Sizzling Scissors Chop!

Real life portrayal of a dream I had while at camp. Maybe I ate too much cobbler....

Back, tired, a bit confused at the technology around me, and wondering what to write. I mean, for all purposes I could write about all the cool stuff I did at camp (which will probably come up anyway), or maybe all the inside jokes (not as many as in previous years), possibly tell of all the cool people there. But that would be boring, right?

Too bad.

So, as you should have noticed from my lack of entries, I left on Sunday for John's River Valley Camp. The best place in the world. It rained and it was hard carrying all my junk up the skinny, steep, wet hill. Monday we hung around the camp and did some camp service projects in small groups. Luckily, my group the sizzling scissors (1-2-3 Sizzling scissors chop! shh shh shh shh!), got to stand in the cold, cold John's river and catch branches and logs from a fallen upstream tree that was being chopped up. OH BOY!

Tuesday was time for rock climbing and hiking. That night we pitched tents and spent the night even more in the middle of nowhere then we already were. Wednesday we swam in the even colder Huntfish falls. Burrrr. Then we hiked back to the van and finished up the Queen cd on the way back to camp. Thursday meant waking up at 4:30 am to drive to Banner Elk for a most awesome whitewater rafting trip on the Nolochucky River. Probably one of my favorite days. Friday we went to Anthony's creek (the coldest water of the week) and then I watched some people (guys, mostly) play ultimate frisbee. A game I just don't understand. What a great week. It went by so quickly.

In addition, it was kind of a weird week. Lots of people this year, not at all like last years 15 or so campers. With 31 campers it was really hard to get to know everyone. Not that I am discouraging anyone from going. But it was hard. And lots of younger people, you could see a split in the camp, I think. Maturity levels were different between lots of the campers.

But it was fun. And sad. All at the same time. It was my last year as a camper. Yeah, I can come back as a SCAT (counselor)....but it won't quite be the same. It is very unnerving to think that people might possibly start thinking of me as an adult. That, while I might be the smallest, I'm the oldest out of all the senior high campers. I guess it is just one of those things that make you realize that life is passing quickly...even though you don't notice.

But in no way am I saying I am old. Older, hardly.

And before anyone asks me again, I am hoping to be on SCAT next year. So watch out. Wow, you know what that means.....a whole summer at John's River!

Cuddle buddies, 'cause it was pretty darn cold for June!

Feel the Funk!

Warning: I'm going to be like Josh...and not write anything for a while.

Now, I actually have a reason. I'm finally going to JOHN'S RIVER!!!! Amazing, but I wait all year for one single week of camp. Call me crazy, but I enjoy the week without electricity, running water, mattresses, and air conditioning. I don't know what it is, but its addictive.

Deanna (non-Johns River kid, who's sick of hearing of John's River): I'm beginning to think that this place is unhealthy
Deanna: nothing that addictive could be healthy

In all honesty, I don't know what to write. I am so excited about going...but I can't believe that camp is tomorrow. Tomorrow I will be seeing all my friends, breathing (humid/sticky) mountain air, lugging bags up a skinny, steep hill. Sounds like fun, I know.

Its just something about good ole' Johns River.

So I will be gone for a week. I'll be back and smellin' on Saturday the 25th. The infamous John's River Funk, I wouldn't suggest visiting me that day...unless you are just crazy. I will have so many pictures and stupid stories (that no one else will understand). Anyway, you will just have to live without this blog. If you feel like you can't live without it, write me at camp and maybe I will write you back...your own personal blog entry!

Can't wait to be at camp!

Talking to Mrs. Tattle

On the walls of the gym I work at are lots of paintings of children playing. Most are playing in groups (some are doing ridiculous stuff like flying planes and running through walls) but one character is alone playing with a ball. Coincidently, the character is close to the floor so she is only slightly above most children's heads. Her name is Mrs. Tattle. Like Mrs. Tattle's name implies (don't ask me why she is married, she just is), she likes to hear people tattle-tale on each other!

All kids tattle, just some more than others. For some reason, we are having a very "tattling" week at the gym. Normally, I just tell the kids one-on-one about Mrs. Tattle...and then watch as they consider going to talk to her or not. But after about my first 15 minutes of camp, I had to tell all the kids about Mrs. Tattle while I went over the gym rules. It is funny to watch kids' faces as you tell them about her. Some believe you..."that Mrs. Tattle really likes to listen to me"...others are older and see it just as a warning not to tattle. The younger ones are the funniest, though. They ask questions about her and seriously consider talking to her, sometimes they even slow down while walking past her.

But the point is, camp is simply about laughing. So many kids, something funny is going to happen. "Madness" could describe it. A few adults with a bunch of kids.

But see, it is fun. For me at least. Others might not see what I find so funny in each day. I think there is a fine line between "I'm annoyed" and "I'm amused." I think that is why we have things like "Mrs. Tattle." I admit it, all that tattling drive me crazy, but getting to see a child truly think about a picture on a wall.....worth it.

Accidents in the bathroom, yeah, not my favorite. But some little boy so excited over a pair of Spiderman pull-ups...worth it. Saying "I'm sure he didn't mean to hit you" a thousand times a day gets tiring, but seeing the tears dry up instantly as they run back to join the child-initiated game of tag, priceless.

It's madness. But it is funny has heck. In two days I have done everything from talking about magnet boots to hearing a confession of love. Just makes me laugh. And tomorrow work; more crazy, funny things, I'm sure.

This wasn't exactly the direction I saw this entry going in...oh well.

"Eclectic" Is the Word of the Day

So, I went to that church thing the other day. I was sick. It was long. Not much fun. That is about all that can be said on that.

Seeing as I have been sick and haven't done much of anything, I haven't had any ideas for blog entries. You see, this is when co-blogger Josh would step in and save me and write a few posts (or at least one) to keep you readers (or the reader) entertained. But he seems to be too lazy.

In other news, I was thinking last night...does anyone think I am a weird person? What makes someone weird? I don't think I am that weird...am I? I admit I am more than a little unique...especially for Davidson County. Or maybe, it is as my friend, Ron, put it "You seem to have weird things happen to you." Do I really, or do I just find weird things in normal situations? Ok ok, I'll give you an example. This church thing I went to on Friday. We were trying to sing a song that (probably) no one knew. In the middle of the song, the woman leading it stopped and said, "This sounds horrible! We all have to sing in the same pitch or it won't work!" Eek. I have never been told off at church. I mean, even if you can't sing, everyone is happy that you are at least trying, right? I saw that as weird. Maybe no one else picked up on its "uniqueness."

I do know some unique stuff about me:

1. My family is the only Mazur in the local phone book.
2. Keeping with Mazur theme, the Rolling Stones tongue logo was designed by a Mazur and we have two professors at Harvard.
3. A college I applied to wrote me a letter asking me why I had a "felony on my record."
4. If I was only one inch shorter, I could get a scholarship for little people.
5. Our family has gotten a check in the mail for $0.73.....it was so funny we framed it.
6. Our cat is half named after a dog (from the television show Frazier); our cat's name is Furry Murry.
7. We use to have a microwave that was old enough to drink and drive.
8. For some reason, I have developed the habit of only slightly opening my can drinks; not pressing the tab all the way forward and all the way back like most people.
9. I was so small when I was born, my parents had to take me to a "height" doctor.
10. I'm sure I have met George Michael's (secret) twin brother while white-water rafting.

I'm sure I will think of more later, but do you see my point? Really, how many people get letters asking about any criminal records or have a framed check around their house?

I guess we are all a bit weird in a way. I'm sure everyone has something unusual about them. These are just a few of my more...eclectic...characteristics.

No Voice at a Church "Thingy?"

I'm feeling pretty sickly today. And that stinks. Not just because I don't feel well, but also because I have to go to this church thing all day tomorrow (I have no idea what I am doing there), and on Saturday I have to work a bunch.

I woke up this morning with no voice. After I woke up, I went back to sleep. I woke up about an hour later and moved downstairs to lay around on the sofa (half-sleeping). Finally, I took a shower and put some ugly, comfortable (in a word, "camp") clothes on.

Later, I took my brother, Mitch-the-itch, to get his hair cut. Like every cool, future middle school-er, he has to have longish hair. But, he plays baseball. And I'm not talking a few times a week....no, all the time. He plays on a community team and a traveling team and hopefully soon an all-star team. We are constantly going to baseball games and either freezing our buns off (in November) or burning up (now). After Mitch-the-itch's last baseball game, his head was soaked. Eew. So I took him to get his hair a little "cleaned up" and put some layers in it so it wouldn't be so hot. Of course, it was really hard to tell them what to do with his hair when I could barely talk. All the hair-cutters are probably making fun of me right now.

Anyway, this thing for church tomorrow...it is definitely a "thing" because I have no idea what is going on. I thought it was going to be a banquet or something but last week I learned that it was going to be long. Anyway, I received a scholarship from the Western North Carolina Association (WNC) of the United Church of Christ. When I got it, my minister's wife told me that if I went to the meeting/banquet thing, I had a better chance of renewing the scholarship. Of course I would go (even if they don't renew it, they are giving me money). Last week I called her to find out what time to meet her because she was going and it is about 45 minutes away at Catawba College. She only told me to be at the church at 7:45 tomorrow morning and not to worry "she registered me for everything." Basically, this is still all I know. I had my mother call her today and my mom emailed me saying to dress up and that it would go all day "Have fun," she ended the email with.

It is driving me crazy that I don't know what is going on. I have looked all up and down the internet for any info. In fact, I don't know if the meeting is just the WNC association, or maybe the entire Southern Conference. I don't know. Am I going to workshops? How long is "all day?" Are there other scholarship kids going?

Its driving me crazy. Hopefully, I will get my voice back by then. Otherwise, they might be kinda worried that they gave me the scholarship and I can't even voice an answer or opinion. Tomorrow will at least be interesting.

Under No Circumstances

That box of chocolates is gone. At this point in the morning, it sounds like a real good idea to run tomorrow. Of course, at a much more sensible time tomorrow morning it will sound like the most horrible idea in the world.

I could say I would wait till after camp to start my diet. But you don't know the logistics of this years camp. Seventeen boys, eight girls. Seeing as camp doesn't have electricity or running water nearby, I will look horrible anyway. I might as well look decent in a bathing suit, right?

This sorta-kinda leads me to something that really annoys me. Try not to take personal offense, but today I was shopping because I need some t-shirts, and I couldn't find anything. Not because nothing fit, but because every shirt had some stupid saying on it. No, I am not talking about something that says "Miami" or "Athletic Dept." That's fine. In fact, that is what I was looking for. I have so many solid, plain shirts. Most of them are kinda hoochie, or at least not a t-shirt. All I wanted was 2 or 3 t-shirts with some writing on them so I can mix up my wardrobe.

But...

Under no circumstances will I ever wear a shirt that says "Limited time offer" or "Spoiled Rotten" and especially not "I will if you will."

Is there something about girls that we think saying bad stuff on our shirts will make people think "nah, she can't be that bad...it must just be her shirt"? Or, do guys like girls wearing shirts that say dumb stuff like that? I just don't understand....I would never want to profess my flaws to everyone (you know, that I am "spoiled," a "brat," or a hoochie ["I will if you will"]).

Maybe I am the only one who doesn't like them. Or mostly, I would never wear them. But it is really hard to find any shirts. What happened to a shirt with a palm tree design that said "Bahamas"? Those use to be really popular. But the saying shirts are taking over! Help. All I want is a decent looking shirt (or two).

PS- Everyone look up at the top of this blog, check out that name. Has anyone ever wondered who the "man" (might should be "boy") is of this blog? Sometimes even I wonder. I think everyone should email Neko/Josh, call him, or in some way annoy him until he comes back. Everyone is probably tired of seeing pink entries.

PPS- The bathing suit thing and the shirt stuff connected because I went shopping for both of those things today, and had no luck.

Nothing Says Summer Like, Well...."Nothing"

Now that the stress of school work is over, I have completely done nothing. You know how you start the summer with lots of ideas on what you are going to, but you never do them (or at least most of them)? That's me. I had planned to run every morning, read a book or two, and do a scrapbook of my senior year. Well, Harry Potter is coming out, I will at least read a book this summer. I'm sure that is exactly what professors want to hear, "Yeah, I read a lot this summer! I re-read all the Harry Potter books, even the new one!" That is the type of intellectual stuff that you will be able to use.

I've also found myself saying things like "I am going to lose weight...as soon as I finish my box of chocolates." It makes perfect sense to me. I mean, you can't every well start a diet with tempting food in the fridge. And, my aunts got it for me for my graduation. I am sure they would be crushed if I didn't eat it.

As for the book, I've been on a cruise. What loser reads a book on a cruise to the Bahamas? Actually, I did one night. That should be a testament to my English teachers greatness (she was even the person who gave me the book).

The scrapbook? I might start that soon.

Anyway, seeing as the summer camps at my work haven't started yet, my summer has been filled with nothing. I am kinda just waiting to work (seeing as I'm just working weekends and Wednesdays). I hate to say that, because as soon as work starts, I will be wishing for nothing days. I better enjoy them while I can, huh?

PS- I have done somthing I wanted to do othis summer...check out that stat counter at the right side of the screen! I know, I have crazy HTML skills. Who knows what's next, maybe some links? Awesome.

Warning: Graphic (yet funny) Imagery Ahead

So I know that every job has its weird occurrences (I mean, just imagine working for minimum wage in California and a woman coming up to you with a finger in her chili), but when you work with kids, you open yourself up for a lot more, and weirder, events. I work at a gym coaching gymnastics (non-competitive), leading birthday parties, and working summer gymnastics camps. I have been at this gym over a year and it's the first real I've ever had. I plan to major in Education in college, so it is probably best that I learn all this weird stuff now. But in the past year, I have seen really weird stuff. Did you know that 3 year olds have "clothing issues?" They do, they can't seem to keep them on, no matter where they are or who they are with. It could be a boy coming out of the bathroom with underwear in one hand and pants in the other ("Miss Emily, I'm done!"), or how about a girl who said it was too hot in the gym to have pants on. Or, my personal favorite, a boy coming out of the bathroom into the gym (luckily the other kids had just been moved into the snack room) completely naked and running very, very quickly. It took me a while to catch him, and if you knew the gym I was talking about, you would know about the very large picture windows looking out to the rest of the shopping center. There is something about 3 year olds. They are certainly fun, though.

On Wednesdays, I co-coach an advanced class. I love teaching this class because it is more about the gymnastics and less about...well, nakedness or babysitting. Now, I co-coach this class, the other coach is the owner of the gym, my boss. Let's just call him "One who pays the bills" (or OWPB for short). OWPB has two really cute grandkids, which he sometimes brings to the gym; on normal days, they are cute, participate in classes, and watch some TV. However, Wednesday was anything but normal. It started with blood, and ended with oatmeal. I'm not making this up.

Because the gym is non-competitive, we just have a show for the parents so they can see what their hard-earned money is doing. Wednesday was the show. After showing floor routines, we moved over to the beam, where some of the girls decided to sit on the parallel bars that had been made un-parallel so they could watch. When parallel bars are un-parallel, there isn't much space between them. As the first girl preformed her beam routine, I watched another girl smash her face into the lower bar. I ran over to the injured girl and noticed lots of blood coming from her nose. I moved her to the bathroom and her mother came over, I spent a while getting ice, checking on the girl, and spotting a few cartwheels in-between. I don't handle the sight of blood very well, but I am better at handling it if I know someone is injured (that sounds stupid, but don't worry, it will make sense). Later, however, when cleaning the bathroom I could barely stand to look at the bloody paper towels. The thing I have the biggest problem with is hearing people cry or scream because of injuries. Luckily, this girl wasn't crying... too loudly.

Now I can hear everyone asking, "Why would you clean the bathroom if you knew it was going to make you sick, Emoney?" Mostly because that was just one event of the day.

I do have a strong stomach for....ah...."other" bodily fluids. This is probably good seeing as during summer camps, we have lots of accidents and spare clothes (especially pants) are normally in high demand. After the unfortunate nose incident, I started to find what I like to call surprises or gifts around the gym. Of course, this is the day all the parents/grandparents/siblings are in the gym. After finding the culprit, OWPB's grandson (3 years old), I picked him (lets call him situation #2, or S2 for short) up and put him in the other bathroom. I went to pick up the surprises and when I came back to check on S2 (within 3 minutes) he had successfully splashed all the water out of the toilet onto the floor. I couldn't do much, so I just finished cleaning up and then came back to him. As I walked out of the bathroom to get his clothes, his sister, S3, told me she had an accident. Luckily, the bloody nose had just left to go to the doctor, so S3 got her own bathroom... floor to pee on. I came back (of course with the wrong bag) and ended up realizing exactly what was on the floor around S3 and changed her quickly and sent her back to the gym. Now I had S2 left. I ended up carrying him naked into the lobby to find and change his clothes. Now S2 and S3 are safely in the gym so I can start cleaning. In my bare feet.

But there are 4 situations in this story and surely you want to know about the oatmeal. Just as I finished wiping down the bathrooms and mopping both floors, S3 comes and say to me "Come see what S2 has done!" Oh geeze. In the snack room I found a floor covered with beads, dry pasta, yellow paint, and oatmeal. I started to clean it up when a woman came and complained to me that the floor was wet in the bathroom. She has no idea...I could have left it wet with something else. My boss came in and saw the mess (my advanced class was long over), and scattered S2 and S3 to the lobby. We started cleaning when someone came and told us "two children in the lobby are bathing in the hand sanitizer and destroying magazines." OWPB and I stopped them, and then he took them home (thank goodness, they were winning!). This at least gave me time to clean without having to stop to clean up something else.

All in all, it was the craziest day. The gym coordinator (GC) had asked me earlier if I could stay a little after my class and fold brochures. Hope GC doesn't mind that I only folded about 20.

And another thing, I have noticed that I am on an injury streak. That is the 2nd injury under my watch in a month. In all the time I have worked there, I have sent 3 kids to the hospital. Eek. I'm competent, really I am.

When I got home (1 1/2 hours late) I could barely tell my mother this story because I was laughing so hard.