Extreme Anger!!

Picture me with a red face and smoke coming out of my ears!! That is close to what I look like right now!! I just had a big huge long back to school post written and was just about to hit the orange Publish Post button when my computer froze!! It did this to me on my last post as well!! I swear, only computers can make me this angry !! This is retarded!! I should breath in and out more probably, hmm? I may or may not rewrite the post...it was a good one though. Ok Erika, 10 years from now this won't matter...but URGH!!

The Heart Clinic

Per Petunia's request, I decided to do a post about my volunteering at the hospital. Sadly, I don't do anything all that exciting. When I signed up to volunteer, I pictured myself interacting with patients. I imagined pushing wheelchairs, delivering flowers, and bringing smiles to the faces of poor hospital bound people. When I got my assignment, I found myself assigned to the Heart Failure Clinic.

When I come flying into the heart clinic on Wednesday afternoons around 3:15, I'm usually apologizing for being late...again. I grab the coffee pots and dump the excess coffee into the sink after I greet Lauren and Mary, the secretaries. The heart clinic deals with about 30 bazillion patients, each with charts that go in hanging files in filing cabinents. My next job is to file all the charts the nurses have used during the day. There are usually a TON of 'em out, despite efforts by Lauren and Mary to keep up with them during the day. After I do that I go to the off the list pile, which consists of a whooooooole bunch of faxes concerning individual patients. Each fax needs the chart pulled for its patient. After doing this I need to pull the charts for the clinic appointments for the next day. It's imperative that these charts be pulled, as the appointment can't be conducted without that patient's chart. I've spent more than one afternoon tearing the office apart, searching for the dang chart!! Once all this is done and I've contemplated harming the person who invented patient charts several times, I usually have about fifteen minutes or so until 5, when I leave. This time is spent doing some tidying up. I rearrange magazines, water plants, and shred papers as necessary. When my ride comes I leave, content that I've done my help for the day.

The heart clinic's redeeming quality is the people that work in it. Lauren and Mary, the secretaries, do an awesome job dealing with the 30 bazillion patients, doctors, RN's, and nurse practitioners that all demand their attention...normally all at the same time. If I have a question, they are always willing to help me out. The nurses are all awesome. Some have the habit of talking to themselves. It always makes me laugh when they look up and see me, quietly filing charts, and start apologizing. I rarely see the doctors, but when I do they always take time to ask me how I am and thank me for my work. I love how its kind of like a big family there. As an example, right before banquet I was telling Lauren and Mary about my dress. The next thing I know I'm promising to bring it in so they can see it. So I come in the next week with my dress and start to take the wrapper off so they can see it. Oh no, this isn't good enough for these two, they have to see it ON me!! Off I go into the bathroom to put it on so I can model for them. By the time I come out the entire office is waiting to see how I look!! It was a tad embarrassing to hear them all cooing over me, but at the same time it was like wow, these people are awesome!! Its moments like that when I'm GLAD I ended up in the heart clinic!!

Cran Hill III

I'm tired of writing about cran hill, but I suppose I can't leave you hanging, lol. Wednesday we were all like, dead tired due to major lack of sleep. We were forced to play football for awhile...yah, it was kind of funny. We had free time for the rest of the morning. At 1 we went tubing down the Muskegon River, which was actually a lot of fun!! The water was kind of cold at first, but I got used to it pretty fast. The water got really shallow in some spots, resulting in painful collisions with my bottom half and rocks!! It was over in about an hour, and we all wished it could go longer!! When we got back we had freetime until supper. I sat on the porch of the camp store and ate icecream with about 6 other kids. We talked and ate candy and stuff for like, almost two hours!! It was relaxing since we had NO energy!! After supper we had MORE freetime during which we played Frisbee for a bit, then football for about 10 minutes before deciding to go swimming. We were supposed to be in at 9 for a topic, but 7 of us were having too much fun and "lost track of time", arriving around 9:30. We were slightly chastised for our tardiness, but it was definitely worth it. Imagine cramming 7 people onto a raft meant for about 2 at most...it was hilarious!! Our topic, presented by two of the older kids, was about prayer. After the topic we could do whatever we wanted. Mostly it consisted of people throwing water and running around trying to kill eachother. I was content to sit in a chair and watch from a safe distance!! The guys bathroom ended up being decorated with streams of catsup. A girls pillow was graced with horse road apples in a leaf. Another pillow had a pair of whitey-tightys on it!! THAT was nasty, lol. Finally everyone settled down, however, and we went to bed around 2 a.m. Thankfully once we fell asleep we stayed sleeping free of mosquitoes!! The next morning we woke up and packed everything and left by 10. It was a GREAT couple days!!

Petunia, I'll post about my volunteer stuff soon, k? Great idea...I was running low on things to write about!!

Cran Hill Ranch II

Once we’d unpacked, we had lunch. After that, we had freetime until about 4:30. We went down to the beach for awhile. The water was warm, however. In the lake there were these floating wooden raft things that we played on, trying to balance and push others off of. Unfortunately it was kind of cloudy, so we didn’t stay long after we swam, because it was kind of cold. There were 14 girls and two showers…it took quite some time to get everyone cleaned up, but we managed. Since we still had over an hour before we had to come to the topic, us girls sat around and did our nails in one of the bedrooms. Nailpolish and remover smell quite strongly, and Shelley, one of the chaperones, said she could smell us as she came up the stairs!! We talked and did our nails until it was time for Rev. Vogelaar to come. The boys came by, and one remarked that “it smells like GIRLS in here!!” Although a bit late, Rev. Vogelaar finally arrived and gave a topic about Joseph and resisting temptation, as Joseph had to do in Potifar’s house. The topic took place in the chapel in the woods. Dinner followed the topic. The lasagna was plentiful, as was the French bread and salads that accompanied it. After and cake-and-icecream dessert, the whole group went outside for a big game of softball. It grew very competitive as each team was accused of cheating and the ump of being biased for his wife’s team. The game ended with a half point win…the half point being scored when there was a huge argument over the runner being out or not out. There was more freetime, spent with a bonfire and playing ping-pong, pool, and foosball, as well as a couple people going swimming. At 11:30 evening devotions closed the night…or we thought they would close the night...
Not being ready to sleep, Kate and I decided to go bother the other room of girls. They had their door closed and the lights off, so we figured we’d turn the light on. We did, and beat a fast retreat back to our own room. The other girls apparently weren’t asleep, so two of them came FLYING into our room, armed with cups of water!! They tried to throw it on Kate and I, but mostly missed us, instead getting the sleeping bag of one poor girl who wasn’t even involved, Kristen. Kate and Kristen decided that the other girls, Anna and Maria S., didn’t deserve to get away with their wrong, so they went charging into the other room and drenched Anna’s sleeping bag while Anna was getting more water. They came back into our room and got innocently into bed. Anna and Maria came back with even MORE water, asking for a truce. Anna hadn’t seen the water in her bed yet. We agreed to a truce, and the two left. Seconds later they were back, and succeeded in drenching Kate. They went again for MORE water, but we moved a set of beds in front of our door so they couldn’t get in. This ended the fight…for Tuesday night.
While all this was taking place, one unusually brilliant young man, Arnie, decided that there wasn’t enough air circulation in the lodge, so he opened the doors!! Unfortunately, the doors didn’t have SCREENS!! This allowed about 4 bazillion mosquitoes to take up residence in both wings of the lodge, as well as the main room in the middle. There were two girls rooms and three guys rooms. One of the girls rooms kept their door closed and escaped most of the mosquito issue, but the other 4 rooms weren’t so lucky. The girls in my room tried to sleep, but we finally concluded it was hopeless around 2 a.m. We moved into the great room in the middle of the two wings. This was ok for a little while, but the guys weren’t able to be quiet for more than 2 minutes at a time over in their wing, getting up every 2 minutes to go to the bathroom, blow their noses, or come into the middle room to ask what we were doing!! They were plagued with mosquitoes, same as us. The mosquitoes found us in the room all to soon, and some of the girls went back to the bedroom, while the rest of us stayed. The mosquitoes weren’t any better in the room, as those of us who kept switching back and forth figured out. Around 3:30 a.m. a whole group of guys went to sleep in the basement, managing to make more noise then they had UPSTAIRS!! With all the commotion of people running around, swearing at the mosquitoes (or yelling at them at least), and swatting them, it was pretty much impossible to sleep. The mosquitoes would bite legs and arms, and when one took cover in the sleeping bags, they were forced out from the heat. If one braved the heat, they would find the bugs buzzing over faces and in ears, making it equally impossible to sleep. 4:30 a.m. found Kate and I in the great room, and the other girls in one of the two other open rooms. The other room of guys joined us, but, like Kate and I, found the great room to be full of mosquitoes, though not as bad as the bedrooms. The wake-up call came around 7:30. I think I got about an hour of sleep the whole night. It was one of the worst nights I can think of in my whole life!! More to come soon…

Cran Hill Ranch

craMp missed me!! I must say that this made me feel special!! Thanx 4 noticing!! Anyway. Tuesday I got up bright and early, and arrived at my friend Maria's house by 8:30 in preparation to drive the the carpool spot by 9:15. Our church in Kalamazoo was having a youth camp at Cran Hill. We arrived without too much fuss. Once there, however, we were forced to wait for almost 45 minutes, due to the bus being stuck in traffic. However, it finally arrived and 7 of us boarded the VERY full bus. In fact, the bus was SO full I was stuck sitting on a sleeping bag in the aisle!! NOT a very comfortable spot, let me tell ya!!! We reached Cran Hill, which is by Big Rapids and stuff I think, around 10:45. We had the retreat center to ourselves, and quickly claimed beds and unpacked. More to come when I feel like it...

Scary, Violent, or Confusing

Last night I went bowling with some friends, and after that we went back to someone's house to watch a movie. I have something against any movie that is scary, violent, and/or confusing. To my great dismay, my dear friends chose to watch Black Hawk Down, a movie that is VERY violent and even MORE confusing, although not that scary. I can't understand what it is that attracts guys to war movies!! All they are is people going around with guns and bombs, shooting the bad guys!! If you're really lucky you'll get to see someone's arm get shot off or the insides of some poor guy. Due to its graphic nature, and the fact that I was VERY confused and frustrated since I had not a CLUE what was going on, I spent most of the movie with a couch cushion in front of my eyes, talking to one of the other girls. Another phenomenon of guys is that they REALLY hate it when you talk through a movie. This annoyance is multiplied if the talker happens to be making periodic comments about how stupid the movie is. The moral of the story is I STILL DON'T UNDERSTAND GUYS!!

Vampires*

Once upon a time there was a house. The house was in need of some interior design. The owner of the house decided that, since her and her husband were quite busy and her children should grow up in a decorated house, she would ask her niece to do it for her. Now, when she had asked her niece to do this, she'd forgotten that the niece had little to no sense of fashion, and dressed all in black. I'm sure one can guess what this led to. When the owner of the house came home one day, all of her walls were BLACK!! The first thing she thought of was that black is a slimming color. Her children liked the walls, and since black is very hard to paint over, the walls stayed a raven hue. One day however, one of the kids, a little boy of about seven, asked if he could sleep in a box. This led to one thing after another, and soon the whole family was sleeping in long, narrow boxes. One great advantage was that they no longer had large house payments!! Soon neighbors started disappearing. The mother thought nothing of it, and even enjoyed the lower and lower grocery bills each week. Soon, however, the other neighbors began to notice the strange goings on at the house. They reported it to the police who looked into it and soon after arrested the family. The mother used the money she had saved on groceries to get a lawyer. When it came time for the trial however, the lawyer was frustrated and confused, and quit, as he realized something was very wrong and he wanted to be no part of it. On the day of the trial, the family was quite hungry. Since they didn't want to be put in jail, they just ate the judge. The bailiffs, having suffered budget cuts of late, had had their guns replaced with wooden sticks, and were no match for the revived family. They got away and lived happily ever after.

*Vampires are NOT real!! Just so you know.

This story was inspired by an IM conversation with Shannon. Much thanks!!