Sensations

In Anatomy today, we watched a video on our skin, our brain, our sense of touch, and our nervous system and it's crazy how these all connect. Did you know that when you suffer a major injury, your brain shuts down your sensation to feel pain? You brain can actually halt these signals if your body knows that these signals can interfere with your survival. This one lady lost in the wild did not feel the pain of a splintered knee until the rescue crew found her. This one dentist gave a root canal to a guy without anesthetics, using mind tricks. If you can somehow harness that energy in the right place, you can shut out pain for a while.

I tried to do it for my hunger pain today, and it worked for a few minutes! I swear I actually stopped feeling my stomach constantly nagging me just by thinking intensely about it. And maybe if I try hard enough, I can do the same with my math grade... make my brain numb so I longer feel the stinging pain of it lol.

I am starting to despise math even more, especially since I cannot handle failure. My grade is steadily decreasing and that is really worrying me. From now on, my junior year will be devoted to passing Calc AB with an A. If that means I'm staying everyday afterschool, going early in the mornings, and going to the Saturday study sessions, then so be it. I don't think I've ever had a math class this challenging, but I think that's exactly what I need.

Lots of homecoming talk already, but isn't it in like.. a WHOLE MONTH? Silly high school kids :)

What swimming and school do to you

The annual and long-awaited Monterey meet was this weekend. I am pooped. I don't think I have been this sore yet in the past.. year. If I sit for 5 minutes, I feel like someone is continually punching my back. And walking is pretty excruciating, I feel like I just ran miles and miles. Even just sitting down feels like someone has been sitting on my lap for quite a long time. Everything hurts, more than usual. So my mom put on 4 of those Asian patches that HURT LIKE HELL when you try to peel them off. It kinda helped. Advil did too. And sleep, yum.

In general, I guess I'm pretty satisfied with my results, although I always have those nagging regrets. I received the 1st place High Point Champion trophy for the girls 15-18 age group.. that made everything worthwhile :D And MTW got the 1st place team trophy for the highest scoring team. But there was an air of sadness cause it was Alex's last meet with us; he will be dearly missed. I hope he liked our card and acoustic rendition of "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz. And I know I could have gotten better times and I know what I need to work on now: faster recovery in free, faster kick in fly and back, IM turns, stop saving my energy for the last lap!!! I absolutely hate the feeling of being out-touched by a few tenths or hundredths of a second. If I lose, I would rest easier knowing I lost by an entire body length than by the length of a fingernail.

I wish I could have camped out with the team.. but my mom doesn't like the Monterey fog and the cold breeze that results from it. I'm glad we didn't though, a hotel is like heaven. My major back and leg pain would not have been very pleasant at all if I slept on the hard dirt floor. But I did visit the campsite around sunset and enjoy the potluck, making the s'mores, climbing the trees, ignoring the "no trespassing sign", touching electric fences, playing mafia, hunting for bambi, stepping on the poison ivy, nonstop laughing with Vincent, and feeding Victor, LOL. I love my team :)

I am not at all pleased with school. My grades so far are putting me in a super bad mood and a few people said that it shows. I feel like I'm settling. I can do better, I know it. School is one of my top priorities and I feel like I'm losing this competition. I CANNOT lose.

1. I know you don't, but try to understand. We have entirely different priorities. I act like it's nothing, but it's more than that to me.
2. I think it's the end, but I do hope it's the beginning.
3. Thanks for not even bothering to try.
4. It bothers me when you act like nothing has happened.

I can only go so far

Duck duck goose (F*** f*** shoes), Elbow Tag, and Australian Pursuit are greeeat games. Even the hell set was kinda fun today :) Practice has been more playing and less swimming, which I kinda have mixed feelings on. I wanna be perfectly in shape for Junior Olympics and I only have one week to do so, but if our coaches won't let us concentrate on SWIMMING, I don't know how I possibly can get ready by then. I need a coach to push me to my limits until I hate (or should I say "strongly dislike") them... but in reality, I won't hate them for long if I improve and get better times. I'm not supposed to enjoy practice like this! I'm supposed to be sore on a daily basis.

I guess all that complaining was "counterintuitive," as my physics teacher would say. But hey, no pain, no gain.

"I feel like I just seen the sun for the first time."