Making strides (with family & summer homework)

Later last night, after I had already finished blogging about my day, I got a surprising text saying "Hi Madeline" from my friend Dom. I hadn't talked to him in a long time and it was so great hearing from him. I loved catching up with him and hearing about his trip to DC. He is so passionate about everything he does, but especially music, and it is so fun to get to hear about his life and have a conversation with him. Dom always wears a smile and is so encouraging and goes after his dreams. It's so great! We talked about writing and creating and he suggested I listen to the song You & I by the band Wilco which I very much enjoyed.

I slept in late today. Almost until 11:30. But when no one wakes me up, and there is a blanket covering the widow and my doors shut so no light gets in-I don't blame myself. I quickly got dressed and we headed to Lafayette. Me, my dad, Maria, and Jacqueline. Yes! My cousin from my mom's side hung around my dad. You read that correctly. This is a big deal. It's making history and that is why I'm recording it.

My dad had to go to work up there so he dropped us off for a few hours at the mall. Jacqueline was the only one who didn't buy anything, besides food. Because we all ate lunch there. Which was soon to be breaking my no eating fast food or from restaurant idea. But oh well. Maria bought clothes and I bough a new pair of soccer cleats that I am very excited about, even though they are white and will probs get dirty real fast.

[note this is a very detailed, extensive version of our Barnes and Noble adventure because I will use it as a journal entry to my homework]
Then Jacqueline and I walked over in the thickness of the muggy June air to Barnes and Noble. When we opened the big wooden doors we were greeted with air conditioning and many, many books. There were books on tables straight in front of us and books on shelves to the left and the right for as far as the store went. Jacqueline and I went our separate ways. I'm not sure where her wondering took her, but I went to the non-fiction section. I've always been a little confused about which means real and which means made up and exactly what qualifies as real. But, I saw that the aisles of the left side were mostly titled non-fiction and literature so I browsed the right side of the store. This included cookbooks, history, biographies, music, poetry, sports, and medicine. Every single person that I saw in the store seemed to be lost in their own worlds. The workers in the dark colored polos, the couple sitting at a table highlighting pages as they flipped through a text book, the older man sitting cross legged in the chair, and the boy with wavy brown hair who was sitting on the ground between two book shelves labeled sports and who was so lost in the words he was reading that he jumped up as I walked by. I knew we are really supposed to be finding new books that look interesting and intriguing that we have never heard of before, but the whole time I was hoping to see Rob Lowe's Stories I only tell my Friends. I knew that it is non-fiction and that I would write down its title and dashing author as something I would want to read, but I did not see it. Instead, I found these other books that looked appetizing and appealing:

1) The Optimism Bias a Tour of the Irrationally Positive Brain by Tali Sharot
2) The Ripple Effect the Fate of fresh water in the twenty-first century by Alex Prud'homme
3) She Walks in Beauty by Caroline Kennedy
4) Someday my Prince will come by Jerramy Fine
5) Two Kisses for Maddy by Matthew Logelin
6) The Anatomy of Hope by Jerome Groopman, MD
7) How Soccer Explains the World by Franlin Foer

When I met up with Jacqueline, and became less focused, my other senses seemed to kick back in. I realized there was music playing, and that it must have been on the whole time. It was subtle and calming, like the music I listen to on the Coffee House channel. Then, I took in a deep breath, like those I take during yoga, when I walked by the Starbucks. The coffee smell was soothing and inviting. We walked around a little more, this time together. We walked by the two summer reading tables in the middle aisle. She pointed out to each other the books we had read, mostly they were mandatory for English class. She had read more than me, but together we had read about half of them. It was kind of astonishing I thought. Then we looked through the teen area. This has been my favorite place at Barnes and Noble for a while. I used to get gift cards for my birthday from my great aunt Madeline, my namesake, and spend hours picking out books that added up to be much more than the generous amount on the gift card and narrowing it down to the ones I actually bought. Jacqueline both expressed our love for the author Sarah Dessen and books similar to hers. Before, we left Jacqueline purchased The Lord of the Flies for her summer reading homework. I walked away empty handed. With no pages bound together in a world to get lost in like so many of the people in the bookstore had done. I did however, take away a pleasant memory, and good start to my English project.

On our way home from Lafayette we worked on friendship bracelets that were duct taped to our legs and stopped to get vanilla blue raspberry ice cream cones at the Lindy Freeze. We agreed that Dari-Licious had some good competition and retold many camp memories that we share.

I took Jacqueline home and hung out at my dad's house for the rest of the night. I folded my laundry and watched a movie called Nice Guy Johnny and texted and blogged and read other really great blogs and talked on the phone and laughed with Maria and watched the sheets of rain pour from the sky and by whipped around by the winds.