Failure to Post

Okay, I have to apologize for not having posted in ages, but I have a reason. I have been busy; I have started memorizing Hebrews and 1 & 2 Peter for Bible quizzing, and it has pretty much taken over my life. Of late, many conversations with my sister have run thus:

Her(upon finding me crouched in the recliner and muttering to myself): "Hey, want to watch a movie"
Me(Staring up at her while clutching my graffitied text): "I can't." (I go back to reading and muttering)
Her: Why not?
Me(Mouth taking over before the brain has time to think): I have to work on my quotes.
Her: You always say that!
Me(once more returning to my quoting): It's always true.

So if any of you ever want to memorize Hebrews, 1&2 Peter, you can use my flashcards here.

Another thing I wanted to tell you is that I will be gone all next week because I will be on a missions trip. It's in the city, but we are going to be working with the refugees that live here. It's my second time going, but I'm still nervous because of some of the changes being made to the program. The changes are for the better, but it is still rather frightening to go into a unknown situation. As soon as I get back, I will make a post about the trip and post my pictures.

Sorry that this post is so short, but I have to leave in a few minutes so I didn't really have time to say anything else.

Oh, Summer, Summer! Wherefore Art Thou Summer?

Is this not the most depressing forecast?

As I have previously expressed, it is summer; the time when I degenerate from, neat little Bethany with her 4.0 into crazy little Bethany who always wears sun dresses and never brushes her hair. Although that change has not failed to occur, it still doesn't feel like summer. The greatest contributing factor to the lack of summerly feeling is the rain, the constant, driving, never-ending rain! I have never known it to rain so much in my existence, or, indeed, rain with such a steady pattern. It starts off with a little sprinkle, continues with the slow drop of gigantic drops, and then it suddenly changes to a torrential downpour which lasts only a few minutes, it then becomes a steady rain shower. It is depressing!

However, this is not the only topic I wished to talk about, so I must move on. At the end of the summer,
Allen County Public Libraries holds a photography competition for students, so during summer I start to look through my photos to decide which are worth entering. I have many photos that I love, but I can only enter three into each of the four categories, so there are always some that I regret I cannot enter. Because of my regret for not giving these photos a chance to be seen, I am going to make a page on my blog where I will publish the best of the pictures that I am not entering. I would love to post the ones that I am entering, but the acpl can get a little tetchy about things like that.

Oh, and one last thing, aren't you (all one of you who read this) proud of me? I broke my lazy tendency to post only once a month!

Apologies and the Sarcasm of Fifteen Year Old Sisters.

Today I have two things to talk about. Firstly, I must apologize for not having posted in an unacceptably long time. I was extremely busy and just didn't have the energy to post. Now, however, I am not spending eight hours of everyday at school, and hopefully this will give me more time for blogging.

Secondly, last Thursday my mother, sister, and I were driving through downtown. I was thinking about all the interesting places in Ft. Wayne that I had never been to, or even known of. As we crossed one of my favorite streets, So Wayne Avenue, I voiced the opinion that there are many interesting things in the city. To this my sister  spoke with the sarcasm that only fifteen year old girls can muster, "Oh yes! Fort Wayne is such an amazing city." A response to which I could only reply that she was right; Fort Wayne is quite amazingly interesting. Once I had convinced her that I was serious, I told her that me and my mother we're thinking of going to a new place in the city every week. I began making a list of places we should go, and discovered just how right I had been. Why didn't I know that Firehouse #3 was now a cafe? Why had I never been to the canal house or the old fort? From now on, we will be visiting all these places and more, and I hope that I will have time and enough interest to blog about each of them. For now, however I must go kill off the worlds population with a deadly disease.

Five Diseases I'm Glad I Don't Have

So this will probably be a post full of the delirious ramblings of my illness, but it is imperative that I post today. Right now, I have strep throat, which is a bacterial infection caused by streptococcus bacteria. It isn't a horrible disease to get, but it's still no fun at all. Since there are so many diseases that make me glad that I only have strep throat, I decided to make a blog post of the top five diseases I'm glad I don't have(in no specific order).

5. The Plague

   We've all heard of the infamous black death pandemic that started in 1348 and is thought to have reduced the worlds population by almost one hundred million people. The plague has fascinated me ever since I read Connie Willis's Doomsday Book. There are three forms of the plague, Bubonic(infection of the lymph nodes), Pneumonic(infection of the lungs) and Septicemic(infection of the blood). Bubonic has symptoms that include a high fever, huge buboes developing around the lymph nodes, severe headache, and nausea. Pneumonic causes a high fever, cough, and flowing, red sputum(that conjours a lovely mental image). Septicemic is so deadly that it has a death rate of close to 100%.


4. Ebola
The Ebola virus has some of the nastiest symptoms I have ever heard of. Hemorrhaging, bloody vomit, seizures, and bleeding from the eyes are only a few of the plethora of sickly fascinating symptoms. I can't even imagine how unpleasant it would be to bleed from your eyes. It is feared that some day the Ebola Virus will reach the United States and there will be a huge pandemic.





3. Cotard's Delusion
This one really surprised me. Apparently, there is a rare neurological disease called Cotard's Delusion, or Walking Corpse Syndrome, where a person actually believes that they are dead. They may think that they have lost all their blood or vital organs, or they might think that their body is rotting. This is probably the most disturbing of the diseases I found.




2. Epilepsy
Epilepsy is when the electrical signals in the brain are overly active and cause seizures. I wanted to put this one in because I know several people who have epilepsy, and it is a rough condition to live with. Epilepsy can occur in people without apparent reason, but it can also also be caused by brain injuries, strokes, and tumors. I was too scared of searching epilepsy in Google Images to find a picture for this one.

1. Leprosy
I had to throw this one in, I am a Bible quizzer, after all. Leprosy is a infectious disease that has a long incubation period and slowly progressing symptoms. Its greatest effects are on the nerves and the skin, and it has long lasting effects on each of those. For the skin it causes discoloration, large sores and ulcers, and skin lesions. For the nerves, it causes loss of feeling until you are no longer able to any heat or pressure. It's sort a of strange feeling to read the chilly medical reports on this disease, where such terms as "loss of digits" and "Facial disfigurement" are so coolly slipped in.


I really enjoyed making this post because I spent so much time searching for strange diseases to talk about, that I ended up learning a lot of things that I can add to my compilation of useless knowledge. I'm sure it irritated my mother a lot, the way I kept running into the room saying things like "Apparently, aspirin is used to treat leprosy!" and then running out again.

The Oregon Trail

Today we purchased the supplies we need and prepared to join our wagon train. It is so hard to believe that we are actually setting out into a wild land! Anything could happen to us during the months we will spend traveling through the untamed country between Missouri and Oregon. It was difficult to decide what we would buy for the  journey, but in the end we decided that the most important item would be a rifle. After that, we decided to buy spare axles and wheels for our wagon. It is good to have spares of everything because if anything broke then we would be stranded in the plains with no way to travel.  I hope that we are well prepared for the long journey ahead of us.

                                                                                            Gladys Butler
                                                                                             May 20, 1846

We have just left our third stop, Independence Rock. We had to go through the terribly narrow "Devil's Gate" pass, which was so small that we nearly didn't make it through. My son, John, caught his foot on a rock and broke it quite badly, but he was in denial because he didn't want to admit to being the first casualty of the train. However, no one cared about his foot after what happened later that day; two of the girls on the wagon train were stolen away by Indians! I hope they aren't dead, but we may never see them again.
So far we have crossed the Platte River and stopped at Chimney Rock. We have heard many stories of the treachery of traveling through this land, but so far our wagon train has had a fairly smooth journey. We learned  the dreadful story behind the name of Scott's Bluff, and the woman at the Platte River had lost her husband to the river. It seems that we were wise to bring extra wheels and axles, since we have already broken one of each. We have been fortunate enough to have a sufficient quantity of food for our journey, but some of the other families have not been so successful.  The land here is almost entirely flat and without trees, but there are animals enough for hunting, and we have plenty of water. I am glad that things are going so well for us.

                                                                                              Gladys Butler
                                                                                              July 16, 1846

Tragedy has struck! Our dear Genevieve has passed away,  and now things are taking a turn for the worse. We started of successfully at Fort Bridger when we found an abandoned wagon. We found two sets of clothing, several boxes of gunpowder, two sets of silverware, and a two month old baby who we have named Savannah. Things started going badly for us at Canyon Hills Rut, where our wagon became too heavy for our oxen to pull, and we were forced to throw out 30 pounds worth of goods. Then it got really bad. We started running low on food, and poor Genevieve starved in the Blue Mountains. My son has been terribly effected by his wife's death, but we must keep on going. If not for ourselves, then for the children. It seems that we were not well enough prepared for this leg of the journey, but we can't go back now. We could not find any game to hunt for food, and I fear that we will not be able to travel much farther without finding more food.

                                                                                             Gladys Butler
                                                                                             September 10, 1846

Things did not get any better. The day before we crossed the Columbia, I started feeling ill. I became more and more nauseated and started suffering from severe dehydration. As I got more ill, my son started giving me Wilson's Special Tonic, which we had bought for just such occasions as this one. However, I did not get any better. I was delirious the whole time we crossed the Columbia, and it was not until afterwards that I was told of our great misfortunes. Our young baby, Savannah, fell out of our wagon and drowned in the river, and now that I was ill, the rest of our family was in desperation. The day we reached Oregon City I died from my illness. Now the only members left of our family are Jasper, Charlie, Lulu and John. I don't know whether they will be fully prepared for their new life without a mother and a grandmother.

                                                                                               Gladys Butler
                                                                                               September 25, 1846

My family has settled in Oregon, but life has not been easy for them. My son had to be taken in by another family for a short while because he did not have the proper supplies for settling in the city. My grand daughter, Lulu, has left her family and run off to live with the natives, and has not been seen by her family since. By the end of the journey, only three of the family members remained to settle in the new land, when once we had seven. I do not think that the journey was worth all the pain and the sorrow that it brought on our family, and it has nearly done for the Butler family. If I had known only half of what would happen to us, I would never have dared gone, but there is no going back now.

I have not figured it out.

As you may have noticed, the video I posted did not load properly, so I hope I can get that up soon.

On a lighter note, I have remembered that I said a few weeks ago that I would post a piece of creative writing.
I have so far forgotten, so I thought that I would make it up to you by posting my current creative writing assignment from school. So you all get to read my Oregon Trail Journal Entries! On the Oregon Trail, my name was Gladys Butler, and I was 70 years old. Have fun reading them.

Next month, on May twentieth, my entire family will go to Independence, Missouri to buy supplies and join a wagon train heading west. From there we will travel the long journey to Oregon City to start our new life. It is a thrilling prospect, but it is also one fraught with danger.
I will be setting out with my beloved husband, Jasper, along with our son, John, his wife, Genevieve, and their two children, Charlie and Lulu. My son is a farmer, and we decided to move to Oregon when we were told about the fertile ground that is said to be found there. I wasn't certain, at first, what to bring. I knew that it would only be right to bring the family Bible and heirlooms. As great-grandma Theodonia always reminded me, if you don't know where you come from, then how will you know where you're going? I think that I will also bring my coffee supplies, as I  cannot live without it.

                                                                                 Gladys Butler
                                                                                 April 19, 1846

So that's the first one. I'll try to post the others tomorrow.

I finally figured it out

As you have seen, I figured out how to post a video on my blog. I meant to post this with the post about thunderstorms, so if you want to know why I was posting this, read that post.