Spelunking

What is it about facing fears that makes you feel stronger?

Yesterday we went spelunking at a local cave. As some of you know, I am pretty claustrophobic. We have been to this cave many times and I have normally waited outside. Mister helped me go in two times before; I would get a little further every time. This time I made it to the back! TA went with me, and talked me through the several stops I made in order to turn back. I couldn't have made it that far without him.

Mister was talking to me before I went in and he reminded me that my fears were all mental. It is phenomenal what I could do when I gave those fears to the Lord. Granted, there was still that feeling of...well, that anxiety over being closed in. That physical tenseness was eased with my trusted friend near.

My friends clapped when I made it out...I love them.

How come having friends who believe you can do it make you believe that you can do it?

Success

Pranks properly carried out result in resounding success (and laughs).

The morning of the 18th dawned with extreme normality. So I will not venture to explain the morning further. I fear I would bore you before I even begin.

The afternoon of the 18th was a bit out of the ordinary as my sister and I went to B-- to pick up a friend in order to have a girls afternoon/evening/night out. We had a rough draft of our plans mapped out in our heads and we were soon off to the mall. Our main purpose for going on a Monday afternoon was that there wouldn't be anyone else around. This was very true. We were pretty much the only ones about the place.

Frivolous "shopping" came first and we tried on some fun prom-type dresses and laughed at how girls wore them with all seriousness (how they pull straight faces while wearing the things I'll never know). Then went about our serious shopping and in that was the first success of the day. We all found something we liked! At the same store! I got a dress and some suspenders. EP got a lovely skirt for an even lovelier price. SG got a sweet black jacket and red shoe laces for her Chucks.

On our way out of Penney's we walked by the mall theater. Seeing a movie we thought we might like to see, we looked at times. The next showing was in half an hour. We then discussed whether or not to call JW and get him to buy us spray paint. I finally just said that we should just go find out for sure whether there was an age limit on buying the stuff. We went and I went in alone (we thought it would look a little less suspicious if just one giggling girl went in as opposed to three). There is no age limit on who can buy spray paint (I hope you're all taking notes).

We then buzzed back to the theater, got our tickets, and watched the movie. Not much to report in that department, except right when the credits started rolling I got a phone call. I thought that was a perfect example of good timing.

**Time passed**

**I got very hungry**

**SG and EP decided they wanted to eat at Subway**

When we finished eating it was still growing dark. Not dark enough to pull this prank. We went to the library to change into all our dark clothes. By the time we got back across town it was dark enough.

As you well know, we couldn't just drive up and park at the A's house without their notice. So we parked at their neighbor's house. EP and I went up and knocked asking if we could park here while we pulled a prank on their neighbor--I feel I should interrupt myself for a moment here and explain that we knew these people before hand and it was fully ok with them that we prank the A's.

At this point we put on our grease paint. Then, with hoods up, we crept towards the A's house with all the proper technique of a blind hippo. To our advantage, the tv was on quite loud. They didn't hear a bit of our blundering about.

Out came the neon pink spray paint. Literally, all over the grass. We wrote all kinds of little things on both the front and back lawns. Then we shaving creamed Mister's truck windows.

Now, this is where it gets exciting. The house is somewhat on a hill which makes the garage roof low enough to climb up on. This is what we did. There are three windows that look out over the garage. Two are bedrooms and the third is the bathroom. Earlier that day we had picked SG up from their house and while she was there she had unlocked the bathroom window and opened the screen enough for a small finger to slip under. We opened both screen and window (by the way, there was no one in the bathroom and the lights were off). It was too much of a jump to get up and into the small window on our own legs so we used one of their own chairs from inside the garage.

With some difficulty we made it into the bathroom. There we stood giggles getting louder and louder (yes, JW you were right :). We wanted to come out of the bathroom and ask something like, "Where do you keep your extra toilet paper?" but we couldn't so much as say, "boo"! So we ended up just screaming while we ran down the short flight of stairs to the living room. Mister just stared at us and [he told us later] tried to remember if we had been there the whole time. TA didn't even turn around from the computer, but I was so excited about just pulling it all off that it didn't matter so much.

I must have been extremely giddy because I laughed and bounced all over the place. They loved the grease paint.

I am still riding on that thrill high.

Pink: What I Didn't Know About It

I painted my toe nails a bright, almost Barbie, pink the other night. I couldn't believe it when it made me giggle in the morning. Telling my sister to "Look at my toes!" was the first thing I said to her that morning. Since I don't normally paint them pink, every time I saw them today I smiled and got all silly. It is a complete mystery as to why it makes me feel like that. *befuddled*

Saturday is the air show. I'm very excited! Last year a remarkable show was displayed and I hope to see it's equal or better this year.

Here is a link to a funny site: www.homestarrunner.com

Here is one to a completely pointless site: www.iloveegg.com/index.htm (If you go there, you'll have to click the "English" button)

Here is a great radio station: http://radioy.com

Since the color of my toe nails has made me happy I have decided to share the joy and use this nice pink font :) Be happy everyone!

What I learned today

I learned something very interesting today. Tomato horn worms don't just eat tomato plants. We have some lovely flowers that only bloom at night (not surprisingly, they are called Moon Flowers). THWs like them too. Mom and I found 6 or so of those fat, tender little bugs on those plants and we smashed them. Well, Mom did the smashing, I did the pointing out.

I found a really cool animal paw today while I was mowing! Mom thinks it belonged to an opossum. It still has the skin on it! I also found half of it's jaw bone. When I told Dad I had found a paw, he asked how I knew it wasn't a ma ;)

On a more serious note, today is the 5th year after the 9/11 attacks on America. I heard a nice tribute song on the radio today and it really struck me how many people were affected by that event. I was 12 when they happened and I didn't fully grasp it (I guess not many truly did). Because I was so young I honestly didn't give it much thought. Now that I'm a bit older it's more devastating than my young mind thought. So many people...

Picnics and People

Tonight was the church Sunday School picnic. We played a game called Corn Hole or something like that. You would try to throw a bean bag through a hole. It was two teams verses each other. JW and I won one out of the four games I played. I was with my sister for the first two--we were smashed.

I went to work today was was able to tell my co-worker that I am a Christian. It was interesting. She didn't really respond. It was more like just another religion to her. I'm trying to live my life like Jesus would. And now that I've told her I'm a Christian I need to watch my actions more closely. Prayers for this selfish brat would be welcome (meaning myself).

I'd better take a look at the Psalms for tomorrow. My aunt thinks I should lead the singing tomorrow. That is still up in the air. Far up there.

Nothing

Since nothing exciting has happened to me in a few days, I recommend Lyn's blog. Something quite interesting happened to him and a few others...

My Brother

For those of you that know my brother, these next few quotes will be funny. However, for those of you who don't know him I have only one thing to say, I'm sorry.

"Today's belts have more metal then belt."

"I'm like an emotional rock, nothing you can say will hurt me, but I will stub your toe."

And this one is my favorite!
Dan (with agitation): Whose bread popped [in the toaster]? Hello, whose bread is this?
Mom: Whoever left it in there from lunch.
Dan: *grins sheepishly*

My sister came up with a great one the other day, and those who know her realize that she really didn't mean to say it this way...But the result is classic!

"There's too much money infested in these computers!!"

What A Day!

This morning at 3am I woke up with a sore throat. This made me quite distressed because there was much to do today. In search of some relief I found a throat lozenge and was able to go back to sleep. At 6:45am I awoke for good (well, for today at least). I was somewhat improved so I showered and got ready to leave.

Today was the first day of CBS (Community Bible Study). There are 10 people in my group. Since it was the first day, we didn't really have a real meeting and spent time getting to know everyone. We were paired up to do interviews. I was paired with one of my best friends and we were able to pretty much fill out eachothers. Perhaps we should have spoken up and told them that we already knew eachother...

I work at our local library. Today I was scheduled to work, so I decided it would be best for me to come in. I have nothing to report on today, but I just thought I would get that info out of the way.

I was driving home from work this dark night and my mind was really wandering. Suddenly it hit me (I think this would be a good time to pause and tell you that it wasn't a car, a person, or a toad that hit me), I was the only one heading...er...um...the direction I was headed! There were plenty of on coming cars. All these circumstances caused me to wonder if everyone was fleeing the city! I'm not sure how to end this tale, I could say, "but there was nothing wrong and we all lived happily ever after" or I could say, "As I passed through the smoking piles of rubble that were once the buildings of my hometown, my numb mind wondered what we would have had for supper tomorrow night." However, the latter is not very true.

I'm still figuring this blog thing out it's really rather hard for me. I tried to post on someone else's page and it wouldn't let me :( I'll have to look into that...

Here I Come...I guess

I was thinking about how profound I would like to make my first post but everything of consequence has already been said. So I shall just have to quote something: "Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in Thy sight, O Lord, my rock and my Redeemer." ~Psalm 19:14

Let's see how things go from here :)