of endings

Woke up this morning in excruciating pain again. I get the feeling this is going to be a regular occurrence for the next few weeks. Ulgh. So. Not. Looking. Forward. To this.

In other news, one of my pain medications is also used as an anti-depressant. So, I might not be depressed in the next few months? Haha… interesting.

I stumbled around my room, bending over like an old pregnant woman. It’s depressing. I used to totally take it for granted that I could just bend-in-half to do, well, just about everything. Bending straight down from the waist is super convenient. For getting ready in the morning, cleaning your room, getting up out of bed, and numerous other things. You have no idea how much you use your abdominal muscles until you can’t or don’t want to because it causes pain. For me, I can use them, it just hurts a lot because it causes me to use the nerve that is affected by the shingles. It also hurts to slouch. Who knew.

Headed to church – I thought, on time, but I got there 5 minutes late for worship practice, for which I was kinda bummed about, but it wasn’t an issue at all. Still bummed though. Then after practice I walked around a bit and got some coffee at the coffee shop. Bud was really depressed. It was surprising. He was on the verge of tears the entire time I was getting my coffee.

Then I saw Kali, and she was already a mess. It was sad to find out that her Dad let her down and bailed on the whole song for the special offering that they were going to take for her to go to the Masters Commission up in Minnesota in a few weeks. So between that and the fact that I was leaving – this was my last Sunday at church, she was pretty down.

I found myself telling people not to be sad. I mean, I wasn’t crying. Did that make me a heartless person? (Or was it just that I’m on this anti-depressant/pain-killer? Lol) or is it because I know it’s foolish to get worked up over goodbyes? I have no idea, because it’s not like I don’t get worked up over goodbyes. I mean, I am going to miss all these people so much. Good gravy, yes, I am. It’s going to be hard going back to Oregon after having been here all summer. I haven’t been away from home and away from everyone I know in Oregon for this long since I went to Belhaven a few years ago. But even then, that was for school, and I didn’t really get to know a lot of people in the community like I have here.

Then during worship, I was supposed to play a solo of the chorus of a song… but I realized three notes in that I wasn’t supposed to play it at that exact time. Whups. But I just went with it anyway and finished it because if I stopped mid-way everyone would notice. Trick of stage performance: never let people think things happen unintentionally. The show must go on. haha.  Sooo I sat down at the back during announcements right after that feeling kinda like a dork, but oh well. The only people who knew were the worship team.

Then right as Pastor Dan was starting up his sermon, he gave a shout-out to me about how they have loved my playing and will miss me, as it’s my last week here in Shenandoah. It’s amazing how sweet all of the people here are. It’s one of the things that always manages to catch me off guard.

Then after church I passed around some bracelets that I had hand-made in the last few days for all of them. I’ll miss them a lot. Some of them had a harder time accepting my departure than others. They all wanted me to stay forever. There was a lot of hugging, and me consoling them that it would be alright, and then Danny wanted to give me something that he had been wanting to give me every day for the last week. His old guitar. Yup, this kid has the hots for me. I had to convince him that I could not take it because it was his instrument, and because there was zero way I could get it back home with me on top of everything else.

Before Kali left, I made sure to give her the package I’d assembled for her, which included a notebook/journal, some of my favorite pens for her Master’s program, and a really good book for her to work through.

I could really go for some chicken nuggets right now. Why I am telling you this, I have no idea.

Then after more and more and more goodbyes and hand-shakes, and hugs, Erica wanted to do something for lunch when she found out that I had no plans. So she, Ashley, Tricia, and her brother Michael, and I went over to El Portal (where everyone goes after church because it’s kinda the only restaurant in town) for lunch. We saw a lot (and I don’t just mean like two or three, I’m talking like 10-20) of people from church there.

Then after lunch, I came back home. Erica had handed me a box and I opened it when I got to my room. A hilarious Hoops and Yoyo talking card, and a beautiful scarf were inside. So sweet.

Then I set to work cleaning my room and organizing things more (yes, I do continue to destroy it on a daily basis, thankyouverymuch). Then I vacuumed. I can’t do that enough, it seems. As it’s Sunday, there isn’t a whole lot of much I can do for the rest of the day. I visited with Jan a bit, watched a movie on my computer, tried to update my blog, but fell asleep for a few hours, and woke up only to find that I’d managed to type some garbled nothings while I was asleep.

Tomorrow is Monday. I’m hoping to do a few things tomorrow. I believe the plan is still for me to meet up with Susannah on Tuesday for lunch in St Joseph or something like that. So pretty much everything else that I want to do in Shenandoah has to be done tomorrow. Which, isn’t a whole lot, but still.

Weird how things come to such a close like this.


Recent updates:
August 17: "of an epic all-nighter"
August 20: "of roat tripping"
August 21: "of misery and a bowling adventure"

of epic an all-nighter

Soooo last night, yeah, somehow I managed to stay up for the duration. I don’t know how it happened. But it just, well, did. I was up at 12 and knew i’d probably be up for a few more hours, but once 2 hit after skyping with Kim, and her wondering why she was up at midnight, I was up at 2, I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be awake. I was hoping to go to bed soon, but my mind was still racing like crazy

(don't ask me about the lines, i have no idea why they are there... they're driving me crazy)


Then 4 came along. By this time, I had made the final decision to add more excitement and spice to my life by coloring my hair again. I kinda freaked out when I pulled off some of the highlighting kit after awhile, but the funny thing was that I knew that would happen. I mean, it’s what I was hoping for, it’s just that the initial shock is always there to surprise me with the: holy chamois: my hair is blonde. But I like it. Then I showered and skyped with kim while making more bracelets some more before cleaning my room. And then cleaning my room and then putting more things up on my walls, and then kim went to bed and I kept putting things up on my walls and kept cleaning, and doing random things on my computer, cleaning more, organizing more, putting more things up, bumming out on my computer more. It just didn’t make sense to go to bed. I mean, seriously, I wasn’t tired.

Then my alarm went off at 6:00am to get ready to meet Annette for our bike/chat date. Woah. 6? Already. How insane is that. I mean, I wondered if I might end up staying up the whole night, but I never really thought it would really, really happen, and I didn’t do it intentionally. I just wasn’t tired.

So I did my best to wrap up the cleaning, get… dressed? and head out on my bike to meed up with Annette just on the other side of the Nishna/Airport and Hwy 59 intersection. Of course, leave it up to loser me to stumble half way through that intersection with cross traffic nearing the signal. Fail. But thankfully I had my lights on, so I made it through safely because they saw me there.

Then Annette and I biked back over to the church and decided to just stay there as it might rain were we to bike around or sit at a park (plus, it was deathly humid). After a few hours of talking on the couches at the church, I biked back to the farmhouse. The whole way back I had started to feel the whole you’ve-been-up-for-too-long kinda thing and was quite nauseous. But I made it safely back to the farmhouse and went straight to bed. Napped for five hours before heading to work. I was so confused about what day it was and what time and all that when I woke up from my nap. It was around 2pm, but it was kinda overcast (very Oregon weather) and looked pretty much like it could just about be any time of day.

Worked 4-8 with Philip, Jenny, and Amber and we generally had a good time. Between Amber laughing at all my stupid sayings and jokes (surprises me every time), and Philip is awkwardly a high school football player, so everything is flirting from him. But we have a good time, between the laughing, jokes, fake-complaining, the occasional (and annoying) gossip about the co-workers and regular customers, making of set-ups, and rag throwing/hitting, it’s always fun.

Looking back on it all, I realize that I had slept in until noon the day before my epic all-nighter (my second on record), so really, it was no worse as if I had stayed up til 3 after getting up at 6 the same day. Which I’ve done before (more times than I would like to say). So the whole staying-up-all-night isn’t nearly as awful or epic as some might like to think.

of airplanes and shooting stars

Just so everyone (and particularly some people) know, my delay in updating this blog is not due to things relating to anyone. I’ve been busy (well, sorta… I’ve been otherwise occupied) and completely unmotivated to update. But I am in the process of updating all the back days that I missed. I’ve kept track of my goings-on and will post them in chronological order soonish. I realize I’m over a week behind and also behind on a few back days when I said I would update, but haven’t. Those are coming. I promise.

Got up at 7:45 (Wow, I know, concept, right? morning… weird). Got myself some MD Lounge coffee (to wake up… I was up til well after 3 last night. No idea why. I don’t usually suffer from insomnia. Usually I can go to bed and crash (unless I’m a) hungry b) thirsty or c) needing chapstick), but not last night. Nooo Hannah goes to bed just after 11 and can she sleep? No… not four hours. So I get up around 1:30 and read my Bible for a bit and do a Bible study that I haven’t done in literally ages and then read more in What’s a Girl to do? After finishing that, I pull out Don’t Waste Your Life. I finally start getting to the point where I can’t coherently read a page without my eyes buzzing and flickering, so I shut off the light and try to get some shut eye. Didn’t work so well, but I eventually fell asleep. Only to have my alarm go off at 7:30am, 7:31am, 7:32am, and 7:33am before I realized I’d set one for every minute for five minutes to ensure that I would actually… well, you know, get up.

So then I did a Bible study and read a bit more, then worked on my puzzle and bummed it out online for awhile, showered, and then headed to work for a few hours. Worked with Michelle, Sandy, and Pat as per usual. Trevor came in to unload the truck and asked me to cover a few hours of work for him tomorrow. Considering how much of nothing I’m doing I didn’t mind, but I found out later that the hours I am to be cover is in the middle of the afternoon and therefore the hours of the day that I would be ridin’ solo while trying to get a tip at subway (wow, way to quote two songs in one go, Hannah). So they called another worker to come in because I’m not super dooper comfortable being by myself at Subway for 3 hours. I’ve done it for an hour, but I’d rather not have to for longer I suppose…

After work I came home and after awhile I got ready for worship practice, and then I remembered that Jan wanted to go to her exercise class tonight, and I can never remember what time she has to be to it… is it 5? Didn’t know… so I went down to talk to her about it because I had to be to worship practice by 5 and would be there til probably around 6:30 or so, so I asked her to just drop me off on her way out to Clarinda. Well, as it happens, her class isn’t until 7 or so, but I still didn’t want to make her late to it, so I asked her to just run me into town and drop me off. On the drive there, she kinda surprised me. I just tried being friendly as normal, talking about the weather (lame, I know), but also about my violin playing, my upcoming birthday, playing on the worship team at church, friends from church, and the like. Then she seemed to pause for a second and asked me if I was sworn off the garden because of the heat. Well, the heat is mostly ridiculous. 100 at night? Meaning from 9pm til 5am? Yeah, I’m not going to even attempt to work out there in that insanity, I am so sorry to disappoint. Plus, when I had talked to Jim a few weeks previous, he said that he “just wanted me to have a good time here in Iowa” and that “I’m not getting paid anything for the work I do, so I shouldn’t be expected to do all the work out there.” But it’s mostly that recently there have been a lot of growing weeds (likely due to the excessive heat and humidity we have here this summer; it’s a scortcher). Anyway, Jan is getting really frustrated and depressed about the garden because it was a huge investment for them and right now Jim is focusing on doing some programming work for a client with his computer business because this is the dude who provides their monthly rent needs, so his computer is the top priority right now. This only makes matters worse for Jan, and it’s probably a combination of her health issues, but she is of the opinion that we are doing things because we don’t appreciate her, which makes life for us rather challenging. So I’m trying my best to stay on her good side now, which is harddd….

So I walked into worship practice feeling like a failure in general. I felt pressured, like a bad guest, like a miserable relative. Like the worst person imaginable. I’d come out here to help and serve, and what do I do? I complain about not having any friends. Who cares. Job lost his friends, his family, his everything, but he still served. No, I’m no Job, but I can try… It’s just really difficult. I just haven’t been putting myself forward enough I suppose. I’ve been getting too absorbed in my own world up in my room. Just bumming out because of the heat and not doing anything much at all. Like, seriously. I’m a bum, straight up. So besides the fact that I felt generally miserable, it was a wake-up jolt (not just a call… a bit more intense). So I was feeling kinda down (um… only kinda, right), and I ended up just quickly explaining things to Pam before we started up worship practice, and she didn’t have much to say, but she said that I was in the right place to be right now if I was upset about things.

I was glad for worship practice. Playing music, praising God. You know. Kinda awesome. But it all ended way fast. We played for, maybe 20 minutes tops. It was weird. We usually go for well over an hour. So… I didn’t have a car with me, or a bike because it was far to hot to bike, which was why I asked Jan to drive me here in the first place. So I just walked over to the library to do some homework, and on my way there (3 blocks to walk) I called Lydia, and we ended up talking for awhile, so I didn’t go inside, instead I went out back and sat in the grass in the shade. It reminded me of sitting behind the library in Hood River, only… there were no trees, no ice cream shops, no people, no incredible view, no river, no mountains, I wasn’t on a hill (flat as ever), and it was hot and super humid (lol). After we talked for a while, I decided to go over to Nancy&Co’s because I havent’ been over there in awhile, and would love to just talk with Nancy about everything that’s going on as she’s a decently normal person to talk with. Found out later that it is a 1.3 mile walk from the library to their house. I plugged in my headphones and walked it. With my backpack (because I thought I was going to be doing homework at the library), and my violin from worship practice. Yeah… a mile, in converse, without socks, in crazy heat and humidity… probably not among the smartest things I’ve ever done, but not the worst. Needless to say I managed two blisters (one per foot, but not the worst I’ve gotten [thank you ballet, modern, and gymnastics]).

So Rachel and I hugn out for awhile, me watching her play her new computer game (which, FYI, she bought for herself with her allowance on half.com with the computing assistance of her father), where she created new creatures and told me how they evolved (awesome…) and how her character can dance, pose, and kill (also awesome…). Then Nancy and I talked about a million and one things ranging from family, to old issues, to redecorating her house, to their recent trip to Chicago (made me actually want to go to a big city for once in my life), to everything in between. It was good just to talk, commiserate, and laugh about everything and nothing in general. Then we had dinner – but because their kitchen was just recently worked on, and their dishwasher is out of commission because of the sinks needing to be replaced and that hinging on the fact that her beautiful granite counter needs to be re-cut to fit the new sink (dishwasher was leaking, ruined her wood floor… got floor replaced with (beautiful) tile, decided to replace sinks to match stainless steal look of the rest of the kitchen (was going to do it anyway eventually, dishwasher connects to small sink, small sink doesn’t fit in available hole in granite counter, sink still not hooked up, therefore no dishwasher [because you so needed to know that]) – so Rachel and I helped ourselves to frozen (but healthy) dinners and frozen fruit bars. Then we hung out some more while Nancy practiced the piano. And ohmygoodness is she amazing. My jaw hit the floor with her intricate scales, chord progressions and finger exercises. Yes, indeed. She is a concert pianist. So awesome.

A bit later Nancy and John convened for their official dinner, which was a protein shake made from a protein mix (café latte flavor) with almond milk. She gave me a sampling of part of it. It was quite good and goodness, filled me up for the rest of the evening. I got munchy later, but only because I wanted an occupation for my hands. So I worked on my puzzle more, lol. When Nancy drove me home later, she questioned me about keeping in contact with “that one guy friend of yours who moved up to… Wisconsin?” lol… Josh, and yes, I’d been in contact with him. We’d been texting all day. Haha.

When I got home, I was kinda spacing out, but then I had a momentary freak out when I remembered that it was the Perseid Meteor Shower tonight. I was so stoked. Not only do I love stars, this is the one that always hits around my birthday (hence, why I always remember it). So, after getting far too excited, and texting a few friends about it, I went outside. Yard light. Lame. It was after 12, but I took off in the Buick. North on 59 for a few miles to get out of town. I pulled off onto 160th (whatever that is… it was a class B maintenance road, lol). It was so black out. The stars were beyond amazing. You couldn’t help but see the Milky Way. All the constellations were super visible, but also not because there were so many other smaller stars that you normally can’t see in any populated areas. I saw an airplane while I was watching the meteor shower. Yeah. Not the same thing. I realize I wasn’t watching stars fall, but meteors are a part of comets and well, meteors are actually what common people of today call shooting stars. So it was rather epic. It was really, really awesome. Yeah… and then I saw a satellite; not the same. Then an airplane flew overhead. Definitely not a shooting star (although, pre-song, I had always wished one could wish upon an airplane and pretend it was one). It was one of those moments where I wished I could have been with someone. It would have been a good moment to even be on the phone with a friend back home. But no. Not a romantic evening like one might wish for. Just me, God, and the stars.

of the art of bumming

I think I’ve generally been able to perfect the art of being a bum… today I slept in til 11, then I moseyed around and finally started to clean my room (and by clean, I mean legit cleaned. I haven’t cleaned it so much since I’ve been here, basically), I worked on my puzzle a bit, only to later realize that it is too big for this card table that I hoarked from the downstairs area, so I tried working on it more on it, but then decided to move it back to the floor. Well, that’s not entirely true. I now have it on the backside of my Alice in Wonderland poster that Kim got me for my gradumation (it would be up on my wall, did this town have anything to put thins up on the wall with), and it actually doesn’t even really fit on it… it’s a panoramic shot, lol.

Talked to Lydia on the phone for awhile… I miss her a lot (“a lot” is too short a phrase for the extent that I miss her). Then I went down to HyVee because I was bored and hungry (we have little to no food… I’m talking broiled hamburgers and one uncooked one left uncovered on the same plate together, spoiled salad greens, numerous varieties of beer, diet Mountain Dew, diet Coke with Lime, water, Gatorade, light Gatorade, HyVee brand cinnamon Life cereal…. Yeah I think that’s about it besides some milk, orange juice, and assorted sauces and salad dressings. I was going to get something to eat, but I ended up just going for some ice cream. Found the HyVee brand for $1.48/box. So picked up Cookies and Cream and Butter Crunch. I wanted cookie dough or mint chip, but I didn’t see either. And while I was there I remembered that I had another handy-dandy frozen Totino’s in the freezer to pop in the new, fancy schmancy toaster oven.

I still need to figure out what I want to do for my birthday. Aunt Jan said they’d be down with doing whatever I want, but I don’t know what it is… and I have to work 4-8 on my birthday… AND it’s on a Sunday. So that rules out a lot of the day.

I still need to quit my job – if nothing else then simply after yesterday, I have nothing wrong with just leaving it as it is. As much as I didn’t like working back at the MD Lounge in Oregon, it was actually decent compared to the super crappy management and constant blame-shifting that goes on here. Misery.

For the rest of today, I ended up attempting to update my blog (hence, this post, finally, after a ridiculous amount of delay), but… mostly I just watched too much back episodes of Chuck and ate too much ice cream, worked on my puzzle a bit, and missed hanging out with people, working out and being generally active in life.

It’s so retardedly hot anymore. It’s pushing 100 every night – for the whole night (like, you know… from sunset to sunrise? Yeah… 100 outside during those hours), and just gets hotter during the day. It’s frustrating. I can’t do anything outside. It’s too hot to even go for a midnight run or bike ride to the park to sit on the swings (even though the park actually closes at 10 and I have been kicked out by the cops before… haha).

Sometimes I wonder what people would think and/or do if they knew if I was a secret agent or a spy or something. I mean, really? How many people come to small town Iowa for the summer? And work on forming friendships and relationships with the people in town, get involved with the library, go for road trips around the area, but don’t really do a whole lot else? I mean, seriously, I could be top secret undercover if you didn’t know better. Ok, so, by you reading this, you automatically know that I’m not undercover (I wish…), but there are times when I just take in everything. Seeing who is where, how many of this and another thing, how things go down, watching how things play out, thinking about various ways they could potentially play out if I wanted them to be that way… etc, etc, etc, lol. I am a dork…

of ice cream sundae sunday

Ulgh, last night there was the WORST storm. I mean, it could have been worse, I realize, but still... it woke me up, and not a whole lot will actually disturb my sleep enough to make me actually wake up, much less get out of bed anymore (thankyoucollegeformakingmesleepallthetime). The wind was super intense. The whole house was creaking and part of it, I am serious, was even shifting slightly with the wind. It was crazy. Not to mention all the groaning of the house and everything. Plus the trees outside were just blowing around and all over everywhere. Then the pieces of the shed that has yet to be put together were picked up by the wind and blew into part of Fred's yard - quite far, actually. There wasn't any rain, which was kinda the weird part, but there was definitely thunder and lightning. I couldn't really see anything with the exception for when there would be near-constant flashes of lightning. It was terrifying. I had a really hard time going back to sleep. But I just had to figure that the house has stood for well over 100 years, and it's not likely to blow away to Oz in one more storm.

When my alarm finally went off, I was still pretty intimidated by the storm from the night previous, but I got ready for church regardless. The weather had calmed down to pretty much normal by that time.

Church was good, but before I left, I checked up on the chicks, and one wasn't doing so well. I was afraid it wasn't going to make it much longer. It was just really lethargic and uninterested in running around, food, or water. It also kept lifting it's wings. I couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. It was really getting to me. But all the same, we have 50 chicks. at least 20% are going to die before they reach full maturity.

Worship practice and church went really well. I'm always kinda nervous about playing songs and such, especially because Erica kinda goes off and repeats stuff, but I just have to kinda sazuki it up and memorize the chord progression and keep to that. The message during church was on the Pearl of Great Price, it was really good, but something I've been noticing about here is that the sermons are super short! We're talking like, 20 minutes max. I'm so used to the hour + messages of The Way and Solid Rock. I kinda miss it... I'll have to podcast them up some more here soon.

After church I caught up with a few people, which was good. I have yet to actually have coffee there at church. I think I'm a little intimidated by how they have someone there to serve it to you... weird, lol. Then Josh wanted to show me his new car that the church help him get. It's a super cute two-seater, silver, Pontiac Fiero. Engine in back, trunk in front. It's super adorable. Definitely a boy-toy. Then he invited me to go along with another friend to El Portal, the only (mostly) mexican restaurant in town. The food isn't really the greatest as far as mexican food goes, but it's better than nothing. He said he'd pick me up at my house so I wouldn't have to drive over there and wait because they weren't heading over just yet.

So I headed home, and noticed that the sickly chick was doing worse, which was frustrating. But I knew it was inevitable.

Then I got a call from Josh saying he was here... but he wasn't in the driveway, so I was confused. Apparently the road was confusing: and I'll give it to him, it is. Airport Road curves south into Manti, but it also goes straight into the Dead End of a gravel drive. We're down the latter. Haha, on the phone "gravel road....? Tiny car!!" hilarious. But it was fun to hang out, and lunch was actually really good. He used to work there, so he said to go with anything steak. I chose the fajita burrito w/ steak. It was a good choice.

After lunch, he took me on a local's tour of the town. It was great. But kinda sad at the same time. He told me about how many businesses were now shut down and vacant, and how many of the houses were pretty much the same story. Shenandoah is full of wealthy families, but people are leaving the town left and right and not caring for it well. Also, because there isn't much in the way of things for the youth to do in this town, most of the high schoolers are getting involved with serious drugs, or ending up pregnant. He said he spend the day previous with a kid a few years younger than him that he knew from when he used to live in town. The kid kept trying to sell him drugs. It broke his heart.

We rounded another corner and I kept asking what other things he used to do in town. Suddenly, he made a last minute turn north of the downtown area, pointing to large silos and grain conveyer-belts, he said: oh yeah, we used to go corn-boarding here all the time. I didn't really know if I'd heard him right... Corn... Boarding?!?! Yup. Cornboarding. You take a snow board, and climb up a grain conveyer-belt and strap in and go down this massive mountain of corn. Of course, you often hit giant pockets of air and  fall in to about your waste, so it's kinda scary, but that's half the fun (well, that's what he said). I asked if he ever got caught doing this... Apparently all the cops go home around 3, so you just gotta know how to plan stuff right. Oh, the life of a local.

As soon as I got home, Jan told me we were going up and over to Randolf to the museum to an ice cream social - they were especially hoping it would be with home-made ice cream. I was up for an adventure, so I tagged along. After getting lost on the way with our lack of maps, and the sever lack of road signage in this part of Iowa (you just have to know where you're going... meaning you know where you are by land marks, curves and hills in the road, and other.... things.... ...?) we stopped and asked for directions a few times before landing on the museum. It was this really adorable old house restored to look like it did for normal life back in the 1930s. I loved it. It was beautiful. I also found an ad on one of the desks for spoon rings!!! It made me so happy... it was an ancient advertisement! It also made me want a spoon ring even more than before...

Then after ice cream (blue bunny appeared to be from costco or something of that giantly bulk nature), I checked out the wash house, and then called Lydia just to chat and say hi. It was fun talking with her, but once we were back on the road, my signal kept dropping out because we were, well in the middle of BFE going through goodness only knows how much corn. So I called her back once I got home. The ride was so boring, hot and tiring. The a/c doesn't really reach the back very well, and leather seats are not cool by any means. But it was alright, thankfully the ride was only about half an hour.

Got home, had some celery, and found out that the sickly chick died while we were gone. I was super depressed about it. It was so beautiful and perfect, and adorable. *sigh* but chickens die, and more frequently than that, chicks die... so, depressed more than I was before, I went back to my room to read more of my book, got bored with that, so was going to get coffee even though it was like 5 in the afternoon, but the cars were gone, so that idea was scratched because i didn't want to go out on my bike just yet. so i read my book some more before finally taking out on the bike. I went up Clarinda Hill and then back down, then went to various parks, hitting McComb up first, then Priest Park over by Shenandoah Assemblies of God church. I just bummed out on the swings for awhile and the laid down in the grass. Then I saw that Annette and family were over by the church, so I rode my bike in that direction, and we got to talking. Pastor Dan and Annette's house is literally, right next to the church, so we went in and had some sun tea and drank it while sitting on the porch. It was really good just to talk and stuff. Annette has a daughter who is right about my age, so I can tell she misses her and such. Plus, her other kids are a blast to talk and hang out with.

Then we went inside and Annette put out some various food items for me to assemble into a sandwich. Oh my goodness, I have not eaten so much since I've been here. It was wonderful. Just basic home made food, egg salad sandwich, home made jalepeno poppers, and ice cream, but still. It was beyond wonderful. Plus, the fact that there was the food combined with talking to Annette, it was awesome. They are such amazingly wonderful people. It meant so much to me. and when I rode my bike home later that evening, I just remember feeling soo rejuvenated and so happy, and so blessed to have been here in Shenandoah this summer, and to have found that church too.

of strobe lights and cannon fire... or something like that

Got up today, and it was ridiculously humid. I thought it was raining. But no. Just like, 80 degrees and super humid. At 6am. Talk about insane. But went on my run anyway. It was harder than it was a few days ago, considering everything I've been doing lately, but it was still good. Then I showered, read some in my book, ate some cereal and headed out to work outside. It was super hot already, and not even 8am. Jim and I put the pool together for the chickens. I seriously don't understand. I asked where he got the idea. He just said he wanted something to keep them in, and there are going to be ssooo many of them, and he wants to keep them safe and in something that's durable and that they can't get out of. How we're going to get IN is another challenge all in itself. I don't understand it at all. But all the same, I know he's sick of me questioning his motives, so I just left it alone. Maybe I can research something that would be less expensive and easier: ie: appliance boxes?

There is this SUPER intense storm outside right now. It's insane.

Then after working outside for hours, Jim said he wanted to put the lettuce mix down... erm, he wanted me to. But I said I was about to call it a day. Between the work I was doing, being on my knees for so long, and in the hot sun and everything, you just can't work much past noon before any sort of work outside is just out of any sort of sane question.

Finished my few rows after replanting the rows Robby had done yesterday afternoon as many of the plants were on their sides and sticking out into the aisles. Sad.

Then I showered (again), had lunch, took a nap (glorious, glorious sleep), and headed down to the library to work on my internship papers and send a TY note to Aunt Loraine. I ended up staying later than I thought I would. It's nice and cool there. The AC works soo well. It's not working super well at the house, but supposedly someone is coming to work on it tomorrow.

With the humidity calculated into the heat index, it was 120 today. Yeah. No joke. You step outside for half a second and you start sweating literally buckets. I've not sweated so much in my life, ever. It's insane. You can't drink enough to keep up with it.

After librarying it up, I didn't really have time eat anything before worship practice before Wednesday night church, so I hit up Maccas again for a smoothie. Sadly, they'd just run out of yogurt (didn't know they were actually that legit... figured they were more of a healthy excuse for a milkshake (which really, they are, but anyway) but apparently not).  So they offered me a blended coffee drink. Coffee? Um, YES please! Haha, when I was working out in the garden today, I realized that I've only had coffee 6 (now 7) times since I've been here. In the last 4 weeks, I've had coffee 7 times. How insane is that? Can you count that? I mean, of course, I have enough time on my hands to think about such things when I'm out in the garden all by myself for 3-7 hours planting tomatoes, but still. It's slightly ridiculous that I think and add up such things. Lol...

The power keeps dipping. I'm starting to wonder when it's actually going to go out. Got my handy-dandy LED flashlight out just for this potential. I was hoping (power dip) to read tonight before going to bed, but if the power goes out, I might just eat my mexican (power dip) salad and go to bed. Goodness knows I need the sleep anyway.

I'm trying to decide if I'll still go for a bike ride/run tomorrow if it's raining like this.... well, actually, if it's raining at all, there really is no sense to even get up in the morning as all (power dip) my work is outside, and with all this rain, it's going to be miserable tomorrow. Humid like mad, and thick, nasty, sticky clay mud.

Worship was good Erica (worship leader) was having trouble with her voice, which was sad. I kept hitting one of the songs in the wrong key. Felt pretty stupid for that. Stupid D#... Then, after the message, we split up into smaller groups to discuss introducing small groups to the church to help people connect together. Pastor Dan asked me to be a group leader. I was kinda surprised, but I also wasn't as nervous as I thought I might be. It went really well.

Then I hung around afterwards, talking to various people at the church (wednesday services are a smaller crowd than sunday), and hung out with the youth group and some of the younger kids. It was good talking to them, and I can kinda tell that they think I'm "cool" because I'm different, and from Oregon (which makes me exciting and exotic), and in college (even more exciting)... WOAH. INSANE thunder crash just now. Sounded like, a million garbage can lids just smashed into the driveway all at once. Rain is pelting down like there's no tomorrow.

God, protect us! ahhh!!! o.0

Towards the end of service, a storm started heading in (the same one that's still over us), and there was rumor that there was funnel clouds in the area and tornados to the east and west of us. Still not sure if those are just rumors. But thankfully, it's not been more than a severe thunderstorm.

Video'd my drive down Airport Rd. It's not much, and you can hardly see anything, but it's kinda the general idea of how it is. It hasn't let up at all in the last 2 hours. Wind. Rain. Thunder. Lightning. It's at moments like these when you know that God has to be real. (Huge thunder crash that made me jump). The flashes are pretty much constant.

If fireflies are God's glitter, then this thunderstorm is God's strobe lights. Maybe it's a rave, God style? Ha... kidding... :P

When I finally headed out to my car about an hour after church, I had to run through literally 8 inches of water rushing to the drains. It just wouldn't let up at all. I was soaked by the time I got in the car -- and I wasn't parked more than 50 yards from the church front door. IN.SANE. Once I got home (took forever as I couldn't go more than like, 20mph and still have relative visibility) I had to close the garage doors and pull all my stuff out of the car and run into the house. I looked like I'd taken a 20 minute shower in my clothes once I finally got in the house.

...and when I walked in the back door. Guess what. All the doors and windows were still open. Jim and Jan were in their living area watching a movie on Hulu. So I ran around the house, closing everything up because with all the wind, the rain was just streaming into the house. There was a good half inch of standing water just inside the back entryway. I'm serious here, intense storm.

Oh! and Jan came to church! She came because I was playing on the worship team and she wanted to hear me play, sadly she didn't get there in time for it because she'd wanted to take a cold shower, but she stayed for the rest of the service. I didn't see her til about a third of the way through the message, but I quickly jumped up and went over to sit by her for the rest of the message.

Going to the Garrison Coffee House tomorrow for coffee/dinner with Ashley and Tricia after worship practice at church. I'm super, super excited. :) Apparently the coffee house is a Christian place and is usually only open til the mid afternoon, but Thursday nights they have bands come play music in the early evening. So that should be fun, and I'm looking forward to our outing.

Ha, even if the power does go out, I'm not even sure if I will be able to sleep with how intense this strobe-light-and-cannon-fire storm is.

of bike rides, longboards, and aviator kid

So I must say, that I am sitting here, now laughing quietly to myself. I was, however, laughing a bit more out loud a few minutes ago. Why you might ask? I will tell you...

My day started out not unlike yesterday. Alarm hitting off at 5:45am and me deciding whether to attempt an exercise thing of sorts in my  room, go for another run (went for one yesterday, see), or go for a bike ride. The bike riding won, so I headed out. Wasn't too unlike yesterday, except there weren't any clouds. Just the standard midwestern haze along the horizon. The sun hadn't come up just yet. Once I got into town, I decided to hit up the Wabash Trace bike trail... at least for awhile anyway. Sounded like a nice enjoyable thing to do. When I was almost towards the trail, the sun started to arrive just above the horizon. It was beautiful. Not much was lit by it just yet, but it was the deepest orange-pink, and it was literally massive. Maybe the humidity, the smog, or the general concept that it's on the horizon is what makes it so big at sunrise and sunset (probably), but it's such an awesome thing that you basically never see in the Pacific Northwest (yeah, at the beach, but seriously, peoples, how often is it clear enough at the beach to actually see the sunset, lol). Went over the Nishnabotna River, across Hwy 59, and a bit farther to whatever 170th is... hwy? road? driveway? no idea... it was gravel (not that this fact helps anything). Anyway, I just looked it up on google maps and it says I apparently went around 12 miles. Did not know I went that far. Regardless, I really enjoyed my bike ride. Plus, as I was only gone for around an hour, I was still able to do some stuff before starting in on planting again.

Oh, and if you were like, seriously wondering where in the world I am:

There you go, now you're not in the dark about where I am, lol.

After my bike ride, I had some cereal and got ready to start planting more. Set up my handy-dandy ipod stereo again and was able to plug into some of the Solid Rock podcasts. Always awesome. Also, managed to get up to The Way event, so I listened to those again. Really awesome.

Then around 10 or so, Jim needed me to follow him into town with the Buick so he could drop off the Saturn at the glass repair shop because the windshield is miserable on that car and needed to be replaced. So after dropping off the Saturn, I drove Jim around to a few clients for his computer business of sorts to drop off and pick up some stuff before heading back home. Then when I got back home, I called Lydia. Her phone isn't working right, which is mega lame. :(

While I was on the phone with her, Lexx started barking, so I walked around from behind the garage to see what was up. Team Green drove up in a van... didn't know what it was until I saw the key, magic word on the van: Plumbing.

THE SINK!!!

I'm getting a real sink upstairs! I could not be more excited.

Out from the van pops your typical construction worker and a younger kid. I knew immediately he was checking me out - me with my sweat, caked dirt, work clothes, and all. Ridiculous kid, flaunting his intense aviators. I guessed he might be in high school no way to tell though, I mean, I look like a high schooler myself, so who am I do judge? lol... Then I got back to working and kinda forgot about it.

After awhile, Jim came back with Robby. He watched me work a bit before I was done for the day - I'd let Jim know before he got Robby that I was about to call it a day after finishing my current row of carefully planted and watered tomatoes.

Once I'd gone back inside, showered (somehow, this clay does not want to come off my arms. it's weird and kinda frustrating), and went back to my room to just chill before getting something for lunch and heading to town to go to the library to finish my grad school application. I already applied and got accepted to my program (agriculture education), but I'm technically still not in the graduate school of OSU, so I have to apply to that as well. All I need to do now is get some letters of recommendation and my transcript.

While I was bumming on my bed, reading a book, the house vibrated with a drill bit. The plumbers were back (haha, no no, they were installing something overhead, so no suggestive/retarded comments :P ). Meant I had to walk past them on the way downstairs, because they were working in the stairs because the mini bathroom is actually above the staircase. They were also working a bit in the kitchen too because of pipe connections and such. I could tell that apprentice plumber dude was still upchecking me out. Whatever.

I grabbed some food and headed back to my room to finish watching the last 48 minutes of Harry Potter 6. I realized, I hadn't seen it since last summer - in the theaters. And I was really cold, and didn't want to be watching it when I saw it, and I saw it with a total non-HP fan, so it was too long and depressing to say the least. But this time: this time, it was good. And I had to wonder why I was so weird about it when I first saw it: circumstances <--- that's all. Anyway, no more movie dates (w/guys) for me, that's all I can say, lol. They're just no bueno. BUT! this time, I loved it, and I kinda want to watch it again, but at the same time, I want to be done with watching movies for awhile. I'm soo into reading books right now, and I'm in the midst of like, 5 right now (hate it when that happens, actually), and I have at least 9 more waiting to be read on my shelf. So excited (like, you have no idea).

Then headed out to the library to return HP5 and HP6 before finishing my grad school app. Got it in! Happy about that, but now I have to work on the rest of everything.

Also? I'm kinda of the opinion that people out here don't know about Starfield, Telecast, or Phil (ridiculously-awesome) Wickham, and this, my friends, is a very upsetting fact. A fact that must be remedied soon (and very soon).

After the library I got a smoothie at McDonalds (apparently it's a new feature, and goodness, although it was sweet, it was goooood and just what I wanted... well, besides salad. I'd been craving salad like mad for the last few days, apparently I'm not getting enough veggies) and headed over to McComb park and read some more in my most recent fun book (book #3 of the summer so far). Then I played on the zip-line thing at the park before finding the worlds most awesome slide ever. it's not really a slide, and I didn't manage to get a picture of it, but it's almost flat and made up mostly of free spinning rods. Goodness, it's so awesome. It's like a rush, no joke. Then I went down like I was boarding. It made me really miss snowboarding. I went down it like that probably 10 times at least. Must have looked absolutely ridiculous to the neighbors, lol. So then, I got a sudden idea that I really wanted to get myself a longboard (nothing new, I might add). No sporting stores like that in town. Lame. So I headed to walmart to check out what they had. for $15 I could get myself a how-to-train-your-dragon themed 28" skateboard. Not really what I'd had in mind... but it's an option. How would I get it back to Oregon? Take the trucks off, of course. But I'm still not set on getting that one, I'm going to craigslist it up a bit and maybe see if I can look for one up in Omaha or something and tag along with someone.... it's a thought. I love longboards, and I wish I was more proficient. Not many people board around here at all, it's kinda sad. Food for thought, not doing anything major as of just yet.

After that adventure, I headed back to the farmhouse. I noticed Jan had picked up some salad makings, and it was around 6pm, and I'd been up since, well... for the last 12 hours, and I really can't wait til 8 or later for dinner as is the norm around here. I tried to decide between making myself a burrito (something I've been craving like mad because they don't have real mexican food here. Muchas Gracias date when I get back? Yes please, like right after I get back - thank goodness they're open 24hrs. But I also really wanted a salad. I opted for a taco-ish salad. Hot refried beans, salsa, ranch (no sour cream), avocado, lettuce, sweet corn, carrots (weird, but still on the crave list). So. Awesome.

Took some pics of the garden and such. Jim is currently out plowing. It's kinda still really hot, but anyway. Then I headed upstairs, walked into my room and set my stuff down and started pulling a few things from my backpack. Made sure that the dogs hadn't managed to wander upstairs and take off with one of my shoes and wondering why it's so ridiculously hot when we have air conditioning in this house, I walked in and out of my room. Looking down, I noticed a blue rubber bracelet. Thinking it must have been something Jan or Jim had left for me, as I was wearing two today (one, my orange Identity one from The Way event, and the other my new, black JSAW bracelet I got at church the other day... orange and black, perfect, no?), I picked it up. It's really plain, so I wonder if it must just be a misplaced rubber band from the plumbing guys? but why would they have rubber bands working with PVC pipes? Nope. There it is. Noticed the key thing. Wow. A phone number. Tricky, aviator kid. Haha, good one. Placed, I realized, directly in front, and in the middle of my door. Adorable.

This, my friends, is why I am laughing right now. I'm not super sure what to think about it, haha. So cute. Quite the smooth move. Still not positive this kid's not in high school, lol.

Anyway, now it's super hot in the house, and I'm sweating like mad, so I asked Jim why the air isn't on... apparently he just forgot. Um, anyway, Jan was super excited when she remembered too, so now the air's on, but it's still a million degrees in here.

of Independence Day

I love 4th of July. It is by far my favorite holiday. I don't know what it is. I just can never get enough of the whole thing. Perhaps it's the fact that it hits right in summer, the picnics, parades, runs, patriotism of the town and people - the fact that maybe, just maybe, people are actually proud to support the red, white, and blue old glory. Maybe it's the heat, the sunshine, the freedom of the day to do whatever you want, the barbecues, the popsicles, pop and chips, or maybe it's just the fireworks. I don't really know how to tie it all together other than I just love the 4th of July.

I woke up at 7:38am to a ridiculous amount of humidity. I felt like I was in a swimming pool without being submerged at all. Then I heard the rain. Crud. I get up and close the windows on the south and western facing walls (the floors by the windows already wet), assuming that either Jim and Jan already got the ones downstairs last night, or that Jim is already up. Regardless, I just don't really care if they don't and go back to bed. Only to wake up a few hours later to go to church.

The plan was to go to to Shenandoah Assemblies of God at 10am for church. I struggled out of bed, not being any more tired or uncomfortable than I ever have been while I'm here (perhaps a bit more damp, but that was from the rain). Checked the online schedule of Shenandoah to double check for the schedules for the day. Found out that everything, aside from the indoor pancake breakfast, had been canceled and that the fireworks display would be postponed until Saturday. Seriously? It's not even raining at a significant rate or anything. I was bummed. So much for a traditional 4th of July out in the midwest for me. Bummer. Had I been in Oregon, I doubt anything would be canceled, but then, I suppose that's the difference between the constant rain that western Oregon usually gets, and the occasional downpour that the midwest gets.

After going downstairs to get breakfast, I noticed that nothing had been closed up for the rain, so I proceeded to shut both doors and some of the windows. Lexx was mega depressed because of the rain, and therefore nothing to do outside. Plus, both dogs are almost always ultra lethargic in the mornings. They are too adjusted to sleeping in until noon. Ate some frosted mini spooners and headed back upstairs to finish getting ready for church. It's not really an issue. I don't have much in the way of clothes here (today I chose jeans, gladiator sandals, teal tank and my fun super epically floral tank over that), and even less if you count that over half are almost always needing to be washed.

But, I managed to either take long enough, get distracted by my music (as always), and stall on the internet to realize that it wasn't until about 9:56 that I was ready to go. At this point, I debated not going at all and just going back to bed - but I'm already up, and I do not want to work on any of the farm stuff today. Or, I could go to another church with a later service. No, Hannah, just go to church already! You didn't go last week, you really gotta go! You sometimes showed up late to Calvary back in Corvallis, and no one minded. But it's someone else's church, and what if I'm the only one?!? But really? who cares...

So I went anyway, and I just want to say right now, that I don't know that I've made a better decision in a long time.

I walked into the building (after walking through pouring buckets to get to the door) and the foyer was empty, but really pretty, and then went on into the sanctuary. Worship was already underway and they were playing a song familiar from Real Life (the college youth group that I go to at OSU). I find a chair in an inconspicuous place, hopefully not taking any late comer's usual spot (knowing small churches and all...) and set my bag down.

I started singing along, but I kept finding myself tearing up. I couldn't hold it back. I didn't want to look like a freak, being a visitor to a new church and all, but this was real. Everyone here loved Jesus. They were passionate about him. Sure, it was a bunch of midwesterners, and I was from Oregon. Sure, I didn't go to church last week, and I've been really inconsistent about keeping up with my Bible reading and personal studies, but these people - they shared something with me. Something that I was passionate about. They were real people. And we were worshiping together. We shared something more than just a phone call, more than an instant message, more than distant relation. I'd never felt closer to a group of strangers in my life.

The decor of the church was fairly basic. Reminded me of a smaller version of Calvary Corvallis. There were huge windows directly behind the worship team with water flowing down in a constant stream with the words "Streams of water will flow from within him" on the wall above them. Flags were hung all around.

A few worship songs with beautiful harmony later and we sang Proud to be an American. I've never sung this in church, but I honestly can't tell you that I can think of a single reason why it shouldn't be sung in church on Independence Day. It was at that point that I gave up trying to be any sort of normal, and just cried. Between people actually standing up and celebrating God, but also praising the fact that we live in one of the most prosperous and free nations in the world, and that we could all be here together, having the freedom to worship God how we want, read the Bible, and have such a culture where people are able to believe and say what they want politically and otherwise. We can, because we're Americans. It just seems that people don't take our nation for granted out here. Maybe because they're actually accustomed to working the land, maybe it's because they're deeper in history and closer to Washington DC and the other original colonies. I'm not sure what it is. But these people openly love America than anyone back in Oregon.

Then we sat down, and kids from the youth group came up and shared their experiences from a church camp that they all just got back from. It made me realize - made me jealous that I never got to go to one. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps it is because they were never the right denomination? There just weren't any? Too expensive? Conflicted with YMA? Was I too obsessed with YMA to pursue something like that? Probably... did I want to just stay away from anything like that? not really, but considering life growing up at Gloria Dei, yeah, I kinda didn't want anything to do with a church camp, because they might not have the right doctrines (and that's all that matters when it's hammered into your brain day in and out with the catechism, right?). But then I started thinking: how would my life be different now, how much more in love with Jesus would I be right now, how much more passionate would I be? Would I want to go on missions? Would I have already been involved in any by now? Would I not have made the huge mistakes over the years, getting stuck in ruts with high school and college and emotions and actions and getting involved with the wrong kind of boys? I can only assume so... But maybe I was supposed to go through that because God wants me to use them to help others. I don't really know, and I can't really say. All I can say is that I was very envious of these students for having such experiences this last week, and wishing beyond anything that I could have been involved in a camp like that, or at least be a part of one now, and be a counselor at one.

Afterwards, they showed a video from the camp. It was awesome. Then Pastor Dan got up and gave a really good message about freedom and bringing in points from our Declaration of Independence, a few points of history, and some science-nerdy stuff about that oil spill out in the Gulf of Mexico.

The service ended with another familiar worship song with just piano and voices: no shame, I cried again. After the service, I didn't really know what to do with myself. A few weeks ago, at Cornerstone CMA they all just packed up and left directly afterwards. They had coffee, but for some reason I didn't really want coffee. So I started heading towards the door and Pastor Dan was shaking everyone's hand. Good, traditional church thing to do, I thought. He was saying hello to everyone as they passed and such. I shook his hand, and he said: "I don't know that I know you, but I know I've seen you around recently."
"Yeah, well, I mean, I haven't been here to ShenAG before, I went to Cornerstone CMA a few weeks ago and wasn't able to go anywhere last week, and I don't know if you noticed, but I just started breaking down throughout worship because I've just been away from fellowship for so long (at this point, I almost start crying again) and just people in general. But anyway, I've been in town for about 3 weeks now"
"Oh? What brings you to Shenandoah?"
"Helping relatives move to the house at the end of Airport road and helping them get a really big garden started"
"Oh, how nice, where are you from?"
"I'm from Oregon, actually"
"Really? I have a daughter out in Seattle. Yeah, she's in nursing school"
"Oh, awesome."
"Yeah, you guys would really get along, but she's staying out there"
"Cool"
"You should come by during the week sometime to talk to us here"
"When are you around?"
"Well, a lot of people are out of town - out of town, you know with the holiday and, I mean, we have a few guests, but there are a good bit of people missing, and you should come by and talk to us"

At this point, a blonde woman who has been standing at the outermost of the doors to the church leans over.
"I haven't really been catching much, but I'm Annette, Dan's wife, can you catch me up a bit?"
"Oh, yeah, I'm Hannah, I'm 21, just graduated from Oregon State University, but need to get more agriculture experience, so I came out here - do you know James and Jan Bowery? Dr Bowery? They're his relatives... anyway, I helped them move to the house out at the end of Airport Road last Saturday, and I've been helping them set up a really big garden/farm, I'll be here all summer."
"Oh, wow. Have you gotten to meet many people around Shenandoah?"
"I haven't. I really miss people. I mean, I've basically spent the last 2.5 weeks alone."
"Oh, wow, that's really hard. Well, we have, as I'm sure you heard, events in the church. We have Sunday school at 9am and church, as you know, at 10, and then we also have something Wednesday evenings at 7, we also have a youth group - I know you're kinda in between ages, but anyway, then we're also going to AdventureLand out in Des Moines this week and a Royals baseball game in Omaha next Sunday."
"Yeah, I'd like to see if I can go to those. I'd really like to get involved and meet people and do things"
"Hey! You know, we have a girl who works in the office here who is about your age. I bet you guys would hit it off well right away. Have you been over to the Sanctuary?"
"Yeah"
"Mmmh, yeah, it's a really great restaurant. You two should get lunch!"
"That would be awesome"
"Have you been to the Garrison Coffee House out in Clarinda?"
"No, I really haven't been anywhere outside Shenandoah since I've been here."
"Really? Well, we should go on a coffee date."
"That would be so great, wow"
"Here, let me, give you my phone number and you can give me yours."
"Ok, awesome - wow, yeah."
"You know, when I saw you there talking with Dan, I thought you had to be from Oregon, and then you said you were! You just look like you're from out there, and you dress - have you read this magazine...? I can't really remember what it's called...umm..."
"heh... probably not"
"well, anyway, you're just dressed and look super cute, and you just look like you're from Oregon"
"Thanks"
"So yes, our office is open Tuesday through Friday and you're more than welcome to come over anytime"
"Yeah, I will. Definitely. I really want to get involved and meet people and start really doing things with other people"

It was amazing... I walked through the rain back to the car in a completely different attitude than I'd walked into the church. But when I sat in the car, I just cried. I was happy, but sad, but really happy all at the same time. Just soaking everything in, mostly.

Then I drove over to HyVee and picked up a box of those amazingly fluffy and wonderfully frosted cookies (complete with 4th of July sprinkles), and a few Budget Gourmet frozen entrees before heading back to the farmhouse. When I got to the signal at Airport Road, I cant tell you enough how badly I did not want to have to turn right. I wanted to go somewhere - anywhere but back there. But I went back anyway.

Jim started talking to me about growing a "live mulch" of sorts with the tomatoes, such as the lettuce mix, or trying something else like plastic, and what I thought the expense of that would be (a lot). And then telling me all about control groups (yup, been there, done that with numerous experiments in all my science labs) and their importance (why, of course).

I kinda felt rude, but I just had to take the day off, so I took my food upstairs and watched Howl's Moving Castle (as per my long-standing desire to see it, my love for Spirited Away, and Jeni's recommendation). I loved it.

Not long after finishing it, Jan popped through my door and asked if I wanted to go to that new vampire movie. I was all for it. I mean, I'd kinda been wanting to see it (it's my fav of the books, and a few of my friends had already seen it and said it was good [at least the battle scenes anyway], and I know that the music is good because I already got the soundtrack).

It was good, but depressing (as per usual of the Twilight saga). Jim fell asleep part-way through and started snoring, so I asked Jan if she could elbow him or something because the girls behind me were getting slightly annoyed, lol. Apparently he didn't know it would be so much of a chick-flick. um.. anyway

Then we went over to Nancy and John's for our 4th of July BBQ (inside b/c of the rain). It was mormon family night again, so we got to hear about how some prophet did something and said something that got into some scriptures saying about how the US Constitution is actually a sacred document and that this idea or revelation or something has to be therefore true because it's in their book.... ummm yeah.... anyway...  For dinner we had pineapple kabobs, shrimp kabobs, rice, salad, steak, sauteed mushrooms, and strawberry shortcake. Needless to say, we had a lot of very good food. No fireworks, but still good food. After dinner, and after helping Nancy with kitchen stuff, I went around the house with Rachel, talking about assorted randomness. Then we went up to her room and she showed me her pets again and her room, and we went into the cubby hole under/behind her loft bed and then sat on her bed for awhile and she told me all about her favorite books and stories related to them, and all about her pets, and all about family stuff, and all about other stuff too. She reminds me a lot of myself when I was her age (only, she's a bit more outgoing than I was). Then we went back down to the basement and finished watching the first episode of Surface (you know, that show that was on like, five years ago and only went on for one season).

Then on the way home, I kinda mentioned how I'd like to have a real bed... after being on an air mattress for almost three weeks, it hasn't been the best sleep that I've gotten, all other things aside. So, perhaps that is something that might happen in the next two weeks.

I took a few pictures tonight, but I'm too tired to post them right now, will do so tomorrow, hopefully.

Rain here is weird. I expect it to always be cold. But it's not. It's still just as hot, were it not raining. So there is really no need to wear layers. And even were you to wear a rain jacket or anything, it wouldn't really matter, because your clothes dry within minutes anyway because it's already so warm out, so you aren't left wet and cold much at all. However, as a creature of habit, I did manage to wear sweats and my striped sweater when I was watching the movie this afternoon, also because I just wanted to be comfortable, and I liked the fresh air, so I kept my north-facing window open, but there was a bit of a breeze, so it wasn't completely hot in my room.

The Buick is an interesting character of a car. It has no parking break. The front left tire is low on air (and ignored). All the interior lights are on all the time (you know, breaks, air bags, check engine... etc), the dash is falling apart, no seat belts in the back (I'm the only one who uses them anyway, regardless of them being present or not). The exterior is missing a good amount of paint, so it's been kinda spray painted over in a few places, and part of the siding has been falling off, so it's kinda missing a few pieces. In order to start it you have to turn the ignition while the car stalls and idles into starting, which can be anywhere between 2 seconds and 2 minutes. It's not trustworthy to drive distances other than just into town, because apparently it just shuts down and stops working until you let it sit and rest for about 10 minutes and then try it again (not sure how far the distance for this has to be... 30 miles? 80 miles? no idea..). Otherwise though, it drives fairly well (lol).

After arriving back at the farmhouse, read the most wonderful email from Grandma Mary, then I talked on the phone with mom and dad for about an hour. I can't say enough how much I love talking with them, and hearing from or talking to people in general. It's great. I'm really, really looking forward to hopefully getting connected and involved with people at ShenAG this next week. I seriously can't say it enough. So. Excited.

of planting: wash, rinse and repeat

...and 13.5 hours later, I'm done for the day.

We continued to attempt to get the auger to work, and it did, but it took forever, the post-hole digger was not a good idea. The soil is basically solid clay. It's disgusting.

So, after we decided that maybe after pounding a rail road nail into the ground, the auger would work better. Viola! It did... proceed Hannah pounding in a railroad nail into ground and pulling it back out again, moving over 2 feet, repeating. Wash, rinse, repeat. 100 times.

We then took a break for lunch and went to the HyVee market and got pork tenderloin sandwiches, which were more like fried pork burgers. Quite good, but huge and I didn't manage to finish mine.

Might I add that we have 600 tomatoes alone? And the goal was to plant them today.... yeah, no, didn't happen. Between running out of gas, Jim wanting to get more gas/oil mixture, but mistakingly purchasing, 4-cylinder oil with 5 gallons of gas, the engine wouldn't start (b/c 4-cylinder oil isn't meant for mixing with gas like that...). So now we have 5 gallons of bad gas.

Meanwhile, Hannah continues.

Pound rail road nail into ground. 16-21 hits and it's in. Then flip the hammer over to pull it out and make sure the hole is visible for Jim. Always keeping the measurement-line in mind so that we have straight lines. Move over 2 feet. Pound rail road nail into ground. 16-21 hits and it's in. Then flip the hammer over to pull it out and make sure the hole is visible for Jim. Always keeping the measurement-line in mind so that we have straight lines. Move over 2 feet. Pound rail road nail into ground. 16-21 hits and it's in. Then flip the hammer over to pull it out and make sure the hole is visible for Jim. Always keeping the measurement-line in mind so that we have straight lines. Move over 2 feet. Pound rail road nail into ground. 16-21 hits and it's in. Then flip the hammer over to pull it out and make sure the hole is visible for Jim. Always keeping the measurement-line in mind so that we have straight lines.

Awhile later, Fred, our neighbor comes over on his 4-wheeler with little Jessie on his lap (as always). He asks us if we're going to burn off the grass left on the topsoil. We tried, didn't take so well. He tried too, no luck, so he then started moving the loose aggregates and grass (mostly white clover) over to the side with the little plow attached with a wench to his 4-wheeler (little Jessie always on his lap, of course). After a little while longer, he brings a sledge hammer over to me because, well, it's heavier than my hammer. Sweet. Only 5-7 swings per hole. My tempo starts picking up. Even though the auger is temporarily out of service because of the bad gas in it, I keep going, knowing that we'll have to have this finished somehow.

100 more holes successfully measured and pounded by the railroad nail.... making it what, over 200 by now?

After awhile longer, Jim just gets kinda frustrated with how long everything is taking. He looks into what it would cost to rent a tiller. The soil had really only been disked, not plowed, so just the surface was loose, and it really just broke up the white clover that was taking over the field. His result is that it's $100 to rent one for 4 hours. He said "well, I think we're taking a vacation" implying that the tiller, would, indeed be a vacation from all the work we've been doing and making everything easier, plus that's about the amount it costs too... well, at least a day trip anyway.

Around 6:30, I think (time was pretty relative... the sun was still out, that's all I know), Rose pulls up, followed shortly by John, Nancy, and Rachel. We show them around with all the work we're doing. Nancy says that she has a farming friend who lives not far from here that she called and will come out Monday evening and till the rest of the garden for us (!!!!!!!!!!).

So all.... all of that... hammering, pulling, moving, measuring, repeating... over half of it won't be used. That's alright, I did what was the plan until the plan changed.

It was around 90 or so all day, but partly cloudy, and at one point it kinda sprinkled for about an hour (we're supposed to get a thunderstorm sometime today), which was amazingly wonderful to work in. My arms are a bit red from being in the sun all day, thankfully, I had earplugs, sunglasses, and a hat on. that helped. But because of the wind, my shirt kept blowing up, so my lower back is red too. I kept thinking about working in the hot summer sun like we did back when we re-roofed our house in Oregon, and I didn't want any major health issues to happen, so I made sure to drink a LOT (know for a fact that I drank around 1.5 gallons over part of the afternoon alone), and made sure to always bring out those SoBe Lifewaters to Jim, instead of the diet Mt. Dew that he usually drinks. Jan kept brining him diet Pepsi's, but I really tried to push at least the lifewaters (not unlike Vitamin Water), because at least they might help keep a person hydrated.

I mean, I can't really handle the tap water here. I don't know what it is, but it's revolting. I've taken to mixing the purefitness version (no aspartame) of crystal light 4x weaker than it's supposed to be just to make the water here palatable.

I've stopped noticing when I'm sweating here. It's so humid, so it's basically a constant thing.

The good news is that we have about 85 or so plants in the ground.

The other good news is that the whole rest of the garden area is going to be actually tilled and plowed on Monday.

I'm really tired. I can't even begin to tell you how many typos I have been making while typing this. I haven't worked at day like today in a very long time. It was rewarding in that it was literally, a hard day's work. But it was hard, and my arms are hot, and I'm hungry and quite exhausted, but I'd like to fit in some homework reading if I can so that I won't have to cram it in next week if possible. Who knows, my brain might already be too gone for any of that scholarly schtuffs.

I'm coated in dirt.
Is a serious shower in order? I believe so.

Uploaded a few more pictures to this facebook album (again, you don't need to comment on all of them...!!! unless you're my mom :) she gets the trump card on that anytime).

of sunrises and meetings with persons

Got up this morning at 6am to do laundry (I literally am out of clothes to wear... I probably wore everything I brought (besides jeans) at least 4 times), and just generally get my day started before Jim and I have to be at this place to meet up with this guy at 9am.

The sunrise was GORGEOUS. I can't emphasize that enough. It was AMAZING. Yup. It's been decided. I need to get up for it more often.

Rabbit Rabbit :)

Getting up early and the fact that it's the first of the month (hence: rabbit rabbit), reminds me endlessly of YMA. The whole thing. Up early, super tired, kinda sticky from hot air all night, stumbling around, turning music on, kinda a musty smell of the upstairs. Yup. It screams YMA. It's sad that I can't be there this year.... But I'm working on a letter to send them, so hopefully I can get that sent today.

Breakfast, showered, laundry, got ready and went to meet up with this guy at the chamber of commerce. He started telling me a bunch of things about agriculture that I kinda already knew, but he might be able to get me a tour and some other things to do at the ethanol plant! I'm super excited about it! Someone who actually has a potential at getting me in there, lol.

Then he and Jim talked about this FutureGen stuff regarding the algae plan/thing.
FutureGen wikipedia site
FutureGen Industrial Alliance site

The idea is for me to help them with this binder of sorts, working on uhhh, getting some sort of organization on a googlemaps program of sorts, and the idea is that I'd get paid for my work in this. We'll see how it all goes. I'm not planning on really being involved unless I can get paid for it especially with all the work I need to do for the garden to get started in addition to my other homework from my online class.

When we got back, I was ridiculously tired. I think it's from the benadryl I took a few hours previous. Or maybe just the start of slep-debt. Regardless, I decided it couldn't hurt to take like, an hour nap. Three hours later..... (ulgh), I got up, ate lunch, watered the plants, and Jan and I are about to head out to the pool. woohoo.

of runs at dusk and watermelon

I went on a run tonight. I wasn't planning on actually running, I actually just wanted to see what the temperature was like outside. But I ended up actually going on my run anyway. I didn't think I would want to just run up and back airport road, but I did anyway and enjoyed it much more than I had anticipated. Usually I change and go through a process to get ready for my workouts... changing, slicking my hair back, it could almost be compared to the effort it takes to get ready for a ballet class, only not quite that extreme. But anyway, it was really good. I'm actually quite surprised with myself.

While sitting outside reading my book, I apparently got a sunburn on my legs, which is a bummer, but it's nothing worse than the other kinds of mild burns I've gotten that heal within a day since I've been here.

Afterwards, we all ate watermelon out on the front porch. It was really good melon, and it was really nice to just bum out on the porch in the cool evening air.

We turned off the AC for the night to take advantage of the natural coolness of the evening and opened up the house and turned on some box fans for circulation. I'm sure if we want to keep the house cool we'll have to close it up good and early though.