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.