Stephanie Says.. Take a walk inside my head

Okay so back in July sometime, after I got all my hair cut off, Kenny and I loaded up the Blazer with Ben and Jennifer’s posessions, grabbed one of Ben and Jennifer’s dogs and headed down to Florida.

We weren’t happy about heading down to Florida.  Heading down to Florida meant that our best friends were moving many states away, but we knew that God had plans for them and we, somewhat reluctantly, helped them go.

 

Our first challenge was traveling with Trigger.  Trigger is Ben and Jennifer’s dog.  Trigger weighs, I’m guessing, 100 pounds.  At that time, I was still scared of dogs.  All dogs.  Any dogs.  Dogs were barking machines with teeth, as far as I was concerned.  Wrong.  We left Kentucky at five in the morning and I slept for the first two hours because Trigger was asleep too.  The more we travelled, the more the sun made itself known, so Trigger would sometimes stick her head into my space to catch some  air conditioning, but she was a sweet dog who didn’t cause any problems other than wanting to “greet” a puppy during one of the rest stops.   

                       

When we got to Florida, the unpacking began.  There were things to go in Ben and Jennifer’s new kitchen.  There were things to go into Ben and Jennifer’s new bathroom.  There were beds to reassemble.  There were couches to carry and boxes to cut open.  We were making good progress on this (Er…that is, the guys and Jennifer were making good progress.  I didn’t carry much.  I held doors and took pictures.  The idea of walking up that metal ramp into the truck scared me to death.) when the rain came.  And stayed.  And stayed.  And stayed.  I think some people almost went to sleep.  Ben’s grandmother made herself busy unpacking boxes.  Jennifer worked on the laundry room and didn’t even freak when two bugs ran out into the open part of a drawer.  I was wishing I had a book to read.  And Kenny?  Well, Kenny sat out on the porch and watched the rain.  Kenny loves storms.  Something about the coolness of the air during a downpour appeals to him.

 

On Sunday, we went to Ben and Jennifer’s church.  They weren’t yet members of First Baptist Lake Placid, but they are now.  That morning, the youth had just gotten back from camp, so they lead in the showing of slides and the singing of songs.  They talked, they cried, they sang and they danced.  Yes people, they danced in church.  It was mostly a group of teenagers jumping up and down,  but it was so spontaneous as to be infectious.  I still find myself humming “We will sing, sing, sing and make music with the heavens” sometimes.  We also got to sit in on their Sunday School class.  Several of their members were out running some kind of marathon, but we had a nice discussion about spiritual gifts and it was interesting to look around at the church that I was sure had been a school at one time because of the numbers on the doors and the concrete floors.

The unpacking got done and Kenny and I still had some vacation time left, so we went to a mall to seek out a movie.  There was a late showing of “Journey to the Center of the Earth” in 3-D and I wasn’t enthused.  I have a hard time with cardboard 3-D glasses fitting into my own.  I was surprised when the glasses looked like sunglasses and enjoyed the movie.  It wasn’t Batman, but I think Ben and Jennifer and Kenny enjoyed it too.  We agreed that the effects really enhanced the movie, though it was disorienting to take the glasses off and go to the bathroom.

Ben provided one last entertaining moment before we had to return to “our” Kentucky.  On our last night, we went out to dinner at a fancy hotel/dining room.  I mean fancy.  It had fireplaces and people in business suits gathered around tables as if they were having meetings.  There were flowers outside our window and we even saw a rabbit in the grass.  We had steak and for dessert we debated between chocolate and non chocolate offerings.  Such temptations as bananas foster and rum cake were on the menu so I asked was I to drive home if the others got treats containing alcohol.  Ben smiled and said “Stephanie, the three of us drunk could drive home better than you could sober.”  Everyone got a big laugh out of that.

 

           

The boys, much to Jennifer’s impatient tolerance and my unwitting amusement, ended up building a monster out of our bread tray, silverwhere and napkins. Ben threw in the ketchup bottle (which was the cutest little bottle of baby ketchup) and even Beth, our waitress, got into the act by bringing us toothpicks and candy to serve as antennas.  The candy idea didn’t work, but we had fun anyway trying to stack things without them falling over.

 

    

The ride back to Kentucky was different without Trigger in the car.  And it was sad leaving our friends behind.  Kenny and Ben, however, have found a way to beat the distance between them by e-mailing back and forth and taking pictures of phones, computers and anything else technology related that happen to catch their eye.  As for me and Jennifer?  Well, I miss being able to call her and say “I want to go see a movie.  Can you take me?”.  I miss teasing her about the way that her thoughts run parallel to Kenny’s and how they must have melded minds at some point in the past.  I miss having a best friend.

 

But Kenny has said we’ll visit.  And Ben says we’re all going to Vegas one day.  Complete with a trip to the Grand Canyon.  The three of them don’t miss a beat.  They love threatening me with scary things.  It’s so much fun to get together.  I hope it happens soon.