Solitude.

So my weekend of solitude has turned out to be not so solitary.

I embarked on a lonely adventure last night just after leaving a time of joy and deep laughter with friends that make my spirit soar.

Let me tell you about that time quickly before I dive into the present.

We got off work early yesterday, 45 minutes early, to be a little more precise, and so Sonia, Daniel, Deanna, Darren, and myself hopped into two vehicles and headed to town. Taco Bell and Dairy Queen, here we come. We enjoyed great times of gluttony but more important was the mood lingering in the air, the memories being doodled on the pages of this year. We laughed. Deeply and frequently. As I sat there in the corner booth at the local Dairy Queen, watching shadow puppets and planning future marathons, my heart was full. More full than I can remember it being in a long time. Sitting in the presence of friends, friends that care, friends that long to know my heart in its most sincere form, now that's time well spent.

We said our farewells and I got in my car alone, headed to Marianne's.

Now Marianne is my new Maxine. She's an older woman, who is admirable and inspiring. Her spirit is humble. Her heart is overflowing. And for this weekend I am the recipient of the overflow. She has a storybook house at the end of a private road, with four extra rooms that she opens up to anyone who wants to stay...oh and I forgot about the loft. There's a magical adventurous loft that sits above the living room. Perfect for late night pillow talk and top secret plots to save the world.

I arrive at Marianne's and come to find that there will be others accompanying me on my weekend of solitude. Others including both my supervisors and their significants. I'm sharing a bedroom with my housekeeping supervisor, and a bathroom with my kitchen supervisor.

Epic.

And now here I am, sitting in Sisters Coffee, my favorite place in this new environment of mine, and along come Mr. Kyle Kuiper and Tex Piper. A fellow intern, with a fellow kitchen co-worker.

Here we sit, Mac books propped open, like some sort of technological and socially inept playground party. Without the playground. Or the party.

I thought of posting several blogs to tell you everything I had to say...but then I thought that was silly, so I decided to clump it all together...so here I am, launching into my time of solitude, by sharing with you some funny stories and some deep spiritual insights.

Funny stories first, followed my spiritual nuggets.

Funny story #1.

We recently acquired a new vehicle here at camp. Vehicle is an overstatement.

It's a six person golf cart. It came from a retirement home.

And its has clowns painted on it.

The best part, it was christened The Jolly Trolley, at some point in its lifetime.

Sorry to say that soon it will be repainted and renamed. Apparently we're not jolly clown supporters here at the ranch.

Funny Story #2.

My kitchen supervisor's name is Tim Dillman. He has a three year old daughter named Nora. She is brilliant and charismatic and has developed more personality in her tiny three year old body than I could ever hope to accumulate in an entire lifetime. She prefers to be called Ariel. She greets you with a curtsy and a how do you do? and she uses words like filthy and frozen Tundra. I showed her my unicorn. She petted it and then asked her dad if she could have one. I asked if I could be her friend. She said no. I feel inferior to her. And I'm ok with it.

Funny Story #3

Me and one of my roommates who shall remain nameless, had an imagination party while cleaning rooms at the orchard inn. We imagined life after the canyon. There were slurpees on the beach and potential exotic dancing careers. Her name will be Sandra Honeysuckle, should our imagination become a reality. Sometimes inappropriate moments have the potential to lift my spirit dramatically. This was one of those moments. As is the next story.

Funny Story #4

Me, Sonia, and Daniel played dirty word scrabble. Not necessarily morally uplifting, buuuutttt....sometimes childish antics are worth more than morals. What?

Funny Story #5

I've never felt so handicapped as when I try to push a mop bucket down a corridor, a mop bucket with a faulty wheel. Just when I think I've got it stabilized and on a straight path, it tweaks and careens into the wall, frothy water billows over the edge, leaving me sad and dejected, complete with sopping pantlegs and a bruised ego.

Funny Story #6

Would you rather sit, wallow, in Stinky Pete for an afternoon, in the middle of summer..

or, lay in a bed naked, while dirty fem bags are poured all over your body?

Stinky Pete is where all the kitchen garbage lives. Fem bags are pretty self explanatory, perhaps sanitary napkin bags would help you get the point.

Again, inappropriate, but comical nonetheless.

So which would you rather?

Funny Story #7

Cookies & Cream. Oh no, not the tasty ice cream you're envisioning. Sonia re-christened the poop chips caked on the inside of the toilet bowl. It's now known as cookies & cream. I'm taking you to realms you never wanted to plunge into, but I'm trying to introduce my world to yours. If you're not ready to dive in whole-heartedly you can click the little red x in the top left hand corner of your safari page, or the colorblind x in the top right corner of your pc.

Moving on...

Funny Story #8

As you're probably aware, I got a tattoo of a unicorn a little over a week ago. Whilst getting this permanent whimsical creature colored on my ankle, I asked the artist, "Have you ever tatted a unicorn before?" He replied, "I tried, but it ran away."

Nuff said.

Funny Story #9

This next one is documented "carrot girl at Wal-Mart" in my notes. I'm sorry to capitalize on someone else's lack of intelligence, but I just can't let it go. Krista and I went to the Wal Mart Superstore last weekend on the way home from Spokane and Krista was attempting to buy some carrots, 11 of them to be exact. We get to the checkout and the associate helping us has a very indiscreet and unattractive hicky on her neck. Red flag number 1. She proceeds to try and ring up Krista's bag of carrots. She leaves her station to walk over to the next check out to talk to a fellow associate. Red flag number 2. She then comes back to us, proceeds to touch every carrot as she counts them, and then rings them up for .86 cents each. Unless these carrots were dipped in a sheen of solid gold, there's no reason why Krista should be paying TEN DOLLARS for a bag of carrots. When we attempted to tell the girl that the sign above the carrots said .50 cents a pound, she looked at us quizzically as if we were speaking another language. Never did she ask one of us to run over and double check, nor did she volunteer herself, or even call for back up to double check the price. She looked at us. Quizzically. So Krista left the carrots and we left the store. Later, we discovered that the woman had forgotten to put the 6 dollar block of cheese in the bag as well. Funny but unfortunate. Poor poor carrot girl.

Funny Story #10

The weekend before last we had a different kind of group come to camp. The consensus of the entire staff was that this group was just slightly off. From the work crew to the assignment team to the campers, the aura was just off. Maybe it was the camp speaker with the "no homo" pin permanently attached to his shirt. Maybe it was the incessant sassy attitudes. Maybe it was the man in the pits washing dishes who was outraged that we didn't have powdered creamer or a better underground drainage system. Whatever it was, the Family Worship Center just didn't rub me the right way. I got chewed out by a middle aged man with a sweat ring around his collar, because our drain in the kitchen is inadequate. I tried to pass him off to my supervisor, but he wasn't having it. He wanted to prey on my innocent intern flesh, what with my young female lack of authority and my stupidity in all things drain related, I was the perfect candidate for his unabashed commentary with a heaping side of spittle.

Funny Story # 11

There's no story. This is just funny. He's 6'7''. She's 5'0'' even.

Funny Story #12

When I showed my boss my tattoo, he told me "can't wait to see what that looks like when you're 90." And that was it.

Another day, he told me that he had a no tattoo policy in the kitchen and that if I wanted to work in the kitchen this summer I would have to have it removed. He said it's setting a poor example for the children. I told him I would be finding a job elsewhere should this become a legitimate policy.

Funny Story #13

Since getting Amadeus on my ankle, yes, I named my unicorn Amadeus, pronounced Ah-ma-day-us, there has been talk between Sonia, Daniel, and myself, of many other potential tattoos.

They include but are not limited to,

A dinosaur eating an ice cream cone.

A bottle of orange Fanta that has a speech bubble that says "Bonkerz."

A bag of chips.

A hamburger eating a hamburger that says "you are what you eat."

A pterodactyl.

A robot eating a hotdog.

A full arm sleeve of me bungy jumping with different significant creatures that either have wings or a parachute, flying in the air next to my falling body.

There are other funny stories but I'll spare you so we can get serious.

Last weekend I met with a most wonderful and talented woman by the name of Kathi Inglesby. She pursues me. She asks really hard really meaningful questions. And she's insanely comfortable with sitting silently while gazing into the eyes of whomsoever sits across from her. Needless to say our time together was deep, and rich, and overwhelming.

She asked me a question that's been resonating in my heart and on my mind.

"Are you hunting, or are you being hunted?"

We went on to talk about the subjects of the hunt. If I'm hunting, who or what am I hunting? If I'm being hunted, who or what is hunting me?

Think about it.

Since that convo I've been attempting to process what that means for my life. I'm certainly being hunted in more ways than one, hunted by doubt, by grief, by unbelief...I'm hunted by the looming ever-present possibility of failure, of loneliness, of inadequacy.

But in this scenario where I have fallen prey to so many things, I think that I've definitely taken some steps in starting my fight back, my own hunt of sorts. I've suited up in the camo and I'm perched behind the bush, watching, analyzing, assessing the situation, deciding how best to execute the attack. My prayer is that I would be more aware. More aware of what's hunting me, more aware of my feelings, my attributes, more aware of who I am in my relationship with the Lord.

I think that's why I'm out here. I'm here in this canyon to redefine my relationship with the Lord and to redefine the relationship between my mind and my heart. I've drawn pictures in the past of my brain beating up on my heart. It's a perfect depiction. My brain is the bully and my heart is the poor kid who just got it's milk money stolen.

So I sit here, in my attempt at solitude, reflecting on how to set the tone of the rest of my life, how to re-evaluate and restore and redeem this wretched heart and soul of mine.

For you oh Lord, are my rock, and I will trust in you.