sunburns

Have you ever gone on a science field trip? You know, one of those ones where you go waayyy out in the middle of nowhere to look at how the landscape was affected by a glacier 80,000 years ago. And of course you have to hike about a million miles to get up to the remote glacial feature, so that you can draw it with your absolutely stunning artistic skillz that are completely comprehendable to people who aren't you, and then you get to hike back down to the bus, which is parked about three miles away from where it dropped you off. And the whole time the sun is shining, and you're wearing a tank top and shorts, and carrying a backpack full of all the stuff on your teacher's list of necessities. And all this hiking and drawing and fun lasts about five hours (because the school day is seven and the bus ride was an hour both ways).
Yeah, so I went on one of those amazing field trips on Wednesday of this week, and guess what this genius forgot to do - put on sunblock.
I'm sooooo burnt. My new names at school these past two days have included not only the originals Lobster and Tomato, but also Heinz ('cause I'm as red as ketchup, apparently), Genius (for forgetting sunblock when I've lived in Montana for eleven years), and some other ones that I don't care to repeat.
But seriously, the skin on my shoulders is so badly burnt that the skin is cracking, and I can't move my right shoulder past neutral position or it stings like ****. My left shoulder isn't as bad, however, because the nerves are so dead I can hardly feel anything there at all. Although I can feel it when all the lovely people at school decide to see how I'll react when they hit me to see if it'll leave a mark.
Ahhh, I love them to death.
Well, actually, I do...just not when they do that *scowl* I'll really miss them when the year's over, which is only in less than two weeks (!!).
Anyways, yeah, I just wanted to share how stupid I was :P don't ever forget sunblock!!

exclusion and such

One of the reasons I really like my high school is because we don't have many cliques. I know that sounds corny and cheesy to say so, but we really don't. I mean, of course we have certain areas of the lunchroom designated for certain groups - the stoners in one corner, the wrestlers in another, and the football players by the candy counter - but as a whole people are mixing without too much thought put into what they look like when they talk to that person, as is stereotypically teenager to think. There are lunch tables with guys dressed all in black, girls in frilly pink dresses, guys in football jerseys, and girls who always carry around books for extra reading, all sitting there talking unconcernedly and laughing at whatever ridiculous thing our vice principal has just done. I myself am friends with people from every afore-mentioned stereotype (which isn't to say that my friends fit into only one specific stereotype but you know what I mean). (And I'm only referring to lunch so much because that's when we have the most free rein, obviously.)

But what I'm mostly wanting to vent about a bit is that fact that my homeschool friends, who pride themselves on being so anti-stereotypical (?), are more stereotypical in this respect than are my public school friends! They're actually more exclusive in their groupings, which was a surprise to me when I first realized that. And none more so than the two I hang out with most. They have reeeally high standards and thankfully I meet them, because if I didn't I'd be missing out on friendships with two really awesome people. But for those poor unfortunate people who don't meet their standards, well...let's just say they're not part of the group. I feel sorry for the people that don't have groups, or that are afraid to mingle between different groups.

I really hope I don't come as excluding, because I try not to be.