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Friday, October 30, 2009

Genavieve I believe

I don’t have history friends.

There is no friend who has been around my life for more than four years, except for Genavieve. I move around too much.

Gena is my friend from home who moved here a year ago. I met her the summer before my freshman year of high school. It was the height, I tell you, the epitome of my awkward stage. Gena had just graduated, so she was cooler to me than anyone I had ever met.
We’re neighbors now, and we even work together. I share a deep kinship with her that I didn’t know was possible with people who aren’t family. Her sense of humor puts my stomach in stitches. Our cubicle farm friends walk by and stare at us quizzically because they just don’t understand what’s so funny.

Me: “Do you remember the time in high school that we got back to your house really late and we were supposed to be quiet and I accidentally—“
Gena: “Yes.”

She reminds me of the time I dated a redneck and wore cowboy boots, and I remind her of the time she broke her tailbone and had to carry around a donut pillow everywhere to be able to sit down.

Fast forward through eight years of learning and growing and heart-breaking and laughing and movie nights and beach days and mission trips and car accidents and two separate trips to Kansas City, and you’ll find the two of us laying on my bed, staring at the ceiling, making peace with the past. We talked until midnight about places we don’t go anymore, teachers who taught us good things and people who didn’t know they were teachers who taught us lies that we believed.

And we said it was okay after all, because the love of God is stronger than death.

I need to make more friends into history friends. They’re important.



Tuesday, October 20, 2009

We leave notes

I live in a house with 5 girls.
We're all in school and working and responsible to ministries, so we are BUSY. We rarely have time to communicate, so we leave notes. Lots of notes.

We leave kitchen notes:

















and living-room notes:

We leave shower notes:



and...



It works for us. We just leave notes.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

what if?


Me: "...I know that I'm freaking out about the little things, it's just that the little things grow up and gather together and sometimes become big things, which might be fine but if enough big things all decide to turn on me at once then I've seriously got some big things to worry about, you know? Does that make sense?"

Jonathan: "I feel like I just got to run around inside your head for about 3 minutes, and I want out."

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

the mill

The other day, my friends and I went to the Louisburg Cider Mill to drink cider, pick out pumpkins, jump on hay bales, and soak in the last bits of fall before winter prematurely swept in to settle down for a while.
We decided to make the corn maze a little more interesting by sending Sara and Crystal in early to hide so we'd have something more to look for than...the way out.
As I wandered the maze, aimlessly turning right and left on impulse, I realized that this activity was not fun because it reminded me too much of how normal life really is. Stupid humans. What other species would go to such great lengths to invent a game where the point of it all is to get lost and try to find your way through stalks so high you can't see over them and paths that seem to be noble but lead you in circles and land you back where you started?
The muddy path along rows of un-harvested corn reminded me all too well that I don't know what I'm doing, where I'm going, or how I would get there even if I did.

I'm done with school in December, friends, and I'm starting to freak out about it.

Friday, October 9, 2009

Scenes from this week

Me: "I have the flu."
Doctor: "You don't have the flu."
Me: "Then why do I feel like I've been run over by a Mack truck?"
Doctor: "There's nothing wrong with you. Go home and go to bed. You can take off the flu-mask."

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Boss calls a meeting in her office and five of us pile in there. Two minutes into the meeting, boss's cell phone starts ringing an infectious techno beat. My foot immediately starts grooving to the melody and one of those silly unreasonable laughs starts bubbling up in my belly. She picks it up, studies it and says:
"I think I'm just going to let that ring", sets it down, and lets it keep going.
No! You have to turn it off! I can't contain the inner dance party! Don't you know that you only have to press one of those buttons to make it stop?!
Then, while the techno groove is still partying on her desk, she starts PRAYING to open the meeting! WITH HER EYES OPEN!
I can't escape! Don't laugh! Bite the insides of your cheeks! Don't dance and don't laugh!
I bowed my head real low and fought to still my shaking shoulders. I didn't dare look around at the collectively similar expressions around me in the room.
Finally, I regained composure and attempted to appear reasonable...just in time for techno groove beat to lay a dance revolution on our meeting again. I still have mollar marks on the insides of my cheeks.

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Leaving Wal-Mart, I arrive at my car and find a COMPLETELY flat tire. Pancake flat.
I stood there whimpering in the rain for a minute before deciding to drive it around to the tire center.
I sat in the waiting room and called Dad.
Me: "I don't have money for a flat tire."
Dad: "How'd you get it to the tire place?"
Me: "I was already at Wal-Mart. I just drove it around the back side of the store."
Dad: "Bethy! You can't drive on a flat tire!"
Me: "What was I supposed to do? Change it into the spare to drive 200 yards?"
Dad: "Do you even know how to change a tire?"
Me: "Nope."

Meanwhile they call my name, and I go up to find out the cost.

Tire-man: "That'll be $10."
Me: "What?!"
Tire-man: "You had 2 nails stuck in there. We just patched it up."
Me: "Bless you precious man!"
Tire-man: *looks uncomfortable*

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Roommate: "I made something weird."
Me: "Like what?"
Roommate: "Cheese pizza, with sausage. And tuna."
Me, looking disgusted: "Oh, Em...!"
Roommate: "Want to try some?"
Me: "Sure."

Saturday, October 3, 2009

on blakecity


Blakely: "Small, measurable goals...that's my life right now"
Me: "Why not just stare a mountain in the face and cry?"
Blakely: "Crying will come. I'm just going to try to hold off for a while."


"This hill, though high, I covet to ascend.
The difficulty will not me offend.
For I perceive the way to life lies here
Come, pluck up, heart, let's neither faint nor fear
Better, though difficult, the right way to go
Than wrong, though easy, where the end is woe"
--Christian, The Pilgrim's Progress

Thursday, October 1, 2009

this one's for Amy

Scene: Lori's living room.

Lori reached down to pick up 16-month-old Murphy and realized that she had pooped her diaper. Then, while carrying her to the nursery, felt that it had leaked through her cute little dress.

Me to Blakely: "Oh man. The learning curve on being a mom is going to be really steep."

Lori, over her shoulder as she climbed the stairs: "It's BRUTAL"