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Cat's · Journal
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I'm in a bit of a melancholy mood (which I usually am when I write here...funny) so this is very likely to be a strange post.
When I was in primary school, year 5 I think, we had to write a thing on 'My Hero'. We picked someone, anyone, and wrote about them, put a picture of them, explained why we thought they were our hero.
I wrote about my uncle. And if I wrote one today, I'd write it on him.
I never knew my uncle. He was my father's older brother. The oldest of three children, in fact. His name was Peter. He was married, had a four year old daughter.
His whole life, he wanted to be in the army. He wanted to serve his country. And he followed his dream. He joined the Peacekeeping Corps - he didn't want to fight, he wanted to help keep the peace.
In the January of 1988, he was situated in Lebanon. He'd been over there awhile, he had his wife and daughter over there with him. The 12th. It was only a few weeks before he was meant to come home, and he was planning to come home for good. He didn't want to be separated from his young family anymore, didn't want to be moving about.
Another soldier was unable to do his duty, and they needed someone to fill his spot. My uncle raised his hand, said he'd be pleased to do it.
Sounds silly, but it was something that would hurt terribly afterwards; he wasn't meant to be there.
He was on patrol with a Canadian man. They had a photo taken that very day, when they stopped their van for a few moments. They got back in the van, and it was only a short time later that the van drove over a landmine. My uncle was killed instantly, the Canadian seriously injured.
Back home, news of the death was dealt with, by the media, in a way that was nothing less than shameful. My father was the official contact in Australia; the media, the radios should not have released a name till he and the family had been informed. My parents were unwell that day; they decided to sleep in.
My nanna was home alone. My poppy was going south to visit his sick sister. She was making her bed, when the radio that she always has playing told her that her son had been killed in Lebanon.
The town we live in, my parents; the entire community, all our relatives and friends, knew about it before my parents did. And it was only because they slept in that they didn't find out until the army men came knocking at the door.
I wish I'd known my uncle. He sounds like an excellent man, and my father and his sister are both so even tempered and kind it's hard to imagine him different. Yet to some degree, I'm glad I wasn't around to go through that. Does it make me selfish?
My brother was four at the time. My sister was one, really too little to understand Peter was dead. It had an enormous affect on my brother though. See, like I said, he was four, so he understood he was gone, but he didn't really understand why. How can you explain to a four year old about peacekeeping and landmines? They'd ask why, why do they hurt people? Why do people make them if they hurt people? And how can you really answer those questions? But they needed an explanation, so he was told Peter died in a car accident. They explained to him about terrible accidents, etc.
From then on, he couldn't stand for my parents to go out in a car, especially without him. He had counselling and all, but he couldn't stand it, he was scared they wouldn't come back. It continued for years. When they'd go out, leaving us home with Nan or something...he'd write little notes (and this is clearly years later, as he could write) saying where they were, what time they would be home, etc. He'd wait for them, and if they were five minutes late he'd panic.
Why have I shared all this with you? Well for starters, very few read this anyway. I was thinking about it tonight, I needed to get it off my chest. Hope you don't mind me foisting it on you :-)
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So this week it's half yearly exams week at my school. Oh, joy. Let's see, the week kicks off with German followed by Science, History and Geography coupled with English the next day, a day off while the elective Music students do theirs, and finally Maths on Friday. Usually we have Fridays off on exam week, only due to the Queen's Birthday public holiday on Monday (today) everything gets bumped forward.
Oh, a bit of (British) monarch trivia; did you know that the Queen, or whoever is at the throne at the time, celebrates their birthday twice? You see, they figure that the monarch's born in the British winter are pretty unlucky, so the official royal celebration takes place sometime in the British summer.
Anywho, back to what I was saying. You see, I have atychiphobia. A fear of failing. Every exam, I'm convinced I'm going to fail, somehow be caught cheating when I never cheat, go into a daze and forget to answer the questions...never happened, but hey, might someday. This is more complicated now I'm embroiled in the dangerous world of fanfiction. Have you any idea how difficult it is to study when your computers sitting there, looking at you sweetly, and you just know that if you booted it up and went into My Documents and followed the link to Cathryn's Stories, the unfinished chapter of your story would just be sitting there, waiting for you? Or that Lucius/Narcissa one shot that Jessi probably thinks you've deserted is just begging to be completed? It's SO much more fun to write about the trials and tribulations of Sirius Black than study about microbes, you know.
So, I'm going to fail. I know it. I never have before, but this is my year. I'll go down in English and Maths and Science....
See what I mean?
Anyway, onto a completely different topic. When I was searching for the phobia name for fear of failure, I came across a list of phobias....These are mine:
Agoraphobia- Fear of open spaces or of being in crowded, public places like markets. Fear of leaving a safe place
Aeroacrophobia- Fear of open high places
Arachnephobia or Arachnophobia- Fear of spiders
Ataxophobia- Fear of disorder or untidiness
Atychiphobia- Fear of failure
Catagelophobia- Fear of being ridiculed
Claustrophobia- Fear of confined spaces
Cleithrophobia or Cleisiophobia- Fear of being locked in an enclosed place
Glossophobia- Fear of speaking in public or of trying to speak
Kakorrhaphiophobia- Fear of failure or defeat
Ophidiophobia- Fear of snakes
Rhabdophobia- Fear of being severely punished or beaten by a rod, or of being severely criticized. Also fear of magic (wand) (Severely criticized part for me. And how the heck does magic relate to criticism?)
Selachophobia- Fear of sharks
Taphephobia Taphophobia- Fear of being buried alive
Testophobia- Fear of taking tests
Topophobia- Fear of certain places or situations, such as stage fright
I must look like such a wimp. But honestly, there's some really wacky ones; like fear of England, or fear of being tickled by feathers. Here's the one that made me laugh: Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia- Fear of long words.
Now, this has been long and boring enough, so I'll go now; have a good week, every one! :)
Cathryn
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Mosaic-ing. A word I believe I made up, but a word that describes the art of...well, mosaic-ing. We all know what a mosaic is. The pieces of coloured ceramic tiles stuck to a canvas in order to create a picture? They're really cool looking.
Now, in my elective art class, we're doing gods and goddesses. And we were asked to find a picture of someone who we thought could be a god or goddess; meaning they're the typical image of beauty or perfection. We were then to draw that picture onto a piece of black cardboard, cut up pieces of coloured magazine, and stick them on to re create the picture as a mosaic. Easy enough, right?
Wrong.
Now, I made an extensive internet search, looking for just the right picture. It had to be just right. I didn't want to pick a modern movie star, I knew half the kids in my class would pick Hilary Duff or various other frustrating teeny boppers. I didn't want to pick a Greek or Roman goddess, because that's what the other half would pick. So I went for the 30's/40's/50's/60's film stars. -sighs- They just aren't as classy any more.
I considered Audrey Hepburn. Looked at Elizabeth Taylor. Checked out some others. And on the end, I decided on Grace Kelly. Or, as she was known at the time of her death, Princess Grace of Monaco. And, of course, the picture I wanted to use was black and white.
Now, I should make it quite clear here that I was the only idiot in my class to pick a black and white picture.
So I drew the picture onto some tracing paper. Traced onto the black cardboard. Looked proudly at the product and thought to myself 'I'm set!'
Only...I had no pieces. It was emphasised to us that the pieces had to be small. Mine were itsy. And do you have any idea how hard it is to find grey magazine?! So for the last month, my back has been permanently aching as I crouch of a 20cm square of black cardboard sticking bit after tiny bit of grey, white and black magazine onto it.
Plus, I have painful cuts all over my fingers where I've cut myself with the scalpel knife we use to pick up the pieces of magazine.
I never want to see a magazine again.
~Cathryn
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Today someone told me I'm too old for my age. It was a friend, a girl my age, and it was because I mentioned something about Iraq during a conversation with her. Of course, I should've known better than to mention that in a conversation with this particular girl; she's the type of girl more concerned about what her hair looks like than problems in the world.
As you may have worked out from my last post, I'm not really your average 14 year old. I know, I've been told a million times. I've been told I'm odd because I read the paper every morning, and I watch the new every night. I know basics of what's going on in the world.
I often worry about the state our world is in. I said that to a friend once, too, and she looked at me like I was nuts. And maybe she was right; maybe my friends opinions that since we're teenagers, we don't need to worry about that stuff is correct. But I do anyway. You see, it affects us all in one way or another.
Some might argue 'How does it affect a 14 year old girl when there's fighting going on in countries thousands of miles away?' It affects me because the people who are fighting are, like me, human beings. Why should they fight and die for a cause that is often silly?
Silly?, you might say. How is fighting for ones country silly? I know people who've said that to me. Try telling that to the people who've lost people to fighting. It's nice they died a hero, of course, it's wonderful, but the fact is, they'd rather them be home. Of course, different people may take different views on this matter, and your opinion is your own. But this is mine, and I'm speaking from personal experience. Me? If I was given the choice of having my uncle as a dead hero or alive with us today, I'd choose the latter.
My History class is looking at WWI at the moment. When my teacher announced it, there were people in my class who were saying stuff like 'Oh, cool, war!'. We watched a video on Gallipoli the other day. I don't think their opinions were the same after that.
Then in Religion, we watched a video on Mother Teresa. And there were people saying 'Haha, look at the funny clothes she's wearing.' I was sorely tempted to say, 'Well, you wear funnier clothes and don't do nearly as much good.'
This has been a rather waffly post; awfully sorry about that. Been a bit melancholy too; sorry about that as well. I'll try be a bit more upbeat next time.
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Hey anyone who's reading this (hopefully only HPFF users)
Well, although my user name on HPFF, the HPFF forums and a couple other forums connected with that is rainbow92, my real name, as many of you know, is Cathryn. Yes, I know it's spelt odd. I can't stand it, so most people call me Cat.
So why, after months and years of pondering the ridiculous-ness of blogs, did I decide to create one? I was reading one that was linked to from the forums, I believe it was Elfy's...and I am incredibly bored, so instead of doing my homework, I made this.
Maybe I should tell you a bit about myself. Who am I? I'm 14 year old school girl. I love reading, and I love Harry Potter, and I love HPFF. I'm hopeless at HTML. My social life is nearing non existent (not that I care), and I don't have many friends, but those I do have I love dearly. My parents worry about me because I spend a lot of time on the computer, and since they know nothing of HPFF, they think I'm going into chatrooms when I won't tell them what I'm doing. I live in Australia, and I often worry about the sanity of the politicians running my country. I follow football, the NRL to be exact, and my team WILL win the premiership this year.
I like being alone, perhaps more so than is normal for a 14 year old. My family thinks I'm odd, anyway. I like the colour pink, but not that real bright, perky pink; more dark pink, or watermelon pink. I work at McDonalds, God help me. I'm a Catholic, but I only acknowledge than when I do the good granddaughter routine and go with my nanna. People think I'm unhappy because I don't go much into smiling, but the truth is I prefer to be thinking, and what sort of person smiles brightly while they're thinking deeply? I'm a cynic, I like black humour, I'm sarcastic, and I've also been called negative. (I'm a right little ray of sunshine, aren't I? :P) I have horrible temper and tend to fly off the handle at times.
I'm opinionated and loud around people that I know, but I hate talking to strangers and most often coerce people into talking to them for me. I rarely talk about me as a person, and I have been told that makes me shy. When I am being serious, I'm quiet and soft spoken. I hate public speaking (did you know most people fear that more than death?)
HPFF is a complete secret to everyone; none of my friends know, nor my family. Truth is, most of my friends just aren't that into HP. My best friend hasn't even read HBP. I hate the things that most of my friends like; parties, the beach, sunbaking, make up, rap music, and a lot of other things.
I'll shut up now, mainly because I'm sure I've bored you all to death. But if you happen to have read this far, I'd love a comment. I'd love to make more friends on HPFF, mainly because I only have one good one to date. I like making new friends. Despite everything to say the opposite in this post, I think I'm quite a friendly person. I'll make my next post a bit more interesting :)
Cat |
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