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Happy Holidays, everyone!

Enjoy this day, and the food and your loved ones in spite of the true meaning behind it!

Eat well, pay it off later on!

Dakota Marley Strikes Back!

Someone got their butt whooped... but courtesy will keep me from saying who! ;D

What am I thankful for?

I felt like making this post now because my family is coming over tomorrow, they'll be here for the next several days, so I might not get a chance before the holidays!

Should I make a list, or just go with the flow? There are four things most potent to me that I want to say, but to be honest, I'm thankful for everything =]

First off, I'm thankful for God, that's a given. How to explain why, without pointing out the obvious... I thank him for still loving me despite my mistakes, helping me learn and grow from them.. Giving me life and allowing me to keep that life every single day since, in spite of my stupid and reckless decisions... especially involving crossing the street... it's like I'm asking for it... I must be a pain to deal with so I thank Him for still bothering to deal with me.

Next, I'm thankful for my family. Where would I be without their love? Sure we all have our problems... but I wouldn't be me if I hadn't shared these problems with them.

I'm also thankful for my friends. So grateful to have all of you. I'm surprised that I even do... I try not to be a pain...you guys put up with me for more than I'm worth and although I'm just getting to know all of you, I love you all anyway.

Of course, I've expressed this many a time, I think, for how thankful I am for PERSON. H.G... lol..mercury... lmao. He's gone by many names in my posts - except mercury, that sounds kind of gay... almost like he should be on Sailor Moon - but you probably have no clue who I'm talking about, dear Reader! That's okay =] Just know it's someone I love dearly, deeply, and unconditionally! Person changed my life so much, and only for the better... Person truly knows me now. All of me...and he's still here. If he himself weren't reason enough to love him...than his support for me is more than enough. I mess up so much.. whoa boy! How in the hell is he dealing with it, I wonder.. lmao! Person is a mystery =]

Last thing I want to say, although it's not all that I'm thankful for, is that I'm thankful for my experiences. Every single last experience, including the ones I regret, because without them... I wouldn't be me. Right about now, I'm thinking that me is a pretty good thing to be =] - Never dreamed I would be saying that about myself lol but here I am!

Oh gosh... I'm thankful for everything! Especially being alive... and I can't forget you, blogger family! Don't think I was going to >.

Review: Unwind by Neal Shusterman

So, at the recommendation of a friend, I read this awesome book called "Unwind". - you can tell from the title and picture, I guess. The book sounded bizarre from the description my friend gave, which made me all the more compelled to read it! I was hooked from the start. The tale is amazing.... This review may contain spoilers so if you plan to read it and you don't want it to be ruined for you, stop reading this post now. I'm not exactly sure how these review thingies go (I know saying that right now is NOT it but oh well) so I'll just tell stuff from the book that impacted me the most, and what I thought about it in general...and yes I would indeed recommend you to read it. I'll get that out of the way right now! A little background info that you could learn from reading the back: the story takes place a bit in the future after the second civil war. The civil war was about abortion rights. The U.S. army split up between pro-life and pro-choice. Both armies lost when the conflict was solved with a thing added to the constitution called the Bill of Life. This satisfied both the pro-life and pro-choice armies because of a process that would become known as "unwinding". The Bill of Life stated that from conception to the age of 13 a child's life may not be touched, but between the ages of 13 to 18 a child may be "retroactively aborted" as long as the child in question's life did not technically end. They did this by unwinding the child - keeping them alive through surgery and painlessly dismembering them so that 99.4 percent of their bodies is donated to people that needed it. Broke your arm? Get a knew one. It's as simple as that. Doctors were no longer needed... just surgeons. Every single thing wrong with you could just be replaced. So... trouble making kids...they got unwound...unwanted kids who's parents got stuck with them...got unwound...wards of the state who's homes had no more room for them...got unwound. And then there were tithes. Tithes were children conceived and raised to be unwound so that they can be offered up to God through unwinding. The extreme religious people in the story tithed... You know like how you tithe in church? This was human tithing. They did this because in the bible - apparently in various religions - that 10% of everything must be tithed... so they tithed the child that would equal the 10th percentage of their children o.O... The story centers around three heroes, each different cases of being unwound, each of those cases being the ones I've just described. I loved this story a lot. It wasn't to obvious or predictable, but it was just enough that I wasn't pulling my hair out waiting to find out what would happen next. I really didn't expect a happy ending, and when I figured that I would be, I expected it to be quite cheesy. But, it wasn't. It was just absolutely perfect! At some points I would predict what would happen next and it'd be something terrible, then it'd turn out to be almost the exact opposite which was extremely satisfying. When the Admiral and his ex-wife didn't turn out to be murderers I was very happy... it was extremely sweet in the end, what they did. They brought their son back :) - Lev's story was a bit sad... but still in a sort of good way... he could still have God but he found a new way to believe... he didn't have to be faithless. Risa... I don't feel sorry at all that she lost her legs. She could have had them replaced by an unwind but then after that she'd be an unwind again too... it worked out better that way! I liked to hope that after she turned 18 she could get a replacement spine and be able to walk again but why should she? You'd agree with me if you read the story... I'd rather be paralyzed then condone unwinding. I don't think I was surprised at all to learn that Conner would be running the Graveyard... but when I read through the part with his speech and his plans for them, I was almost jumping up and cheering with all of the unwinds as if I had been going through all of their hardships too. That's the kind of story that's good to read... one that gets you just completely wrapped in as you're reading it... Nothing else is there, it's as if you're in the story...you see it, you hear it, smell it, feel it.... Again, with any good story, I imagined sequels and hoped to read about their adventures and how they put their plans to action - and yes - won. I wanted to read about Connor and Risa's romance in the future... Lev's life behind bars and then what happens when he gets released to live with his brother whom was also disowned by their parents. I didn't want it to end. That's when you know you've got a good story on your hands. I would definitely recommend it.