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).