No Dumping.

Yesterday I met my dear friend, Kaitlyn, at Waterstreet. She's in college at Spring Arbor so when she comes home for a weekend, we like to take full advantage of the time we get to hang out. Which you'll see after reading this.

Typically when we get together we will make plans of somewhere to go, but then just end up sitting in one of our car's in a parking lot talking for five hours. Obviously we still haven't learned this, since we still tried to meet at an actual establishment once again. However, twenty minutes in to it, we decided we just felt out of our element in a public building, and retreated to her car as usual. Then we decided to get real fancy, and actually go for a drive while talking.

It was while taking this drive that we passed by a rather large, rather exciting looking cemetery. First of all, all the girls in my family have this really weird fascination with cemeteries, don't ask me why. I once surprised my sister on her birthday by buying her ice cream and then taking her to the greatest cemetery you've ever seen to eat it and hang out. She loved it. Call us creepy but we find them alluring and beautifully historic. And on this particularly snowy day, it was the perfect setting for an adventure.

So, while driving by, I shouted, "LET'S DRIVE IN THERRRRE!" So we did.  We turned in the next entrance and began our adventure in speeding down the gravestone-lined roadways and drifting around the snowy corners like professional drag racers. That's what I pictured, anyway. In reality, Kaitlyn might have hit a fleeting 28mph before sliding pathetically around a turn in her little car with crappy traction. However, in my head, I was pretty much ready to suite up in my racing helmet.

We continued this, pretty much feeling like the coolest people ever, when we came to the top of a hill. "This looks like fun to drive fast down!" I exclaimed. And indeed it was. However, it wasn't until we reached the bottom that the real fun began. (Note: at the top of this hill was a sign that read, "No Dumping." That's an important factor to keep in mind during this next paragraph.)

Picture this: you're in a woods. To your left, there's a very large shelter type thing made out of ripped plastic that protected a large pit of dirt beneath it. In front of you, there's a dumpy, padlocked, triple-car-garage-shaped shack of a cement building. Also in front of you are several cement coffins scattered about. On the hill above you and to your right are a bunch of old gravestones.
...That's when it dawns on you that there are probably a bunch of bodies in that locked up shack in front of you waiting to be thrown in those coffins you're staring at and thrown under one of those gravestones to your right and covered in the dirt that's on your left. Also, there's absolutely without a doubt an axe-murderer hiding in the woods waiting to turn you into one of those dead bodies in that shack.
If my life were a horror movie, that would be the part where our car would break down.
Well, I'm still trying to figure out where the cameras are, because that's exactly what happened.

So there we were: at the very back of a cemetery in an unbelievably ominous location, no winter coats (or shoes, gloves, anything), two feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures, a hill in front of us and an even steeper hill behind us, and a car that utterly refused to travel either forwards or backwards. Heck, I would have been happier if it had moved sideways. But no, the only direction it wanted to go was down - straight down into the earth, tires spinning their way to dirt. At that point, all you can really do is laugh. A lot. Well okay there are a variety of other things you can do at that point, like be really really really mad and/or terrified...but I usually take the laughing route. On the bright side, if we died there, we were already in a cemetery.

We tried for about a half hour to dig ourselves out and push the car up the hill, but all that resulted in was a lot more miserable laughter that wreaked of failure.
It was about 4:33 by now (by "about" I mean "precisely," because I just checked my phone history to find out for sure), and at 6:00 I was supposed to be downtown for a class dinner. Fortunately, my friend John is also in said class and was due downtown at that time as well, so I decided to give him a call, which went something like this: "Heyyyy buddyyy...umm I'm not in a super immediate emergency or anything so if you're busy it's not a big deal, but I was just wondering if on your way downtown you could possibly stop by the cemetery on Gull Road and help Kaitlyn and I get her car unstuck..."
Praise the Lord that all that kid does is play xbox, because twenty minutes later he was there helping us dig and push. However, due to the fact that Kaitlyn and I both have laughably terrible luck on our own so combined we are pretty much guaranteed an absolute disaster, we had managed to get ourselves so adhered that nearly an hour later we had made only enough progress to give us a brief glimmer of hope, only for it to be smashed to the ground violently.

By this point, we were desperate. So, Kaitlyn called her dad, a cop, who was conveniently stationed literally next door to the cemetery (which I find it ironic that this particular cemetery is right between a hospital and a police station).
Good thing for me I'm well-liked by her family, or else it might not have been so easy to joke around with her police officer father about how I told his daughter to drive fast down a hill that got us stuck for two hours inside the cemetery in which I was also the one to suggest going. And see that's the thing, by both John and Mr. Beuckelaere the first thing we were asked was, "So, why are you in a cemetery?" and we really had no good answer. I mean it sounds like we're hiding something if we say, "I don't know, just because..." but really, "just because" is the actual reason.
..Story of my life.

All her dad had to do was put his giant steroid-induced cop Tahoe's bumper against Kaitlyn's puny Honda Civic's bumper and push her up the hill.
Here's my favorite part: as soon as Kaitlyn's car had been freed from the snowy death trap, some of Mr. Beuckelaere's police friends drove over in their cruiser, and two cops that I have never seen before in my entire life exited. The first thing one of them says is, and I quote, "Well no wonder...one of them's a Herter...."
I repeat: I have never seen either of them before in my entire life. And I don't really care to find out how they knew me. Because this way my mind is free to conjure up any scenario I want about my unknowingly infamous reputation at the police department.


So, that was yesterday.
Today was even more frustrating, but that story isn't so funny so there's no reason to get into it. But I will say that in my frustration and angst, the only thing I could think to do was buy a pet rat to comfort me. Actually, earlier that morning Brooke had mentioned the idea of buying gerbils in our spare time before small groups, but in a less-serious tone. And later that day we both left our Church feeling equally unsettled, and so the rest pretty much went like this:

Bri: "I'm so mad that we just need to do something epic to get our minds off it. Like literally buy those gerbils you talked about."

Brooke: "Well I do get an employee discount at Pet Supplies Plus."

*Bri and Brooke drive to Pet Supplies Plus*

Bri: Rats are cheaper.

*Bri and Brooke buy two rats*


We constructed a fairly legitimate habitat for them out of random supplies the Church obviously wasn't using. They are named Bonnie (who's Brooke's) and Clyde (who's mine) after the infamous crooks, of course. Clyde is sleeping in my hoodie pocket as we (I) speak (type).

This is my life.

Last night I went to bed at 2am, which for me is considered early. And I was super excited because I didn't have to wake up until 11, so we're talking a possible nine hours of sleep here. Do you know how long it's been since I've gotten nine hours of sleep at once? So long that I don't even know. I repeat: I was super excited.

Well, all those dreams were shattered when I awoke at 5:37am, knowing instantly that I was not going to fall back to sleep. This was a terrible moment. Especially because I have no outside force on which to blame my rude awakening.
When most people think in their sleep, it comes out in dreams, but at least they stay asleep. Well, apparently I have so many thoughts running through my head at once that my brain doesn't even know how to funnel them all into dreams at the same time, so it malfunctions and screams at me to wake up because it can't handle itself without my consciousness assisting it. I mean, I already knew that I over-think like nobody's business, but this is getting a little out of hand. And don't even ask me what I was thinking about, because there is simply too much to even attempt to summarize it for you.

So, here I am, at 5:37am, staring at my ceiling, involuntarily running 84239786148934042317 thoughts through my head simultaneously, and suddenly it dawns on me: the absolute only thing in the world that could possibly redeem this horrific situation in the very least is a bowl of cocoa krispies. Yes, cocoa krispies. If I could just get some cocoa krispies in my stomach, the world might start to turn once again.
So, I jumped out of bed and trotted downstairs with high hopes. Now, at that point of sleep deprivation, life doesn't really make any sense, and who knows what a vocal filter even is. So, keep in mind for the rest of this that the entire time I'm muttering my every thought about the subject at hand to myself nonstop.
 I will explain what happened next via narration I gave myself at the time:

(read in creepy whisper)
"Cocoa krispies I need cocoa krispies where are the cocoa krispies there they are nom nom nom gotta eat my cocoa krispies gotta gotta gotta where's a bowl I need a bowl here's the bowl AH don't fall bowl okay good now my cocoa krispies gotta pour the cocoa krispies into the bowl NO not on the counter in the BOWL okay there now I need more cocoa krispies more more more mmmm good now I gotta find milk where's the milk oh milk goes in the fridge gotta open the fridge and get the.....*GASP* NO MILK??!!!?!?!?!?!?!?!??!?!?!"

Worst. Moment. Ever.
If my world hadn't been demolished the instant I had opened my eyes at 5freaking37am, it surely had now.

But I was still starving. For some reason the only times I get hungry are in the evenings, and apparently at 5:37am (though it was closer to 6:30 by this time). So I made some burritos. Not actually made, I can't cook, I mean I put some frozen ones in the microwave. However, this turned out to be a lot more of a hassle than it ended up being worth, because in the morning there are several things I am incapable of, such as, A) reading. B) simple mathematics. C) judging an adequate substance quantity.

A) came in when I pulled at every single corner of the burrito package except the one that I now see is clearly marked "PULL HERE" in large, bold letters. I did this on both burritos.
B) came into play when I finally managed to open the burrito packages and put them in the microwave and then decode the directions. When I had remembered how to read at last, I could see that is said, "For 1 burrito, microwave 60-75 seconds. For 2 or more, microwave 40-60 seconds for each burrito." ...I gaped at the words for a solid three minutes. 40-60 seconds? For EACH burrito? What did that even mean? First of all, there were 21 options that I could pick between 40 and 60, and then they wanted me to DOUBLE the one I picked? How did I do that? What do they think, I keep a calculator on me at all times? After contemplating writing a letter of complaint to the Bob Evans Homestyle Burrito people, I decided to just stick my burritos in the microwave for a minute and a half. But even then, the numbers on the microwave just appeared to be a conglomeration of Vietnamese symbols for at least a minute before I managed to decipher the jumbled mess long enough to press the 1 and the 3 and the 0.
Then there's C). That came in after I had finally retrieved my burritos from the microwave. In my current state, the puny burritos looked highly unsatisfactory. That's when I knew that I needed a lot of cheese, salsa, and sour cream. A) came back in for a moment while I was searching for these things in the fridge and managed to pull out both cottage cheese and cream cheese in place of the sour cream. It was all white, it was all sour cream, right? Wrong. I also went into a slight panic when I found some Chick-Fil-A mayonnaise packages in the cheese drawer. I suddenly became filled with rage that my mom or sister or whomever the culprit was could go to Chick-Fil-A without me. But then I remembered that there is no Chick-Fil-A in Michigan, at least not that I know of. So then I just became extremely confused, because I sure don't remember packing any Chick-Fil-A mayonnaise in my stuff from Colorado, but then how did it get there? I'm still notably baffled by this. But anyway, back to what I was saying about C). I guess the burritos either looked a great deal larger momentarily, or I just didn't realize how big the spoon I was using was, or my eyes just don't work or something, because I just kept piling on cheese and sour cream and salsa, and I don't know why. I think at that moment I must have hit a new level of zombie mode, because I just stood there, heaping the stuff almost to a beat, like a worker on a factory line that just presses a button over and over and over all day long with glazed over eyes. By the time I jarred myself back to reality, my burritos were nowhere to be seen. They were drowning in a sea of condiments and all my efforts to salvage my morning had been wasted. There was only one thing to do, and that was to smash my fist down into the mountain of ruin in violent exasperation. However, this was clearly an impulsive move that had involved absolutely no thought whatsoever, because all it accomplished was attaining a kitchen splattered in sour cream and salsa.

Then there really was only one thing to do: blog about it. And then, off to the store to buy some milk.

The Real World

Whenever I'm feeling super unmotivated to finish a writing project (right now), I go back through all my old documents in effort to conjure up some inspiration. While doing this two minutes ago, I came across a poem I wrote last year. Well, sort of wrote. It's a cento poem (meaning "patchwork" in Latin), which is a poem made up of a bunch of different lines of other poems, books, or in this case, song lyrics.
It's not the happiest thing you will ever read, but ten gold stars to anyone who can name all the songs (and one movie quote) it includes, without looking them up.

The Real World
We’re waking up at the start of the end of the world,
Though it feels like every other morning before.
We want to feel reckless, want to live it up just because.
We want to feel weightless.
So we pray to God to justify the way we live a lie.
Our streets are extended gutters, and the gutters are full of blood,
But we let it roll, let it roll right off our shoulders.
Do you feel the weight of the world singing sorrow?
Or to you is it just not real?
Sometimes I convince myself that all is fine in the world.
Because it’s hard to understand, when you’re fed by a TV screen,
That there are no rain drops on roses and girls in white dresses.
So let’s keep it moving, keep our feet up off the ground.
Our hearts are littering the topsoil,
But we let it slide, we let our troubles fall behind.
This is just another suicide Sunday, another day to do nothing.
This is the sound of settling.
And if we find our way through the darkest of nights,
Will we laugh about the things that kept us awake?
We think to ourselves,
“Wouldn’t it be nice, to never be alone in this wasted life?”
So we all float on, together we all float on okay.
But as long as we live, time passes by,
And we’ve got all the time in the world,
To get a grip on the fact that we don’t last.
So watch the end through dying eyes,
Now the dark is taking over.
Welcome to the real world now,
Am I the only one that thinks it’s tragic?

Deep thoughts from a sleep-deprived zombie.

Disclaimer: I have no idea what this blog is going to be about. All I know is that it feels like it's time for a new blog, so here it is. Because I'm pretty sure there's no better time to blog than at 5:23am after you meant to pull an all-nighter devoted to completing the homework that's due in three hours, but instead...didn't. I mean, I definitely did the all-nighter part, but go figure the night I had set aside to accomplish tasks is the night that everyone's world falls apart and I'm obviously the only one awake to whom they can talk. Sorry, homework, for benching you because I'm a good friend/sister.
..Like how I justify my lack of motivation with good deeds? Some call it excuses, I call it caring. And when I put it that way, how can you argue, right?

So anyway, today (..well, yesterday? Does it still count as two separate days when you don't sleep in between? I'm always fuzzy on that rule.) I got home from Colorado. It sucks. It's like, okay, pretend you die (in a super non-painful way), and you get to go to Heaven for like ten minutes and everything is super amazing and...heavenly. And you're just boppin' around on the streets of gold and you're really diggin' this whole "perfect world" thing, but then all of a sudden that blasted paramedic does the thing with those electric circle thingamajigs when they go, "CLEAR!" and shock you back to life. Then you wake up back on Earth where everything is dark and suckish again, and boy do you wanna murder that paramedic (but then revive him a couple minutes later so he can see how HE likes getting pulled back out of Heaven).
Yeah, that's a pretty close comparison to what it feels like to go from Colorado to Michigan (having nothing to do with the people in Michigan, of course, you are all great). Don't ask me who the paramedic represents though, because at the end there I slipped out of my analogy and was just thinking about what it would be like if that really did happen. I've heard of that type of thing happening though. I wonder what God does in that situation. I mean, the person is dead but they're about to not be again, and it would sort of ruin the surprise if they got to get a sneak peek before the real deal, ya know. In my head I get the mental image of God shuffling people into a waiting room or something (and in case you're wondering, the image is drawn by whoever draws the Farside comics). Anyway, I don't want to talk about this anymore, or I'm going to start not making any sense at all.
What I'm saying is, I don't like leaving Colorado. Again, no offense to everyone who lives in Michigan, it really has nothing to do with you. You wouldn't wanna leave those mountains for two feet of snow either.

Garden of the Gods = Epic.

Sidenote: Adolf Hitler's mother wanted to abort him, but her doctor talked her out of it. 

That fact just came up (for the second time, which is sort of a rip off) on my "cool facts" Itouch application. There are 10,513 random facts to scroll through.That fact came up as fact number 666. I thought it was sort of funny.

Anyway.
I'm pretty sure extreme sleep-deprivation produces symptoms equivalent to being on acid. Seriously, if you go long enough without it, the walls start to look like they're bubbling and you lose feeling in parts of your hand. Although I'm not sure if it's the lack of sleep, the excessive amount of caffeine consumption, or the combination of both. Because I remember last year at Winter Camp (with my youth group), I stayed up most of both nights of the weekend but at the start of the second night I downed four different energy drinks and two mountain dews, and this same thing happened. Only that was actually really scary, because the walls legitimately looked like they were melting. That same night I passed out and two of my friends took videos of them jumping on me on the couch while pouring water on me to try and wake me up. One of them claims I sat up and literally punched her in the face, but I have no recollection of the incident.
..Now that I think about that story, I'm pretty sure it's the combination of both, but the energy drinks are probably what really sealed the deal. Man, I forgot about that story until I typed it just now...someone really should have cut me off that night. That's probably why average amounts of caffeine don't affect me anymore. Jeesh, my body should hate me.

I gotta say that the best part of staying up all night is making it all the way through my 143 song playlist without skipping a single song.
No, the best part is chatting with the Romanian's on facebook chat because they're the only ones awake seeing how it's the middle of the afternoon in their country right now.


Okay, how 'bout this New Years Resolution thing? Does anyone keep those? Personally, I think they are a great example of human nature in general. We get really excited and motivated for like a week, but then our spoiled, American attention spans get bored and give up.
Maybe that's not an example of human nature and it's just an example of me...
That's why I don't do them, because I know I'll get bored and give up, so I might as well save myself the disappoint and not even try.

Another thing I found out about myself while in Colorado was that I'm part dog.
While reading "Dogs don't understand basic concepts like moving" on HyperboleAndAHalf, there was a part that read:
"This particular dog is not anywhere near the gifted spectrum when it comes to solving problems.  In fact, she has only one discernible method of problem solving and it isn't even really a method. 
1) Become aware that there is a problem. 2) Wait 19 seconds. 3) If problem persists, begin making high-pitched sounds. 4) Continue making high-pitched sounds until problem is fixed. 
But making high-pitched noises won't solve your problem if your problem is a complete inability to cope with change."
That's when Shawn interjected with, "Hey, that's like you." (Except for the waiting 19 seconds part because that's a horrid number.) And suddenly the world was a clearer place.
It makes sense, really. Most of the time I don't know how to use words, so I just make sounds to supplement for my lack of communication. However, I find that this does the opposite of communicate, since everyone just looks at me all confused and wondering about my sanity a lot more than they would have been if I'd just stayed silent. Or, like the above quote describes, when something bad happens, I just start squealing or groaning or growling or making some sort of noise to express my distress. My mom says that when I was little, I wasn't the child who said "no" when the parent requested something displeasing, I was the child who would turn around and rawr to express my unwillingness. I mean literally, I would rawr like a lion in her face, full of aggression and completely serious. I imagine this being pretty terrifying, since when I was little I had a crazy, uncontrolled mass of curly hair that turned to pure puff and frizz when brushed, so I'm sure it closely resembled a mane.
In fact, I know it did:

Anyway, it's time to go get ready for class now...which is really going to be a bummer because now I can't even say I stayed up all night finishing my project. My teacher will be like "Why haven't you slept?" and I'll say "For no good reason at all." Granted, I did work on homework until around 2ish before I started talking to people, and then it was like 4:30 or something and at that point it's easier to just stay up...otherwise you doze off and it's impossible to wake up without feeling like you're about to die a horrible death, because your body is mad that you tricked it into thinking you were gonna let it sleep but then you were like "ha ha! still no real sleep for you!"  so it punishes you by making you feel like you're gonna puke out your innards the rest of the day. But see this way, I was honest and up front with my body from the beginning about how I wasn't giving it any sleep at all, so I've been able to munch on pringles and candy and poptarts and drink redbull all night and I feel completely fine, other than a wee bit spacey in the head. It's just like the shower thing. I don't need to shower every day because my body has learned that I will withhold showers from it, so it knows it better not produce an overabundance of filth faster than every three days, because it's not getting a more frequent shower schedule either way. All about training the body, you see.
I'm not even going to go back and proof read this because I have a feeling I'll hate it.

Fin.