Adventurers Are We

My friend Lauren and I are adventurers. For example, she wants to be a professional mermaid. And I parked a really big truck perfectly on my first try. See? Adventurers are we.

This summer, we're keeping track of all the awesome things we do as adventurers. (I say "this summer," as though it isn't still spring. It sure doesn't feel like spring, as "bed time" now means lying on top of my covers and listening to raccoons dig through the dumpster out my open window.)

Fun Things We Do, #1: Riding the Legacy Trail.

The whole trail is something like 10 miles one way, but we only rode half of it - which is still 10 miles there and back. We felt pretty good until we were done and sitting in the truck on our way back, and then we were pretty sleepy. BUT NOT TOO SLEEPY TO DRIVE! Because we are responsible with big trucks that aren't ours. (Did I mention how well I parked it, on my first try?)

If you're a Lexontonian, I highly recommend the Legacy Trail. I'm already planning when we can go again. Look how happy my Schwinn is in that picture up there. He had a hard time stopping to pose for a picture, he was so street-greedy. Gimmee, gimmee, gimmee, he said. In so many words.

Fun Things We Do, #2: Ultimate Frisbee.

We take fun very seriously.

And I love Ultimate Frisbee. It fills me with joy and delight and pleasure and other generally positive feelings. There is something deeply fulfilling about leaping into the air and snatching a flying disk out of the sky which otherwise would have sailed away on the currents of oblivion (or at least would've just fallen down on the grass). Today was Sunday #1 of many Sundays to come playing Ultimate Frisbee in Vineyard's front yard. Hopefully by the end of the summer we all won't be as winded as we were today. Happy first day of non-stop running and jumping and sweating profusely. (HOW DOES THAT NOT SOUND LIKE THE BEST ACTIVITY EVER!)

Jesus said, "Where 8 or more are gathered with a Frisbee, there I am in the midst of them." Roughly paraphrased.

I'm glad I have Lauren to go on adventures with me. Stay tuned for more adventures from we adventurers. :)

blame it on the buttercream

Everything was against me.

I didn't have any granulated sugar. (WHAT.)

Then I realized I forgot the bourbon at work. (I bet you don't hear a sentence like that every day.)

Then I was about to run out of gas, so I had to stop at Shell and I didn't even have any Kroger plus points on my card. (My life is terrible.)

Then I realized the recipe for the caramel frosting here needed 4 hours to 1 day to cool, and it was already 7:30 and that is just INSANE. So I had to find another recipe from another trusted source.

Then I burned my caramel and my smoke alarm went off and I gasped through the choking smog to open my windows, turn on my ceiling fans, and disconnect my deafening alarm. (What did we learn here? When the instructions say, "Keep a close eye on the caramel," they are not just being silly.)

Caramel: First batch, pre-"drowning in the swirling river of fog"

Then my feet got cold because it's 30 degrees outside and cold air sinks and my feet are the bottomest part of my body. Therefore: Toes turn to toe-sicles.

Then I realized that over the noise of my heater groaning because of the sudden rush of cold air and the fan on my oven that does nothing but blow hot air in my face, I couldn't hear "LOST," and now I think I've missed something important. Is Ben still the bad guy? I can't keep track.

Then, when frosting the cupcakes, I realized I wasn't going to have enough frosting for all 24 of them. (What did we learn here? When the recipe says, "Make a double batch of icing, because you won't have enough otherwise," they are not just being funny.) But I managed.

They're not this yellow in real life.

Then I started blogging and got tired and now I don't feel like cleaning up.

Scary, dark waters of burnt caramel. Who knows what's down there.

All in all: Chocolate bourbon cupcakes with caramel buttercream frosting = SUCCESS. Seriously so.

I want to see mountains again, Gandalf

After much deliberation, I have decided not to go to Denmark.

You have no idea how painful it is for me to type this.

You see, a couple of friends of mine are going to Denmark at the end of January. Saturday night, they invited me to go with them.

Did you know that a round-trip flight to Denmark only costs $750?

There's a big part of me that says, "Screw responsibility & practicality." If Gandalf were here, he would look at me beneath his bushy eyebrows and spit amongst his beard, "Fly, you fools!" It's not even a debate: You are tired, and weary, and you've been staring at pictures of mountains for the past week because you desperately want to have an adventure that does not include figuring out new ways to rearrange your closet and finding a hat you forgot you had.

Then the other part of me says, "You have rent to pay, and you need things like food and gas, and if you take a vacation now, you won't be able to take another vacation for 10 months."

That's the part of me that's kind of winning out a little bit. Today I even tried to console myself by saying to myself, "Heather, if you don't go to Denmark, you can buy something special for yourself. Like those cutting boards at Macy's that you like so much."

Yeah, that'll be cool. I won't go to Denmark, and instead I'll buy some cutting boards. Great suggestion, self. Then whenever I start to feel restless, I'll just take out my cutting boards and...cut some broccoli. Won't that feel better?

Someday I'll go somewhere out of the country.

Someday.

an essay

What I Did on Spring Break
by Heather K
March 15, 2011

On one spring break I went to New England with my best friend. Her name is Courtney, and she has brown hair, like mine, but hers is long, which mine isn't, but we're still friends. We went on a plane that left before the sun was even in the sky, and the night before we ate an entire package of Oreos because if we didn't they would've gone bad. But we didn't think about our stomachs going bad, which they did after we ate the whole package of Oreos.

When we were in Connecticut we did a lot of things like eat M&Ms and eat chocolate cake and eat chocolate cookies that came out wrong but still tasted good. When we were in Massachusetts we also did a lot of things like eat fudge and when we were in Rhode Island we did lots of things like eat Dunkin' Doughnuts. But there are a lot of other things in New England besides chocolate that we did.

Like for instance we spent a long time in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery where a lot of famous writers are buried and got a big surprise when they found out about God, because they were Transcendentalists. Woops! Courtney and I tried to find a bathroom, but evidently dead people don't pee, so we had to find one in one of the shops downtown (a bathroom, not a dead person). But before we left I got to see where my favorite author was buried, Louisa May Alcott, and I got to tell her how much she means to me, even though she probably couldn't hear me. But that was pretty special. And then we saw a tombstone where someone's name was "BLOOD" and that made us laugh.

We were supposed to go to Boston but we ended up spending all day in Concord and that was okay with me because I also got to see the place where the Revolutionary War started. It started because there was a gunshot, and the people in red thought the people with farm equipment fired it while the people with farm equipment thought the people in red fired it, so there was war. This is why you always tell the truth and don't try to cover up what you did wrong, because what if the guy who fired the shot did it on accident, but was too scared to admit it because he didn't want to get in trouble? I know that's happened to me and if it weren't for my brother my parents never would have found out about the stain in the basement where we spilled ink and I tried to cover it with a rug.

We also got to pretend to be people in the war, except I think maybe I was a viking at one point. I'm not sure if there were vikings in the Revolutionary War, but New England's by an ocean, so there might've been.

One of my favorite things that we did was go to the Yankee Candle Factory, because there was a lot of stuff to play with even though we probably weren't supposed to play with it, like a horn we pretended was from Gondor and some candles that were supposed to smell like your wedding day. We also stole some fudge but it was an accident. Well, not really, but we tried really really hard not to, so it was kind of an accident. I got peanut butter and I don't remember why kind Courtney got.

Some other fun things we did were go to Yale and accidentally join a tour group (this time it really was an accident), but we just pretended we were actually interested in going to Yale and nobody suspected we were impostors. This time I did not pretend like I was a viking. But on our way to Yale we played 20 questions and it was Courtney's dad's turn to pick something for us to guess, and when he did my first guess was "jaws of life" and it was right. I am really good at playing games.

One day I got to go with Courtney to her barn where her horse lives with some other very angry horses, and I got to put hay in the field for them but then I had to run very fast because they were running toward me very very fast. This was before Courtney got the whip out.

Also one day we played on the rocks in Rhode Island by the Vanderbilts' summer cottege which is one million times bigger than my house which I live in all of the seasons. We pretended like we were mermaids and sang "Part of Your World" while the waves came up around the rocks, because obviously we are like fish compared to people like the Vanderbilts.

As you can see, Courtney and I did a lot of things on spring break, and a lot more things that are not recounted here (just like Jesus in the Bible). Like when we watched Australia and I don't remember anything about it except there was a stampede of cows, and I only remember that because Courtney and I still laugh about it. Or when Courtney thought one of the stores was "Balloons and Bosoms" when really it was "Balloons and Blossoms." Or when a woman held up a porcelain bunny in an antique shop and asked Courtney if she'd pay that much for it, and Courtney said, "Maybe if it was a bigger bunny." Or the time we went ice skating and Courtney looked very graceful, and I was very graceful too, but Courtney was graceful on her feet while I was graceful more on my stomach.

And that is what I did on my spring break. The end.

Newport, Rhode Island, March 15, 2009

strange things are afoot at the Circle K

Don't you hate it when you're in a public bathroom and, as you're trying to open the door with your foot, someone walks in?

I sure do.

Today I was at my favorite exit on I-65. Exit 172. It's the last Chick-fil-A if you're coming from Kentucky, but I guess it's the first if you're coming from Wisconsin. Kind of a glass-half-empty/glass-half-full kind of outlook, isn't it? I like to stop at the Circle K, because it has the cheapest gas, though not the cleanest bathroom. Life is full of decisions such as these.

This bathroom has toilets that look like they haven't been replaced since 1980, and the toilet paper is definitely one-ply and probably We-R-Cheap brand. The faucet is no longer silver, but that spotted-texture that your faucet gets when you brush your teeth and the toothpaste sprinkles the mirror and sink. Only imagine that 300 people [a day] have brushed their teeth and flung toothpaste specks all over your bathroom [for the past 30 years]. And they were all using Arm & Hammer.

These spots were definitely not toothpaste residue, however, but probably tiny spores that would grow inside my lungs if I breathed them in. And then I would mutate. Into a gas station attendant.

Of course this bathroom would have a hand blow-dryer instead of paper towels, leaving me to figure out how to open the door after I've washed my hands. I am strictly opposed to the use-your-sleeve-as-your-hand technique, because, hello, my sleeve is still attached to my body. And what if I rest my sleeve against my cheek later on, after I've forgotten I used it to open a spore-covered door handle? I may as well rub my face all over the bathroom floor.

And of course trying to pull at one-ply toilet paper with wet hands is a form of torture they implement in Pacific prison camps.

"I can't...grab...the toilet paper...it keeps...disintegrating...IT'S ALL OVER MY FINGERS...."

So the only option left is to use your foot. Right? Can we all agree that that's a sane move to make?

I had just raised my leg in a ballerina-esque pose, attempting to artfully slip my toe through the handle and pull downward using all the grace and poise of a swan craning its neck to drink from a crystal-like lake. Then the door pushed open and this girl leaned back, startled, as if I had just tried to decapitate her with my calf.
She said, "Oh!"
I said, "Sorry!"
Then I laughed awkwardly and, with dripping hands, said, "Thanks!" and ran very quickly out the door.

Maybe she didn't notice my leg in the air?

At least I didn't have to touch the door handle.

we'll follow the Old Man wherever He wants to go

I cried a lot before, during, and after graduation. There are several pictures of me during the ceremony that my brother took across the aisle, where I'm looking despondent and sad. He thought my forlorn expression was funny. I don't remember anything the commencement speaker said, not because he was boring (which he was), but because I was graduating, and I didn't want to be, and no speaker however entertaining would have captivated my attention.

On my way to the playground at camp this summer, a woman from behind me asked if I went to Asbury. The draw-string bag with "ASBURY COLLEGE" written on the back must've given it away. I told her I had just graduated, and she said she graduated in 1991.

"Did you love it?" She asked.

"I did. I was sad to leave."

She looked very serious and somewhat absent as she said, "Yeah, the year after I graduated I was just sort of lost."

I smiled empathetically. "Yeah, I'm afraid nothing will ever be as good as college."

She looked even more absent as she said, "Hmm," and nothing more.

I was not encouraged.

I realized as I sat on my bed (which is on the floor and much closer to the spiders, I realized yesterday (and so did the spider)) that I am lost. People have been asking me, "What are you doing back in Wilmore?" And I truthfully answer them, "I don't know." I don't know what I'm doing or where I'm going. I have no goals or ambitions or ideas. I thought about that woman's words at camp and I realized I, too, in the year after graduation, am lost.

At first this realization scared me. As if I was taking a stroll with my head down, watching my feet step one in front of the other, and when I looked up nothing was familiar, and I realized I'd lost my way. And maybe night was falling, and it was getting colder, and the wind made my voice disappear as soon as I opened my mouth. Lost.

Then I started thinking of other times I've gotten lost. The time Courtney and I were in Massachusetts and took a wrong street that ended up leading us to an antique book store where I found an 1868-edition of a Louisa May Alcott novel that matched two others I owned. Or the time five of us traveled on foot in suburban Boston in search of our car, and shared a ride with a sweet old lady and an Arab named Milton on their way home from church. Or when Courtney and I had no idea where the road through the center of Concord led and ended up parking across the street from Old North Bridge, where the Revolutionary War began, and I stood on the very ground I had read about in history class.

The things you most remember about trips are the things you hadn't planned on, the things that went "wrong," the things that forced you to be innovative and creative, and made you realize it's much more fun when things aren't what you expected.

I don't know where I'm going. But I intend to enjoy it as much as I can, because one promising thing about the times I've been lost: I either always arrive home again, or someplace new becomes home to me. Either way, I come home.

“Courtney and I are most at home when we have no idea where we’re going.” – journal entry, 3/21/2009

I, 65, take you, Heather....

I cried as I said goodbye to my family yesterday. At first it was because I was leaving home and people I love. But then I started thinking about all the soldiers who have left their families and homes and I started crying even harder. Outer Me: "Bye, Mom." Inner Me: "All those men in World War II lost their lives!"

I've been watching a lot of WWII documentaries and movies recently.

On my drive, I hit traffic just on the other side of Chicago. Then I saw a sign - you know, the kind that look like giant Lite-Brites - that said,

CRASH
I-65 CLOSED
USE ALTERNATE ROUTE

I thought maybe it was overreacting, so I continued to I-65. There were a bunch of people driving the same direction, so I conveniently forgot the warning sign and based my actions on what everyone else was doing (a wise way to live life).

Then I saw another Lite-Brite, and when I looked in my rear view mirror, there were absolutely no cars behind me. I felt like I was in a sci-fi movie and either zombies were coming to get me, or I was a zombie, or the rapture had happened. So I decided to do what I always do in time of crisis: I called my mother. She looked up an alternate route (and told me the rapture had not occurred), and I got off somewhere in Indiana. I reached for the GPS my father had named Betty and had given to me because he got a better one, and programmed in my route. Betty kept trying to get me back on I-65, and I kept telling her No, moron, I'm trying to avoid I-65!

Mom told me to take 2 to 231 and rejoin I-65 in 40 miles. Seems simple enough, doesn't it? It did until my dyslexic mind somehow translated 231 to 321, and I traveled a couple of miles in some direction hoping to see a sign. I looked over at the GPS and the little blue triangle that was supposed to be my car just spun in circles while flashing, **OFF ROAD**. I just shook my head and sighed, "Oh, Betty."

Luckily I had just created a playlist before leaving home entitled, "It's Okay That It's 2011," because I was sad to put away all my Christmas music. Doris Day and Frank Sinatra could make getting lost in Mordor a desired experience.

Doris: It's a lovely day today, so if you're going to be destroying a Ring, I'd be so happy to be doing it with you....

At one point as I sat at a red light and opened up a Reese's peanut butter cup, a mac truck turned onto my road and nearly clobbered my car. I actually had the thought, "At least I would have died eating a Reese's peanut butter cup." I would've wanted that as my epitaph.

And at a Flying J somewhere on 231, I discovered my mom had snuck a gift card to Panera into my wallet. Oh boy! I will always remember you, Flying J in Indiana, for that special moment. For the cleanliness of your bathrooms, however, not so much.

When I finally took the ramp to get back on the interstate, I wimpered, "65, I've missed you so much!" I rejoined just in time to drive through the stretch I like to call Whither the Windmill, and they waved goodbye to me as if they knew I was leaving for good.

My car (whom I named Dule, after Dule Hill, from Psych, of course), does not have cruise control. After it had gotten dark and I was only a couple hours from my destination, I passed a cop sitting on the side of the road and glanced at my speed to see I was going 15 over the speed limit. I assure you, this was completely accidental, and must have just developed, because I was very careful to maintain a proper speed the entire way. I resigned myself to getting pulled over, and imagined how the conversation would go:

Policeman Paul ('cause once when my mom thought someone was breaking into our house at 2 a.m., she called the cops and one of the officers that came had a nameplate that said P. Thomas, and he was very attractive, so I decided as I sat in my pajamas while he looked through our house that his name was Paul, and if I had to get pulled over, I would want it to be by him): Do you know how fast you were going, Ma'am?
Me: Yes, sir.
Policeman Paul: Could I see your license and registration, please?
At this point I would start crying, because

a.) the car wasn't registered in my name yet, since I had just bought it and didn't have the chance to change it,
b.) I don't even know where the registration is!
c.) my leg was aching after driving for 8 hours, and I'm scared of getting a blood clot,
d.) I've just left home for the first time, and
e.) so many men died in WWII.

Then Policeman Paul would let me off with a warning, since I'd never gotten a ticket before, and because he took pity on my poor little emotional self. He'd probably leave me by patting the roof of my car and saying, "Get yourself some help." Then I would drive off sniffling and vowing to buy war bonds.

I checked my rear view mirror for at least 15 minutes to make sure the cop wasn't tailing me to pounce just when I thought I was safe. But he didn't, and I escaped without a ticket. Dule breathed a sigh of relief.

Note to self: When alone in a new place feeling homesick and scared about the future, it is not a good idea to watch a war movie. I don't think war has ever been a suggested cure for anxiety.

predicaments of people persons

Sometimes when I'm driving by myself, I make friends with other drivers to lessen my loneliness. I pick a car to caravan with and pretend that it shares in mutual companionship. Sometimes I name it.

Today I passed a purple semi and it tooted a few abrupt honks at me. This is not the first time I have been honked at by a semi. It happens at least once a road trip. I can never understand why. Is my tire flat? Is my gas lid indecent? Is there a tuxedoed man clinging to the roof of my car? I assume that must be it, because only truck drivers from their perched altitude could have such a clear view of the top of my car, right? It certainly cannot be that they're honking at me flirtatiously, because today as I sat in my Camry listening to Michael Buble in my plaid pajamas and with my stuffed bear sitting on my lap, I'm pretty sure I did not give off the "hey, I'm flirty" vibe.

I realized about 45 minutes later, however, that that purple semi was still in my rearview mirror. I had faithfully employed cruise control the entire time, so my speed never left 75, but the purple semi, whom I decided to name Grape, was fluctuating in speed. He came up beside me and passed in front of me. I didn't mind, since I was lonely and Michael Buble ONLY sings about being in love. (I think "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You" is a horrible concept.)

However, Grape's speed remained inconsistent, and I eventually pulled out to pass him again. Again, he honked. Okay. What's the deal? Is there toilet paper sticking out of my tailpipe? He couldn't possibly see into my car from his height, and think that I'm an attractive lass. Maybe he's lonely, too, I thought, and recognizes that we're in a caravan! I've never had another car actually acknowledge our automotive symbiosis. This was so special.

I had just drunk 3/4 of a tall Starbucks's Thanksgiving blend, and my bladder was ripe. But if I got off to pee, I wouldn't be driving with Grape anymore. Mom called, and I asked her if semi trucks ever honked randomly at her. She said no, that she had never been honked at by a semi. I still thought innocently that Grape was just honking in communion, when he drove up on my left to pass me. I looked over and he waved at me in an odd way, wiggling his fingers as if he was telling me to fall behind. I pretended it was a friendly wave and hung up with my mom.

I am incredibly ignorant and this is all very embarrassing. I am going to die at a very, very young age, unless I stop believing that everyone sees life as innocent frolics through meadows of daffodils, like I do.

Well, the lanes widened into 3, and Grape pulled up with a lane in between us, so that when I looked over at him, he said something (I can't read lips, bucko), and motioned backwards with his thumb. I, in confusion, and to myself, said, "What?" Then a truck sidled up in between us, and I pretended that I tragically got swept away in traffic, separating us after over an hour of driving together. Really I stepped on the gas and maneuvered through cars in an attempt to get very, very far away. Then my brother called, who had apparently been told by my mother that I'd made a friend with a trucker.

"Actually, he tried to talk to me, so I drove away," I explained. I could still see him in my rearview mirror, several cars behind me.
"Yeah. Have you ever seen Joy Ride?" Brandon said. "The trucker tracks him down--"
"But his truck is purple." Nothing associated with purple could be threatening! Barnie, Asbury University, eggplant....
"--and he rips off his jaw."
The tips of my eyebrows had met in the center of my forehead. "Now I'm scared."
"Yeah."
"He seemed friendly!"
"They all do."

Fear had heightened my need to pee, but I was terrified of getting off at an exit with Grape still in sight. I seriously thought about whether I could drive the remaining 2 1/2 hours home in a wet seat, if I just peed where I sat. I would rather have to buy an entirely new car because it smelled like urinated Thanksgiving blend than to die.

I kept driving, and eventually I lost sight of Grape. He was long gone, as far as I could tell, and I got off at a stop to use the bathroom, scanning lines of semi trucks to make sure Grape wasn't one of them. I drove home thinking a few things. 1.) What kind of desperate person tries to hook up with a random person on the highway, from two different vehicles? (It gives a whole new meaning to speed dating. ha, I just came up with that.) 2.) What kind of naive person thinks that when a trucker honks at her, he's simply delighted to have a driving buddy? 3.) There is a time and a place for friendliness, imagination, and child-like faith in the human race. It is not while driving alone through Chicago next to a semi truck driven by a strange man.

adventures in nannying

I saw this as my friend's Facebook status today:

"An adventure is only an inconvenience, rightly considered. And an inconvenience is only an adventure, wrongly considered." -G.K. Chesterton

I would say that yesterday was an inconvenience that I rightly considered, but then I realized it was more than an adventure. It was a harrowing escapade.

The day started as any other. William got up from his nap, giggled when I used cold wet-wipes on his bum, and cheerily waved his hands in the air as I put him in his high-chair to eat some sliced strawberries. Then the doorbell rang. The doorbell has never rung, and as I walked toward the door, the first thing I saw through the window was a badge. For some reason I automatically racked my brain for anything that I could be in trouble for. The only thing I could think of was that I was parked on the grass. Am I getting a citation for parking on the grass? But it's our grass!

It was the sheriff, and I propped the door open with my foot as he asked if I'd heard any strange noises last night. Reason number one for watching too many detective shows: My thoughts weren't gasping at what crime might've taken place last night, but instead were occupied with why this "sheriff" didn't seem to have better people skills, and whether he was really the criminal in disguise trying to decifer if there'd been any witnesses to his crime.


I told him I was just babysitting, and he'd have to come back later to ask the real residents.
"What is their last name?" He whipped open his pad of paper and tucked his badge away.
I told him, hoping I wasn't spelling out their death.
Then Rajah, their bengal cat (which is half domesticated cat and half leopard, in case you didn't know), bolted out the door between my legs.
"Rajah!" I called in distress, as if he would stop running at the sound of his name and return sulkingly, muttering under his breath, "Nobody ever lets me do want I want to do...."


So, in turn, I bolted out after him. I whisked past the sheriff on the front steps, running through the neighbor's grass in my socks, in 50-degree weather.


"Don't chase him, he'll come back!" The sheriff called after me. My thoughts weren't rationalizing, "Maybe he's' right," but instead, "I hope he doesn't steal William, and I hope William isn't choking on strawberries."


I didn't know what to do! Rajah just kept running farther and farther away, and the pine needles in the grass poked my thinly-covered feet. So I came back to the house, and apologized to the sheriff for running away. He apologized for making me let the cat out, and we ended on good terms. As he turned to leave, I asked after him, "Is there anything we should be concerned about?"


"No, no," he said, because policemen usually have a habit of wanting you to feel safe, even when you aren't. "It was a car parked outside...the street...it had nothing to do with the house." I nodded, as if I understood what he was trying to say. Again with the people skills. What was a car parked outside? Which street? This house? In other words, he could've smiled politely, tipped an invisible cowboy hat, and said, "You needn't worry your pretty little head, ma'am. I'm not going to tell you anything."


When I got back inside, William's hand was halfway in his mouth and his bib splattered with strawberry juice. He looked at me as if to say, "Whatcha been doin'?" So I put my shoes on and ran out the back door. I found Rajah a couple yards away, his head stuck in a pile of brush. I grabbed him from behind and tucked him under my arm.


Then he growled at me, and hissed angrily, and turned around and attacked my forearm with his teeth. I think saying "ow" is probably the stupidest habit the human race has passed on through the years, because what does "ow" even signify? Nonetheless, I shouted, "OW!" and tried to keep his undomesticated teeth from piercing my flesh any more.


"Rajah is an evil cat," I told William, walking in the house. William looked unconcerned. I opened the basement door and threw Rajah down the steps. "You think about what you've done!" I told him. I surveyed the scratches on my arm, two of which were drawing blood. If I get cat-scratch fever and die, I want this blog entry read at my funeral.


After the strawberries, William and I went to the park. On the way there, I made him repeat after me. "I will not eat sand," I said. William gurgled. I considered it good enough.


But William did eat sand, and reason number 2 for having watched too many detective shows: The jeep parked on the street by the park gave me the heeby-jeebies, and I imagined some guy finding out the police had talked to me about last night and was now waiting to pounce. I walked past the jeep on the way back to the house, and a lone man sat inside with a bluetooth in his ear. I imagined he probably said something like, "She's leaving the park now. I'm in pursuit." Do criminals use cop-terms? I only ever hear these things from the detective standpoint, so I don't know. But the entire walk home I kept glancing over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following me.


Today nothing was remiss, and my cat wounds show no signs of gangrene. And William and I even dressed alike. Does this mean we spend too much time together? Or that 23-year-olds shouldn't wear overalls?

do not tell me what I can and cannot do when I rock

Three days ago I sat at a traffic light in Lexington, blasting Lifehouse's "Everything" from my speakers, because a.) I love that song, and b.) my windows were down and I wanted to drown out the city sounds. Suddenly out of my peripheral ear I heard a guy's voice, and I looked up to see said guy leaning out of his truck window next to me. I thought it might be a repeat of the time I met my future husband, but it wasn't. This guy was shouting at me, "You have a flat tire."
"I have a flat tire?" I questioned, as if some strange man would lean out his window and shout at me, "Hey, that lady three cars down has a flat tire."
He answered affirmatively, and I thanked him without a good attitude, then drove over to a neighborhood street and called my dad.

Since the tire obviously wasn't completely flat (seeing as how I didn't even notice it was lacking air), Dad told me to take it to a gas station and fill it with air, then drive to a Wal-Mart or some other mechanical place and ask them to fix it. So I pulled up to a Shell gas station and saw a big sign that said, "Air, 75 cents." George Harrison was not kidding when he wrote "Taxman." It's air. It's all around us. We breathe it every day; sometimes more than once. I should've just placed my mouth over the nozzle on the tire and exhaled really hard. (You can tell I know very little about cars, and it's about to get a great deal more obvious.)

As I lifted the gun (because it had a trigger), I saw a sign warning, "Injury may occur. If overfilled, tire may explode." I stared at the sign with the weapon in my hand, my eyes wide, watching a slideshow in my mind of the possible ways I could be decapitated or permanently blinded by my exploding tire.

Did you know they make gauges to determine how much air needs to be in a tire? I didn't.

I kept one hand in front of my face, as if that would protect me from the rubbery shrapnel, and squeezed air into the tire, occasionally stepping back to measure its rotundness against the other healthy tires. "Eyeballing" is a very accurate method that will soon make it into all the indexes of university science textbooks.

Wal-Mart's tire service was closed, but the greasy people there told me to try Chevron.
"I don't know where that is," I replied.
"Across from KFC."
"We have a KFC?"

On my way down the street Dad called, and I told him I filled the tire with air and was on my way to Chevron.
"Did you use the gauge to see how much air you put in?" Dad asked.
Suddenly I remembered that long proby thing with numbers up and down it that I used to use in the car when I was bored and pretending to be a doctor. But I very slowly answered, "No." He could've told me that that was for checking air BEFORE I checked the air.

I found the Chevron (and the KFC), whose sign was almost unreadable behind the grime. I pulled up to the garage and stepped out of my car as a tattooed man with a cigarette hanging out of the side of his mouth and a gut that made his pants sag walked up to me. I should learn to at least pretend like I know what I'm doing in situations like this, but instead I said something like, "I don't know what I'm doing." I probably mentioned that my dad told me to come here, too, and anytime a girl mentions that her dad told her to do something, the potential to be hit on or treated like a child increases by a baker's dozen.

Cigarette Man (shortened to Cig) felt my tire, measured the tire pressure with a gauge (glad somebody told him), and said, "You got a leak, baby girl." Baby girl? Yeah, I definitely shouldn't have mentioned my dad. He took off my tire, chatting amiably in an equally grimy southern accent (I found out he hates Wisconsin and that he was in "the service," though which service I'm not really sure). Then he sprayed soapy water on the tire to find out where the leak was, and I was fascinated by the spewing bubbles coming from the hole. Finally he stuffed a large metal probe into the hole to make it bigger (seems counter-productive, doesn't it?), before twisting a long soggy cloth that looked like a pre-chewed Slim Jim around some plyers and shoving it into the hole. Problem solved.

Cig put my tire back on and told me, "I'll give this to you for ten instead of fifteen," he said.
"Oh, okay," I said, taken off'guard. "Thanks!" Yeah, definitely a good idea to mention my dad.

But when I went to pay for the tire, the lady at the front desk heard what I'd gotten done and said, "Ten dollars, sweetie." Really. Ten instead of fifteen, huh, Cig? I'm sure.

starting out small

Recently I've been making a few trips on my bike to the post office (literally a few backyards away from my house). The man there is probably the sweetest man I've ever met. He deserves a blog post all his own, and maybe one day I'll write one about him. He also deserves some baked goods. Something with zucchini, maybe?

One day when I rode my bike to the post office, I decided to explore. I rode down a road surrounded by cornfields and farms (which describes most of Wisconsin and is directionally useless). But straight ahead of me the road went up, I'm pretty sure at a 90-degree angle. At least, it looked mountainous to me. So I turned around and came back.

But today I drove to the post office, in my pajamas and Asbury U sweatshirt (because it's Saturday, it's cold outside, and my packages were too big to fit on my bike), and decided to see what was beyond this mountain. I drove past a couple of kids in knitted hats playing football in their front yard (swelling my heart with unquenchable joy) and pushed the gas peddle down to keep my speedometer's needle from slowly falling, which it did anyway. And when I reached the top, I decided I was going to conquer that hill. On my bike.

I've already checked a few things off my bucket list, which I only add to when I realize there's something I want to do and have the ability to do it. I try to keep it to things I deem possible. And I only started it this summer, so I've actually only added and crossed off two things so far:

1.) Ride a tandem bike
2.) Stand outside Asbury's "awkward relational goodbyes" card door with a boy

And now,

3.) Ride my bike up Mocking Mountain

As I drove on, I planned my training regimen to conquer this mountain before winter. You may think that's plenty of time, but the sky is already turning wintry, and the wind is cold even when the sun is warm. The clouds are great, white, massive fellows with bulbous dark underbellies. And as I topped another hill in my car, I saw the street name, "Pleasant View," and then turned my eyes on one of the pleasantest views I've ever seen.

Hills of grass and corn, sunlit and shadowed by those autumnal clouds, and in the distance, windmills. Dozens of them. It was absolutely beautiful, and I felt inspired to write a poem or read a poem or at least watch Anne of Green Gables. My capacity for beauty is too small for the abundance of creation that God has to offer, and I feel the need to spill it over onto something so my seams don't break. Consider yourself spilled upon.

Training regimen begins TODAY. I'm coming for you, Mocking Mountain.

last night's sunset from the end of my street

"Would you like an adventure now,

 or would you like to have your tea first?" - Peter Pan

August always seems to take forever to end. It's probably because I'm always waiting for something in August. I'm never sad to see it go. This August was no exception.

With one difference: This time I was ending something without beginning something else. I've been fighting "being okay" with this for many months now. Hence all the posts on adventure, by trying to sooth my desire for stability and assurance with prospects of adventure. I realized my desire had not been assuaged* when I watched the series finale of Gilmore Girls today and cried. For one, Gilmore Girls has been over for over three years. Secondly, I didn't even cry the first time I watched the series finale. I can't help that I'm emotional, but even more so** I can't help that I hate goodbyes and endings. Who knows how many arks I could float with my tears the next time I watch The Return of the King. And, like Wendy, John, and Michael, I'm tempted to have my tea first. The truth is, I'm quaking in my boots at the same time I'm praying for adventure.

The woman whose 9-month-old little boy I watch gave me a zucchini today. I can't wait to hack it up and bake it in something. Muffins? Brownies? Bread? The possibilities are endless and my fingers are twitching with glee.

"Peter had seen many tragedies, but he had forgotten them all. He was less sorry than Wendy for Tiger Lily: it was two against one that angered him, and he meant to save her. An easy way would have been to wait until the pirates had gone, but he was never one to choose the easy way."

* Assuaged, along with ardent and sanguine, are some of my favorite words.
** WHY isn't "more so" one word but "nevertheless" is?

what's in an adventure? pt. 2

Yesterday one of my friends asked me, "What adventures are you engaged in these days?" At the time I had answered that I was in the middle of two fantasy football drafts (Peyton Manning's my QB for both of them - Double Stuf Oreos, anyone?), which is pretty darn adventurous. But if he was asking if I was in the middle of standing atop a mountain in Utah or crashing a jet ski on Lake Erie or spending a homeless day in Atlanta, I wasn't. And I'm not. I think my adventures these days are going to look a lot different than they have for my life in the past.

Adventurous challenge #1: Change.

Then I went down to the potter's house, and there he was, making something on the wheel. But the vessel that he was making of clay was spoiled in the hand of the potter; so he remade it into another vessel, as it pleased the potter to make. Then the word of the LORD came to me saying, "Can I not, O house of Israel, deal with you as this potter does?" declares the LORD. "Behold, like the clay in the potter's hand, so are you in My hand, O house of Israel."- Jeremiah 18:3-6

I've only been home for a week, but God is already shining His light into the dark places of my life and character. This is humbling and difficult. Hebrews 12:2 tells us to "fix our eyes on Jesus," and in one of my Bibles I have written next to that verse, "Every morning, wake up and pray, 'Lord, make me more like Jesus. Have mercy on me, because I'm not like Jesus.'" I think I wrote that in one of my theology classes with Dr. Anderson, or maybe at a Vineyard church service. I realize, though, that there is a lot in me that needs to change. And change is an adventure, whether it's happening to you or in you.

And so the first thing I want to challenge you with is to practice. A few months ago I was praying for a relationship to be restored, when it occurred to me that no amount of restoration with an earthly relationship was going to make me feel fulfilled if my Heavenly relationship was off-kilter. The same occurred to me this morning when I read 1 Peter 1:14, which says, "As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance." This came at an interesting moment, since just last night before I fell asleep, another friend of mine asked what was challenging about being home, and I replied, "It's humbling to be obedient to my parents again." But I realized that, as I pray for the Lord to lead me and change me, I can practice obedience to Him with my parents. I can practice selflessness to Him and laying down my pride before Him with those I am least likely to feel selfless and most likely to feel prideful around. How can I be expected to love Jesus if I don't even love those who live in the same rooms as I do? Practice your relationship with Jesus in your relationships with others.

Not easy. But adventures are not easy, right? Not all pony rides in May sunshine. But they're worth it, aren't they?

somebody loves me, I wonder who?

I woke up at 6 this morning, and now that it's 7:30 I'm thinking about taking a nap. Mom put lavender-colored sheets on my bed, and for some reason they are more appealing to sleep in than those of a different color. Pretty soon it'll be time to put on my flannel sheets with little penguins on them, drinking hot chocolate and going ice fishing, and for this I cannot wait. My teddy bear, Gilbert, also cannot wait. This year marks our eighth anniversary of sharing a bed. Dad took him out of the car upon my arrival home on Monday and said, "He's getting flat." Yes, well, he's lived an adventurous life. Adventures tend to flatten us out over time.

Speaking of adventures, the other day Courtney and I were driving down Broadway, coming out of Lexington on our way back from church. We had our windows down and my arm was casually strewn out the passenger-side window, riding the wind like a seal with wings. I turned my head just in time to see a middle-aged man with a gotee lift his own hand in a friendly wave as his car passed ours. I waved back and said, "Hello." Then I turned to Courtney and asked, "Why did that man just wave at us?"
"I don't know," Courtney answered.
"Do you think it's because I have my hand out the window, and he has his hand out the window?"
"Yeah, it was probably like a mutual 'we both have our hands out the window' type wave."

You know, like when motorcyclists wave as they pass each other, because somehow just because you're both on motorcycles, you have a bond. From now on I'm going to wave at people I walk past, because, Hey! I have legs, and you have legs, and we're both walking on them! What are the odds.

Sometimes Courtney and I are willingly naive.

Well, I picked up Courtney's cell phone to change the background to say something that she'd remember me by, and as I did so, I heard a male voice shout, "859-2415!" I looked up to see Mid-Life Crisis Guy's car beside ours. It was a security vehicle. He was shouting his number out his window. I laughed somewhat shocked, nervous, and delighted all at the same time. He called it out again, and this time I called back, "Are you rich?" He veered right for the turning lane as he called back, "I could be!"

Well. See? All those people who tell you that you don't have to find your mate in college were right. They could be driving down the street in a security vehicle right now, just waiting to desperately shout their phone number into your car. I'm keeping my windows down at all times from now on.

k...now what?

After driving 9 hours on 2 hours of sleep with an entire summer of non-stop child-caring-adventure behind me, I'm back in Wisconsin. When I pulled into the driveway, Mom came out to tell me there was spaghetti on the stove, Dad came out to tell me my room was the one on the left at the end of the hall, and then they went back inside and I carried all my stuff in while my brother watched football and said hello to me every time I walked passed the room. Welcome home.

Classes started today, and for the first time in four years, I wasn't sitting in a white classroom looking at pastel sheets of paper with the next 4 months of my life printed on them. Graduating is an odd thing. I didn’t ask to graduate. I didn’t really particularly want to graduate. It’s as if you’re sitting down to dinner one day, and some strange person walks into your kitchen and takes the plate of delicious food away from you, and then says, “Congratulations!” And then he walks away, and you’re left sitting there staring at the blank table in front of you, thinking, “Oh. Well…thank you?”

Sometimes I feel kind of numb, sort of frozen, like those dreams that you wake up from and have to figure out whether they were real or not. And when you realize you aren’t really pregnant or your teeth haven’t really fallen out, you feel such a sense of relief and thankfulness that you’re willing to devote your life to playing with children or something else humane in sheer gratefulness for being alive with teeth. Sometimes I think I’m going to wake up and realize it was all a dream, and I still have two years left, and I will be flooded with that relief and thankfulness. But I’ve woken up in the morning several dozen times since May 8^th, and I have yet to discover it was a dream. And so I try to figure out how to leave something I never really wanted to end, and live a completely different life, when I really loved the one I had.

I don’t really know how to do that.

I know college is just a chapter, and if the entirety of The Hobbit was one long chapter of Bilbo making tea in Bag End, not only would that be boring and a waste of paper, but then the volumes of adventure to follow never would have been written. The hard part is turning that last page of The Two Towers before the chapter titled, "The Breaking of the Fellowship." I don't know how to face it. And frankly, I feel very much like that giant stone man in The Never Ending Story, who stares down at his empty hands after the huge wind storm carries away the kids he was holding and says, "They slipped right through my fingers." And I don't know how to move on from here.

what's in an adventure?

A trip by any other name might sound as sweet....but won't be.

I was thinking about adventures this morning as I sat with God at my college roommates' kitchen table. (I can say things like this now, because we have graduated from college, and they're no longer my roommates. Don't I sound adult?) I had just eaten a peanut butter granola bar for breakfast (thanks, former college roomies) and was waiting for God to say something. He sat there, verbally silent, but looking at me with that look on His face like, "You already know what I'm going to say, so I'm just going to raise one eyebrow at you and wait until you sigh resignedly and write it in your journal." You can tell God and I have this "conversation" a lot.

I've been on a few adventures. Enough, anyway, that I've begun to realize what classifies an experience as an adventure. Is it the circumstances? The destination? The people?

I think the only thing that determines what is an adventure and what isn't, is the attitude of the adventurer. Some qualities of an adventurous attitude:

willingness
flexibility
determination
whatever characteristic ducks have when water rolls of their backs
laid-backedness
joy
optimism
chocolate covered raisins

An experience without those things is just something to trudge through, withstand, or tolerate. Experiences with those things are pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. You come out of adventures with nuggets - and scars - that you'll take with you for the rest of your life, changing you and shaping you.

I can't say, like Johnny Cash, that I've been everywhere, man. But where I go doesn't determine my adventure. My cousin Christine, married and with two kids, told me yesterday that she envied my situation. I can go wherever and do whatever, for however long, with whomever. It makes me want to pack all my stuff and move to Wyoming or Maine or Canada, since they have free health care.

But this is where God's knowing expression comes in. And I sigh and write in my journal, because I realize why I'm depressed as I think about the un-stability of my life instead of being excited about its adventure. I answer people's questions with, "I have no idea what I'm doing with my life." And therein lies the splinter in my finger, the gaping gorge I'm balancing precariously on the side of and ready to plunge into at the slightest tremor:

It isn't my life.

I realized that for the past 6 months I've been trying to find a vocation that I'd enjoy but would still be serving God. I'm good at that, AND God's involved! I can go there, AND be with my friends AND serve God! But I have it backwards. If my hands are too full of my life, I can't hold onto His robe. If my ears are too full of my own plans, I can't hear His voice calling to me. I need to surrender my plans, my desires, my will, and then the REAL adventure can begin.

He called Andrew to leave his nets.

He called Peter to walk on water.

Talk about adventure!

Bilbo said it best when he said in The Hobbit that adventures are not all pony-rides in May sunshine. And, as my 12-year-old camper from Africa sang in the sweetest voice I've ever heard, it's not going to be easy to leave. But I feel like Moses in Exodus 33, when he tells the Lord, "If your Presence does not go with us, do not send us from here." I'm banking on the Lord's answer here being His same promise to me:

"My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."