Number 58 - Go Cross Country Schooling

August 22nd, 2011, my best friend took me cross country schooling. This makes 11 of 100 things accomplished. I had a wonderful time at Northwest Equestrian Center in Rainer, WA. I shared my friend Margaret's horse Obe, so poor Obe had to go over everything twice, but it was well worth it. My first experience with cross country was over a baby ditch (right). It was such a baby ditch that it was only one sided, in fact. After jumping it for the first time, I loudly exclaimed "11 down, 89 left to go!" and everyone laughed. Later we jumped a "real" ditch, but never got a good picture of it, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Our second jump, left, was nothing exciting, just a log. Except for the part where it was up a hill, and the grass was really high so you couldn't see it until you were on top of it. Yeah, did I forget to mention that? Though it wasn't very big. I will say, cross country fences don't look big until you're a stride out from them, and then they look huge, and then you're going over them and you realize that they're not big at all. At least that's how it is for me. I hear it's different for everyone.

This is probably my favorite picture from the day. At least of Obe and myself. I do not have video at the moment, seeing as Allison has it all and she is currently in Waco, doing something for college. Smarty pants. I'll put video up once I have it.

Now for some non cross country related business. I realized a while ago that the picture I posted under FEI Dressage does not indicate that I showed FEI Dressage, since I'm wearing a short coat. I showed FEI Juniors, in which you still wear a short coat even though the tests and rules are sanctioned by the FEI. Since the picture doesn't show it, I will post video now. Here is my proof of accomplishing #19: Show FEI Dressage:

I'm also in the process of working on marking off a few other numbers before the summer is over. Let me know if I've inspired you to start a bucket list of your own, I'd love to know (It's also on my list to inspire 10 people to start their own). I hope you all are enjoying my adventures as much as I am!

My Bucket List

So I've been thinking. I want to change the world, right? Right. Well, what better way to do than by doing things that make me happy and inspiring people to do the same? Exactly, I can't think of one. I can promote my platform day and night, and I still will, but the only way to truly change someone is by making them happy about who they are. So new goal in life. Read on.

About 6 months ago I began making a bucket list. I started it after I saw the movie with Morgan Freeman, and I realized that life is short, and I didn't want to wait until I found out I was dying to realize I had missed out on all these amazing things in life. So at 20, I began a list of things I wanted to do before I died. I'll often add to the list, and today I brought it up to #100. One of the things on my list is to inspire 10 other people to start their own lists.

The most important thing about a bucket list is that it's not just things you might find cool, or fun to do. It's things that will make you happy, or bring joy to your life. I mean, the two aren't mutually exclusive, obviously they can be cool and fun as well, but that's not the purpose of the list.

To keep you on your toes, I'm going to keep my entire list a secret and just document things as I accomplish them. Some things will be able to be document via photo or video, and some you'll just have to take my word on. But I'll give you some ideas on what to put on yours. I have everything from Try Yoga (#96) to Tour Europe (#6) to Volunteer in a 3rd World Country (#91). Quite the span of things. Now onto the things I've accomplished.

#4 - Be a size 6. (June 2011)

#15 - Date a good guy. (December 2010-May 2011)

#16 - Have picture I've taken published in a national magazine. (February 2009)

#19 - Show FEI Dressage. (March 2008)

#39 - Have a walk in closet. (June 2011)

#54 - Have picture I've taken published on the cover of a magazine. (November 2010)

#59 - Go to the Baseball World Series. (October 2005)

#62 - See a play on Broadway in New York. (July 2007)

#63 - Go to a game at Old Yankee Stadium. (July 2007)

#67 - Fly in a hot air balloon. (August 2010)

So that's it. 10 down, 90 to go. Until I add more, that is. I'll add more pictures as I find them, and more accomplishments as I do them.

Summer...

So I'm home for the summer, or at least for a little while. I've immersed myself in horseback riding once again in hopes of getting back in shape enough to join the OSU IHSA team in the fall. I've missed showing horses and IHSA is an inexpensive way to do so, and it's new and exciting things.

I've also gotten back into taking pictures. I didn't realize how much I'd missed it until the camera was in my hand and I could hear the shutter clicking. I'm following my best friend Allison around to all the lessons she's teaching and taking pictures of her students. There's also a 4-H show on July 2nd that I will most likely go take pictures of. Oh how I've missed this. So here's a little of what I've done over the past couple days:

Secrets

Here are some secrets about me:

I secretly want to be a gymnast.

I secretly wish I had more of a social life and spent less time studying, though I will never regret my good grades and GPA.

I secretly think I'm not good at anything.

I secretly wish I had super powers so I could fix everything wrong with my life.

I secretly wish that I wasn't so tall.

And I not so secretly wish I could change the world.

It has been brought to my attention in the last few days that some judges want pageant girls to be perfect. Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm not perfect. I am, however, a positive role model for youth around me. I am willing to share things about myself in order to help better the lives of those around me, and I am willing to make myself vulnerable to make those that feel they cannot feel more comfortable.

Yes, I have tattoos. Yes, I want to be Miss America. Yes, I believe the two can go together. And no, I will never regret the choice to get my tattoos. They have meaning to me, and almost anybody who hears the story of them respects that meaning, whether they like tattoos or not. They are not profane, and there is no way they can offend anyone (at least not anyone I have ever met). I cannot regret being who I am, and that is something I want to share with the world. I can do that by being Miss America, so judges, give me a chance. Ignore the black on my body and look at what's inside. Give my soul a chance to change the world.

Everyone has secrets, but only those who are willing to share theirs and make themselves vulnerable can make steps to change the world.

Literary Explorations

So since I don't really have anything to post, I'm gonna do one of these facebook things, because, well, why not? Pageantry is on hold until March when Miss Moses Lake happens, and nothing is happening in the horse world. So here goes nothing!

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes that most people have only read 6 of the 100 books listed here. Bold the books you've read in entirety. Italicize the books you started and did not finish, or read an excerpt from.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D'Ubervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchel

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma -Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 A Wrinkle in Time- Madeleine L'Engle

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - A.A. Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol -Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - E.B. White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

So that's 9 in entirety and 6 incomplete. I thought I was more exposed to literature than that. Hmm... Ah, well. I guess I know what I have to do now.

I've been bad

I know, I know, I’ve been really bad about posting. I thought I’d be better about it what with having rehearsal every Sunday, but apparently that hasn’t made me any better about keeping up with my blog. I’m sorry to all you loyal followers (all what, one of you?). I keep promising that I’ll try to be better about it in the future, but as my English professor says: “There are no absolutes, only broken promises.” Perhaps if I stop promising it will begin to happen.

And now for something completely different.

Miss Seattle 2011 will be crowned in just 5 days. This is the most excited I have ever been in my life, but also the most terrified. The emotions that flowed through my body yesterday at rehearsal were too numerous to count as everything happened all at once. My interview improved ten-fold in my opinion from the first mock to the second, I just need to brush up on some political topics. I feel so much more confident in my walks and the opening number dance. I can’t believe that it’s less than a week away, the time has flown by, it’s ridiculous.

The worst part about all of this is that after next week I won’t be seeing this amazing group of girls every week anymore. We’re more than just competitors, we’re friends. We’re all cheering for each other, and I’m sure we each have a favorite selected in our minds (I know I have mine). I don’t want to give up weekly rehearsals, and by the sounds of it, everyone else has the same feelings!

Erin flies into Eugene on Wednesday and I have so many things to do before Friday’s dress rehearsal, as well as finding time to go to class! I’m not sure I’ll have time to sleep this week, but I’m going to try to find time for myself and make this week about just making myself happy and feeling like me. If that means listening to Taylor Swift 24/7, then so be it! By the way, her new Speak Now album is AMAZING. Just sayin’.

Well, that’s about all I’ve got. I’m not going to promise to try to be better about posting, but I’ll say that I’ll try to THINK about posting more. How’s that sound?

Rehearsal Numero Uno

We had our first Miss Seattle rehearsal today, and I'm even more excited than I was before. They brought in McKinley Smith (reigning Miss Seattle, and 1st Runner Up at Miss WA 2010) as a guest speaker, as well as Devanni Partridge (Miss Seattle and Miss Washington 2009), and hearing what they had to say was amazing. I felt so star struck, but the girls were so friendly and willing to answer anything we had to ask. They said we could win them over with coffee or happy hour appetizers if we wanted to meet with them one on one and that they were looking forward to getting to know all of us.

We got our schedule for a general idea of what we'll be doing over the next couple months, and everyone mark your calendars! We're hoping for October 16th for our first annual fundraiser entitled (drumroll please) "Miss Seattle's Got Talent." Last I heard it'll be a talent preview and dessert auction, and it will raise money for the program which goes directly back to us girls in the form of scholarship money. So I expect to see some people I know there!

That's about all I have for now. I'm planning on going shopping for an evening gown on Tuesday, and I never knew it'd be so hard to find a swimsuit! Until next time.