Rain, Rain, You're Here To Stay

What had been an abysmally dry winter is so no longer. For the past week we have experienced and almost continual outpouring of rain. Perhaps what's even better is the fact that it should continue to rain well through Sunday afternoon. There is something about just sitting back on a couch, wrapped in a warm blanket with a glass of hot tea in hand, watching the droplets dash themselves against the windowpanes. A sense of utter peace settles over one. We feel content and perfectly comfortable spending the entire day indoors, going nowhere. Rain has the ability to make us slow down our frantic pace of life and sit back and take a breather. Perhaps that it one reason of why I so enjoy it when it rains.

Ah, I see I truly am born in the wrong century. It is times like these---when the house is dark with nothing but the fire to light the rooms and calm and soothing music ("rain" music) is playing---when I am seized with a desire to put on a dress and either bake some culinary delight or sit down and scratch out a few paragraphs of my story on yellowed paper with a quill pen. (I have no idea where one can even find a quill pen these days; it has always been a great ambition of mine to learn how to make my own pen and ink. How gloriously old-fashioned that sounds!)

Now, for some exciting news. My mother and I went to an old bookstore and found a treasure: eight books written by Louisa May Alcott with sweet, pale green binding and ink illustrations. The best part? We only paid $24 for them all! I am excessively pleased with this find. Nothing is better than reading an old book, except for reading an old book with tea and a scone.

Rain always puts me in a bookish mood. It never fails. Perhaps that would explain why I just requested two books from the library ("The Railway Children" and "The Story of the Treasure-Seekers", both of them by E. Nesbit). They have been favorites of mine since I heard them read aloud in fourth or fifth grade. (They also happen to be set in England in the 1900s about the escapades of the children trying to win a fortune for their family.) So here I blissfully sit, mug of tea beside me, listening to the patter of the rain about me and waiting for that mechanical call from the library.

I love rainy days!

Deck Those Halls

Christmas is a holiday that is most looked forward to in our household.  It is our favorite season because we have so many beautiful decorations to put for it.  

The weekend after Thanksgivings finds us packing away all of our Fall decorations---including our Fall music---and dragging box after box of Christmas ornaments and decorations up from our basement.  The first day of December was heralded with us blasting Christmas music defiantly to the 80 degree weather outside.  It has been my sister and my fervent wish that one day we would have snow Christmas morning.  We had a sprinkling of snow last year and are supposed to have some next week.  Oh, what bliss!  To awaken to snow falling lightly through the trees and frosting over our yard.  We are ready for it.  We have an ample supply of firewood, cider, and our tree is lit and decorated.

Yes, it is only December 5th and we already have our tree up in our living room and festooned with lights and ornaments.  The weekend after Thanksgiving saw us in the parking lot of Home Depot with our Nana and Abuelito, ready to pick out a tree.  It usually takes us a good forty-five minutes to an hour to choose the "one" and undoubtedly, it will be the one that we first laid eyes one.  

Last year, the helpers of Home Depot threw themselves into our Christmas choosing whole-heartedly.  They held the trees, spun them, lifted them, carried them thither and fro, and offered general comments and opinions.  This year, the big elves of the Christmas lot were not as helpful as they had been in past years.  We were left to do much of the lifting, carrying, and spinning to ourselves.  We searched and searched through the bins of trees, yet we could find none to our satisfaction.  Suddenly, mom inched towards me, hissing, "Hannah!  Look at those people over there!  I think they just pulled out our tree."

I glanced over at the customers examining the tree.  It was tall, with well-placed branches, and was the perfect shape.  The word of the "perfect tree" passed through the Andrade ranks like wildfire.  Quickly and quietly, we began to edge forward, pressing in and about them.  I think we must have overwhelmed them, for they began to ever so slowly, slip away.  The tree was ours!  Victory was ours.

Can You Scratch That Off Your Flow?

Debate season is here.  Oh joy.  Debate season.  Not only that, but I have my first debate "tournament" on Monday.  Be still my beating heart.

     

Well, I have had just over five weeks of "debate intensive".  The coach of our club has gone through with the newbies and broken everything down into understandable sections.  We have created a case, formed teams, and are going to go against each other in two rounds of in-club debating.  One round is an hour and a half long.  That is three hours of debating.  As our coach says, "The best way to learn to swim is to jump in the water feet first."  I always hear this saying, but everyone neglects to mention that there are those who drown before they figure it out.  

Although we have had five weeks to be quite literally submersed in the lingo and happenings of debate, I still find myself confused by all the terminology.  Our coach calls it "debate speak" and some of the debaters in the club are better at speaking in the debate language than in regular English.  It seems like I'm always hearing, "I'd like to address their third Inherency point in our Solvency, after I've provided a link-turn to show that their Advantages are actually DA's."  Or "Judge, the Affirmative team has dropped our arguments regarding the significance and topicality arguments---which are major voting issues---so you can just carry that through the flow."  Now, I'm sure many of you are thinking what I'm thinking when I hear this, which is: WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT???

I still am a bit confused, but hopefully everything will turn out all right in the end.  Again, as they say, the best way to learn is to jump right in.  We all have permission to fail, so that is alright.  I don't think anybody really expects anything mind-bogglingly amazing from us, so we should be safe.  I will update on Monday to let you know how I survived the lion's den.

As British As Afternoon Tea And Biscuits

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."~C.S. Lewis

A sure sign of fall and the approaching of winter is when you can see an Andrade bent over a cup of tea and immersed in a good book.  Sure, this happens often during the summer but it happens almost constantly as the chill months set in.  There is nothing better than sitting by a fire, wrapped in a blanket with rain pouring outside, reading a good book, and drinking tea.  Nothing better.

I am convinced that my family was supplanted from a sweet cottage in the UK and brought here to America where we had our memory erased and were led to believe that we were native Americans.  But I think that is lies.  All lies.  We are as British as afternoon tea and biscuits.  If souls have a language I know that mine speaks Gaelic and that my family's at least speak with a British accent.  

We have a deep-rooted love in Jane Austen, tea and scones, and good books set in England.  Currently, there is one book that my mother is in love with.  It is one that she has laughed and cried over.  I have only got so far as the laughing part, but she says there is still time.  I may yet cry over it.  Whether I shed tears or not, I cannot disagree with the fact that it is an incredibly well-written book.  If you are in need of a good read, allow me to recommend this one to you.  It is "The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society" by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows.  It is a collection of letters during the 1940s in London and that is all I will say about it.  Except that it is amazing.  And that you should read it.  The characters grew into my mother's best friends in the week she took to read it.  

Ah, winter.  The time when Jane Austen quotes fly thick and fast off the tongue and the house smells perpetually of fresh-baked scones.  Some sort of old movie (such as "Pride and Prejudice", "Sense and Sensibility", "The Secret Garden", "Little Women", or "Beauty and the Beast") is playing or music from "Little Women".  These are common signs of the chill seasons in the Andrade household.

College Credit

This morning we received the news.  I had gotten an A on my first college essay.  The teacher's standards were rigorous and I had worked diligently on my paper.  At best I assumed that I would get a B, a high-scoring B but a B nonetheless.  Usually a straight-A student, for my first semester taking a college credit class I was content with that.

The purpose of the essay was to analyze the movie "Smoke Signals" (directed by Chris Eyre, Miramax, 1998) which was based upon the journey of two Native American men.  While the film presented some compelling arguments regarding the cause and effect of alcoholism on a family, it was not particularly well-done.  

There is nothing harden than writing an essay regarding something you do not even entirely like.  However it was a growing process for me, and I wrote and wrote and crossed out and erased and wrote some more.  Mom helped me, which I was grateful for.  Doubtless a good part of my A can be attributed to her.

With our joint effort, I managed to scrape up an A which I am excessively pleased about.  Hard work certainly pays off!

A Goodbye to Summer, Hello to Fall

"Delicious autumn!  My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns... It is the second spring when every leaf is in flower."~George Eliot.

Fall is undoubtedly the favorite season in the Andrade household.  When the leaves turn colors and the air turns crisp and chill caused great excitement in our household.  On the very first day of fall we go out to buy small pumpkins to place them on the posts of our picket fence.  This year, it was over a hundred degrees out when we did it; but we did set them out anyway, valiantly combatting the heat by our fall symbols.  

Much to our delight, the heat did not persist long.  The mornings have been chill and foggy and the breeze nippy.  Our maples have begun to slowly turn from green to light yellow and orange.  Our Fall Box has even made it's appearance, a true sign that the season for thanks has begun.  What?  You have not yet heard of our Fall Box?  This must be remedied; allow me to enlighten you.

We are very serious about decorating for each season; eggs for spring and Easter, bright flowers for summer, pumpkins and garlands of leaves for fall, and a tree and ornaments for Christmas.  Undoubtedly, our favorite seasons to decorate for are fall and winter.  (We love the chilly months.)  In our Fall Box are our thanksgiving themed napkins and plates, our wreaths and garlands (some are fake, some are very well-preserved), fall-ish paintings done by my sister and I when we were small, and our fall music.  Our fall music is a big part of us getting ready for the season; most of it consists of Celtic music (such as the Chieftains and Irish guitar and the like) but certainly our most fall-ish CD would have to be "Little Women".  That soundtrack sends shivers of pleasure up and down my sister and my spines.  In the early morning when the cold fog is wrapped all about the house and there's a fire blazing and hot cider on the stove, nothing is better than listening to "Little Women" while wrapped up in a blanket and reading a good novel.  Bliss.

Yes, October has come.  Fall is on it's way if it isn't already here.  What a lovely season.

Rascal Queen

"My unfulfilled ambition is to write a great novel in three parts about my adventures," Wendy exclaimed, eyes shining.

"What adventures?" her aunt demanded.  The girl shrugged, "I have yet to have them, but I'm sure they'll be perfectly thrilling!"~Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie

Ah yes.  Creating a novel, what a lovely ambition.  To be an author is an occupation that I dream about and long for.  I like to joke with my family that I have an affinity for the "poor professions".  The things that do not provide a steady monetary income are the things I naturally gravitate towards: everything from music to writing to film has captured my interest.  However, creative writing has always held a special place with me; perhaps because it has been something that I could do even at a young age.

When I was eleven, I created a story.  It was based upon a recurring dream that I had had, and I was convinced that I must put it to paper.  "Ragamuffin Queen" was the first story that I ever finished, and I was immensely proud of it.  Being 153 pages long on paper twice as big as that from the novels I usually read, I thought it my greatest work.  My goal was to send it to a publisher and finally see my name in print.

Yet life was busy and my story was pushed to the far back of my mind.  Only recently have I dug it up again, re-reading what I wrote those years ago.  While my plot and characters were developed enough for an eleven-year-old eager to get to the action, there were glaring errors to my sixteen-year-old eyes.  So it has become my project.  "Ragamuffin Queen" is being rewritten; the plan is to be finished with it by summer.  

My book has been on my mind quite often, almost all my spare time is taken up with the re-writing of it.  As such, my blogs here might be rather dull for some will almost certainly be speaking of the story.  Yet I will not neglect telling of my life completely.  There are many things that I will love to share.