cross country and looking like a girl

I've been thinking (oh, big surprise, like I'm ever NOT doing that in some way, right?). 

As you already know, if you read this blog, I run as the only girl on a guy's cross country team for my school.  The thing is, that, in a way, sort of makes me one of the guys.  But I'm not SUPPOSED to be one of the guys.  I'm a girl, and I don't want to be thought of as a girl who WANTS to be a guy.  (Because I don't.) 

I've been thinking of ways to combat this.  I DO look like a girl, even in our training uniform (remember that I girl-ified it) but still.  Baggy tee and shorts. 

So I've been doing other 'girly' stuff--- mostly, nail polish and hairbows, because do you know HOW GROSS it is to have a face full of makeup coming off with your sweat???  I mean, I don't even like the stuff much even when I'm NOT running.  (I wear lipgloss and sometimes clear mascara, and I'm trying to work up the guts to wear shimmery mascara to dances and stuff). 

Of course, I don't know just how much nail polish and hairbows are stuff are even allowed at school, so I'm keeping them subtle for now.  Gold shimmery polish and blue and white hairbows, anyone?? 

At least it keeps down the casey-looks-like-a-boy factor. 

um. Ten guys now.

So now we've got ten guys, and I, uh, don't even know everyone's names.  It's pretty crazy. 

Also, me and the freshman I was running with got lost.  Luckily, coach came up behind us and yelled out directions. 

Then the aforesaid freshman passed me at the end.  Asthma for casey, you know.  Oh well. 

Cross country is the only place where guys can sweat, spit, dry heave, ect, ect around a girl without it being bad manners.  This may or may not be because the girl does almost all that too...  

We haven't any practice tomorrow, so I'll be running with Ned.  Who, uh, is like waaaaaaaaay faster than me. 

School starts Wednesday, and then practice will be in the afternoons. 

Wonder if I'll know everyone's names by then?? 

Naaaaah. 

unprepared much?

I'm still missing two of my textbooks, and more than half of my uniforms haven't come in the mail yet.  The textbooks should have come weeks ago, and the uniforms should be here by monday, if we stretch out the shipping time as faaaaaaaaaaar as we can. 

Did I mention that school starts on Wednesday? 

Ahhhhhhhhhhh....

undertermined number of guys plus casey

The XC team keeps on growing, and shrinking, and growing, and shrinking... I mean, it was five guys plus me today, but yesterday it was like seven guys and me.  According to Coach, there should be more coming soon, but they haven't shown up yet.  We've got some people who show up every time though.

I may be going to a private school, but they're still some preeeeeetty shady characters roaming some of the streets while we run.  Coach could keep us on the little around-the-ditch loop he usually puts us through, but we can't do that every day.  So we run the streets, dodging the shadier peoples.  I'd be more nervous if I didn't always have one of the XC team guys right behind me, but I always do.  So I'm safe.  And I mean, we're cross country runners!  We run miles and miles!  We are stronger than anyone on those streets!  Or we are as a team, anyway.  I mean, if the guys keep tabs on my asthma, they're going to keep tabs on my safety, too. 

That's just another reason why they're so awesome.

Less than a week 'till school starts.   

XC again

No, school isn't starting for another week, so for now all you're going to hear about is cross country. 

First, that our coach is awesome.  He still lets me run with the team even though my asthma makes me slow to a walk frequently.  I mean, how many coaches let kids like that on their team??  It's totally awesome.   

Second, our practice uniforms are pretty awesome as well, see as above?  Yes, that is me.  Pretty good representation of what I look like.  I have the 'girl-ified' version of the uniform, which basically means that I have the smallest size of boy's uniform available, plus a pair of non-uniform soccer shorts (! they look like track shorts) in the correct team colors.  The ribbons in my hair are of my invention, of course, as as there's no ban on accessories yet...

I mean, why would there be an ACCESSORY ban on a BOY'S team??? 

Well, now they've got me to recon with.  I don't think anyone minds, though. 

Third, the team is awesome.  I mean, nobody's mean to me, the worst is a few weird looks, which are totally normal because I. Am. A. Girl.  I mean, as my mom said, all the nice guys do XC.  I guess I shoulda known, because my brother Neddy Nate does XC with me, and he's like a super-nice brother, but it's still nice to know.  They're the type that'll encourage you when you feel like your asthma is taking over.  They're just... nice.  And it makes me soooooo happy. 

Also, on school-ish terms (okay, I lied, I do have something to say about school), I've finished all my AP English Lang prework, and that feels soooo good to have it completed on time.

Nice happy post, yes? 

Six guys? Make that seven

The cross-country team is growing, even though it's just second day of practice.  We've now got seven guys... and me.  Anyway, as Nate mentioned yesterday, we had laptop training afterwards, which was.... interesting. 

Key points were:

Sweat Segregation: none of the normal, non-cross-country kids wanted to stand anywhere near us when we came in from practice.  So if we wanted to talk to them, we'd yell across the hall to them. 

Nate's malfunctioning locker: all of the new-transfers cross country runners crowded around and tried to help and/or gave advice, but it STILL WOULDN'T OPEN.  Of course, being that we're stupid, Nate and I stored our water in there.  Finally when we had to leave after laptop training, I got fed up, ditched the boys, and went and opened it by myself.  Girlpower. 

Those laptops sounds.  Okay, so windows seven makes LOTS of noise.  After certain commands they'd make anything from a loud click to a whole piece of music.  All of us from my old, dead, school (RIP star) sat in the  back and laughed and laughed.  What??  It was funny... well WE thought it was.

Old classmates.  When people who you've known in previous years show up?  AWKWARD!  I mean, people who went to your school in eighth grade, for crying out loud. 

At least the XC team seems to be accepting the random girl who shows up at their practices.

Guest Post - Nate

 Hey everyone---Casey here before we go into his post.  So this is my totally awesome younger brother posting on what HE thought of it all.  You might want to read-or-skim my post first, because it gives a wide overview of who he and I are.

............

Greetings.

So, I’ll be a guest blogger here. I’m Nate (actually Nathanael, named after Jesus’ disciple), the one who likes the robots. If you go to my school, (or at least what will be my school) you might know who I am. At least if you’re in the Freshman class. Unless if there’s another Nate in that class. Who happens to like robots as well. (Last year, I did meet another Nathan/Nate who liked robots…but he was a Sophomore. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.)

A quick bit about me. I’m fourteen years old at the time, this is the first time in my life going to school, I like robots (and build ‘em with Lego), and I have two Mewtwos and a killer Giratina (I hooked a Lego robot up to my DS to cheat, I admit it.) [casey note: the mewtwo and giratina are like, pokemon things.  He's nuts about lego NXT and pokemon.]

Finally. Here we go. So, today I went to the first cross-country practice around here. Five other guys, me, and my sister. Pretty small, but it’ll get bigger. So after a small meeting, I followed all the other guys to this trail around a huge drainage ditch. After finding (or not really paying attention to (I’m sorry…I know I stink) forgetting people’s names…) we all went running around this one mile loop up one side of the ditch, over a bridge (best part!) back on the other side, and over the traffic bridge (not as good). It really wasn’t too bad. Then we rested and did some faster runs. And that was it. Well, if I was wanting a huge, horribly hard run, I was wrong. And we will have an easier day tomorrow too! I had fun. And as weird as this may sound to all of you out there, I’m looking forward to cross-country again and laptop training tomorrow. I know, weird kid. But what other kid writes (or at least the recent parts are a figment of my imagination) a book about Dialga, Palkia and Giratina as friends? Really?

Thanks, see you.

...........

Casey again.  Yes, the bridge was TOTALLY AWESOME.

Neddy Nate will be posting whenever HE has something to contribute to the story.  I don't know how often, but often enough. 

And Nate, thanks for posting about the laptop training!  We have these awesome laptop PCs we use for school, but the problem is that we have no idea how to use them.  We're learning how to tomorrow after XC.  Eurg, walking into laptop training all sweaty and GROSS.  That's going to earn us lots of brownie points...

hi people... casey here

If you're here, it's most likely you linked her from my other blog, or you were spending time when you should have been doing homework browsing the internet randomly (not the greatest idea, btw) or I actually gave you the address, which is pretty easy to remember, compared to my other blog, which I assume you've seen by now, I mean, I posted a link.

So if you go to my school, you're probably wondering, "why does the girl need two blogs?  She's only sixteen and has enough trouble getting her AP homework done!" 

Well, that's the writing/life/books/random blog, and this is the school/social/CROSS COUNTRY blog.

So quick overview of who I am, if it's still making no sense to you: (trust me, this will totally help)

That's me.  My hair isn't usually full of melting curls, and I usually don't look THAT much like I have sunstroke or something.  As for the hair in general, it's a lightish red-brown inside, and in natural sunlight it's a straight red:

And yes, my eyes are really that green.  More actually, because my contacts are slightly blue and sort of cancel out some of the green, but I'm digressing. 

If you read the other blog, you probably know I'm an introvert from homeschooling all my life until now, and that means I'm pretty quiet when you see me in person.  If I won't talk to you, that does NOT mean I don't like you.  On the contrary, I probably DO want to be your friend, but I'm just too shy to say anything.  And when you see the really weird look on my face, that's because I'm scared, because I'm just not used to talking to anyone my age. 

I know I don't look like the type that would be introverted: five-foot-nine, with bright hair and always running, running, running.  Or, at least, trying to run, because I have asthma and as we all learned in sophomore biology, if you can't get enough air to your lungs, you can't get enough air to your blood so there's not enough oxygen in your muscles and then they're tired and then PLUNK casey is on the ground the end. 

No, that hasn't actually happened, but there was one particularly embarrassing incident in February when my asthma got so bad my freshman-aged brother Neddy Nate had to wait for me while I sat down and caught up with my stupid asthma for like, two and a half minutes.  To this day I have to slow down and walk for a couple minutes every once in a while to make sure I don't have an asthma attack. 

So here's Neddy Nate and I: 

(Shut up about my hair, I already know it looks horrible, it's because we were on vacation out in the sticks and all that)

He's actually going to the same school as me, but while I'll be a junior, he'll be a freshman.  A freshman, and he's almost 5'10" and 140 pounds.  I always feel little when I'm around him, since I'm almost an inch shorter and weigh so much less. 

But we're both pretty much mutants.  School is a new experience for him too, so he'll be guest-blogging here on a semi-frequent basis.  I'm not going to say much more about him, since he can introduce himself. 

I have two other little siblings as well:Wes and Roo, who are younger and probably not going to be mentioned as much because quite frankly they aren't in highschool.  But still, here they are:

These are accurate pictures.  Wes loves loves loves loves loves video games, and of course he's riding in the back of my car, playing them, with pretzels to the side (he loves those too).  And Roo's just sitting there looking all adorable for the camera because that's what SHE'S like.
  

Back onto the blog part:

You're wondering about the title.  Stop arguing with me, you KNOW you're wondering about the title.  And NO, I swear I'm not dating six guys.  My cross-country team has six guys on it... then there's me.  There's no other girls, just me and the guys.  So it really is six guys plus casey.  It really is the essence of the thing---first practice was this morning, and the guys all lumber in, joking around, and then I flit in, all ponytail and pink waterbottle and little blue shorts.  I am the extra, the commodity.  The girl.

And I love it.  Why should I not?  There is NO WAY I'm shirking off my sport just because I'm a girl on an all-guys team. 

...

School hasn't started yet, so I MIGHT post fairly frequently until the wednesday after next, wheninthen I'll post maybe every Friday night and whenever else something crazy happens. 

I mean, homeschooled girl entering school, of course there's plenty of opportunities for crazy! 

As for cast, just bear along with me.  I'll give descriptions, and I'll post pictures of manga versions of roughly what everyone looks like.  Or maybe I'll compare them to a Harry Potter character.  (SEVERUS SNAPE! ...why are you looking at me weird?)  Maybe even pictures.  For now, I'll just say it'll mostly be me, Nate, the guys, and even the transfers.

Ah.  The transfers, you say?  Well that's another post for another time.

Stay tuned.  This is gonna be one series of epic.