The Devious Duo in their natural habitat.

I am getting complaints for not blogging in over a month, but I don't have anything really specific to talk about, so I will now tell a story that is unrelated to this present day.

The day: February 13th, 2010.
The place: Richland Bible Church.
The mission: Motivate high schoolers to donate winter clothing to the homeless.

As part of the service project team, my solution to the mission was, "Tell them whatever grade brings in the most stuff gets to do whatever they want to Michael's hair." Michael was the youth pastor at the time - I live with him and his family now, funny story - and he consented to the idea under a few reasonable conditions. The whole thing got more complex when we added a point system to the articles of clothing - coats were worth the most. The grade that accumulated the most points won the prize of controlling the fate of the pastor's precious locks, and we would later take all the clothes collected and hand them out to the homeless downtown.

Here's the thing: I really like to win. Here's the other thing: when my obscene level of determination is combined with my best friend's equal level of determination, not a force in the universe can stop us from reaching our goal. The lengths we go to may be slightly questionable at times, but always worth it. And Reina and I decided from day one that this competition would be ours for the taking.

And so, we waited until the day before the end of the battle - a Saturday - and traveled to The Salvation Army. Fortunately, Reina's mother is quite supportive of our antics, and allowed us $50 to spend. Obviously since coats were worth the most points, we imagined buying the whole store out of them, because clearly $50 is the equivalent to $5000. Much to our dismay, The Salvation Army coats were priced at 6-8 bucks at least. That would allow us maybe eight coats, which would not put us in the lead.

Discouragement began to set in. We stood in front of the coat racks, staring hopelessly as if our gaze would reduce the prices.
And it did.
That, or Jesus was exceptionally on our side that day.
A voice came over the loud speaker: "Just to remind everyone, at 5:00 we will be having our 49 cent sale, where everything with a yellow tag is only 49 cents."
Reina and I turned and stared at each other for a moment before embracing each other and jumping around in circles shouting, "YAYAYAYAYAYAYAY!"
Then we looked at the clock.
It was barely noon.
But no matter. We would wait.

In preparation, we loaded up two shopping carts with every single coat that possessed a yellow tag. In total, we collected 83 coats. Yes, 83.

 

We then found a nifty room towards the back where all the recreational type equipment was on display. No one went back there except some old people who were walker-shopping. It was the perfect place to hide and protect our winnings.

However, we knew we were going to get hungry in the five hours that we had to kill. Reina ran to her house to collect nourishment while I stayed at The Salvation Army on guard.

Reina returned with the only nutrients one needs to survive: poptarts and a 2-liter of coke.

There was a little table in the corner - probably placed there specifically for us. It was behind it that we parked our coats, sort of like they were an exhibit and if anyone wanted to get in to see them they needed to check in at our front desk. Of course we would turn everyone away, because those were our coats. At least at 5:00 they would be.

 Something else Reina and I are really good at is taking a potentially outrageously boring situation and entertaining ourselves to the point of being able to blog about such a joyous experience.

You might see this picture and see a room containing some beaten-up exercise equipment, a hefty supply of crutches and walkers, and an unnecessary amount of skis. But Reina and I saw a playground.

We spent the afternoon racing on crutches (I liked to use them to make myself feel like a transformer as well - keep them down and they were robotic legs; hold them up and they were wings; point them forward and they were guns), playing on the treadmills in a manner much like five year olds, feasting on our gourmet poptarts and hydrating ourselves from the 2-liter, memorizing the Salvation Army Mission Statement which was hanging on the wall, sword-fighting with ski poles, annnd knocking the skis over (which was an accident and admittedly all me).

 Half-way through picking them back up... Seriously, I touched one and they all went down like dominoes. And crashing thunder from Zeus himself.

That's the hole in the wall where we were fed our weekly gruel (that was when the room turned into a prison for a little bit).

Eventually, 5:00 came around, and with it one of the more uncomfortable store check-outs I have experienced. It took about a half-hour, and I felt the need to declare every 53 seconds or so that we were giving these coats to charity, not hoarding them for ourselves.

The trunk was packed as well.

I will never forget the triumphant feeling we experienced when we marched into small groups the next day, enormous garbage bags in hand - and then announcing that we needed help bringing in the other twenty or so. It took a solid 15 minutes for the group to unload our car. 

And our reward:

"Sad teenager wearing pajamas" for best Halloween costume of the year!

So, when I first set out to write that last post, it all sounded funnier in my head beforehand. I meant to incorporate more jokes and things, but by the time I actually got around to the parts that I had meant to be funny, my mood had decreased so much that it was just impossible to make it produce the amount of humor I so highly hoped it would. I promise it was not intended to be a cry for pity, but if that is what it became, I sorry.

I thought I would come back and let you know that the last part of my day wasn't as horrid as the first.

See, the Fernihoughs all went to a big Halloween party that I had planned to attend as well, but that whole confining myself to my bedroom thing I talked about at the end of the last post got in the way of those plans. I have a really horrible habit of not being able to hide it when I am in an awful mood, so I figured it would just be best to stay away from everyone I know. Well, about an hour after they left, I realized that it was Halloween and I was sitting in my bedroom all alone sulking and I was pretty much drowning in self-pity and patheticism. Because of this, I thought it would be a good idea to leave the house... and go drown in self-pity and patheticism elsewhere.

What I really wanted to do was go see Puss in Boots by myself, but I figured with my intensely impulsive personality that is infinitely maximized when I am upset, it would not be a good idea to put myself anywhere close to a candy counter where I could easily spend all the money that I don't technically have on sour patch and peanut m&ms.

So, off to the mall I went. I wore pajama pants because hey, it was Halloween, and for all anyone knew my costume was "sad teenager wearing pajamas."

I walked around for a while in a daze, picturing my life as a montage. I imagined everyone zooming by me while I was moving in slow motion staring into the distance as Boulevard of Broken Dreams played loudly.

And then I entered Pet City. A sign out front read "Puppies $50 off on Halloween!"
$50 sounds like a lot of money, but when you are selling puppies for $900, it isn't such an exciting bargain.

I have a very love/hate relationship with pet stores. On the one hand, they are my favorite kind of stores because I love love love animals. On the other, they make me want to cry because... I love love love animals... and they are all caged and sad. :(

One little puppy stuck out to me. Here he is:

And he was in a tank with this little guy:

If your heart didn't just melt, there is something wrong with you.

I asked the worker lady if she could open the tank and she obliged. I then proceeded to spend the next 45 minutes with my hand inside the tank, petting and playing with the puppies.
I love puppies.
I can honestly say I considered every possible angle at finding a way to take little black puppy home with me. I thought maybe I could drop a ton of money on him and just bring him home for the night to be my friend and comfort me, and then return him tomorrow. But then I knew I would get attached and cry even more if I had to return him. I also knew I didn't have a ton of money to drop even if it was for just one night. Personally, I feel like puppies should be 100 bucks maximum. The pet store, on the other hand, feels differently. They seem to think that $850 is juuust right. It's a good thing I had left my satchel in the car, or I might be in prison on account of puppy theft. That, or I would be home with my brand new, free puppy and a clean getaway on my record... but seeing how I haven't had the most supreme luck with the law this week, that is unlikely.

Anyway, the pet store people eventually told me I had to stop because they were closing.

I walked around some more to more pretend montages. Then I walked into Hot Topic because they always have fun candy and snacks. I bought this:

I wasn't really sure what they would be like, but they had pandas and chocolate on the cover so I figured it would be a good choice. I also bought some other thing that was the same brand but a weirder name.

Then I decided to go to my other favorite store/where I will live if I ever become a hobo.
TA-DA:

I'm not even sure what the name of this store is. I just call it "The Truman Show store" because it makes me feel like I am in the fake little world of The Truman Show. The pictures can't really capture it in all of its glory. It is much more sprawling and laid out like a real little neighborhood - you can go inside the little houses and everything! I have also never seen an actual employee there, so I like to go  and play on things and pretend I am the Dictator of fake-neighborhood-world.

After that I went and got an Orange Julius (I justified these small impulse purchases with telling myself that I was still spending less than I would have if I had gone to see Puss in Boots).

Then I came home and talked to Reina on the phone and we told each other about our bad days (which I suspect was our twin telepathy subconsciously making us feel empathy for the other person all day in addition to our own problems, which surely magnified our emotions). We came up with scenarios of how I should have thrown my car into reverse and ran over the cop since even my very compact Jetta is much bigger and more powerful than his wimpy little motorcycle.
The thing about me and Reina is that we can twist any horrific situation into something that will make us laugh so much that we feel like we are removed from the reality of it and it is all just a funny joke that doesn't spawn any actual repercussions. Probably not the best tactic for dealing with long-term issues, but it made me feel better tonight.

After getting off the phone, I still had one more hour until I needed to be home and so I went for a drive. I ended up in the King Soopers parking lot having a nice chat with God over a double cheese burger from McDonalds (a purchase that I justified because I used all nickels from my piggy bank to buy it, which was money that I had forgotten I even possessed and therefore money that never really existed anyway).

The end.

Warning: contains emotions.

This morning I woke up and just knew that it was one of those "Emotionally vomit all over your English professor" kind of days.
False.
But I wish I had because then I would have known to not leave the house.

First of all, it is going to take me giving you some slightly boring back story in order to get to what I actually want to blog about. But just bear with me.
Secondly, let me be clear that once I finally get to the main part of this, you can definitely laugh at it. In fact, I want you to. If you laugh, then maybe I will laugh, and this will all become hilarious instead of miserable.

Alright, I mentioned briefly at the end of my last post that I rear-ended a student driver car. I am now going to explain that in more detail, as it is much more relevant today.

So, there I was, driving along on my way to work last Tuesday behind this big truck. You see, I couldn't see anything beyond this truck, so I was pretty much just trusting his break lights to tell me when I should slow down. But the truck was accelerating, so there was absolutely nothing about this situation that led me to believe I should be stopping anytime soon. Well, I soon came to find out that the reason this truck was accelerating was because he was planning on merging into the turning lane where he had a vast expanse of space to drive along inside of until he reached the distant traffic light. Of course, as soon as the truck merged and got out of my line of sight, I saw that there was a long line of stopped cars about twenty feet ahead of me. I slammed on my breaks but since I had been going 45mph and it had just started to rain, there was no hope of not hitting the student driver car ahead.

And so, all the very excited 14-year-old girls hopped out of the car ("We got in an accident at driver's ed! How thrilling!"), the cop showed up, and I was handed a $185 4-point reckless driving ticket.

I have had two speeding tickets in my life (four points total on my record) that I received in Richland, Michigan last year. Due to those my insurance is a hundred dollars a month and for someone who is already in loads of debt from Community College (pathetic) and has zero financial support from their parents, that was stressful enough on its own. I was also trying to figure out how to pay the guy from church back who fixed my car two weeks ago.
So, let's summarize the tab I have going at this point in the story: I owe $260 to Matt, $100 to insurance that will be taken out of my account tomorrow, and I got a 4-point ticket that will make my insurance skyrocket and also requires me to pay $185.
I have $168.75 total to my name right now.
Needless to say, car accident did not put me in the greatest mood in the world.

Now that we are more up to speed, I can tell you about today.

First, I will give you some insight to my academic life right now. I am failing 2/3 of my classes.... at community college. Pretty impressive, I know. A large reason for this is due to the fact that I am on an entirely wrong ADD medication. Basically, when I am on it I feel invincible and came pretty much take on anything... the downside is, it does not let me sleep. Like, DOES NOT. We aren't talking like, I have a hard time sleeping. No. I take it in the day, and the next night I will literally be wide awake until the following morning without dozing off for even a second. This leaves me feeling very zombie-like and as if I never want to take it ever, ever again. The downside to not taking it, though, is that I am incapable of accomplishing anything. Literally, anything. Even the normal day-to-day activities such as conversing via sentences that have any structure or sense involved whatsoever is an enormous challenge. It is also one of those drugs you take as you need, which means your body isn't ever really sure what's going on because it's never consistent and it just does super crazy things to your mood.

The only class I'm not failing is -- surprise -- English. It is pretty much the only school subject that has ever come remotely natural to me. However, due to the above information, even something that has generally been easy for me has become a difficulty. Luckily, I have an awesome teacher. I've been emailing her about my problematic drug situation and she has given me a lot of slack and let me turn in a lot of late assignments.

See, we were supposed to have been working on this essay for the last three weeks or so, and were supposed to have had our rough draft done last week. Obviously I hadn't even started yet. The essay was due today, and so was our topic for our next essay. Well, since I spent the last few nights playing catch up for the first essay, I pretty much just focused on getting that done and forgot to even think of any topic ideas for the next one. She told us last week that if we were going to print our papers in class, to show up early because we were having someone from the library come in to speak about something or other website that we are supposed to do something or other with.

So, feeling pretty good that I had finally managed to write this stupid essay AND get out of the house ten minutes early so that I could print it in class, I left the house feeling like this week might turn out better than the last.

I could not have been more wrong.

So, there I was, cruising along Woodmen road on my way to school with about a dozen other cars all going the same speed as me.
You know when you're driving with everyone else and you feel like there's no reason to pay attention to your speed because you just have this sense of security and trust in all the other cars that whatever speed they are traveling at must be the correct one? No, I am not a follower. I would not jump off a cliff if "all the other kids were doing it." However, if all the other kids were driving other cars at 60+ miles per hour, then yes, I am going to do it too.

And then it happened.
The flashing blue and red lights.

Usually I have a great cop-dar. I am super awesome at knowing when a cop will be around the next corner and making sure I adjust my speed accordingly. However, I guess my cop-dar only picks up on the cops that are real and actually drive CARS.
Yes, I got pulled over by a little man on a little police bike.
Me.
There were like 13 other cars around me.
I was in the MIDDLE of the pack.
Like seriously, he must have seen us all and picked out which person's week he wanted to ruin most and literally would have had to weave in and out of all the OTHER law-breaking cars just to get behind me.
It must have been my bandana.

Hello, second $185 4-point ticket that I have received in under one week.
Seriously?

So, at this point I am not really sure how it would be possible for me to afford insurance to keep driving even on the off chance that my license doesn't get revoked. I was/am planning to go to court for the accident one just to try to get the points taken off, and pretty much the only way I would still be able to drive hinged on the slim chance that that worked out in my favor. Well, chances of getting a judge to take off 4 points are pretty miniscule, but 8? I should probably start looking for a bike now. Oh wait... a bike costs money, too. Rats.


I have constructed an emotional meter in regards to the way I cope with negative situations and/or feelings. It depicts both the bar in which I store these things and how I respond to them the higher the pressure within it becomes. On the left is the severity level of the situation/feeling, and inside the bar shows what I am sure to do when each level is reached.

Last week, my meter had been filled to "Really, really bad." At approximately 11:07am today, I hit the "Unimaginably awful" level. Seriously, I did not stop laughing in misery the entire car ride to school.

Needless to say, I was not early for English class. I printed my paper in the library and went to class late. Since the librarian lady was speaking the whole class, our teacher was going around quietly to each person individually to ask them what topic they picked for their next essay.

From the time I sat down in class until the time it took my teacher to get to me, I was slowly transitioning from "Unimaginably awful" to the dreaded "Boiling point."

First of all, let me be clear that said "boiling point" is very, very rare. I only reach it every few months, and when I do, there is never really any telling what might happen. Typically I will either cry or lash out at someone, or both. Really it all depends on if I can just slow boil and find some other way to calm back down before the lid gets blown off the entire meter or not.

Today was not a "slow boil" kind of day.

Ms. Ray knelt down next to my chair and asked what my topic for my next essay would be.
"Um... I haven't really thought of one...."
To which she responded with an intimidating stare and, "Bri, you need to get things together."
That's it.
That's all she said.
Not even a big deal, right?

But even I was not prepared for what happened next.

Obviously, by "things" she meant "homework for my class."
But today, in my head, "things" meant "YOUR CRAZY OUT OF CONTROL LIFE AND IMPOSSIBLE-TO-SOLVE PROBLEMS."
I felt it coming.
"Don't do this...." I told myself.
It was going to happen...
"No no, stop this, stop this right now!" I internally yelled at myself.
But I couldn't stop it.

You know when your eyes start to fill with tears and you know if you blink they will come cascading down your face dramatically, so instead of blinking you just try to open your eyes wider and wider to try to make room for the tears to spread out and hopefully soak back into your eye sockets before you need to blink? As soon as "things together" came out of Ms. Ray's mouth, that is exactly what began to happen.
I knew I had to say something.
"I know," I mustered.
But you know what the only thing more challenging than trying to hold back ten thousand tears is? Trying to hold back ten thousand tears and talk at the same time.
"Don'tblinkdon'tblinkdon'tblink" I kept telling myself. I probably looked a little bit insane sitting there, not making eye contact but looking straight ahead with eyes the size of golf balls.
I think she could tell what was about to happen, because she immediately got up, went over to the light switch and announced to the librarian that she was going to shut off some lights so we could see the slides better. I like to think she was also trying to give me some cover from all the classmates who were potentially about to witness one of the bigger meltdowns of my life.

She came right back to me, which happened to be right at the moment that my eyes could not take it anymore. As much as I wanted to think I could will myself to go the rest of my life without blinking if I had to, it simply could not be done.

"School is important, but there is never a reason to shed tears over it," my teacher said.
"It's not even just school!" I blurted.
"Well what is it? Pressure? Stress?"
"EVERYTHING!" I swear, at that moment I could feel the snap of the hinges on the thick sheet of metal that serves as the roof of my emotional meter. The boiling point had been reached. More like, it had boiled all it could and now just wanted to erupt. And erupt it sure did.

Here's what came out, in the format in which I heard it: "IgotanotherspeedingticketonmywayhereandIjustgotinanaccidentlastweekandIdon'tevenknowhowI'mgoingtobeabletohavealicenseandthenhowamIsupposedtogettoworkorschoolandIhavenomoneyandmyfamilyisawreckandIfailatEVERYTHINGandIcan'tgetcontrolofmyemotionsbecauseIthinkIamgoingclinicallyinsaneandalsobecauseofmystupidADDmedicationthatmakesmechoosebetweenfocusorsleepand...."
I'm not even sure where or how I ended.
It was a mess.
I was a mess.
And I was in public.
Dumping it on my English professor.
"Are you living with your family?" she asked.
"Not my biological one... I live with my pastor's family........"

If there is one thing I have realized over the last couple months, it's that there is almost nothing you can say that will make someone who doesn't know you pity you more than telling them you live with your pastor's family.
Ms. Ray proceeded to give me a pep talk about how all these things are happening at once and how hard it must be to manage at my age, but how everything is a season and they will all pass... and how she would cut me slack on the homework and to just text her my topic by tomorrow.

I came straight home after that class and came right to my room where I have decided to confine myself for the rest of the night in order to protect the rest of humanity from just happening to be in the wrong place at the wrong time - aka being within a three mile radius of me when my boiling pot of emotions just happen to erupt without warning.

...happy halloween.

The case in which The Devious Duo journey to East Lansing.

First: my apologies to my little sister for taking so long to write this post.

So, I went back to Michigan a couple weeks ago. I arrived at my mom's house at 2am. I had previously given Reina the head's up to not be alarmed if someone crawled through her window in the night, but it's like she doesn't take me seriously or something. No, I didn't crawl through her window - it was way too high. But I did find her basement door unlocked and did turn on her bedroom light at 3:45am to say hello. It sure was a swell start to the week.

The main reason I went to Michigan was for a wedding. Which was outside and cooooooold but it's a good thing it's normal to find a quilt to be wrapped up in during weddings, because that's what happened:

It was also super duper great, because Lauren and Steve are great, and when you put two great things together, you get super duper great.

On Thursday night, Reina and I decided to take a mini road trip to MSU to visit our pal, Alexa. It was only an hour and a half car ride, so we thought it would be simple. Too bad nothing is ever simple for The Devious Duo.

First of all, it was raining. Hard. Really, really hard. And not to say Reina isn't the world's most cautious driver or anything, but... well, I said a few legitimate prayers.
Then we missed our exit to switch onto the different highway. So, we got off on the next exit and, rather than wasting all that time turning around, we decided to be much more efficient. We spotted some signs directing us to the interstate we had missed. Granted, they were marked "Emergency vehicle route" in bright orange, but a highway entrance is a highway entrance, right? Eh. Sort of.

By "emergency vehicle route" I really think they meant "zombie horror route." By this time the rain had let up a bit but instead there was thick fog everywhere. And when you're driving down country roads lined with woods and cornfields and scary barns late at night in the fog, all you can wonder is when you're going to get a mysterious flat tire and be axed. And this wasn't something we were wondering briefly. On the contrary, I think the "emergency vehicle route" is for vehicles that aren't really in an emergency, because I'm pretty sure by the time any vehicle finally got to the highway, whatever person they were rushing to get to would be long dead - even if they weren't necessarily dying when they called the ambulance in the first place. Nevertheless, we did eventually find the highway entrance before our teeth fell out or we were murdered, and were back on route to MSU.

An hour or so later, we arrived in East Lansing. You think it'd all be smooth sailing from here, right? Ha. We drove a couple miles down the busy city street before we realized we had passed our turn. So, we did a quick U-turn and began re-tracing our tire tracks in search of "Kalamazoo St." After doing so, we began to notice a few oddities. The first of which was a stop light we came to that did not have any lights on our side of it. Reina began to stop anyway but I said, "What are you doing, you don't have a red light. Hey, you don't have any lights...(you might think we would have picked up on the red flag right here...nope)..... cool! Go!" And so, she went. Without a second thought. I guess we just figured that having no traffic lights was the equivalent to an eternal green light. Not really sure. Although it really was a miracle that no other cars were crossing the intersection at the time.
We continued on down the street when we noticed that the traffic seemed to be parting for us like the red sea. At this point things still just seemed very convenient. "Look, they're all pulling over for us... go down the middle! Weeeee!" But then, cars began flashing their brights at us. Reina checked to see if her brights were on, but nope. They were just all on crack, apparently. These things continued for about a mile until we were confronted with a car straight ahead who had stopped, facing us, and was flashing their brights as well. And then suddenly it hit us. How was that car in our lane and facing us at the same time?
The world suddenly made more sense.
The traffic laws and fellow drivers were not, in fact, catering to our every desire for no reason. We had been driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Shoot.

We pulled into the nearest driveway, laughing hysterically, to turn around once again. Although now we had no idea how we were supposed to get back to Kalamazoo Street. Fortunately, the driveway we had pulled into was an Arby's. Unfortunately, it was still raining and it was 11:15pm in the inner city of East Lansing and there was a street gang standing armed outside the restaurant.
Well, they weren't armed, and chances are they weren't a street gang either, but they were scary and we didn't want to take any chances. And so, we got in line for the drive-thru. I can now check "wait in line for ten minutes to ask directions through a drive-thru window" off my list of things I never thought I'd do.

We followed Arby's-drive-thru-window-girl's direction and finally found Kalamazoo Street. We never really saw a sign for Michigan State, but once we stopped at a stop sign and heard the heart-pounding bass, I cleared the fog off my window and was met with the sight of several dozen drunk kids partying on the street corner about two feet from the car, and we knew we had arrived.

But still, our journey had not yet come to an end.
There was still the matter of finding Alexa's dorm building.
We followed googlemaps' directions right to the administration building parking lot, which is when I texted Alexa. She told us we were on the opposite side of campus as her dorm, and to just drive towards something-er-other street. Okay, sure. Except that we had no clue where we were in relation to something-er-other street. So, I tried to call her, and as soon as it appeared that she had answered, the line went dead. Perfect. The only thing to do now was to get out of the car and flag someone down to ask for directions again. By this point, the rain had severely picked back up, but that wasn't going to stop us. We got out of the car and stopped the Asian passerby. She told us she didn't know where this something-er-other street was, but there was a library in the Administration building right there in which we could look it up. Seemed like a good idea, but before we could cross the parking lot and enter the building, we needed to lock the car. Well, this proved to be a problem when Reina began to panic because she couldn't find her keys. It seemed like one of those things that would go something like, "Hey, where's my key- oh, haha, found it." Um, that's not what happened. Somewhere between the moment when Reina opened her car door and the moment when she stood up, her car keys had disappeared. Like, abducted into space kind of disappeared. We frantically searched under the car, on top of the car, around the car - nothing. That was when we pretty much started spinning in circles, laughing in exasperation and shouting "HOW DOES THIS HAPPEN?!?!?!?" very loudly. And then Reina found the keys dangling around her stick shift inside the car. Sigh.

Now that we could lock her car, we were free to dash up to the Administration building. Which was locked. Obviously, since it was 11:30pm. That's what we get for taking Asian passerby's advice without taking common sense into the account. So, we dashed back out and flagged down a car. More Asians. They didn't know where something-er-other street was located, either.

By this point, life was looking pretty bleak. We got back in Reina's car, soaked to the bone and at a loss for how we were ever going to find Alexa's dorm building, and now really having to pee... when my phone rang. On the other line came the voice of hope and promise! Aka, Alexa calling us from a friend's phone since hers had apparently died right as she tried to answer my call.

Then she told us how to get to her dorm, and the three of us had one of the top greatest sleepovers ever, and all was well. The end.

I got back to Colorado and failed two tests. Then it snowed. Then I rear-ended a student driver car. Mmm. Here's to hoping I'm a bigger fan of life next week.

Typical.

Well, last night I thought it would be really cool to jump in a moving vehicle like a secret agent. So, after fetching the ice cream money, Michael started driving the rodeo at approximately three miles per hour and I swung the door open and attempted to jump inside... aka, I jumped too high and smashed my head into the roof of the car and somehow possibly permanently injured my shoulder (whilst spilling the ice cream money in the street).

I'm only blogging about this because afterwards Michael said, "Hey, you have something to blog about now!" To which I replied, "Yeah, perfect, I can say 'I moved to Colorado and the most exciting thing that happened was hitting my head on the roof of a car while trying to jump inside like a secret agent.'"

Seemed like a pretty good idea.


As easily as that could be the end of this post, I just remembered I have one more funny story.

Two days ago, Mandy and I were grocery shopping at The Sunflower Market, where I immediately felt the need to juggle some lemons. So, there I was, juggling lemons, when one of them flew into a sea of olives and their juices. So then one of my lemons was covered in oil and nasty, but I didn't want to let that hinder me, so I kept on juggling. Though all I accomplished by that was getting my hand smothered in olive oil. Mandy felt it was necessary to share this fact with the awkward boy working our check-out line, to which he informed me of the nearby napkins. After getting myself some, I noticed that his hands got especially oily as well from touching the oily lemons, so I decided to be nice and fetch him some napkins, too. Clearly, this was a mistake. He made some comment about me being kind, to which I informed him that I am always kind, to which Mandy clarified "It's deceiving, don't let her fool you." The next words out of awkward-check-out-line-boy's mouth were some of the worst he could have possible conjured. Here they are: "Well, I kind of like your deceivingness, then.................... and just your cuteness."
Here is how my brain processed that statement: "Deceivingness is not a word... he should have said 'deceit.' Wait, what was...SDKNFDDSFDFSYBKUDGRKLJSALJKDRGJKNOOOOOOO!!!" My brain went into system lock-down. The compliment-processor inside my head is slow enough as it is, but with it being given right there, in the middle of The Sunflower Market, with Mandy (who for all this kid knew could have been my mother... do you say something like that in front of someone's mother? No. No you do not.), oily lemons, and coming from a greasy-haired, [probably] 17-year-old whose left nostril seemed almost non-existent, my compliment-processor chose to not only process slowly, but reject altogether. On the outside, here's what that looks/sounds like: complete panic.

I'm not quite sure how to describe the sound that emerged from my mouth via letters, but if you have spent much time around me (or just a little), chances are you have heard it a few times. It's my typical "freak-out" noise. To an untrained ear, it probably resembles that of a two year old being hacked to death with an axe (I am really not trying to evoke horrid mental images here, that is really the only way I can think to describe it).
So, I began making that noise whilst turning in circles and flapping my arms, sort of as if to say, "AM I CUTE NOOOOWWW?!?!?!?!??!?!?!"

Thanks to Mandy for translating my frenzied reaction into words with, "You're scaring her." After which I managed to scrape some words and say, "Yeah don't DOOO that!"

Then we grabbed our bags and left.

'Bout time.

I know it's been over a month since I've blogged, but I have a really good excuse... my laptop decided to be a quitter. Not only a quitter, but it was just the most stubborn thing when it came to trying to fix it. It just did not want to be fixed (props to Michael for showing it who's boss). And, obviously, since my laptop is the only form of computer to which I have access, I just could not blog.

I really hate when this whole "monstrous gap between blog posts" happens, though, because then I am just overwhelmed with all of the things I could write about. So overwhelmed that my mind goes into panic mode and just erases everything due to overload anxiety. There is just so much wedged back in there that it can't even conjure up any of it. But I suppose I will just start saying things and see where it goes.

Alright, well, first of all it has been exactly two months today (well, technically yesterday) since I moved in to my new Colorado home. Kinda ridiculous. On the one hand, it seems like forever ago that I pulled up with my mom and Reina, but on the other, everything still feels so new. Like, this whole responsibility thing for example.

I have constructed a chart to illustrate a few of the main differences between my level of responsibility in Michigan vs. my level of responsibility in Colorado.

This may seem like I am making Colorado out to be a killjoy, but that is not the case. The emphasis is more on how ridiculous my Michigan life was. However, as ridiculous as it was, I still became very accustom to that ridiculousness, so now that I am in the real world I sort of feel like a hamster being taken out of Wonderland and dropped in the middle of Tokyo where no one speaks its language and everyone is hustling around doing tons of things and it suddenly has the feeling that it should know how to do those things too, but instead of ever learning how to keep up with the pace of responsibility it learned how to make fire balls and climb really tall things.


As terrifying as these adjustments are to attempt to make, the rational side of my head knows that if I wasn't here, I would for sure end up looking like this guy:

Only hopefully without the mustache, and I wouldn't be a man. 

Still, even though I couldn't be happier to live in Colorado, I still have my moments of intense angst. Some nights I get an idea in my head, and I instantly become infinitely convinced that I will never be satisfied with the rest of my life unless I fulfill said angst-desire. Typically these ideas include finding a good roof to climb onto or an abandoned building to explore or a prank to pull or something as simple as just going for a drive until I run into an adventure. And these ideas always hit at night, and always after the time that I am allowed to be out of the house (midnight). The other night, I really wanted to climb a radio tower. Don't ask me why, I just really, really knew that if I didn't climb a radio tower, I could never be happy again. I ended up pacing in tiny circles in my room for over an hour instead. This is becoming problematic. 

Speaking of problems, now that I am hauling toddlers around, everyone thinks I am a teen mom. Shawn and I went to IHop for breakfast the other morning and I had to bring Lindley with me. You know how you always get those old ladies coming by and adoring small children... well, what do you say when the lady looks at you and goes, "Oh, she is beautiful." I mean, I can't say "thank you" because then it sounds like I'm admitting to being the mom. But I also don't want to make a scene with "SHE IS NOT MY CHILD! I WAS NOT PREGNANT AT 16!" Really, it is just one of those situations that calls for a total face-palm, and that is pretty much all you can do.

And another problem, this whole insomnia thing... it's 5:23am right now and I still haven't slept. Currently I feel as though I am invincible and never need sleep again anyway, but it is amazing how much that feeling differs when I have to wake up after getting about two hours of sleep. Seriously, it might be the worst feeling in the world, I always just want to cry when I have to wake up and know that I won't get another chance to sleep for at least fifteen hours. I then spend all day looking forward to the end of the day when I can go to bed again... only to be hit with a brick wall of frustration and disappointed when I finally do get to go to bed, and yet still can't fall asleep until the wee hours of the morning, if at all. Honestly, I am completely baffled as to how on earth my body still functions at times.

The end.

Asylum Antics

A couple months ago I had a post up for like a day, but I deleted it because it accidentally got one of my friends in trouble. But I feel like it's been long enough and I've shared this story in enough places now that no one is going to be totally shocked/think I'm super terrible (there's a good chance I could be wrong about that, so if that is actually still the case with you, I am sorry). After all, this blog is devoted to my shenanigans, so I don't know how I can leave out the asylum shenanigan for forever. Especially since even for that one day that the post existed, I never got to write about part two of the story. So, here we go.

 

There it is, Kalamazoo's own little version of Shutter Island. Which actually isn't all that much of an exaggeration. You can't tell from the pictures really, but the whole thing is on a hill, surrounded by a forest, the perimeter of which is surrounded by barbed wire and a lot of scary signs. The only difference is that it's surrounded by a poorly maintained and rarely occupied street and a small-town ghetto instead of raging waters. Also, there is a legitimate corpse incinerator in the basement's morgue. Anyway, those pictures are what it looks like in the day... but at night, it is a totally different place. As in, I'm pretty sure I spied the silhouettes of walking corpses wearing hospital gowns creeping around the grounds and bloody chainsaws strung up in the windows. And scary background music. 

Before I get to the actual story, here's some historical background for ya: 

In the 1950's it was opened as a Tuberculosis Sanitarium. Which was pretty successful, since they began curing everyone and sending them home. By 1966, there were only 69 patients. So, 108 long time care, elderly patients, who no longer needed to be treated for mental illness were transferred from the Kalamazoo Psychiatric Hospital to spend the rest of their years under the care of this facility. Tuberculosis care was shut down in 1969 and began serving completely as a mental hospital until 1990 when the number of patients was too low to keep it running. It could have been turned into something cool, had it not developed an enormous asbestos problem that no one wanted to pay to fix. The property belongs to Western Michigan University now, and I heard it was scheduled to be torn down in June, but I'm not so sure that actually happened.

My brother told me about the time he explored this place a couple years ago, and I've wondered where it was since then. But it wasn't until sometime in late May that one of my best friends, Shawn, actually showed me where it was. My "challenge accepted" alert went off in my brain the second I saw it. And so, we started planning. First, we had to find a way to get through the fence. Fortunately, a group of 8th graders on youtube found it for us. The video briefly shows a hole in a certain part of the fence, so we studied it enough to figure out where along the ten acres of fence it was exactly. It had been patched, but no work had been done that we couldn't undo. So, after turning the hole back into a hole and scoping around that afternoon, we got one of our other friends, Sam, to come back with us at night.

We drove back into the ghetto neighborhood where the asylum is located (it's in a super random part of town), and just as we began approaching the block where the building sat, we met our first predicament. The block directly next-door to the one on which the asylum sat, was lined with cop cars... they were sitting, lights flashing, in a way that led as to believe they were looking for someone. See, you would think that 15 cop cars might make one feel a bit uneasy about breaking into abandoned buildings right next to them, but my thinking was that they must be so distracted with hunting whoever it was that they wouldn't even notice us. Yeah, that's not exactly what happened.

We found the hole in the fence, but it was still a long shot up the hill through the woods, which was full of thorn bushes and death. Eventually we made it up there, though... now I could describe a bunch of details that happened here where Sam was stupid and got these kid's attention that were on the street, but this blog is already going to be way too long, so I will just skip to the highlights.

See, the building is cemented off on the first and second stories (it's like they think people are going to try and break in or something), so in order to get inside you have to find a way to reach the third level. At one point, Shawn and Sam waited by the edge of the woods while I ran around to see if there was any way onto a certain part of the roof in the front. Well, I got around to the front and immediately something caught the corner of my eye. From where I was, I could see what used to be the entrance from the road, so instead of woods there were a bunch of cracked slabs of cement where the parking lot had been. And just inside the fence by the entrance, two figures stood silhouetted against the flickering, yellow street light.

My heart stopped. I took a step back, and as soon as I moved, the figures - who, judging by their mag-lights and uniforms, I had now figured out were cops - began moving my direction.
I broke into a sprint and grabbed Shawn and Sam, explaining to them in a rushed whisper what I'd seen, and we all jumped into the woods. The problem was, we weren't entirely sure how to get back to the hole since we'd walked at such an angle away from it, and even if we were, there is no way we could have trekked through the thorns and weeds before the police heard and found us. Our only chance was to sit on the edge of the woods and be as silent as possible.

The cops searched for us for about a half hour. Towards the end, they neared so closely that I could hear them whispering amongst themselves and the beam of their flashlight shot right over my shoulder. In that moment, I was trying to decide who I was going to call with my one phone call. But, miraculously (literally), they somehow missed us and eventually drove away.

And thus concluded night one.

But I wasn't about to get that close and come out of it without seeing the inside of that building. It was no longer just a challenge. It was a need.

So, night two: This time my other best friend, Reina, came instead of Sam. And this time we decided to go at 5:00am on a Sunday morning, so that we would still have the cover of darkness to get through the fence, but it would be light enough once we figured out a way inside the building that we didn't need flashlights. Also, cops aren't so watchful early in the morning.
This time Shawn wanted to stay in the car, since he had forgotten to pay a speeding ticket and there was a bench warrant out for his arrest already so he didn't want to risk another close encounter with the law.

And so, Reina and I traipsed up through the ferocious jungle, fighting thorn bushes taller than ourselves and mosquitoes the size of velociraptors. We circled the asylum looking for a way up. We managed to find a way onto one of roofs (and almost died getting down), but no luck there. But no matter, we kept looking.
It was nearing 6:00 when I found our route. Someone had leaned part of a chain link fence against a wall that led to a wire-rope-thing that you could climb to reach a ledge on the second story. And on top of that surface sat a very old filing cabinet, on top of which balanced a very broken desk, above which was another wire-rope-thing that you could climb to reach the third story ledge, which was right beneath a window. If you followed that, you should be picturing something extremely precarious. Which is a mass understatement. Looking back, I am truly quite baffled as to how we didn't at least get paralyzed in the process. But, if I could sum up the theme of mine and Reina's relationship in one word, it would be, "Determination." When she and I decide to do something, no matter how outrageous, there very literally is not a question about it. We both just know that whatever it is, it is going to happen, and it is going to be great. This situation was no different.

By roughly 6:30am, just in time for sunrise, we had reached the third story. The room we entered into looked to be some sort of reception room. Broken glass covered the floor and graffiti plastered the walls. As there was light shining into this room, it wasn't so bad. It was the hallways beyond that very closely resembled a scene in any given horror movie which results in two girls being murdered. But there was no turning back at that point, so we gathered our courage and began inching down the dank hallway. The patient rooms each had a window, so as long as we were brave enough to travel in the hallway between patient rooms, we could regulate our breathing easily enough.

You know how sometimes you picture something in your head that SOUNDS like it would look creepy, but you know that in real life, that thing probably wouldn't be as creepy as your mind is imagining it? Well, this was not like that. If you are picturing what the inside of an abandoned insane asylum would like it, and it looks pretty stinkin' scary, then it is exactly how you are imagining it. There was glass and wreckage everywhere, the remains of disintegrating curtains flowed eerily in the windows, the wall-paper was shredded on every wall, and there were old shoes laying everywhere. The shoes might not be part of your initial imagination, but I promise they added to the creepy aspect.

 These were the only pictures that turned out light enough... I wish it would have been possible to capture the darker areas where it was more intense scenery.

Finally, Reina and I made it to the end of hallway one, managed to force ourselves up the dark flight of stairs, and made it all the way to the middle of the next hallway. That was when we were just starting to feel really good about ourselves and our bravery. Actually, I was seriously in the middle of saying, "This isn't so bad, we're-" when I was cut off by the sound of an army coming to kill us from the ceiling tiles. I'm not really sure how to describe the sound, other than it literally sounded like a person crawling extremely fast and aggressively in the ceiling. There was one missing ceiling tile right above our heads, and the sound was traveling towards that opening. At first it was brief and we just stopped in our tracks and looked at each other. Then it happened again, only this time louder and getting closer to the gap in the ceiling above us. At that, we darted over to the nearest window and just stared at the space where we'd just been standing. We were both just waiting to see two, scrawny legs drop down, or maybe the white hairs from the top of a head dangling through the gap, before a little, psychotic man in a hospital gown hopped down. He would look much like the old man that Jafar impersonated when he tricked Aladdin into giving him the lamp - long, scraggly beard, rotted teeth, knobby knees, hunched over like a monkey, fast like a freak...  "Finally, fresh meat!" he would screech in his deranged voice as he came charging at us, blood-stained knife extended.
As you can see, my mind had come up with all the details about how we were going to die right then. Like, truly, for a second there I was convinced it would happen. I mean, you know how sometimes you'll get kinda freaked out and be like, "Man, what if I died right now..." but logically you know that is unlikely? Well in that moment, logic was out the window and I was full out preparing myself for the inevitable death that WAS about to befall me.

Fortunately, that feeling wore off as I began to realize that rationally, there was probably not a manic, 90-year-old man living in the ceiling tiles of an abandoned asylum waiting to cannibalize unsuspecting teenagers. And after thinking about it, the sound of "clambering crazed cripple" could have also sounded like a stampede of bats. Still, we were a tad shaken up. That's when we called Shawn.

Shawn was still driving around being our "street eyes" to make sure there were no cops around. It took a bit of convincing to get him to risk a criminal record by joining us, but I decided to go the "This is so awesome, you are going to regret it sooo much if you miss out on it" route, rather than the "This is scarier than I'm willing to admit and would feel safer with a 6"4' guy with us." Eventually, he made the better decision and about a half hour later, all three of us were inside.

We made it up to the fifth story and even found a way to get on the roof. We really wanted to try and get all the way to the basement to see the morgue, and we made it pretty close, buuut then at the bottom of the stairwell (where it was completely pitch black and we only had Shawn's IPhone for a source of light) we found another missing ceiling tile, inside of which there was some bedding and some recently opened boxes of cereal, and a shelf that seemed to be serving as a ladder had been moved underneath it. Probably not a psycho ex-patient, but quite probably a hobo that, for all we knew, was standing just around the corner waiting to mug some stupid teens. At that, we decided we'd had our fill of the place, and high-tailed it back to level three.

Getting down might have been more difficult than getting up. It might not have been so bad, had it not been for one of us (yours truly) accidentally dropping one of the ropes over the edge while we were still two stories high. The combination of not sleeping all night, feeling a little tense after experiencing high levels of anxiety, and now the prospect that we might be stranded on the ledge of this asylum until we either died or were arrested, put us a liiitttle on edge with each other for a minute there. But I believe that the good Lord blessed me with similar abilities to a monkey for that moment right there, because if I hadn't been able to find a different way down and throw the rope back up to Shawn and Reina, I feel like it could have turned into "It's A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World: Asylum Edition" pretty easily there. Fortunately, we all made it to the ground and were still friends.

Then Reina and I went to breakfast and then straight to Church. The end.

This is Where We are Now, Where We had Always Wanted to be, Whether We Like it or Not

Listen to your soul speaking—doesn’t
its spark seem so weak? Much weaker than

(“Listen, listen,” they whisper; your muses
used to shout much louder. What happened
to the days spent in and under trees, ruling
castles forged in grass-stained sheets? What happened
to days filled with hunting dinosaurs when card-
board boxes could fill the role of anything?
These days, you seem to be running somewhat short
on time and time machines.)

before.
Listen to your heart beating—doesn’t
its sound seem so much slower
than before?

My brother writes the greatest poetry ever, and that one there is my personal favorite. It doesn't really have to do with anything, nor is it technically a shenanigan, I just like it.

Neverland bound.

To elaborate on that last post, I moved to Colorado.
I still get a bit thrown off saying that... I'm not sure if it's hit me yet. But I'll tell you what HAS hit me: responsibility is terrifying, and I am a huge baby.
It's not so much that I'm afraid of responsibility as it is that I'm afraid of being bored. Last week I went to Wal-Mart, and I took one look at those cashiers stuck behind those counters, and I actually teared up. I know, it's a great example of how pathetic I am... but seriously, how do people do that? How do they stand there day after day for hours on end... just doing that? If that's what normal life is, I don't want it. I want to be Peter Pan.

Always read the fine print.

You know, when I signed up for this whole "real life" thing, no one told me how expensive it was.

Anxieties of the responsibly incapable.

You know those dreams that are just really great? The ones where you're flying or you're a gajillionaire or the whole world is made of candy or you're a tyrannosaurus at the top of the food chain with all the power you could ever imagine? And then you wake up and feel the most potent kind of depression because your dream wasn't real, and at the same time feel completely idiotic for genuinely believing something so ridiculous could actually exist for that entire time you were in dreamland? Well, that's how I feel whenever I get in my mood where I legitimately start to think that I am capable of being a responsible young adult, and then I wake up and remember that I am Bri Herter.

If you read Armageddon of the Mind a couple months ago, and I sincerely hope you did (you should probably go read it right now if you didn't. By "probably" I mean "there really isn't a question about it"), then you might understand how my mind is a little chaotic.  In fact, if you go to Google Images and type in "chaos," it will give you a few pictures that resemble my mind. One of which being:

Replace those human soldiers with little demonic gremlins, as described in Armageddon of the Mind, which you have ALL read by now, and it is somewhat close. Anyway, the point is, my mind likes to make itself have way too much going on at once. But when it gets pushed to the edge and tries to take on more than it can physically handle, it malfunctions. As in, it shuts down. Actually, it goes into "toddler mode." The sensation of acute overwhelmsion (this is my blog, I'll make up words when I want) is so drastically traumatizing for it, that it temporarily erases all memories and abilities that ever existed beyond the age of three. Meaning, the only thing I know how to do to cope at a time like this is crawl up in the fetal position with a blanket and make very pitiful sounds.

The things in my mind that trigger "toddler mode" do not so much depend on quantity as they do the specific topic. For example, I can typically contain an ample amount of brain-teasers, social drama, and life-changing decisions without spiraling into it. However, anything pertaining to behaving like an actual adult is completely off limits, whether I had already been thinking about a lot or just a little. If someone were to tell me I had seven seconds to save the earth from an asteroid the size of Betelgeuse, I would probably handle it in a more mature fashion than if they told me I had to find a job, a functioning car, and go to college without flunking (that last one is killer). I truly wish I was exaggerating.

Like I said at the beginning, sometimes I do get in these silly moods where I actually start to believe I am capable of adult responsibility. I accomplish something like cleaning out my car, and I think, "Dang, that didn't take so long. Way to go, Bri." And then I finally manage to SELL my car, and I think, "Look at me go! Bring it on, life!" I grasp that $1250 cash and feel limitless. And then suddenly, the crushing defeat of real life hits me like a freight train. I realize that $1250 is the most money I've ever touched, but I can not survive on that for the rest of my life. Soon I will have to buy another car with that money, a car that I will probably not luck out as much with as I did with Beast. It will probably break down on some back road where I'll get mugged. I will probably lock my keys in it when I'm trapped in close proximity to a bomb and need a quick getaway. And even if neither of these scenarios come true, I will still have no money again. That means I will have to make some sort of income, which means application and rejection and even if I got hired, it still means crabby co-workers and probably early mornings and sore feet and unhappy customers. And even then, all that money will get sucked up by... by... by school. I have a hard time even typing, much less speaking, much less LIVING OUT this word. The sound of it makes my ear drums bleed and the thought of it happening to me makes me want to go sky diving without a parachute. Even thinking about it right now as I type this I am fighting the urge to start whimpering and making other puppy-like sounds that tend to emerge when this specific subject presents itself. 

The problem with me and school is, I have a deep, analytical mind AND am a ten year old trapped in an 18 year old's body at the same time. So, that deep mind convinces me that there are way more important things I should be doing than sitting in a classroom and doing homework. Like, going across the world to share the gospel, or maybe other not-as-major things that will still matter in eternity. On top of that, my childish self means I have the attention span of gnat. I mean, I can't even read a book that I WANT to read because I get so distracted with playing DuckTales2 on my gameboy for three hours instead. A gameboy that I bought on ebay like, last year, mind you, simply because I woke up one morning and HAD to have a gameboy. A gameboy color, actually. But besides all that, I am also just really bad at listening to people who get paid to talk at me. I would much rather spend all day finding my own sources and teaching myself what I need to know, because that way it would at least be my choice. As a wise scholar (not as much a scholar as a Lauren Kilmartin) once told me, "You like to learn, you just don't like to be taught." So true. So problematic.

Shawn thought it was a good idea to capture my toddler-minded misery on camera a couple days ago when the need to figure out my financial aid arose. (I didn't even know what website to go to, I forgot all my log-ins and PINs and everything else... hiii lost puppy speaking.)

Hobo week!

Three or four weeks ago, Reina and I were in the church kitchen scavenging for food. Upon the realization that we are excellent scavengers, Reina said, "You know, if we were homeless, we'd be okay." To which I replied, "We should try it sometime, just for a week or something." At first it was a joke, but it quickly turned into a realistic plan... as things tend to do when it comes to me and Reina.
So, Reina got off work, and we scheduled "Hobo week" for June 13th-18th. What you are about to read is the real-life recollection of this grueling, homeless week.


Day one


First rule of homelessness: while biking, Bri and Reina must speak only in British accents and address each other specifically as "Hobo Bri" and "Hobo Reina." An example conversation might have gone something like this:

*British accents*
Bri: "'Tis a bit nippy out here, isn't it, Hobo Reina?"
Reina: "Indeed it is, Hobo Bri. And my buttocks is in quite a load of pain."
Bri: "Right there with you, Hobo Reina. Also, it seems that my pant leg is caught in my bicycle gears."
Reina: "Well this certainly is a bit of predicament, Hobo Bri."

This rule was created in effort to pass our biking time, and also because it just happened on its own and so we turned it into a rule. However, before we could embark on these biking endeavors, we had to transport our bikes to our base - the church. I was able to wedge my bike into the back seat of Beast, with the tire sticking out of the door about three inches. But I tied the back doors together from the inside to keep the door from flying open further while I drove (unfortunately, the rope was stretchy, so it still flew open every time I made a left turn... but the rope at least made sure that the door bounced back after straightening the car out... my bike was buckled in the seat belts for extra protection). I picked up Reina and we managed to attach her bike to my trunk via ropes and bungee cord. It was kind of a mess, but the bikes remained secure all the way to Richland.

We parked Beast on the edge of the church parking lot and wouldn't drive him for the rest of the week. From that point on it was just us and our bikes - no cars, money, or plans.

It was 10:00pm and we were hungry. We obviously hadn't brought any food, that would have been cheating. So, it was time for our first dumpster dive. You see, I've gone dumpster diving with my brother at Big Apple Bagel before where they throw out a giant bags of good, sanitary bagels at the end of every day. There is no Big Apple in Richland, but our hope was that Panera might do that same. So, we biked the four-mile stretch along Gull Road, dumpster bound.

There was nothing but garbage in Panera/Pizza Hut's trash. We tried Bennigan's. Still no luck. But then we noticed that, even though Panera was closed, there was still an employee back in the kitchen. He might still throw out bagels. And so, we waited. Brooke, Befus (Brandon), and Mark, dropped by and kept us company for a couple hours of our waiting. Reina and I grew hungrier, and our thirst for bagels overwhelmed us. It was now nearing 1am, and we had to get those bagels. So, upon Brooke's prompting, Reina and I approached one of the windows that looked into the kitchen.
We knocked on it and danced in front of it in order to get the employee's attention. At first he thought we were just some drunkards waving at him, and he waved back. But by the second time that he looked at us (and it was obvious that he was trying not to), we made it much clearer that we actually wanted him to come to the door. Finally, he stepped outside. I apologized up front for being creepy, and then Reina spewed our story about how we were conducting a social experiment for our sociology final on what it was like to be homeless. Some might say this was a lie (which I don't condone), but others could argue that we were just really into our hobo characters... I mean, there's a homeless woman downtown who has been claiming she needs money to buy her infant diapers... for five years. Stretching the truth just seemed like the homeless thing to do.
Anyway, the young employee gladly gave us two free bagels and some raspberry cream cheese. It was a successful night of begging.

We biked back to the church and slept in my car. I realize that it would have been much more hobo-like to make camp among the elements or a park bench, but my mom's only condition to letting me do this was that we didn't sleep outside. Besides, if we were really homeless, we would have just biked downtown to the gospel mission where they basically give you a little house to live. So compared to that, sleeping in my car could be considered "roughing it."


Day two

The first thing we did was bike to John's house to borrow one of his bikes... apparently Reina had failed to realize that her bike was stuck in first gear before we brought it. So, after switching her bike for one that would allow her to travel faster than half a mile per hour, we biked back to church to help Peter set up for Loco Cocoa - a middle school event that would take place the following day. Alexa was there to help, too, and Peter sent us all on an errand. Of course, on our way out of the parking lot in Alexa's van, she noticed she had a flat tire. It took a while for us three girls to figure out how to change it, but we were determined to do so on our own. Peter attempted to help us, but... well, here's what his twitter post read about the incident: "Alexa, Bri, and Reina are attempting to fix a flat tire. I came over to help and they yelled, "We are self sufficient!" I stand watching."
That pretty much sums up how it went. I wish I had a recording of our conversation trying to figure it all out, though... I'm sure it was pretty humorous to anyone who actually knew what they were doing. But in the end we emerged from the situation victorious, thus proving our self-sufficiency.

  

Bri, Reina, and Alexa - 1

Flat Tire - 0

After we finished our duties at church, we set off to bike downtown to my brother's house, as it was Tuesday game night. The amount of pain our butts were already in from the previous night was pretty ridiculous, but we managed to peddle through our agony and make it ten miles into downtown Kalamazoo in just one hour. Once there, we played games, ate the food we had previously scavenged and brought with us, watched "American Psycho" (named appropriately), and crashed on Justin's couch for the night.

Day three

Wednesday. This was an eventful day.

It started much like one of our old "bike trip" days from two summer's previously: biking our longest stretch completely uphill in the rain and 50 degrees. But even in these excruciating conditions, it only took us an extra ten minutes to reach our home base once again. 

Once back to the church, we enjoyed a breakfast of stale donuts, potato chips, and mellow yellow. We then spent the day continuing to prepare for Loco Cocoa (a middle school youth event where we get a colossal tarp, dump 52 gallons of chocolate pudding and hershey's syrup onto it, and play games in it. Aka best thing ever.)

We also revised our "first rule of homelessness" to where we had to talk in accents and preface each others name's with "Hobo" every time we addressed each other, not just while biking. It made things much more entertaining for us all around.

The madness of Loco Cocoa began at 6:30. Here's what Reina and I looked like after it:

The best part is, homeless people don't shower. Sooo yeah. On the upside, our church has connections and we got a fire truck to the event to spray the group off with their fire hose afterward. But still, even a fire hose isn't strong enough to get the amount of chocolate that we had cemented into our hair fully removed. Only shampoo can do that. Shampoo that we wouldn't have access to until the end of the week. And while everyone snuggled up in their nice, warm towels, Reina and I were pilfering the church supply closet for rags with which we could dry off. 

By 10:30pm, everyone had left the church, but we were still collapsed in exhaustion on the couch in one of the church bathrooms. Then the day got even more interesting. The door opened in a crack and we heard a man's voice call, "Is anyone in there?" 

For at least ten seconds we were silent. I'm not sure if I was under the illusion that if I just didn't answer, whoever it was would just go away - despite the light on - without even walking inside to check, or something... but after a while Reina finally replied with a, "...yeeesss?"

That's when we hear, "Richland police department, please step outside."

Reina and I looked at each other with wide eyes and then ran to the door. There stood a cop, along with Marty, one of the custodians. The cop asked what we were doing, to which I replied, "Just hanging out after youth group..." Marty interjected with, "Oh I know these guys, it's okay." And then explained to us that he just didn't like people hanging out after hours when he was alone in the building.

Luckily for us, neither Marty nor the cop actually stepped inside the bathroom. If they had, they would have seen our backpacks, bedding, and bikes camped out just around the corner in front of the sinks. 

We told them we would leave right away. They left the area and we got all our stuff outside without them seeing us again. But the cop was still parked outside with a clear view of Beast, so we couldn't exactly get kicked out of the church and then bike on over to my car where we would just sit suspiciously in the parking lot, bound by our rule of being unable to drive it anywhere. So instead, we biked the other direction, laughing hysterically, to the Circle K.

We sat in the gas station for a while before deciding to go back and see if the cop had left. We biked back, and he was still there - only his cop car was pulled up next to my car and he was shining his cop spotlights inside it. Panicked all over again, we kept biking past the church in the other direction - towards John's house. It was now 11:30pm, but we really had nowhere else to go, soo to John's it was. He understood why we were dropping in so late after we explained that we were on the run from the law.

We hung out with him for maybe an hour until we felt that it was safe to return to the church parking lot again. We slept in the car again that night.

Day four

We awoke early to help Peter in the offices. He told us if we cleaned them for him, he would pay us in pizza for lunch. And so we worked for our food up until it was time to go play soccer with our group of friends. That afternoon we enjoyed the luxuries of normal, home-dwelling teenager activities... hitched a ride to soccer and then to McDonalds for ice cream, which Alexa graciously bought me, having pity on my homelessness. 

That night was church league softball. We biked to our home field in Parchment in order to participate. We were already exhausted by the start of the game - but by the end of it, our team still remained undefeated. Afterward, we biked back to the church where we waited along the curb with our thumbs stuck out. Coincidentally, our friend, Grant, drove by and picked up we hitch-hikers (almost like it was planned, or something), and took us to see Super 8 with him. He paid for our tickets in order to support the less fortunate. 
Also coincidentally, one of the doors to the church had been left unlocked, so Reina and I spent our last night of hobo week inside our favorite building. 


Day five


We awoke in the prayer room at noon, dug around in the kitchens for expired food, and then biked off to Gull Lake in order to bathe. We had found some tiny bottles of shampoo and conditioner in the church to which we decided to put to some much-needed use. The closest beach access was four miles away at the Country Club, where it is all too easy to just waltz right in, pretending you're a member. The water was slightly numbing - but hey, beggars can't be choosers. We washed our hair in the lake and then biked our last bike ride of hobo week.


By the end of it all, we put in a total of 57.4 miles of biking. All week people kept asking us what we were *learning* from it all, and we got more and more irritated every time we had to say, "NOTHING. CAN'T ANYONE DO ANYTHING FOR NO GOOD REASON THESE DAYS?!?!?" But now that I think about it, I did learn that cars are the most taken for granted objects on the planet. And also that homeless people have to have extremely conditioned butts. Other than that, I suppose the whole thing wasn't exceptionally different from the way I normally live. If you either read this post back in the beginning stages of my blog or just know me somewhat well, you aren't surprised by this.