Desperate Housewives

I have never been so obsessed with a TV series. Usually when I watch a show, I tend to get very bored and uninterested. I have seen numerous shows, and the only show that I have never lost an interest in is Desperate Housewives. I was addicted to watching this series. I could not put my computer down. I watched all 8 seasons in less than 3 months, an impressive record for me.

Most people assume that Desperate Housewives is a show that just talks about the lives and drama of wealthy, spoiled housewives. Desperate Housewives is commonly associated with the reality TV shows about rich housewives who live in LA or Miami. However, Desperate Housewives is the opposite of this.

Desperate Housewives focuses on the lives of a close-knit group of five women who all live on the same road, Wisteria Lane. Wisteria Lane is viewed as the seemingly perfect suburban neighborhood. Everyone aspires to live in a neighborhood like Wisteria Lane, or do they? When one of these women commits suicide, life on Wisteria Lane takes a turn for the worst. Each woman must deal with their own individual struggles, along with new mysteries, crimes, violence, murder and secrets. Throughout the series, this ideal neighborhood, becomes less and less “perfect”. Each episode brings a new mystery and even darker and more twisted events.

Before I began the show I thought that I would just be watching another reality TV show about housewives and their luxurious lives. However, after watching just 5 minutes of the first episode of the series, I realized that this show was nothing like any reality TV show I have ever seen. I could not stop watching Desperate Housewives. I couldn’t wait to see what happened next.

So, if you are looking for a new show to start, I highly recommend Desperate Housewives. Your eyes will be glued to your phone or computer screen.

Snake in My Garage

I hate snakes. As a child, I could never go into the “snake exhibit” at the zoo. I could never watch a TV show or video that had a snake in it. Looking at pictures of a snake makes me shiver. I refuse to listen to stories about snakes. I can barely talk about them. I find them to be very creepy animals. I am terrified of snakes. Between their unusual length and size, the noises the make, their texture, and the way they move, seeing or being near a snake petrifies me.  I absolutely hate snakes.

A few months ago I came home from school and my mom was practically in tears standing in the kitchen. My mom rarely cries. I asked my mom what was wrong, expecting her to tell me that a friend or family member has died or was deathly ill. My mom could hardly speak as she replied to my question saying that “there was a snake in our garage”. I was speechless. I was in shock. Like me, my mom is extremely afraid of snakes. She hates them more than I do. I hoped that she was joking, but she wasn’t.

I thought I was going to throw up. There was a snake in my garage. How does a snake even get into the garage? I didn’t even think there were snakes in Marblehead. I was ready to break down in tears. I have never been so disgusted or afraid in my life.

My family uses the garage for everything. We park our cars in the garage, keep our shoes in the garage, get in and out of the house through the garage. Obviously, I refused to use the garage. In fact, I didn’t even want to step foot outside my house. I was convinced that the snake would come back and attack me while I was outside. I was nervous that the snake somehow found its way into my house through the garage.

Even today, I still get nervous that one day I will be outside of my house, or standing in my garage and there will be a snake. I honestly don’t what I would do.

Never Fly in a Blizzard

It was December vacation, 2014. I had plans to fly down to Florida with my sister and cousin to visit our grandparents for the week. For months I had been looking forward to spending quality time with my extended family, and escaping the snow and cold water. I woke up that morning at around 10am. My flight was scheduled to take off at around 7pm. Or so I thought.

I woke up to my mom in a complete panic. She was on the phone with my grandfather and researching other flights to Florida. The news was blaring throughout the house. New England was expecting to get a huge snow storm.

My flight had not yet been cancelled, so we drove to the airport. My parents kept telling my sister, cousin and I to not get our hopes up about going to Florida, because chances were our vacation to Florida would be cancelled. The airport was extremely chaotic. Flights were being cancelled by the minute. Travelers were in a frenzy. It was a disaster.

After we checked in, said goodbye to our parents, went through security, and walked to the gate, we saw that our plane was on time. It was planned to take off in about 30 minutes. Suddenly the words “on time” on the TV screen at the gate were replaced by the word “delayed”. One of the gate attendees announced that something had to be fixed on the airplane, so we would have to wait an extra 40 minutes to board. Finally, we were able to begin the boarding process and get onto the airplane. At this point, our flight was the last flight to take off for the night due to the dangerous flying conditions.

We were sitting on the plane for about 30 minutes before the pilot made an announcement that the airplane had to be “de-iced”, because there was too much ice on the plane and it was not safe to fly. This took about 30 minutes. I, along with every other passenger on the plane began to get very frustrated and anxious. I just wanted to be in the air, on my way to Florida. The snow was coming down very hard and accumulating very quickly. After the plane was “de-iced”, the pilot made another announcement that we had to wait for the runways to be plowed. Another 40 minutes go by, and I thought that we could finally take off and in just a few hours I would be in the warm Florida weather. But, I was wrong. The plane had to be “de-iced” once more.

Finally, after waiting for about four hours we were ready to take off. I have been on an airplane many times throughout my life but, none of the flights that I have been on were as scary as the flight that night. The combination of the wind and snow made for a very bumpy and terrifying flight. I thought the plane was going to crash. Realistically, the flight should have been canceled, but I was very happy and relieved to finally be in Florida.

Chipping My Teeth

Who would have ever thought that a simple hug could turn into losing your teeth?
It was the summer of 2010 and I was away in Cape Cod with my family and our family friends. Our short vacation was coming to an end, so all of the adults decided that it would be nice to spend our last day at the beach together.

Before I knew it, the sun was setting over the ocean. It was starting to get chilly and dark outside, so my parents thought that it would be a good time to load up the car and drive back to Marblehead. Being a stubborn 10 year old, I refused to leave the beach unless my parents bought me a popsicle. As I was sucking on my cherry flavored popsicle, I began to say goodbye to my family friends. Our family friends have three kids. At the time they were 10, 8, and 3, similar to the ages of my sisters and I. Right before I got in the car, I bent over to give the three year old, Drew, a hug goodbye. However, he was unaware that my chin was right over his head. Drew jumped up to give my dad a high-five and his head smacked my chin.

I began hysterically crying.

I looked in the car mirror and saw that I had cracked my two front bottom teeth in half. While my mouth did not hurt, I could not get over the fact that I was missing half of two of my teeth. I usually tend to overreact when I get hurt or sick, so I was sobbing my eyes out for the entire 2 hour car ride back home.

The next day, I went to get my teeth fixed. My dentist told me that a chipped tooth is extremely common and that it wouldn’t take long to fix. Finally, after a long 24 hours, my teeth were finally fixed.

The 11 Year Old Seamstress

When most of us think of sewing, we rarely picture an 11 year old taking a sewing class.
One of my friends came into school one day with a late-birthday gift for me, a small change-purse. When she told me that she personally made the gift in the sewing class she takes, I was shocked. I was so impressed that my friend had the ability to make something, even as small and simple as a change purse. After a long discussion about her sewing class and the other things she had sewed in the past, I was amazed. I got the urge to want to start taking sewing lessons myself.

As a young girl, I always participated on sports teams and took dozens of art and painting lessons in my free time. I never had time in my busy schedule to start a new activity. However, after talking with my friend, I decided that I want to stop taking painting classes and begin taking sewing classes. The idea that I could hand-make my own clothing, stuffed animals, pillows, and gifts for friends and family stunned me. Sewing was such a unique and rare after school activity, especially for an 11 year old. But, I could not wait for my first sewing class.

After years of sewing lessons, I knew how to make dresses, pajama bottoms, stuffed animal dogs, bags, computer cases, raincoats, pillows, quilts, the list goes on. In fact, for my Bat Mitzvah, I sewed 36 pairs of pajama pants which I donated to the sick children at the Boston Children’s Hospital. I made countless birthday and holiday gifts for friends and family. I made myself a wardrobe of clothes including a raincoat, pants, shirts, and dresses. I had sewed so many pillows and stuffed animals that I did not know what to do with them.

What I loved the most about sewing was how peaceful and satisfying it can be. Sewing is one of the few things that has truly made me proud of myself. The feeling of finishing a project that has taken you weeks, even months is priceless. Never in my life have I been so passionate about an activity than I was with sewing. Sewing was my favorite hobby. My obsession for sewing even led me to force my parents to buy me my very own sewing machine for my 13th birthday.

Unfortunately, I was forced to stop taking sewing classes my Freshman year due to my intensive field hockey schedule and tremendous amount of school work. However, I do plan on picking up sewing again sometime soon.

Gone Girl

I have never been so interested in a book.

Reading is not something I chose to do in my free-time. I prefer to watch a TV show or a movie instead of picking up a book. However, my views and ideas on reading changed last week while I was on vacation. This past December vacation I went on a cruise, with no Wi-Fi or access to the internet. So, in order to keep myself busy, I decided that I was going to try to read a book. My mom suggested that I read the novel Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn.

I began reading Gone Girl on the short airplane ride from Boston to Philadelphia. I read about 50 pages in a little over an hour. I am usually a very slow reader, so I could not believe how quickly I was reading this book. I could not wait to get on the four hour flight from Philadelphia to San Juan, Puerto Rico to read more. By the time I had reached San Juan, I had read more than one-third of the book. Everyday for the next three days I refused to put the book down. I spent more time speaking to my family about Gone Girl than the vacation that we were on. While reading the novel I was anything but bored. I had never been so interested in a book before.

So, why was I so attached to Gone Girl?

Gone Girl tells the fascinating story of Nick and Amy Dunne. The seemingly perfect Amy suddenly disappears on the morning of their fifth wedding anniversary. All of the evidence gathered by the police clearly shows that Nick is to blame for the disappearance of his wife. About a month passes after Amy disappears, and the entire world has become attached to this case. Everyone believes that Nick killed his wife and is insisting that he is punished for his actions.

One evening everything takes a turn. For the better? For the worst?

Gone Girl is truly an unbelievable story, and is definitely worth the read.

You will not regret it.

Its The Little Things in Life

“Its the little things in life”, a saying that I have heard countless times throughout my life, but it wasn’t until the fall of 2012 until I learned how accurate this saying really was.  In the fall of 2012 I volunteered at Haven from Hunger, a homeless shelter located in Lynn, MA. A group of families from my community decided that it would be nice if we all spent a few hours working at the shelter. Although I was excited, I did not know what to expect from the shelter.

We arrived at Haven from Hunger at around 4 pm. When I first walked in, the shelter was nothing like I had imagined. It was very small and cluttered. Cardboard boxes, tables, chairs, soda bottles, and plastic and paper bags took over the entire shelter. It was not very clean. It was apparent that it was very unorganized and lacked strong leadership. A woman greeted our group of about 20 people and gave us our task for the night. We were supposed to make, set up, serve, and clean up dinner. It was going to be a busy and overwhelming night.

Before I knew it, dozens of homeless people living in and around Lynn began piling into the shelter. When they saw all of us kids, their frowns turned into smiles, and their faces lit up. They could not wait to talk to us, and thank us for helping them. In the moment, I did not understand how volunteering for a few hours could make someone so happy.

I specifically remember a group of four or five women who were sitting together that night. I had a few short conversations with these women about my hobbies and what sports a played. They were so intrigued and eager to learn more about who I am. Speaking to them truly warmed my heart. Even today I can still picture those women and how genuinely delighted, grateful, and excited they were because we were there helping them.

It really is just the little things in life that can have such an incredible and strong impact.