BEDA Day 9: Rock, paper, scissors, kimodo dragon!

Not gonna lie, this BEDA thing is kind of getting old! I'm so tired when I get home from work, but I make myself do things to be productive for a while, and then I usually remember that I need to post something here right as I start thinking about going to bed. Oh well. I'm gonna stick this thing out if it kills me! (Not that I'm really expecting things to get that dire.)

I actually just realized how ridiculous it is that I made a whole post about weather yesterday, that quintessential small talk, I-don't-have-anything-else-to-say topic. Pretty sad.

Fortunately my kids always give me material to talk about. I sat with one of my favorite kids on the way to and from the pool today. His name is Andrew and he turned four in June. Shortly after we got on the bus at school, he looked at me and asked, "Do you know what cemeteries are?" I was very curious as to why he'd thought of this, since we were just sitting in the parking lot, I said, "Yes," and I was pretty sure he would give me his explanation. I was right. He said, "Cemeteries are a lot of rocks." I'm assuming he meant headstones, but this statement seemed to exhaust his interest in the topic. We then sang the Mickey Mouse Club Song five or so times, because he's been obsessed with it since I taught it to him on Friday as a distraction from something he wanted to do but couldn't.

On the bus on the way home, I sat with Andrew again, and he wanted to play Rock, Paper, Scissors, which we often use at school to settle disputes among kids. When I'm playing a game with a preschooler, I usually try to let him or her win, but there's absolutely no way to do that with Rock, Paper, Scissors! We were each winning about 50% of the time, but each time I won twice in a row, Andrew would say, "Why do you keep winning? I want to win this game!" I could tell he was really tired, and I tried to get him to settle down and go to sleep, which I usually can when we're on the bus, but he wasn't having it. Yesterday one of my co-workers (who was in marching band with me in high school) and I showed some of our kids the llamas we used to make with our fingers which were a complicated inside joke in the band, and then we started to make other animals with our hands, so I thought I'd try to distract Andrew with those animals. (For those curious, a llama is made by putting your middle and ring finger together with your thumb and sticking your index and pinkie finger up like ears.) I was trying to get him to make llamas, bunnies, fish, and other things, but he still seemed focused on Rock, Paper, Scissors. Then he said, "Rock, paper, scissors..." and put out his fingers like scissors, then turned them vertically and said "...bunny!" So we spent the rest of the ride back to school saying, "Rock, paper, scissors, snake!" "Rock, paper, scissors, moose!" "Rock, paper, scissors, kimodo dragon!" (That was his favorite, and it always ate up whatever my animal was.)

I love my job. :)

BEDA Day 8: Weather is weird

They, whoever "they" are, always say, "If you don't like the weather in Ohio, wait five minutes and it'll change." Having lived my entire life in Ohio (save for the 10 weeks I lived in Ecuador), I know that's pretty much true. I've grown up in central Ohio, which has its own brand of totally unpredictable weather. I went to college in the northeastern part of the state, which has an entirely different brand of unpredictable weather. I learned at a pretty young age that no weather forecast is sacred, and that Ohio is a state of extremes. We had two days off from school during my senior year of high school because it was temperatures were around 0 degrees Fahrenheit, officially too cold to stand outside and wait for the bus. Two weeks ago, I got sick when we had to take the kids at work to the pool when it was 96 degrees Fahrenheit, with a heat index of around 107. (The heat index is a calculation that combines the temperature on the thermometer with the humidity level.) Last week I was driving home from work in pouring rain while it was brilliantly sunny...and I didn't even see a rainbow, I might add. Disappointing to say the least.

I always think it's funny to see reactions to our weather from people who live outside the Midwest. In July 2007 I attended the Presbyterian Youth Triennium, a tri-annual (is that a word?) gathering of youth from around the country and the world. It took place at Purdue University in Indiana, and all of my fellow Ohioans were highly amused by all of the people from the Southwest who couldn't handle the humidity, even though they're used to temperatures well over the mid-80s, which is what we were having that week. The following summer, my family had a reunion in Indiana, and my cousin Matt, a native Californian, just about had a heart attack when he saw a weather forecast that called for 90% humidity. I told him he'd have to get used to it, since he was about to start college in Pittsburgh. (He still gets really excited by snow!) Finally, my friend Annika, also a native Californian, who transferred to B-W last year, was really scared back in October when there were severe thunderstorms and a possibility of tornadoes. Now, I will never deny the destructive power of twisters, but I can count on one hand the number of times there's ever been one within fifty miles of where I was located at the time, compared to the hundreds or maybe thousands of tornado warnings I've been subject to during my life. I told her it was no big deal; it was super unlikely that any would be cited, and if we had to we'd just go down into the basement for a bit till the storm was over. Anyways, tornadoes weren't nearly as big a deal as the earthquakes they have to worry about in California. Annika assured me that earthquakes weren't anything to be worried about, but tornadoes were still terrifying.

In case you're wondering where all this is coming from, we're currently in the period of the year where hot temperatures mean that crazy huge cloudbursts can pop up at just about any time, like the one we had this evening. After that, everything goes back to being peachy keen.

I should mention that Cuenca, where I primarily spent time in Ecuador, also had crazy, crazy weather. It must be my lot in life.

BEDA Day 7: In which I worry extensively about England

I think possibly the scariest thing that a person could experience in their life is being stuck in a riot. I can't even imagine how terrifying it's got to be for the people in the suburbs of London right now. In case you don't already know, violent riots have been raging in many areas of London for the past few days, initially sparked by outrage over the death of a man at the hands of police officers. This article from CNN gives a pretty good explanation of how everything spiraled out of control.

Sadly, rioting has now sprung up in other parts of the country, including Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, and Liverpool. This BBC article paints a seriously frightening picture of what's going on. I wish I could wave a magic wand and just stop all of this. I'm frightened for the people who live there, and for all the people that are visiting there, even though at least in London most of the rioting is well away from the tourist-y areas. Less than three months ago, I had several friends visiting London and Liverpool on a study abroad trip. For selfish reasons, I'm frightened for all the incredible history and beautiful buildings that give those cities such character. The essayist Samuel Johnson said, "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford." Well, let's hope that's still true when all of this is over. I'm afraid to see what's going to be left....

BEDA Day 6: No, I didn't forget to blog today...

This is my blog for today. I had entirely too much fun hanging out with two of my almost-siblings this afternoon, and now my best friend Carie is here to spend the night and save me from being lonely in the house all by myself, since my sister and my parents drove to Chicago today. We have spent the evening watching Across the Universe and working on a scrapbook that's been on hiatus for almost a year, and now I'm tired and it's time for bed.

Cop-out blog post is a cop-out.

BEDA Day 5: I think the Whomping Willow's out to get me

As I hinted yesterday, I will now commence writing about the crazy thing that happened to me after Mel and Derek's wedding reception.

Directly after the reception and getting everything cleaned up at the park, the families of the bride and groom and the wedding party went back to Mel's church to clean things up there. It was around 5:30-6:00, and the sky was starting to look really nasty, and the wind was picking up. As I mentioned before, it had been exceedingly hot and sunny all day, and in Ohio, that kind of weather early on a summer's day often means there will be a thunderstorm in the afternoon or evening. It took less than half an hour to get the bulk of things cleaned up at the church, and the sky had taken on the greenish cast that means a really, really, really bad storm is coming. The wind was blowing dust from the dirt/gravel parking lot in circles, and I decided I'd better head out right away. (It's only about seven miles to my house.) I hugged everyone goodbye and promised I'd call Mel when I got home.

The wind was buffeting my little Honda Accord from side to side as I hurried down the road, not to the point that I was crossing the center line, but certainly enough to be disconcerting, and there were lots of branches flying through the air. It started to rain really, really hard right as I turned onto 257, but I was still more concerned with the wind. There are tons of trees surrounding this long, very curvy stretch of road, and things were still flying everywhere. Right as I was going through a teeny tiny, bump-in-the-road town, I heard this terrifying sound that was like a huge rock smacking the body of my car. Then I looked up and saw a golf ball-sized hole in the top left corner of my windshield and saw the glass spiderwebbing all the way across in front of me. It had to have been a pretty large tree branch that hit my car; I never actually saw what it was because it didn't come inside. I completely freaked out and didn't know whether to pull over or keep going, but I was almost home, and I could actually see halfway decently, so I just decided to suck it up and keep going. I groped around for my phone and managed to call my mom and have her move her car out of the garage so I could park there, and to her credit, she didn't flip out when I told her what was going on.

I finally made it home and parked in the garage, and I just totally lost it. I really can't remember the last time I cried so hysterically. I was wet, and I was completely covered in teeny tiny shards of glass. It was all in my hair (which was still done up from the wedding), all over my face, in my mouth, down my shirt....it was horrible. But my family was amazing and helped me clean off, and all I got was this miniscule cut on my wrist that didn't even require a band-aid. My windshield got replaced two days later, and it's perfectly fine, although I do kind of miss the Virginia vehicle inspection sticker that was still on the old windshield from when the car belonged to my grampy.

So really, I'm pretty sure the Whomping Willow is trying to kill me, because that was the third time in my life that I had the thought, "I'm going to die right now," and both of the other times had to do with trees as well. The second was the time I almost got eaten by the Log Monster, and the first was when Mel was driving me home from a friend's graduation party in 2008 and we almost slammed head-on into a gigantic tree. So, yeah. Trees are apparently not my friends.

BEDA Day 4: Goin' to the chapel and we're gonna get ma-a-arried...

So this is the post I was planning to write yesterday....

On June 4th, 2011, my best friend Mel married a wonderful guy named Derek. I was honored to be a bridesmaid, which was my first foray into the world of wedding parties, and it was honestly so much fun! It was really wonderful to spend some quality time with Mel's mom (whom I call "mom"), and it was great to see her older sister, Rachel, for probably the first time since Mel and I graduated high school. Rachel was the matron of honor, and I had a blast with her and the other two bridesmaids, Mary and Debbie, and the pianist, Kristen, who were friends of Mel's from college. We all helped decorate the beautiful little church, which is right across the street from the school where I work, which was lots of fun. After the rehearsal dinner at the ever-amazing Der Dutchman, we went back to Mel's grandparents' house and wound up with one of the best bachelorette-party-gone-wrong stories ever!

Everything started out pretty low-key, because we were all exhausted, especially Mel. Rachel decided we had to watch some home movies from Mel's first birthday, and while the bride kept protesting that this was dumb and everyone was bored to death, we all laughed and laughed and kept track of the number of times baby Mel fell on her face. Then Rachel, who was insistent that her little sister have something akin to a real party, took us all outside for sparklers. After that, she sent Mel on a little fool's errand inside the house while she passed out cans of silly string. When Mel came back out, we attacked and chased her all the way down the street, which resulted in me spending a good 15 minutes picking little bits of colored goo out of her gorgeous curly hair. Then we went back inside for a bit.

I was just about ready to head for home, and Mel was just about asleep, when Rachel waltzed in again, blindfolded the bride, and marched her out to the car. She announced we were going to take Mel somewhere and leave her to be rescued by Derek. I climbed into the car that belonged to Kristen and her husband Daniel, Mel, and Mary. Debbie and Mel's cousins Jason and Sydney went in Rachel's car. I figured we were just going to drive to the park a few blocks away or something, but no -- we followed Rachel for nearly half an hour, all the way to Marysville, including a random turn-around in a driveway to throw the still-blindfolded Mel off track. After that turn-around, everyone in our car felt a small jolt, like we'd hit an animal on the road, and I couldn't see it from where I was sitting, but a whole bunch of lights suddenly lit up on the dashboard. Once we reached Marysville, Rachel turned into a Walgreens parking lot, just hoping to regroup and tell her about all the calls her crew had been making to Derek while we were on the road. As soon as we parked, however, Kristen and Daniel's car died. As in, completely quit functioning. The guys immediately started poking around under the hood and determined that one of the belts (I forget which one now) had given out.

So there we were, stuck in the parking lot of a closed drug store in a small town around 12:30 AM on the day of the wedding. We called Derek and his brother, who had been waiting at the nearby Wal-Mart, where we were supposed to meet them, and we determined that the whole groom-seeing-the-bride-before-the-wedding doesn't count till the sun comes up. Some of us had to use the bathroom, so Rachel drove Mel, Mary, and me over to Wal-Mart, where we used the facilities and Rachel bought a jumbo box of ice cream bars. When we got back to the Walgreens lot, the dead car had been towed, Mel's pastor was there telling stories like only he can, and her aunt was on her way with a working vehicle. After Aunt Lisa got there, we sat around in the parking lot for probably an hour, listening to Pastor's stories of bachelor parties he attended when he was younger (they once put a totally smashed groom-to-be on a commercial plane the night before his wedding!). We finally decided we ought to go when it was almost 2:00 and a police car drove slowly by the parking lot for the third time. I told Mel it's all going in my novel someday.

The next day, everything went wonderfully. My sister came along with me to the church, and she was a big help, putting on Mel's nails and doing Debbie's hair and running little errands for Mom. She did my hair while we were still at home, and it looked amazing! Pictures went pretty smoothly, thanks to Rachel running a tight ship, and they were a lot of fun. We were all highly amused by the ring bearer, a family friend of Mel's, and the flower girl, Derek's niece, who wouldn't even talk to each other at the rehearsal but had to be restrained from running around the sanctuary together while everyone else was taking pre-wedding photos. Mel was incredibly gorgeous and just seemed happy. Derek was adorably nervous. The ceremony was beautiful, and the only tiny hiccup was the flower girl deciding that she wanted to go sit with her mom in the second row after about twenty minutes, and that was way more cute than problematic. The reception was at a local park, and it was insanely hot, but that didn't stop us from having a great time. They had buttercream-frosted cupcakes and orange punch, and their cake toppers were Han Solo and Ariel, the Little Mermaid. I got to see a lot of good friends whom I hadn't seen in quite a while, and everything was just sunny and happy and wonderful.

This post has gotten sufficiently long, so I'll write about the crazy thing that happened after the reception in tomorrow's post. I'll leave you with some of my favorite pictures from the wedding:

Mary, Debbie, Rhiannon, Mel, Rachel, and me


Best friends since eighth grade <3


Mr. and Mrs. Derek Glynn!


Mel and my parents

BEDA Day 3: I Am a Murderer :(

So, I was definitely planning to write about happy things like the wedding I was in two months ago today, but I really don't feel like it now. I was just driving back from the grocery store with my dad and I'm pretty sure I ran over a frog. I've never run over an animal while driving before, and I know it probably shouldn't be that big a deal, but I really feel like a horrible person right now. The fact that it was a frog makes it worse, since I had a pet frog for six years when I was younger, which launched me into a lifetime of collecting froggy things. From my bed, where I'm currently sitting, I can see almost forty frog items around my room -- everything from stuffed animals to figurines to socks (yes I'm messy and have dirty clothes on my floor). I always figured God had a hand in me not having to dissect frogs in science class. I never particularly enjoyed dissection, but I could handle the fish and the worms and the squids and the crayfish. If I'd had to do a frog, I probably would have cried the whole way through.

Here's a prime example of the weird thing I do where I get extremely emotionally attached to large categories of things that don't really matter in the long run. Oh well. I'm going to go eat my ice cream and be sad now.