Fill 'er Up!

So I was supposed to post something on here but it seems my computer ate it. Or, rather, I can't remember where I saved it. Or if I saved it... Darn. Maybe I'll rewrite it. Possibly. Eh, I dunno. Buuuuut, until I decide on what to post here, you get one of these surveys that have popped up all over Facebook. I liked this one so, I decided to do it. [And, yes, I'm filling in the answers as I post this]

Rules [copied directly from Facebook]: It's harder than it looks! Copy to your own note, erase my answers, enter yours, and tag 10 people. Use the first letter of your name to answer each of the following questions. They have to be real . . . nothing made up! If the person before you had the same first initial, you must use different answers. You cannot use any word twice and you can't use your name for the boy/girl name question.

1. What is your name: Kaylyn

2. A four Letter Word: ...kite

3. A boy's Name: Ken

4. A girl's Name: Kathryn

5. An occupation: k.. k.. kinetic engineer? [That's a job, right? It is now...]

6. A color: k.... Kermit the Frog green! [oh, yeah, I'm a beast]

7. Something you wear: k..k.. K Swiss

9. A food: k...k.. [I'm starting to regret doing this] Kellogg's cereal

10. Something found in the bathroom: Kleenex

11. A place: [I cheated. WikiAnswers. Great stuff!] Kyle, Texas

12. A reason for being late: ...k.. -pass-

13. Something you shout: Kaylyn Marie Hawkins! [At least, my mom shouts it... And then I'm in trou-ble.]

14. A movie title: King Kong

15. Something you drink: KOOL-AID!!!

16. A musical group: Killers

17. An animal: Kangaroo

18. A street name: k.. k.. [back to WikiAnswers] Kitch Street, Liverpool

19. A type of car: ...Kia?

20. The title of a song: Kiss Kiss, Chris Brown


God, I gotta find something to write here. My life just isn't interesting enough. Suggestions? :P

.:~o*'Kaylyn'*o~:.

Dance With Me

Okay, so I'm really itching to go to New Orleans. Like, seriously. I'm really considering looking at a summer roadtrip. And after recent conversation(s), I've found myself inspired by the city, the atmosphere, the... possibilities. So, here's my NOLA inspired poem--I know, right? I haven't written poetry in forEVER! Disclaimer: I'm not from New Orleeeeeeans (just for you, Harrison :P), so it's not going to be 100% accurate or authentic. But, hey, you try to rhyme something like beignet!

Dance With Me

Dance with me
under a rhythm and blues moon,
beneath a bourbon-blanketed sky.
We’ll sway in the heat of June
to the sounds of a familiar zydeco tune.
Just you and I,
me and you,
not a care.
Nothing to do.
But to dance.
Together.
Tonight.
In our beloved New Orleans
What a sight!

Hold me close.
Dance to the beat;
the sounds of jazz swelling beneath our feet.
We’ll dance ‘til the Saints Come Marchin’ In,
‘til the crickets stop singin’
‘til they call us home
'til there’s nowhere left to roam.
Just you and I,
me and you,
not a care.
Nothing to do.
But to dance.
Together.
Tonight.
In our beloved New Orleans
What a sight!

Never let me go.
We'll circle Jackson Square.
With the scent of jambalaya thinning the air,
we'll watch the sun rise over the Mississippi.
See the sparkling water so pretty,
hear the saxes fade
as we wished we had stayed,
uninhibited and unafraid.
Here.
Together.
Tonight.
Dancing.
Beneath a New Orleans street light.

.:~o*'Kaylyn'*o~:.

Searching for Serenity

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

He's here now. There's no denying it anymore. I saw him. I saw his face--so much like my father's. I heard his voice. I heard him say my name...

Carey. That's his name. My brother. Half-brother. God, it looks so strange in print. The word's so alien to me: brother. I could type it a hundred times and still be in disbelief. I've never had a brother. And this is certainly not the circumstances I wished to gain one from.

I've been told I'm acting selfishly. Bratty. Bitchy. Wrong. And I always ask Why? The answers always the same: Think about Carey. He didn't ask for this. He's been without a father. He just wanted to know you. And while I agree with that, I also realize that was a choice. He chose to seek us out after finding out about us. He was free to choose something else. So why can't I be free to choose to not automatically accept him? Not to feel awkward? To not want this? Don't I get a choice? Or am I just to follow his decision, even though it affects me? That doesn't seem fair to me.

If anything, he needs a relationship with my father. His father. Not me. There's nothing I can do for him.

I keep holding on to some small glimmer of hope that this could possibly not be real. That I'll wake up and realize it was all a dream. Or Ashton will jump out. Maybe if I click my heels... I'd settle for either at the moment.

Now that it's here--he's here, I should try to accept it. But I don't want to. I feel like I wasn't given a choice. I just needed time. I need time. I want time.

I can't change this, may as well accept it.
Or the courage to find a way change it....

Bound

We're all bound by something--to someone. Every one of us. Bound by friendship, bound by blood, bound by honor, bound by duty. Some of us, bound by secret. But what do we do when those bonds are broken and we're left standing alone? Do we dance a celebratory dance of freedom, waving our arms wildly in the golden streets as the trumpets sound and the angelic chorus chants? Or do we remain there, lost, broken, confused with the lacerations of our chains still burning brightly on our skin? Who do we reach out to in the darkness? Who is there to hold your hand when you're left alone? -Me

I've been recently thinking about why people do the things they do. Why governments lie to their people. Why friends betray each other. Why lovers go their separate ways. Why parents hold secrets....

The conclusion I've come to is this: Security.

Whether we'd like to admit it or not, the human race is a very fragile state of being. We act, think, and feel according to a preset set of emotions or behavior we have learned throughout the years. And while we may boast these attributes as superiority over the rest of the animal kingdom, it seems to me our greatest adversary. Why do we worry about what other people think of us? Why do we feel pain in our hearts when we are betrayed? Why does it all matter?

Security. We bind ourselves to others because we want to be bound. We desperately hunger for the attention of another because somewhere deep inside us, that means we're worth a damn. Someone cares. Someone has taken an interest. Someone listens. Someone thinks you're worth their time. And time is the one thing we all hold near and dear to our hearts because it is the one disease we cannot treat nor cure. With all our technologies, we cannot manufacture time.

It has been said that I pay way more attention to my friends than my family. In the words of my sister, "I live for my friends." I hate when she says that because it's simply not true. Yes, I do enjoy spending time with my friends and will try to help them in any way I can should they ask. But that isn't to say I wouldn't do the same for my family.

But perhaps she has a point... Why would I "live for my friends" over my family? I think it's because they chose me. My family is there no matter what, I know that. My family has been there since my birth (some even before then)and will be there throughout my life. But my friends... They have their own families. Other responsibilities. Other things their bond to. Why bind themselves to me? How can I bind myself to them? What's keeping us together?

We're all bound by something--to someone. Every one of us. Bound by friendship, bound by blood, bound by honor, bound by duty. Some of us, bound by secret. But what do we do when those bonds are broken and we're left standing alone? Do we dance a celebratory dance of freedom, waving our arms wildly in the golden streets as the trumpets sound and the angelic chorus chants? Or do we remain there, lost, broken, confused with the lacerations of our chains still burning brightly on our skin? Who do we reach out to in the darkness? Who is there to hold your hand when you're left alone?

Math class + boredom =

As a result of the mind-numbingly boring hour that is my math class, I have taken to writing in my notebook. It started innocently enough... Small notes from the board just to keep me awake. Then, before I knew it, the margins and every bit of free space was filled with small paragraphs and bits of dialogue, twisting and winding about the paper, forming as intricate pattern of plot and detail. It looks kinda cool, actually.... Anyway, here's the transcribed version (Of course, /all/ of this isn't my notebook. I'm continuing here after I type up what I had written):

Tick tick tick

I swear the clock in my math class moves slower than any other clock in this entire school. The teacher must have cast a spell on it. She a bit of a witch anyway--a crazy witch at that. I keep waiting for someone to drop a house on her but the storm never comes. Bummer.

Jimmy's tapping me on my shoulder. I should throw something at him. He convinced me to take this class. Come on, it'll be cake! I told him I was bad at math. I told him I wanted to take the basic course, that he was more suited for advanced math. But my brother had Mrs. Briggs two years ago and he said she's a huge pushover. The old bat can't hear to save her life and she's practically legally blind. Come on! She retired last year; just before we returned in September. It was too late to change schedules.

"Ouch!" hissed Jimmy. "What the heck was that for?"

I picked my eraser up from the side of his desk where it had landed after ricocheting off his face. "For sticking me in this class." With the witch, I wanted to say but decided against it. Dogs have excellent hearing, after all; especially the female variety.

"Oh, it's not that bad. Stop being such a baby, man. Hey--did you get that last problem? She erases too fast."

So that's what he wanted. "Yeah. Here." I passed my notebook over to him while the witch was writing the next problem on the board. Big mistake. Without my notebook, my mind was free to wander. That was never good. Last time I handed over my notebook, I told Jimmy that there were exactly 167 tiles on the ceiling in our history class. I looked up at the ceiling. One.. two... No, no. Not again. I kept hearing something. What was that? Was something about to fall from the ceiling? What the...

Click click I looked over to the seat behind Jimmy. Click click click Theresa was texting away, expertly crouching behind Jimmy to avoid the prying eyes of the witch. I don't think she had a single note on her paper. Click click click It was like listening to machine gun rapid fire. In just two seconds, Theresa had unloaded about four rounds onto her phone. I wonder who she was texting at 10 o'clock in the morning. On a Tuesday, at that. Theresa Smith. Theresa the Texter. Smith the Swift, ever-electronic. God, where the hell was Jimmy with my notebook?

"Thanks, man." Jimmy tossed my notebook onto my desk. "Hey, you forgot to change the sign. Took me forever to figure out what the hell you did to get that answer."

I looked down at my eraser again. No, it wasn't worth it. Besides, I had a problem to fix now. I furiously began scratching into my paper, correcting the mistake Jimmy was so kind as to catch for me. "Five-eighths? Is that what you got? Dude,what?" Jimmy turned to me, his mouth twisted into the usual sly smirk he had on his face before he made some smart-ass comment. But his eyes suddenly widened and he fell silent. "No? But I worked it just like you said. Changed the sign and everything. What the hell--,"

Jimmy quickly tilted his head back.

I knew all too well who was standing beside my desk at that point. I turned and was staring directly into the witch's face. Shit.

"Mr. Johnson..." she said, her icy voice chilling the very air around me. The room had fell silent. Theresa had even stopped texting. I don't know where she had hidden her phone so quickly. I suspected it was tucked under her leg somewhere. She was seated a bit too uncomfortably now. Then again, the witch made me cringe as well.

"Uh... yes ma'am?"

"Is there a problem here? Or is my lesson interrupting you and Mr. Myer's conversation? Terribly sorry. Please, continue." Her eyes narrowed on me.

I gulped, wanting so badly to look at Jimmy for help. But I bet he was just as terrified as I was at the moment. What to do? What to do? "I'm sorry. It won't happen again." The words seemed to fall out my mouth involuntarily. Did I just seriously apologize to the witch? I waited for her to walk away but she continued standing there. I shot a quick glance towards the clock. Of course there was more time left in class! In fact, the minute hand had only managed to move a few degrees since the last time I looked at it. This witch was good.

"James? Are you quite finished? May I continue my lesson now?" There was an audible snicker from the class. No one called Jimmy that. He had convinced all his other teachers to refer to him as Jimmy when calling role and such. Pretty much everyone called Jimmy that. Except the witch. She had her eyes set on him now. I looked over to him, then my eyes shifted toward Theresa again. Her face contorted for half a second before she wiped her face emotionless. Had her phone just vibrated? That made me smirk.

"Oh, please, continue. In fact, could you put number seventy-four on the board? I had trouble with it last night while doing the assignment." Jimmy said.

That cheeky bastard!

The witch raised an eyebrow, waiting for Jimmy to crack under pressure. "Number seventy-four? But, Mr. Myer, the assignment was only to number fifty."

I felt as though I were watching a championship chess match. While I could tell the old witch was reaching for anything that would bring Jimmy down, he looked as though he were just getting started. He hadn't broken a sweat. If I knew my best friend, he had a few more tricks waiting under his sleeves in case this didn't work. Your move, Jimmy.

"Yes ma'am. I know. But I wanted the extra practice, so I went to the end of the lesson." I heard a few gasps from across the room. I don't know which was more astounding, the fact that Jimmy was directly challenging the witch or that he had actually done his homework. Jimmy never did the homework. Math just came to him naturally, he said. Lucky him.

Even the the witch's eyes had widened. "I see... Number seventy-four, then." She turned on her heel and went back to the front of the room. Once she got to her desk, she began flipping through her teacher's manual with such speed I thought she would snatch a page right out of the binding. Once she found the problem, she grabbed her dry erase marker and began writing on the board. Game, set, match.

"Dude, where the hell did that come from? When did you start doing homework?" I said, keeping my voice low as low as I could.

Jimmy had that smirk about his face again. "Psht, I didn't. But someone had to save your ass from detention. Besides, any idiot can pick a problem from the book. I just said the first number that came to mind. You know--Ow! What the hell, man?"

I picked up my eraser again. "Nothing."

.:~o*'Kaylyn'*o~;.