Hayley's Gender Reveal Party! 3.28.16

Hi everyone reading! 

If you've read me before, hi friend! 
If you're new here- welcome to my blog! 

This week I've decided to do a post about one of my close friend's Hayley, who is 23 weeks pregnant and deserves to be talked about a little bit. 

I'll be back with my regular posting sometime later this week.

Okay, anyways! On to the important stuff! 

~

As I mentioned above, my friend Hayley is having a baby! 
(Hayley is my best friend Bethany's older sister, for those of you who didn't know that.)

Last weekend we went to the ultrasound with her to find out the gender of her baby, as she had planned out this really cute gender-reveal party. She didn't find out, as part of the fun in the party.

Well, Bethany and I were nominated to bake the cake and decorate it-- thanks to our obsession with baking that has developed over the past two years. We were mostly prepared: cakes baked ahead of time, fondant purchased, food coloring purchased, etc. We knew that it had to be stunning, and had to be gender-neutral. 

Kneading fondant is my new least favorite thing to do ever, by the way. Bethany's boyfriend Shawn was over, and he had to help us press out the fondant because it was near impossible for us to do. 

I think that we started decorating at around, I dunno, 9:30 or 10:00... It lasted well into the night, and we finished a little while after midnight. The cake in it's finished state was two-tiered with pink and blue fondant bases, baby footprints and dots scattered all around it, and surrounded by bubbly purple frosting. The top of it had two footprints on it, and writing that said, "Takin' Baby Steps..." 

(Thanks to the magical powers of blog editing that I have recently discovered, enjoy this picture of the cake.) 

        Cake baking/decorating credits to Bethany Turner, Victoria Wickline, Shawn Gauldin, and
Bethany's grandmother whose name I cannot spell to save my life.  

Needless to say, I'm pretty sure that Hayley and company loved it, and Bethany and I have decided to bake cakes for people if they need them... Probably for a price though. If you're interested, contact me via Facebook or something. I'm sure we could probably come up with something for you. 

Bethany and I finished out our night painting clothespins and talking about our plans for the following day. I think we eventually passed out around 2am or so. (Which is usually what time we fall asleep when I go to Bethany's house, so don't let that shock you.) 

Anyways, on Saturday he party itself was wonderful. Hayley's mother and grandmother decorated the shelter that we had the party in, and Bethany and I were put in charge of getting the balloon for the actual reveal part of the party. 

Okay, note to self, never assume that anything is gonna be easy when you're pressed for time. We got to Party City in Beckley, which I'd never been to before and was in awe of once we got there, and waited in line for like 20 minutes before somebody actually told us where to go to purchase balloons, and how to go about choosing confetti for the balloon. (Apparently, if you put "sharp" confetti in a balloon, it will pop it before it's supposed to be popped. The more you know!)

The balloon was h u g e. 
24 inches of pure balloon blackness.

To correctly imagine this, put your arms above your head with your arms grasped. It was bigger than the space that your arms create. Your arms wouldn't have fit around it if you would've tried to hug it. 

Anyways, Bethany and I walked it to her car and-- surprise surprise!-- it didn't fit.

So, in a moment of panic, we called like 3 people. It was around 1:20, the party was set for 2:00, and we just had no way to transport the balloon. Their grandmother came to the rescue though, with Hayley, and they took the balloon to the party while Bethany and I collected our sanity and went the backroad way to the park. 

The party was very pink and blue, and everybody who came had a really good time. Pizza, macaroni salad, chicken, cake, cupcakes, and strawberry shortcake were served and thoroughly enjoyed. When you arrived, you were to pick up a clothespin according to your guess of the gender. Even the people who already knew wore the color of their original guess, just to keep Hayley in the dark about it. 

Finally, the time arrived to pop the balloon, and it was done in a very creative way. 

Hayley's grandmother, at the recommendation of another friend, had taped two or three tacks to the handle of a broom. She held the actual broom end, and popped it. 

It's a boy!

Needless to say, she was pretty happy about it. 

So if you can't tell by the picture, that glitter is a very blue glitter, and she's having a little boy. 
A couple of us had purchased some baby clothes and such for her, since most of us knew the gender already, and she cried with everything she pulled out. She finally got the picture of the ultrasound, and teared up again when she looked at it. 

Overall, the party was really successful and an all-around time of joy. 

Also, a lot of people want to speculate and call babies born like this "situations" or "problems" but they are surely mistaken. Baby Wes (short for "Wesley Dillon") is being born into a life of love, and is going to be surrounded by a mass of people who love and cherish him dearly. That's more than anybody could ever ask for. 

I am so blessed to be involved with this family, and to have friends like Bethany and Hayley. You guys are pretty awesome, and I love you both to death. 

~

I hope that everyone enjoyed this lighthearted little read,
and to Hayley I'd like to say a massive congratulations! 

I absolutely cannot wait to meet Wesley! 
(I think that most of us are really excited!)

I wish you the best of luck and joy as a mother. I think that you are going to be a marvelous mother to this little boy, and I am always available to help whenever you need me. 

I might be back later this week with another post, but for now, have a wonderful week everybody! (Especially to those of you on Spring Break! Enjoy it!) 

-Tori <3 

p.s. Around 150 reads until 4,000-- and I cannot thank any of you enough for it.

p.p.s. THIS WEEK I MAKE MY COLLEGE DECISION, SO STAY TUNED!

The Pink Pen and the Journals 3.20.16

This week I am foregoing my weekly tirade and doing a bit of a story-time kind of thing. I really miss writing about specific things, so I'm going to tonight. 

Updates on my life before I begin: 

-I continue to like modern organized religion less and less, and doubt that anyone will see me in a church or a facility pertaining to a church anytime soon. 

-Those people who follow my academic achievements and classes will be pleased to know that I got an A on a test in my college algebra class this past week. It made my day.

-Those wondering how theatre is going may redirect their questions at a different point in time. 

-I am not working camp this summer. At all. 

~ 

So, the title is pretty much a dead giveaway that this post is going to (ironically) be about writing. More specifically, writing in a color that most teachers won't accept and that a lot of people find weird. And keeping a journal, which a lot of my friends used to find weird. 

Here goes nothing. 

In the seventh grade, as most of you know, I started a new school. I didn't know a single person, nobody knew me, and I kind of liked it that way. My school had a type of uniform that couldn't be strayed from unless there was a special occasion, so my usual outlet for creativity at the time had to be re-imagined. 

Before the seventh grade I wrote a little bit. I enjoyed writing songs or poems to read to my mom. 

I kept a Lisa Frank journal, and when I ran out of room in it, it was right before my move in sixth grade. My Christmas present that year was an empty journal, a real one, with about two or three hundred blank pages. I wrote every single day in 2011, even if I didn't have anything to say. The next year, when I received the same journal in a different color because I'd filled the other one up. That started me on a course of only writing when I wanted/needed to, and not every day. Coincidentally, I filled it up slower, but had longer entries and started doodling in it intricately around my words. 

My tradition in my journals, because I've kept one since about the end of fifth grade and now I'm a senior in high school, is to write myself a letter of reflection at the beginning, and a letter of encouragement on every New Year's Eve. It's a strange thing, but it's just a thing that I've done. 

I also don't say "dear diary" or anything like that, but I do sometimes personify my journal in my writing as if it's a friend that I'm confiding in. It has been, in a lot of aspects, my dearest friend through my secondary school years. Different journals aren't personified differently though, they're just all one large stream of consciousness separated by dates. 

Anyways, before seventh grade, I usually wrote in black or blue ink. Writing in pencil was so elementary school, so I attempted to stray away from it as best I could. However, the summer before seventh trade, I made a bold decision and purchased pens that were completely out of the ordinary. One was green, one was blue, one was purple, and my favorite pen in the set was bright pink. The pens wrote flawlessly, and remain my favorite brand of pen to date. (If you care, they were BIC Atlantis ballpoint pens, lol.) 

For a writer, writing isn't always about words. Writing isn't always grammar or material or accuracy or amount. Sometimes, you look down at what you've written, and simply admire the handwriting or the font or the spacing. You fall in love with the page(s) and don't want to let go. 

I'm romanticizing a pen, and I feel no remorse. Moving right along. 

I'd never written a "love note" and passed it to someone before the seventh grade. I'd sheepishly asked my friends to pass notes along in elementary school, and was too cool for them in the sixth grade. 

Oh, how seventh grade was the defining year of my life as a writer 
...and a romantic.

You see, I liked this boy. I was a twelve year old girl, the new kid at school, and I really had a crush on this kid. Like, it was bad. Which was funny because when I first met him, he was kind of a bit much. He grew on me. 

Anyways, one day in my social studies class, my friend and I were talking and giggling. My teacher didn't like that too much, and plopped my straight-A having self down in the second to last row in front of the boy that I had a crush on. 

He wasn't like other boys that I'd crushed on... He had long unruly brown hair, and brown eyes. Really brown eyes. I don't think that I'd ever crushed on someone with brown eyes before him, because I was generally attracted as a preteen and little kid to boys with dazzling blue eyes. He was different, and for that, I'm still kinda grateful. 

A few weeks after that, after learning that he had a "girlfriend" and that most of the girls (and one in particular) also liked him, I felt hopeless. I confided in a friend, who told the entire class that I liked him. 

~Interjecting here to tell my adult readers that all middle school girls are jerks. Just throwing that out there. Between 11-13, they are absolutely relentlessly mean.~

That class period, I sat with my head down until said boy passed me a note (which was unheard of- I was a goody-two-shoes who never passed notes) and asked me what was wrong. Well, the only pen that I had with me that day was the hot pink one, so I pulled it out and scribbled back asking him if he seriously didn't know. 

He didn't. At all. He was so oblivious to how mean people could be back then. 

I eventually jotted back and confessed that I liked him, and he told me that he liked me too, and that began a whole saga of pink love letters. 

I got really sick one week and missed an entire week of school, and I remember rereading the letters that he'd written me over and over again. 

We "dated" and "broke up" a time or two, before becoming best friends, then acquaintances, then best friends again, then dating a few more years, aaaaaaand now you guys all know him as the guy that I can't sum up in a post so I write a bunch of them. 
(aka: Patrick, if you're new here) 

He used to pester me about what I wrote in my journals, because so much of it is about him. Now, on evenings that we are particularly bored, I'll read him the thoughts that middle school Tori had about him. He relishes in it, usually. 

Recently, in the last year or so, I bought another BIC ballpoint hot pink ink pen. The first thing that I did with it was write in my current journal, which was a gift from one of my mother's friends before she moved out of state. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it, and have been writing in it since mid-2014. I'm hopeful to finish it by the summer, but whenever I finish it, rest assured: a couple of Christmases ago, Bethany and Patrick both bought me journals, so I'm good for a few more years. 

I love to write, and I know that writing letters to Patrick when we were younger really helped to develop my writing style a lot. I'm a very from-the-heart kind of writer, and I don't really hold back from what I think when it's in written form. Words spoken can quickly dissipate into the air, but words written will be around and have to be forcibly removed usually. 

I'm still a private writer in some ways. If it's too bold or too...personal, I'll write it in my journal. But these days, more often than not, I turn to you guys to write for. 
(Actually, I still bet that people from middle school would kill to know what I wrote about them back in the day. They all thought I was weird for carrying around a journal. But now, a lot of them read my blog, which is just a glorified version of the same exact thing.) 

This just goes to show that sometimes a little bit of color sets the ball rolling for a lot of things to happen. 

Patrick is my best friend, my best writing critic (he writes too, by the way), and he's kind of cute too but I must say that I'm a little bit biased. 

I hope that this inspires those of you who think about writing to do it. Walmart sells journals (and BIC pens!!! I swear- they are the best pens ever! #NotSpons, but I wish!!!), and it just takes some paper and a want to write to start on a journey of self-discovery and potential new friendship. 

~

I hope that you guys enjoy this little break from my weekly series- BUT I'M ACTUALLY ON TIME WITH THIS??? WHAT??? TORI ON TIME??? 

*holds up hands*

Yes, I know, but contain your enthusiasm please. 

This week has been really awesome to be quite honest. My high school basketball team ended up in the state playoffs, so the school took "pep buses" to the game to fill in student section. 

Shoutout to Larry, Jada, Kat, Andrea, and Neriah for keeping me company during that whole thing. And also for providing necessary HSM interludes that were basketball game appropriate. These are the kinds of things that I'll remember in 10 years. :) 


I love you guys all a whoooole bunch!

I hope that you have a lovely week, and for those of you about to enjoy spring break, I hope that you enjoy it immensely. We get a 4.5 day weekend for spring break next weekend, but I'm gonna enjoy the time off anyways. 

-Tori

p.s. Extended shoutout to all of my friends in vocal ensemble whether you read my blog or not. You make school days far more than tolerable. 

p.p.s. In the sixth grade, I had my own pink address book. I wrote to my Grammy and to Bethany after I moved to North Carolina. It was one of my favorite things to do. I wish that you could write letters to people in Heaven, because I have 3-4 that need to be stamped and mailed immediately. Also, I will be keeping in touch with people after high school through snail mail. I'll keep in touch digitally, too-- but I definitely want to write to people. I'm that person. 

p.p.p.s. I STARTED WATCHING A NEW SHOW CALLED "REIGN" AND IT'S LITERALLY THE BEST THING THAT MY EYEBALLS HAVE EVER HAD A SENSORY REACTION TO! 

Tori's (late) Weekly Tirade 3.15.16

Hey everyone!

My school unblocked blogger!!! So now, when the need arises, I can blog from school. (This fact will become irrelevant in less than 70 days, but it's nice to know for now.) 

Anyways, this past week has been all over the place. Let's get real here- when are my weeks not all over the place? 

I was sick on Thursday and I can't remember whether I went to school or not. I don't think I did, but I'm not sure. Friday night was equally uneventful, as I concluded Season 5 of Grey's Anatomy. It was emotionally testing and I cried at the end of it. I wasn't expecting it to happen. 

Then, on Saturday, I went out on the town with Bethany. (If you're new here, she's my best friend.) Her boyfriend drove us around, which was pretty entertaining because they gave me creative control over the aux cord. I tastefully played things like Def Leppard and Hollywood Undead, because her boyfriend drives a sports car with a backseat so tiny that I was low-key squished. The music made up for that. 

We went out to eat, prom dress looking/trying on/speculating, to Hobby Lobby for cake supplies (we're making a cake for a gender reveal party for her sister), to GameStop to pick up a game for her boyfriend, to Starbucks because we are oh-so basic, and finally to Grandview.

Grandview is one of my favorite places in the world, and that isn't an exaggeration at all. My grandad and I used to drive out there on warm days for no reason, and nana and my parents used to take me to shows there. (It's where Theater West Virginia performs.) It has the prettiest overlooks on this side of the planet, and trails that go for miles. It's also a national park, and I was a junior park ranger there. 

There's a trail there that we wanted to walk, but it was too dark by the time we got there to actually go on it all the way. Instead, we climbed up almost eight flights of steps (her boyfriend beat us both to the top because we are so out of shape that it isn't even funny) and enjoyed the view. 

So worth it. 

Anyways, she stayed the night with me Saturday, and we decided that we were going to work out. In my basement (that is fully furnished, with a bathroom, living room, and kitchen) we have this corner with equipment in it. We have a weight-lifting thingie (really awesome vocabulary Tori, great job!), a treadmill, and a bike. After stretching it out, we did a full workout, aaaaand that was absolutely draining in the most epic kind of way. 

When that workout ended, we decided that we needed to workout every day from now on. So woo. I'm actually working out, guys! :D 

(I'm so proud of myself, my boy-ish friend is too, and my parents are too, and I'm just happy about it!) 

Anywaaaays, on Sunday we were gonna wake up super early and go running at Grandview. Well, knowing both of us, we got out of bed around eleven and decided to go hiking at Little Beaver instead. It's a smaller park- I'm more than sure that I've mentioned it before. We hopped on a trail that we thought was 2.5 miles long. Turns out? It was 4.5 miles long.

4.5 miles. 
with no way to go but up. 

I googled the trail about halfway through, only to find out that it is the longest and most challenging trail at Little Beaver. 

When we got off of that trail, we high-fived, and found our way to her car. 
Her car that was on the other side of the park. 
:-)

She went to something of her boyfriend's that evening, and then came back because my family grilled out.

THE WEATHER HERE HAS BEEN THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE THIS WEEK. It is never this warm in West Virginia at this time of year. I have absolutely been basking in every available moment of it. 

...This post is all over the place, geez. 

Anyways- Did I tell you guys that Patrick  (aforementioned boy-ish friend) asked me to prom? 
Yeah... He did. His prom is the week after mine, and I get to miss my last day of high school to take the trip to North Carolina and it makes my stomach flutter to think about it.

I haven't seen most of my friends down there since October 2012. 
It will be May 2016.
Also, Lord-willing I'll be moving into a dorm down there in August. 

Hey, I told them all that I'd move back in four years. It's been four years. I'm about to be on my way back. :) 

(See post: She Looks Like Carolina for more information about all of that. It's somewhere in my blog archive. I'm not gonna link it- too lazy for that.)

~

Well, that's all for the most part. 

On an important and not random note, please pray for the family of my mom's good friend Robyn... She's been in Hospice all weekend, and small miracles have happened on and off, but please just hold her near and dear in your thoughts and prayers this week. 

I'm going to go to lunch now. 
And then to my vocal ensemble class.
And then to a pep rally... Oh joy! 

I'll see (says the blogger metaphorically and ironically as she technically cannot presently see any of you reading this post) you guys sometime next week! 

-Tori :D

p.s. We're All in This Together is my least favorite song in the world at the moment. Do not ask why, just take it as fact and move along. 

Tori's (late) Weekly Tirade 3.9.16

Hi everyone! 

Better late than never, right? 

Let me first apologize for not having this up on time, and for posting half way through a week, but I've been sick and my weekend was insane. Good insane, but insane nonetheless. 

Anyways, last week was absolutely a cross between a deadly level of boring, and so busy that I wanted to curl up and take a nap. 

In Theatre, we are now cramming to learn every song to High School Musical (On Stage!, lol) and it is, for lack of better terminology, a process.

I ended up spending the weekend with my friend Bethany at her sister's apartment, and there I enjoyed the luxury of feeding a guinea pig almost an entire head of lettuce. 

Saturday. Was. Crazy. 

Saturday was a new level of crazy for me. 

Our school hosted the West Virginia State Show-Choir Competition, and let me tell you, trying to feed 2,500+ people is no small feat. 

I started out the morning selling popcorn with my friends, and then we came up with the brilliant idea to walk around with the box. That ended up selling faster for popcorn, and we continued teaching our ways to everyone new at the station. 

Eventually, new crews showed up, and I switched tables when my mom left. I helped with the exchange of money at one table, devoured nachos for lunch, and then joined some of my classmates in our school auditorium where the actual competition was taking place.

My personal favorite would have to be the school that did a show entitled "Freak Show" which centered around characters set in a 1950s freak show, and provided a message of love and acceptance. It brought me to tears. 

When the dinner break happened, my classmates and I ran over to the cafeteria (which was where we were doing the massive concession stand.) After grabbing a quick dinner, we all took our places walking around trying to get rid of the rest of the baked goods. They sold quick, since most people were getting ready to hop back on a bus and go home. 

My friend Bethany and I ran to the auditorium and saved a row of seats so that everyone could see the final two show choirs, and then left because it started snowing. 

So by the time that I got home on Sunday, I was still exhausted from the day before. 

~

Sunday evening was a different story. 

Mom and I watched the series finale of Downton Abbey, which was absolutely heart breaking. It brought me to tears just thinking about it two weeks ago, and actually watching it was... it was like mourning all over again. 

Somewhere in my head I know that nana knows how it ended. If people care about things like that in Heaven, then she knows how it ended. If they don't care, however, then I will tell her someday when I get there. 

This week I have been sick, and that means that I've been sleeping and watching Grey's Anatomy. (Sorry, I'm kind of obsessed.) Watching the show has given me new perspective on the world, and on saving lives. I'm nearly convinced to take a ton of math and science classes and go into medicine. Nearly. 

No, not because of steamy romances and the thrill of surgery. The idea of being able to save lives, and to contribute to families that feel like they're walking around with blindfolds on... That encourages me so much. So we shall see. 

~

On a different note, last week I was abruptly faced with a situation that almost broke me as a person. You know the people I talked about in my slam poem? (A post that is now found at the top of my blog, since it is my most-read post.) The following is about them. All of them, and then some. 

I made a post. A post that a lot of people didn't like. 

Though I deleted it on Facebook, I feel like I have enough free will to say it here. 

Why? 

Well, mainly because- 

This is my safe haven, and my place to post and think. It is to provide you guys, whomever you may be, with a snippet of a look into the chaos that is my brain. So here it goes. 

I made a post on Facebook that said, 

"It's crazy how many "Christians" that I want to tell to go to hell." 

Offensive, right? Even for me, it's offensive. I know. Sorry not sorry.

Now, for those of you who quickly judged me with disgusted looks through your computer screen, and for those of you who quietly scoffed, and for those of you who smiled because you know that it's you that I speak of and you get off on hurting me, just listen. 

Hop off of the pedestal that you stand on because you are inferior without it. 
I spend so much time feeling like garbage because of some of you, that I forget that I don't need a pedestal- because I have a platform. 
This beautiful platform that has made my voice go as far as Thailand. A voice that is heard regularly in places like Germany and the UK. My voice has gone that far. 

So no. I don't need your pedestal. I'm sorry that I ever wanted to stand on it beside of any of you. I am disgusted by my desire to do that, to stand in front of people and pretend, and I'm kind of done doing that for a looooong time. 

I have been hurt by some people. I had things that I cherished being a member of, but because I stood for something, for a few someones, for myself even, that was a crime to them, and I have been cut off. 

In surgery, as I have recently learned, when you make a clean cut through an artery, you must cauterize it to make it stop bleeding. This cut wasn't clean. It was jagged and messy. I felt like a lot of pieces of me were left behind it the cutting process. There was no anesthetic to help me through it, just raw pain, and a bleeding infection left behind because of the poorly done process.

So this week, I have decided that it is time to bite the bullet and clean the wound. It has been almost as painful as the first time, but now there are no foreign bodies left to invade the wound. These words are me cauterizing a bleeding wound so that it will never bleed again from this cut. 

Sometimes sanctuaries appear as soon as you flee from them.
Freedom sometimes comes through the stopping of blood that is anything but Jesus-blood. 

So you can keep praying over there, and anointing, and praying for the blood of Jesus... But that's not the blood that's covering any of you or any of the people that you pray for. 
The blood covering all of you is the blood of the people that you have cut off with jagged edges. It is the flowing infectious blood from the wounds of every person you have hurt. 

But in the spirit of the Holy Spirit, 
to everyone who hurt me in the process of the cutting,
I'll pray for you. 

~

I love all of you, and I hope that you know that. I'm grateful to the people who stand by me when my world seems like it's gonna fall to pieces. Thank you for every single read, every single heartfelt prayer and kind thought, and thank you all so much for just being awesome. 

See you guys on Sunday! I'll be here on time next week. 

-Tori Wickline

p.s. I'm job hunting! Wish me luck!