Why I Will Never Be Able To Break Up With Someone

I knew by the look on my mom's face as soon as she answered the phone. Another college asking why I didn't complete the online application/would I consider applying? 

I groaned and took the phone to my official 'dealing with grownup stuff over the phone' place. The downstairs bathroom. 

I knew what the call was going to be like. First, they'd ask me how my day was and immediately go into asking what I am considering doing for the rest of my life. 

Don't get me wrong, I give a lot of credit to the unfortunate souls on the other end of the phone. I wouldn't want to spend my free time calling high school students who don't want to talk to me and persuade them to attend my school. (Watch, next year I can almost guarantee that if I get to participate in work study, that'll be the job I get)

So this is how the conversation went:

'Good evening, my name is blah blah, and I'm calling on behalf of Blah Blah University. How are you?'

'Uhm, I'm good.'

'Good, good. I see here that at one point you were interested in attending Blah Blah, are you still considering applying?'

'Well, see, there's another college that I'm interested in. I started applying for Blah Blah a while back, but never got around to finishing.'

'Oh, I see. And what college is that.'

'Blahditty Blah.'

'Alright then, would you like to be removed from our calling list?'

'Uhm, well, I might still get around to applying, but, uhm, you can remove me if you want.' -face palm-

'The decision is really up to you. Would you like to be removed?'

'...yes, please.'

'Thank you, goodnight.'

I proceeded to press the 'End Call' button two or three times (to be absolutely sure, you know?) and hand the phone back to my mom. I happily went back to looking up things on Pinterest, knowing that I had successfully been removed from a college's calling list. 

My Life as of Late

*Adventuring out into the wilderness with my younger sister to smash ice, cough, slates over an unsuspecting stump, cough, Gilbert Blythe. 

*Eating chocolate chess pieces from my brother and playing 3-player chess. (As if 2 wasn't hard enough!)

*Practicing evil laughter. 

*Becoming addicted to Pinterest. I recently woke up at 3am and couldn't fall back to sleep, so I used Pinterest to help figure out if it was possible to make a climbable tree as a set piece. 

*Performing thee most embarrassing 10+ point turn while my sister's director waited for me to get out of his way. 

*Discovering that selling candy bars to fund your prom is exceedingly awkward. I've made a mental note to always buy candy bars for fundraisers in the future because now I know how great it feels to have someone buy one. 

*Discovering that explaining that homeschoolers can have a prom and that we can be just like other high schoolers is also awkward. 

*Spending most of my time under my covers or snuggled in sweater because Wisconsin is cold!

*Sitting in on the first rehearsal of a local show that I'm not in (it's a talent, remember?) to pick up a prop that wasn't there. I ended up staying for the whole rehearsal plus an extra half hour because of how much I missed my local theatre family. Seriously, guys, theatre is awesome. I sort of did an internal happy dance when they said the prop wasn't there today, but I'm welcome to come to any other rehearsals in the future to pick it up or hang out. 

*Making intermission conversation. 

'How are you?'

'Good, you?'

'Good. How do you like the show?'

'Good, you?'

'Good.'

And that's usually pretty much it. Intermission isn't long enough to have a full conversation, and depending on the person you're talking to, you just don't know what else to say. I tend to do the awkward 'How are you?' circle more than the normal one time in a conversation, leaving the person I'm talking to feeling confused and awkward. 

*Finishing up the last of the Christmas baking mixes. There's no loser in this situation. Seriously. 

*Senior year craziness. Prom. School. Graduation. Deep breaths. 

We're Off to See the Wizard...

Awkward angle + red lips + dark eyebrows + hot-pink-hairdye scalp

I ended up painting my nails bright pink to avoid looking like I had some sort of fingernail disease from helping the Wicked Witch of the West. 

I have a talent for sitting in during rehearsals of shows that I'm not actually a part of. 

This show was absolutely insane. Literal flying monkeys (and a flying Dorothy, witch, Glinda, Oz, and best of all, bike), a dog, a pit, fire, smoke, melting. Everything that *could* be done, was done. 

And it turned out amazing. 

Theatre is an incredible thing. There's no way of counting up the hours that go into making something like it possible. All that time goes into making sure nothing goes wrong, and when it inevitably does, the only way to fix it is by joining forces in the split second before the audience knows what went wrong. 

Over the past few months I've gotten to observe community theatre in action and high school theatre in action. While theatre is theatre and everyone is working for a common goal, there are quite a few differences. Like, for instance, in high school there's the obvious working around school schedules that needs to be done. I don't know how the actors managed to do school for three days while doing shows in the evenings (homeschooler perk, I guess). 

There's also a definite maturity level difference. At least in some cases. Some of the high school actors showed much more diligence and maturity than some of the community theatre actors I've met, but the overall difference was noticeable. 

That being said, high schoolers listened to directions from authority figures better. I think in a local theater setting, when you're working with adults, there's a sense of 'you can't tell me what to do, I'm grown up', where with kids and teenagers, they know they ultimately have to listen to what they're being told. 

And then there's homeschool theatre, where everything runs perfectly. (Kidding, ;) there's NO such thing as perfect theatre, especially with 74 kids)

 After going to nearly every practice and interacting with the high schoolers for several weeks, it wasn't until the day of the second performance that I got a 

'Wait, do you go to our school?'

I took this comment to mean that my awkwardly wandering around the halls and lack of knowledge of which things went where had gone at least somewhat unnoticed. 

This was also the night that I was told that I seemed normal for a homeschooler. 

I wonder what the reaction would've been if I told them that they seemed normal for a public schooler. ;)

But really, theatre is for the weird kids. The kids who aren't 'normal'. Personally, those kids are my favorite.