Thornton Academy – AP Language 2018-2019

I guess you could say I have a busy life style. I’m taking a pretty difficult course load at school, I work 3-4 days a week, and I volunteer about once a week. Most week days, I leave the house at 7:30 a.m. and get back home at 8:30 p.m. That means most of my life happens on the go, and part of that includes my meals.

On a normal day (and I’m not proud to admit this), I would likely start by going to Dunkin and grabbing a bagel with cream cheese and a water. At lunch, I’ll rush over to McDonalds and get a mcchicken and some fries. And to end off the day, I’ll eat a pizza at work, or get even more fast food after volunteering. In between all of this I’ll usually cram in even more unhealthy snacks: chips, fruit snacks, really anything that just looks appetizing.

Now, most people might look at my diet and wonder how on Earth I’m not full of health problems. My blood pressure, heart rate, weight, and cholesterol are all in normal ranges, and in fact, I’m technically underweight. All of this has sort of encouraged my eating habits.

Not being able to see the effects of my eating on the scale or in my lab results means I’ve never really been given a reason to stop. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve always known the food is TERRIBLE for you, but just not seeing any direct results has made it hard to quit.

Recently though, I think the combonation of the busy schedule, stress from my classes, and my poor eating habits have gotten to me. I always feel tired, lathargic, and drained of energy.  I knew I wasn’t getting nearly enough fruits, vegetables, or even protein in my diet.

That’s why I have decided to go on a diet. At first, I was going to join my mom for her February Whole30, but seeing that almost all of the people that do that diet intend to lose weight, I decided not to, since my goal is to gain weight. Instead, I’m going to be crafting my own diet. Mainly, no fast food or candy, 5 fruits and vegetables a day, 100 oz water per day, and a certain calorie count that I haven’t determined yet.

I hope this diet cleanses my palette and gets rid of my addiction to these healthy foods. Not only will it make me healthier, but it will save me so much money!

I had never babysat an actual baby until a month ago. I love babies, but I had never gotten that chance. When I heard that I would be babysitting baby J, both felicity and trepidation flooded my mind. Was I qualified for this? How would I do with four kids and a baby?

When I arrived at E (the mother of J,K, and R)’s house, there was a flurry of activity. K squealed and came to hug me (I mentally noted that her eight-year old body came up to my shoulders — she did NOT get her tall genes from my side of the family). I was introduced to two sisters, H and A, whose mother made sure to explain everything I needed to know twice. Baby J smiled at me, but clung to her foster mother like a leaf in a snowstorm.

The parents left, and I had a content baby J on my hip. However, the mom of H and A jinxed me: as she was leaving, she patted my shoulder and exclaimed, “Good job getting the baby to calm down!”

And with one look at my face, J opened her mouth and wailed.

My first thought was, hey, am I really that ugly? I could think no more before J squirmed out of my arms and started toddling away from my ugliness as fast as a wobbly one-year old can. I went to grab her, but her face turned red with the exertion of her screaming. Oh dear.

It was twenty minutes later that found me sitting on the floor of the living room. I could see baby J out of the corner of my eye; if I looked directly at her she started to cry. This could not do — I needed to think out of the box. I remembered something that E told me before she had left. I turned to K and A, who sat in the kitchen playing Minecraft.

“K,” I called, “Can you play Baby Shark?”

I am convinced that someday, when the world is minutes away from ending, an innocent soul will play Baby Shark, and the world shall be saved. I stood in the small living room, baby J scrutinizing my every dance move. And miraculously, she was quiet. The last notes of the song rang out, and she was still silent.

A while after the last crisis had been averted, baby J was sleeping on my lap. I stroked her hair and half heartedly watched Trolls. Now came the next task — transferring the little lady to her crib upstairs.

I tiptoed up narrow stairs, cradling her lolling head in my weak arm. I made it into the dark room, when baby J shifted and woke. I turned on the light. She gazed at her crib and began to cry. She took big, upset breaths and sobbed from her spot on my hip. She was tired, and NOT going in her crib. I slid down, my back against the wall, and let her calm down.

It was another half an hour later when K strutted into the room and asked me to help paint nails. I told her later, and she nodded and went to leave the room. However, she stopped at the door and turned. “You know Grace, if you press the paw of that bear in her crib it’ll play music and she’ll stop crying and go to sleep.”

Oh.

Sure enough, I left the room as baby J slept, well, like a baby. Mission messily accomplished.

Many films that center around lesbians often follow a strikingly similar pattern. You would imagine that it wouldn’t be difficult to create a film that revolved around a lesbian romance that didn’t feature a twenty year age gap, an unhealthy relationship, cheating, over sexualization, or a tragic ending, but then again, the sample size of what lesbian films are would lead you to believe otherwise.

There are hundreds of films that focus around heterosexual relationships and romances, highlighting their love for one another and how well they match up, and even with their struggles or great big conflict, they always seem to end up together in the end. These films are all well and good, something to watch when you do not want to think to hard, or simply want to feel war, and fuzzy, but where are those stories for lesbians to see themselves in? There have even been strides made in the ways of gay romantic comedies, such as Love, Simon, and although this should be appreciated for what it is, it is also a rare occurrence. A film doesn’t need to be overtly tragic or hold a great amount of gravity to be enjoyable, and romantic comedies and other such films of similar genre are perfect examples. They give a bit of hope to their audience that there is someone out there for them, that they can perhaps have their fairy tail ending, too.

However, there are not really movies like this for those in wlw relationships. As stated before, it would appear impossible for writers to simply tell a story of a happy lesbian couple, or a cheesy meet-cute romance. Instead, stories feature odd relationships between women that involve infidelity, large age gaps, and ties things off with death or heartbreak or something of the like created by writers that have no experience with the subject matter. They do not seem like films created for lesbians, but rather for a much difference audience. 

Lesbians enjoy cheesy love stories just as much as anyone else, so when we will get ours?

Throughout human history, curiosity about the moon has led to research, studies, and, more recently, exploration. Over the past six decades, countries such as the United States and Russia have been intertwined in a competition to learn more about the moon. In the space race between nations to discover more about our planets, on January 2, 2019, China set a new record.

          A Chinese six-wheeled rover named Yutu 2 touched down on the lunar far side, commonly known as the dark side of the moon, on Wednesday of last week. With the landing, China became the first country to successfully land on the far side of the moon.

         Equipped with four scientific instruments, Chinese space officials have said that the craft’s mission is to study and probe the planet’s subsurface in order to learn more about the undiscovered portion of the moon. Images and data from the rover will be relayed to earth via Queqiao, a satellite launched in May 2018.

        Although China is significantly behind the U.S. and Soviet Union, who battled for lunar supremacy from 1957-1975, Chinese general secretary and chairman Xi Jinping believes that China will be a serious contender in space exploration. According to CBC Broadcasting, “The space dream is part of the dream to make China stronger,” Jinping said. “With the development of space programs, the Chinese people will take bigger strides to explore further into space.”