So here I am in Virginia visiting my cool relatives.

Tomorrow I'm going to drive to Elnora, Indiana.

Well, I guess you should say I'm going to ride. I doubt I'll drive much.

Actually, right now I feel more like skedaddling back to Oregon, walking into my classroom, picking up a green pen, and telling somebody to get busy.

But I'm not gonna be back for a looooooooong time.

In the last 50 hours I've watched 6 movies.

Six looooooooong movies.

I think it fried my brain.

If you want to know how intelligent I was before my brain got fried, go here.

I should go to bed soon.

I have to get up at 3:00 in the morning.

This is a weird post.

The Ducks won the Holiday Bowl.

To all you EBI people: see you tomorrow!

Murphy has faithfully taken me across many, many miles of this great country, from Oregon to South Carolina, and back again. It was during that return trip, and Mom and I and my pressed-down-shaken-together-and-running-over trunkload of stuff that I had accumulated were traveling through one of those Midwestern states that blends almost indistinguishably with the next one when you drive straight through them. It was August, and hot hardly begins to describe what it felt like when you stepped outside. Unfortunately, Murphy soon felt this strain, and by a little after noon he had decided that he just wasn’t strong enough to keep the fan going that blew the cold air. The thin trickle of cool air that emerged from the vents was quickly swallowed up in the heat, and the temperature in the car rose higher and higher.

I was driving at this point, because Mom hadn’t finished her article for August yet, and had to send it to her editor sometime that day. She intended to finish it up while we were driving, and then stop somewhere where they had wireless internet and send it. Unfortunately, the sun was so bright that she couldn’t see the laptop screen. Her solution: drape a towel over her and the laptop both. This looked quite amusing, and may have worked, had it not already been so hot in the car. After a short time she emerged, rather frustrated, and we decided that we needed to find a place to stop, cool off, give Murphy a chance to rest, and let Mom finish her article and send it off.

So we pulled off at the next exit and turned right. This proved to be the wrong thing to do, because within about 5 seconds all we could see was cornfields. So I turned onto a rutted little side road to turn around, and as I was completing my 3-point turn, I heard a CLANK! from somewhere toward the back of the car. We were in a hurry, so I just ignored it, but just a bit later, as we headed in the other direction with our windows down, one of us turned to the other and said something like “The car sounds loud. Was it that loud before? Maybe it’s because we have the windows down.”

Well, as it turns out, it had not been that loud before. I didn’t find out until much later that at that point I must have hit the muffler with something, which caused something to disconnect between the muffler and the tailpipe, or something down in that region of my car. (I generally feel like I am a rather informed person with a fairly extensive vocabulary, but whenever the subject of cars comes up, I feel rather stupid and illiterate)

So for the next few months, my car was loud. Dad assured me that it was nothing to worry about—that I should just ask the mechanic about it the next time I got an oil change—so I didn’t worry about it. It was annoying sometimes, forcing you to raise your voice to be able to hear other people talking, but there were benefits also, namely that car-people thought something about my car was cool. 

By November it was high time for a oil change but I still hadn’t gotten it done, partially because my complicated and unpredictable schedule of when I got home from school and which vehicle I would have, but also because mechanics just scare me, and Dad was going to make me go in by myself. (yes, I know it’s important to face your fears)

My brothers, Ben and Steven, and my cousin Stephanie are in a choir directed by my aunt Rosie, and they practice on Monday after school. Stephanie is also on my volleyball team, and normally we play on Tuesdays, but one day in early November we played on Monday night, so since choir and volleyball are sort of both in the same direction from my house, I went and picked up Stephanie and Ben from choir, and we went out to eat, did a bit of shopping, and then went to play volleyball. Now, the reason this incident is important is because as I was leaving Aunt Rosie’s house, Mom was right behind me, taking Steven (who couldn’t come watch volleyball because he had homework) home. She left me a voicemail saying that my muffler looked like it was going to fall off any minute.

My imagination works fairly well, and I started seeing myself on a busy 4-lane street, with cars flying by me, trying to rescue my muffler, which is lying in the middle of everything, as angry drivers honk and swerve around me. Not a pretty picture.

But my dad assured me that it would be fine, and if the muffler fell off I probably wouldn’t even notice. Mom added helpfully that if it fell off I could just pick it up and put it in my trunk. And Dad tried to set up a time to take the car to the mechanic, but I had parent-teacher conferences almost every day that week, and it just wasn’t going to work.

That weekend our former Sunday School teacher, Zelma, was taking all of us girls to a resort in eastern Oregon, which happens to be only a few miles from where Emily lives. I had volunteered to drive if they needed me, and they did. I was still a bit scared about the muffler business, so before we left on Friday Dad went out and looked at my muffler. “It will be fine,” he assured me when he came back in. “If you go over a big rock or something it might hit it and make a little noise, but it’s not going to fall off.”

So we confidently set out. As fate would have it, Dad’s optimistic statements were made before the trunk of the car was filled with stuff and the back seat was filled with people. We had to drive over the mountains, on some fairly steep and bumpy roads, and the muffler was drooping down far enough that every few minutes we would hear another loud clank, and I would glance in the mirror and the girls would all turn around to make sure that nothing was lying in the road.

The other carload stopped at the resort, while we went on to pick up Emily. I had decided that I should look at the muffler when we got there, but forgot until we had collected Emily and her stuff and were starting out again. I got out of the car, bent down, and peered underneath. The muffler was a scant half-inch above the pavement. Uh-oh. I knew that wasn’t good, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so I decided to just keep going.

To get out of Emily’s parking lot, we had to drive through a short but rutted alley. CLANK!CLANK!CLANK!CLANK!CLANK!CLANK!CLANK!CLANK! went the muffler. Well, I told myself, this alley is really bumpy. Once we get out on the road it will be fine. The bevy of girls riding with me found much more humor in the situation than I did at that moment.

We turned onto the street. The noise that greeted us sounded like someone had taken a shovel, turned it upside-down, and was dragging it along a rough sidewalk. Only louder. The problem was now too big to ignore. I pulled off to the side of the street, wondering what I was going to do. I knew I had to do something. Would it be ok to just grab the muffler and pull it off? Or could I try to push it back into place somehow? I went around to the back of the car, and there, sitting on the road a few feet behind my bumper, was the muffler. It had fallen off at just the right time. Following my mother’s advice, I picked it up, put it in the trunk, and off we went.

Well, almost. First, I got back in the car, relieved to be rid of that pesky thing but still quite flustered, and pushed the turn signal lever so I could get back out on the street. Nothing happened. In my harried state I had forgotten that I hadn’t started the car yet. After another burst of laughter, I turned the car on, and we were finally on our way.

Before joining the rest of the group, though, we decided to stop at the Dutch Bros drive-through that was right on our way. I felt I deserved some coffee after that whole ordeal. We all ordered coffee except Emily, who is allergic to both caffeine and sugar, and who asked for a pink straw instead. The guy was rather amused, but thought that we wanted pink straws in our drinks, and I ended up having to ask him again, specifically, for a pink straw—a skinny one—for Ems. We finally got all our drinks and the pink straw, and were ready to go, except that we hadn’t tipped the guy. Unfortunately, the tip jar was rather big and rather high, and I am neither very big nor very high. I stretched up, but couldn’t reach it. The Dutch Bros guy was helping someone at the other window. So I unbuckled, reached up as high as I could, and just grazed the top of the jar with the tips of the bills, but as I tried to push them in, they fell, down to the ground, and I let out a little shriek of surprise and frustration. Dutch Bros guy heard, and came back to our window. “Are you guys all right?” he asked. I mumbled something about the tip, Kayla opened her door and picked the money off the ground, I handed it to him, and we drove off, my face warm with embarrassment.

A few days later my dad took Murphy in to the mechanic, who gave him a brand new muffler. Now Murphy is nice and quiet again, although people who ride with me still say he sounded better before.

The frenzied rush of busyness that preceded the first day of school has subsided as life settles into the routine it will hold for the next 9 months, and I finally have time to sit and write up the post I promised over a week ago...

So after I got back from Jamaica I spent almost a week in South Carolina. The first few days I spent with Gary and Ruth, living in my familiar-yet-different apartment and.....you know, I can't even remember what I did. Good heavens. Oh yes, I did spend a lovely day with Esther in Greenville. And I think I did a bit of shopping--I had to go to Cato one last time, although I don't think I got anything. Anyway, that is all inconsequential....

The BMA convention was that weekend, and since my mom was a featured speaker she flew in for it. And since Gary and Ruth were already hosting lots of company and didn't have room for us, Mom and I stayed in the dorms there at Erskine College for the weekend. Mom came in Thursday night, and it was late by the time we got in and settled, so we both slept in the next morning. We were in the same dorm building, but I was on the second floor with all the BMABI alumni girls, and she was on the ground floor. Around 10:30 I ran down to Mom's room to see if she was ready to walk over to Subway and get something to eat. She said she needed some more time, and mentioned that she'd been exploring that morning and found a kitchen in the building. I also love to explore, so I asked her to point me in the right direction and went off to find it.

The kitchen wasn't that spectacular. Fairly normal, as kitchens go, except for the list of rules posted on the wall. (i.e. remember to close and lock windows) The coolest thing was that it had a door with a big window leading out to a little courtyard with little tables and chairs and steps down to a little lawn.

Across the open end of the courtyard there was a fence, as you can see, with a gate. At this point, however, it was not propped open with a trash can. Hmmm, I thought. I wonder if the gate is unlocked. It would be cool to go out there and wander around.

The door to the courtyard opened easily. I walked out, down the steps and over to the gate. It was locked. I went back, looked around, savoring the cuteness, and then turned to go back inside the building. I grasped the doorknob and turned, and it didn't budge a bit. The awful truth hit me--I was locked inside the courtyard. It got worse as I realized my cell phone was still up in my dorm room. I didn't even have a watch with me to keep track of the time.

The door was completely immovable, so my only hope of escape lay in the fence at the open end. It was much more imposing in real life than it appears in the picture--the horizontal bar in the middle of it was exactly the height of the top of my head. The horizontal bars were on the courtyard side of the vertical ones, providing nice toeholds, so once I had placed my flip-flops where I could retrieve them from the other side, I scrambled up. That was the easy part. Once I was perched at the top, it got scary. There was grass on the other side, but also a sidewalk, and the fence itself sat on a concrete block. I could probably jump down and be fine, but what if I hit the concrete, or the sidewalk? I pictured myself hobbling around on crutches, fielding endless questions about how I had broken my leg. I climbed back down.

At this point I didn't really know what to do. I knew Mom would be looking for me as soon as she was ready to go and I wasn't around and didn't answer my phone. I didn't know whether she would remember that I had wanted to go see the kitchen. And there was no one else around to help me--most people wouldn't arrive for at least a few hours yet.

I tried to get comfortable. I sat in a chair in the shade for a while, but was afraid Mom wouldn't see me if she just glanced out the door. So I sat next to the door for a while, but the sun got really hot. I started pounding on the door every few minutes, in case someone would happen to be close enough and hear me. After my hands started getting sore, my gaze landed on the broom leaning against the wall. Duh, Amy! Brooms make lounder pounding sounds, and they are much easier on the hands. I banged on the door for a while, they went around, hitting every window I could reach. Still no response. I went back to the routine, sitting there, getting up every little bit to drum on the door with my broom.

Finally, blessedly, my dear mother appeared behind the glass and opened the door. "Where have you been?!?" she asked. "I was about ready to call the police!" It had been somewhere between half an hour and 45 minutes.

So that was the most exciting thing that happened to me.

The convention involved seeing many friends again, friends from Bible School and friends from SC that I hadn't seen all summer, which of course was quite splendid.

And then on Sunday afternoon Mom and I got in my little Honda Civic and took off. Approximately three days, 8 hours, and 2743 miles later we were home. The trip pretty much involved driving and sleeping and not much else. We stopped for the nights at motels, but made pretty good time. The most exciting thing was when we stopped at this ancient gas station in Kentucky where everything was falling apart and there was a hole in the bathroom stall wall so big that I could have fit both of my feet into it if it hadn't been filled with trash. Or maybe it was that gas station in the wilds of Nebraska (where they have signs at the exits that say "next services: 22 miles") where they had to send the kid out to check the pump to see whether I was telling the truth about how much my gas cost and soon afterward the same kid was shooting his little toy gun (that was loud enough to be startling) in the middle of the store. Ok, as you can see, it wasn't terribly scintillating, so I amused myself by taking pictures.

This was Monday evening...

(yes, we went through tons of road construction. The worst was horrible gravel, stuck-behind-a-truck, thirty-miles-an-hour that went on forever, in Oregon, between Ontario and Burns, but anyway, I'm rambling...)

(yup, that's me:))

And then finally....Oregon! Albeit the Eastern part. This would be Wednesday afternoon...

So anyway...that was almost a month ago. Since then I have helped out with VBS at our church, spent quite a few mornings in wonderful sleep, spent an excellent day hanging out with my two friends that have been there about as long as I can remember, had some lovely evenings playing volleyball with my youth group (we're actually getting better!), spent quality time with my family, sent in my application to BMABI for first term 2009, made a sizable dent in my 3-foot-high stack of new books to read, and just in general had a fun, relaxing month.

I really enjoyed my laid-back summer, and I know I'm going to miss sleeping in, but it's still good to be back in the routine of school. Good for me to have the discipline of having to get out of bed early every morning. Good to be forced to use my brain. Good to spend my day with sweet, funny, talented kids. And good to have the peace and satisfaction of knowing that this is where I'm meant to be right now.

And because a feel like it, a couple of pics from the aforementioned day out with friends. We hiked up Multnomah Falls, had a picnic lunch, went shopping, and finished up the day with pedicures at Jessi's house. It was amazing.

The three of us at the top: Phebe, Jessi, me

And (Emily's gonna get after me for posting scenery pics, but here is) Multnomah Falls

I love Oregon...