OK, seriously… How many times can one person desperately require a potty break within the span of two hours. This is ridiculous. Ridiculous, I say! (Which is not an invitation to ridicule me. but if you must… by all means…)

I think I may need to lay off the liquids a bit.

For the record:
Though I often feel that I am on the verge of wetting my pants… I will have you know that it has only happened once… when I was in first grade… and laughing very hard.

As we left tonight, the officer who was watching the church said these words to Richard: “I was about to say… Aren’t you forgetting something?”

And this is why:

The story begins with my first real need for a restroom. I had needed to go for a while, but I was so into what I was reading (in Exodus) that I kept telling myself I could hold it just a bit longer. So, by the time I got up… I REALLY had to go.

I started wandering in that direction… that direction being the OPPOSITE CORNER of the building. The women’s restroom (at least the one I know about), is pretty much as far away as it could possibly be, while remaining on that floor and actually within the building.

Well… it was the middle of the night (actually, it was only about 11 PM) and the church was mostly empty… so there wasn’t much light out in that direction. This shouldn’t have been a big issue for the vigil. Most people would only be coming for an hour. Surely they wouldn’t develop a desperate need for the restroom in that time. But I… well… I drink and pee a lot. It’s as simple as that. Making it until 11 PM is actually pretty good, when you take that into consideration.

As I wander down the dark hall I realize, “Hmmm… stairs… that could be interesting.” (There are about 5 stairs that lead up to the part of that back hall, where the restrooms are tucked away. So, I turn around, thinking, “Maybe the officer will know of a closer restroom.” Umm… yeah… that was a brilliant lead. OK, so I knew my chances were slim. but I thought the fresh air might be nice, too.

On my way out of the room, I had noticed that I DIDN’T notice Richard anywhere. He seemed to be absent. There were all sorts of great potential explanations for that… so I didn’t get too worried. Surely he wouldn’t leave me… right?

So, I get outside, and the guy is like, “Umm… did you walk here? It’s just my car and one other in the parking lot right now.” (And, he had obviously just seen the people who got out of that ONE car a few minutes earlier. I was not one of them.)

So that’s why I didn’t see Richard!

My response: “Umm… no… but that explains why I didn’t see my ride home as I was leaving the room. He was in the black car that was parked over there…”

So, we had the, “I’m sure he’s coming back” conversation, but I decided that it would be a good idea to get my phone, anyway. And… I was experiencing hunger. The hunger wasn’t too intense, but a sudden flash of boredom had just hit me, and going to get food or something sounded really appealing. As I explained in the last post, getting up to use the restroom had suddenly made me NOT want to go back into the room. (Which is sad, as I had really been enjoying it prior to finally giving in and getting up to empty the ol’ bladder.)

The phone rang a few times (just enough to make me go, Ummmm….) and then he answered (sigh of relief). “Hey, where are you?”

Apparently, he had gone to get a drink. (“A drink” being a Rockstar… oh, Richard.) That was good… because he probably would have somehow been in trouble (as I had informed the officer) if we went to get food and didn’t grab me. Of course, that was just because I suddenly wanted to get food… because standing and moving around felt really good… and I had so quickly forgotten how great it was in the room.

Richard actually pulled back in to the parking lot while we were still on the phone. We briefly discussed the hunger thing and then the pressure in my bladder kind of chimed in and I decided to use the light of my phone to venture through the dark halls. When I returned from peeing (and DIDN’T die on my way back down the stairs… which was quite a feat, let me tell you… I had just come out of the blinding light of the bathroom into a very dark hall)… I decided to go stare at the sign-up board for the vigil.

This (staring at the board) is actually something that I felt the need to do pretty much every time I left to use the restroom. It was that resistance to sitting back down just yet. I even did this sometimes when the fact that I was totally parched would send me out to the fountain, which was only a few yards away from the door to the back of the chapel… which was mere feet away from where I was sitting. Yes, a little sad. You would think that I had that board memorized by now.

Well, on that first trip to the board (and staring fun!), I was, as I said, sadly resistant to returning to that place of silent prayer. (Yeah, Jesus… I guess that watch with you think is harder than I realized. Praise the Lord, I never fell asleep, though.) So… I did something relatively juvenile. (I was just killing time, really.) In the second slot next to Richard’s name, he had written “Friends from IHOP.” Well, I was the only “friend from ihop” who stuck around… so I crossed out the S’s in the two times that he had written this. (10PM and 1AM were the only times that other people hadn’t also signed up for in the middle of the night.) As this didn’t take much time (and I needed to take more time), I ended up writing, “i.e. Christine Wasinger” beside this, as well. Yes… so mature.

As I was writing this, a woman who had also been there for the last 2.5-3 hours came up to me and started talking about IHOP (seeing the “Friendsfrom IHOP” thing). I love to talk about IHOP. And then she said something about how great the bookstore is. I love to talk about the bookstore. She was actually quite excited to learn that I worked there. Richard, who had been talking to her earlier, joined back in to the conversation.

And then he asked if I was still hungry. I told him I was… but that it was actually probably more of a boredom thing than a hunger thing. So he said, “If it’s just boredom, I’m going to go back into the room.” So I said, “Yeah… you probably should.” and started heading back in that direction, myself. I think that my alterations to the board had made me realize what I was doing. And I started to remember how good the last three hours had been. I probably just needed to get back in there and press through it.

And I did. And it was great. And I had several quick (but longer than necessary) bathroom breaks after that.

But back to the beginning of the blog. When we finally left that night, Richard simply walked toward where I was sitting and, when I saw him, nodded toward the door. So I was a few seconds behind him, by the time I got my stuff (umm… my Bible and purse) together. The delay was just long enough that it made the security guard remember the first time Richard had left me. (Well… he didn’t REALLY leave me.)

And that’s why he said it, as I walked through the door: “I was about to say… Aren’t you forgetting something?”

So… Stacey took this quiz and posted it. And then I, in my “I’ve been in bed all day” boredom, decided to do the same.

Why did I take the quiz? Why am I posting this? Apart form that whole “I was bored” thing, I really don’t know… but here it is. 

Oh… and if anyone cares to know… According to basically every pride and prejudice quiz they have on here (yeah, all the girls took those ones at work on Tuesday), I am Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy is the man for me. Well… now I can rest easy, eh?

Which soldier type are you? created with QuizFarm.com

You scored as EngineerMilitary Engineer. Your job is usually overlooked, but without you nothing gets done. While you sometimes get annoyed at this, and and you know the only time people come to you is when there’s something wrong: You understand that you are the heart and soul of any organization with honesty and nice work ethic to boot. Hard working, intelligent,”I need more Duct Tape!!!” Engineer 100% Special Ops 81% Combat Infantry/Armor 69% Artillery/Aircraft 63% Officer 50% Civilian 50% Medic 50% Support Gunner 50%

In all honesty, I don’t recommend the site… at all. Just skimming the titles of other quizzes (quizzes other than the ones my friends were taking at whatever moment) proved to be quite frightening. Too much time on our hands… too much time. Aughhhh… we need more prayer in our lives.