wood he would give his life on. For us! Us, the poor, pitiful, frivolous sinners!

Watching him nailed to a splintered and bloody piece of wood, raised on the future symbol of his power, and bleed and bleed.

I've never seen The Passion, but whenever I think of Our Lord's passion and death, that's how I picture it.

I don't mean to be gruesome, but that's how it really happened. I won't apologize for the truth.

Back to the point, that stab in my heart made Good Friday all the more real. We got to sing the Miserere Mei Deus again, but it was more intense this time, a desperate plea for mercy rather than a humble sorrowing for sin.

Both times it was beautiful, though. What we do on Good Friday is at one point in the service (not a mass because there is no consecration of the Eucharist), everyone walks up to a large crucifix the priest is holding and takes a turn kissing it. The feet or the hands or the head of our crucified savior.

I always touch my lips to his feet. It reminds me of Mary Magdelene, washing Jesus' feet with her tears and drying then with her hair. Anointing them with oil and kissing them because of her deep regret for her sin. It makes me feel even more deeply the hallow emptiness in my soul on that day, knowing that it was me and my sins that put him on the cross. But it's a good emptiness, repentant.

I cried.

But the sorrow of Good Friday just made the Easter joy all the more wonderful.

I woke up at 6:15, still a child at heart, I guess. I'm the one in my family who wakes up my silly and sleepy older brothers on holidays. They never seem to want to get into the spirit of things.
It's annoying sometimes.

Anyway, that's why I wanted to insert a picture before. I got a new hat! Here it is!

I hope that works, anyway. If it doesn't, I will never post a picture again. :P

So I got a whole new summer wardrobe (sort of), and lots of my favorite candy. Then I spent the rest of the day chilling with friends and family. Our cascarone fight will never be forgotten.

So...you've basically caught up. I'm in the fourth quarter of eighth grade and looking forward to summer. Also, my braces are supposed to come off soon, hopefully by the end of June. I have VBS and summer camp to look forward to, and I'd rather so it with a straight smile.

It's really only my front teeth that are messed up, because they closed a space and one of them isn't perfectly aligned with my other teeth. But soon, the orthodontist says. Soon.

So anyway, now that you've read my über-long post, can go and live your perfectly different life.

Have fun, God bless, and happy Easter.

Keep Calm and Endeavor On,
~Adalyn

Let's start in the middle, shall we?

Hello, all. I'm Adalyn. I'm thirteen and I have silver glitter shoes I wear whenever I'm not wearing my blue plaid airwalks. I like to think of myself as a cheerful person, although I do have off days where I stomp around the house getting absolutely nothing done and yell at people and generally do things I regret later.

But, to introduce myself on a more positive note, I shall get into my life story. Okay, not really. But, maybe a little thing about an exciting thing that happened today will get you to keep reading my blog....Or not...

WE HAVE A NEW POPE!

Yay, Papa Frankie! xD I'm a Roman Catholic and proud of it, though I don't go around telling people they're going to hell like some people believe. I'm not very judgmental, and prefer to think of myself as someone who listens to an argument she doesn't agree with, and then fires back with reasonable solutions and examples, without seeming like a know-it-all.

...Sometimes my image of myself isn't very accurate.

But back to the point, I do crazy things all the time, like writing novels in a month with this website: ywp.nanowrimo.org and making response videos I never post on YouTube and being an "unsocial" homeschooler.

Yes, I do have friends. xD

Rick Riordan is my favorite author and role model when it comes to writing, with Ally Carter and Eion Colfer in a close second and third. What I love about Mr. Riordan is that he somehow manages to balance humor with sorrow, wonderful with terrible, and pain with joy. It's awesome. Plus, he has a great sense of humor. As do all my favorite authors. Granted, I haven't read any of the classics like Shakespeare and Mark Twain and Charles Dickens yet. I'm starting all the literature stuff next fall.

My other hobbies include piano and guitar, singing, frequenting various websites, Youth Groups, and sadly, D&D. My nerdy brothers finally talked me into it. I play almost every week with some of my close friends, and I'm actually happy I do play because it helps me really get into different characters and different situations and stuff like that for when I'm writing. They haven't managed to convince me to play anything else nerdy over the last year or two, so yay for that!

I also do annual things with my church like VBS, the March for Life, and retreats. I'm really active in my church, seeing as my parents help out with a whole slew of ministries, and I help them help out. ;)

My favorite TV shows right now are Avatar: Legend of Korra, Psych, Sherlock, and Phineas and Ferb. Okay, so I'm sort of a nerd in more than one aspect.

Sooooo....now you know a fraction about about me. Thanks for reading this far. As a reward, you get imaginary smarties. And a hug. *hugs.* ((Spread the love, man. xD)) But really, I hope you can stay for all the wonderful endeavors life has to throw at me.

Let me just say, it should be quite an adventure.

~Adalyn