impromptu adventure

So yesterday, in the space of about 30 minutes, I managed to do most of the things that my mother has spent my entire life warning me not to-- with the exception of getting pregnant.

It all started when I wanted a banana. As I was getting the banana, I looked out the window and my dog was looking down at the road in an odd manner and making these strange barking noises. So I went out onto the porch and dropped my banana in horror-- my three horses and the donkey were in the process of galloping full tilt up the road towards the really busy road...for those of you who do not have horses please understand that if you did have horses, then this would be your worst nightmare-- your horse can slip and break a leg on the asphalt, step on a nail, get caught in something, or get hit by a car. Basically, the life of a horse is one long suicide attempt.

So in this thirty minutes, here is what happened:

1. I leave home without telling my family-- I am sprinting up the road with a halter and a lead rope as my horses disappear over a hill.
2. I realize that I have no shoes on.
3. An elderly man stops to ask me if I need to call someone. I obviously look very desperate. He cannot remember any number that I ask him to dial and will not let me hold the phone because he is obviously afraid that I will take off sprinting up the road with it. "Never mind, sir."
4. I get in a car with three complete strangers and we completely break the speed limit to catch up with the horses.
5. While I am in the car, I borrow a cell phone and dial my home number and instruct Strange Woman #1 to leave a message explaining that I am running after our horses in a cemetery off the main road. She leaves a message on the machine, "Hello, this is Rhonda..."
6. The horses are heading diagonally across the cemetery, so I cut across and reach the main road before they do and proceed to stopping traffic both ways so that the horses wouldn't get hit (you gain a whole new appreciation for the natural stamina and athleticism of a horse when chasing one on foot-- much less chasing three of them). The expressions on the faces of drivers are priceless.
7. The horses gallop several hundred yards down the main road, miraculously escaping certain death and almost running over several workmen who try to catch them. They turn into a subdivision where we commence to ruining several yards and scaring an indignant-looking older woman and her poodle to death.
8. I become aware of the fact that there is now a small procession of strange people in their vehicles following me wherever I go.
9. I catch one horse and the other horses and the donkey continue running because they don't care about him seeing as he is not the alpha horse. They decide to run back up towards the main road. I talk to the horse that I am now dragging behind me as I run-- "See, Rocky, they don't care about you at all." Stupid equine pecking order.
10. Somehow, Rocky and I beat the other horses up to the main road. Apparently, traffic will stop much more quickly for a girl and a horse than it will for just a girl.
11. I catch up with the other two horses in the cemetery where they are generally doing a very wonderful job of defiling everything. I catch my horse, Tom, and then start trying to catch the third horse. I realize that I don't have anything to hold him with. A helpful bystander offers me his belt.
12. Another helpful bystander (not the man with the belt) produces a rope from the back of his truck and catches Frosty. He offers to help me take the horses back home and I accept. He obviously wants to have a conversation and starts it out like this: "Well, I know exactly how you feel, because sometimes my labs get loose..." I stifle the urge to scream.
13. My family shows up-- they have extra lead ropes. I am so happy and I cheerfully wave goodbye to Rhonda & Company and start home. The donkey follows the horses and trots happily along the center of the road as if this is all completely normal...

chinese shar pei

I have developed an aversion to these dogs. I do not like them. Not one bit.

I am talking about Chinese Shar-Peis, not green eggs and ham. Good heavens, look at it...Maybe I just don't like the idea of having a dog whose skin I could use to hide various small objects in. Useful? Maybe. Appealing? Nope. (Okay, just to go ahead and say this because if I don't someone is bound to-- yes, I am sure that these dogs have wonderful personalities. But I still do not like them.)

I don't have a thing against wrinkles. At least not normally. My great-grandmother had tons of wrinkles and she was one of the neatest people ever. She had this big button collection in a golden tin and she would let me take them out and sort them into piles by color and shape and I spent many afternoons of my young life laying on the carpet in the sun sorting buttons into rainbow piles. When Great Mama visited the hospital she was too weak to do anything on her own but threaten the medical staff ("I'm going to slap you good." "If you do that another time you won't see daylight again."), but then when you are ninety-something, you can basically do whatever you want. I am getting off track-- Great Mama had wrinkles, but they came from doing things like smiling, living through the Great Depression, having cows, and raising six children during World War II. Those dogs are just born with them. Maybe that is what causes them to be so repulsive to me. Anyhow, I digress.

I leave in 8 days. Someone asked me yesterday when I left and I said, "In 8 days-- I am so excited-- I can count the days on two hands now!" The person gave me a strange look out of the corner of her eye and changed the subject. Yes, I am painfully aware of the fact that I have only two hands, but now to count the days, I only have to use each hand once. That has always been something I do. So anyhow, I'm not so bothered about the flying part now-- I'm not going to say I'm thrilled about flying over the Atlantic Ocean, but I've really been given a sense of peace about it lately. I sort of made the decision to go in a spilt second and wondered if it was the right thing to do, but now after the team meeting last Wednesday I definitely think God has something big planned and I can't wait to see what it is.

On an entirely different closing note, I love the entire cross country team and I am so glad I am running with them this season. It is part of my handful of favorite things.

an airbus A320

I have tried repeatedly to squish the fear down inside me and ignore it. But I can't.

I have this consuming hatred of flying in planes.

It all starts when I go through security. I cannot do more than two things at once and HERE is THIS MAN and he is telling me--

A. "I need your photo i.d."
B. "And your boarding pass."
C. "Put your bag in this box,"
D. "Oh, and take out all electronic devices."
E. "And take off your shoes."
F. "Okay, now move forward."
G. "Wait, come back! We are going to have to dispose of this liquid because it is over 3 oz."

It makes me want to scream...

Don't you think it would make a wonderful board game? "No photo i.d.-- back to start!" "All liquids are under 3 oz. AND a quart sized Ziploc baggie-- MOVE 4 SPACES!" It could be a best seller...

Moving on from security.

I sit at the gate listening to music and nervously twisting my boarding pass. I am listening to "The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald" (I have this ridiculous appreciation for songs about ships and sailing, no matter how old). It does nothing for my nerves. I wonder why. My boarding pass has now assumed a cloth-like texture and most of the printing is ruined. The gate attendant glares at me as I present it to him. He is supposed to have the simple job of scanning pieces of paper and it is apparently people like me that ruin his day.

Finally we taxi down the runway. I am sitting between my dad and my brother. The dialogue that ensues is reminiscent of those movies where the person has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

"Don't worry, Ash," Dad says, "it's safer than driving."
"Most accidents happen at take-off or landing." Grant reminds me gleefully, "Would you like me to tell you what our chances of death are?"He is a pilot-in-training, so I can't refute him. But I can tell him to shut up. So I do.

Eventually, we reach cruising altitude. The stereotypical screaming baby awakens in the row behind me. My mother and several other matronly-looking women swap sympathetic smiles with the parents. Half of me wants to smile too, but is afraid it would look more like a grimace. The other half of me wonders if the baby would stop crying if I shoved it in an overhead luggage compartment and closed the door.

This thought occupies me until we begin our descent which I really prefer not to discuss at all. At this point the predominant thought in my mind becomes, "Get off the plane as soon as is possible."

And of course, baggage claim is just loads of fun-- after walking off with suitcases that aren't mine several ties and apologizing profusely to the very angry rightful owners I get my suitcase and laugh on my way out at all the people who still don't have theirs.

The End. Or it would be if I never had to fly again. But, oh the irony, I leave on the longest flight of my life at the end of next month. Dear heavens. Maybe I'll make cards for the TSA employees or something. We'll see. But it will certainly be interesting.

emulation is the highest form of admiration (?)

If you listen faithfully to conversations, you start noticing the minute things...

It amuses me how people will change their inflection and tone of voice to mimic those around them-- I don't even think they do it conciously. It's like some weird subconscious way of paying homage to one person (if you listen, people tend to mimic one main person). Now that I see others doing this I catch myself doing it and it's like, "That is weird and semi-creepy and I am going to stop now."

Some people don't mimic the tone of voice and inflection, but the way people pair words together. Like, lots of people in TCC will pair words like this...instead of just saying, "That was horrifying." they say ,"That was vaguely horrifying." They take some adverb and just stick it in front of the verb and it is just so fun to say and it makes everything that much better. Okay, so lots of people do that because that is pretty much what adverbs are for, but anyhow. I guess I've had too much English.

What is incredibly fun to do is to listen to people on the phone and guess by their tone and word patterns, who their are talking to (okay, not like eavesdropping, but like being openly in earshot of someone else's phone conversation-- wait, it that eavesdropping?)If you listen to one person consistently on the phone you can tell who they are talking to by their tone of voice. Like when my mom answers the phone and it is my dad she says 'hello' in this completely unpretentious tone of voice. If my dad is talking to my next door neighbor, he magically gains an exaggerated Southern accent. If anyone answers the phone and they instantly begin answering questions about the weather then they are most likely talking to my Grandfather.

This all fascinates me to an unnecessary extent...

like dorothy hamill

I got a haircut yesterday.

I hate haircuts.

It's not that I mind actually having my hair cut, what I mind is a total stranger lopping off my hair as casually as if I were a topiary in someone's front lawn. And touching my head. It bothers me greatly. But, that's not my only reason for hating haircuts. My other experiences with barbershops haven't been so stellar either...

I was in third grade and I decided that I wanted my hair cut like Dorothy Hamill (an Olympic figureskater-- find a picture of her and see what her hair looked like). So, off we went to the little place by the Wal-Mart where I informed this indifferent looking woman how I wanted my hair, and for clarification I threw in, "You know short, like Dorothy Hamill's hair." At the end of the ordeal, it was entirely apparent that the lady either A. Had no idea who Dorothy Hamill was, or B. Thought that Dorothy Hamill was a little boy with a horrid looking bowl cut. I looked like a little boy with a horrid bowl cut.

Do you honestly think that I'm exaggerating? Okay, so not long after I got this haircut, a new family moved in next door to us. They had two boys, both of whom thought that I also was a boy for 3 months. 3 full months. They got a clue when I got a pink bike for my birthday. The older kid got this expression of horror and goes, "Wait, wait-- you're a girl?" Why yes, I do believe you've hit the nail on the head.

So I honestly have reasons for hating haircuts. So, understandibly, I was nervous when this woman with spiky black and red hair started toward my hair with a pair of scissors. She was also chewing gum-- seriously, what if she choked and spit it out into my hair? (I am slightly paranoid/overly imaginative-- call it what you will) And she constantly commented on how much hair I had. "There's just so much of it. It just kind of hangs." she said while picking up a strand of my hair and letting it fall back in place. Of course it hangs. It's hair. Would you rather it stand straight on end? (I was somewhat frustrated). Every time she cut off any of my hair, she would say, "Oh don't worry. It's fine. It's all right."

Finally, she was done and said,"Here look at it, do you like it?"

I was rather pleased (pleased meaning, I won't have to wear a hat for six months.)

But, hat or not, I am not about to start to start trusting random strangers with scissors.

merely shadows

Does anyone else have thoughts that run the lines of, "What would the world be like without..." (fill in the blank) and preoccupy yourself for long periods of time trying to figure out what the world would actually be like without that thing?

I do it all the time. Things like ball-point pens, computers, spiders (wonder out loud in front of lots of people what would happen if there were no spiders in the world. Someone unfailingly says, "We would be overrun by bugs, you idiot. What a stupid thing. A world without spiders." It bothers me so badly.)

Anyhow, I was wondering aimlessly the other day on the aforementioned, "What would the world be like without..." and I filled in the blank with 'shadows'. And I tried and I tried to imagine a world without shadows, but I can't. I'd look at things and it turns out that the smallest things I look at are affected by shadows. You can't even tell they're there unless you think about them. Like this picture: the shadows are there. You don't think about them. But when you do notice them, you still can't imagine the picture without them.

I don't even really know what a world without shadows would mean. Maybe one less dimension or no sun or something. It just interested me, but I am still absolutely clueless.

a dancing horse

Hate to do this, but this is an amazing video. It is Andreas Helgstrand's musical freestyle from the 2006 World Equestrian Games. The horse is Blue Hors Matine.
If you can get past the guy's weird pants, it really is an amazing freestyle. But I am slightly biased in this area.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=zKQgTiqhPbw

Make sure your volume is up.

For some reason these announcers make me laugh.