I have very vivid memories of roller coasters in my life. My first experience was going to Carowinds with Jamey's family for his birthday... and we were both too short to ride one. Yep, even the Scooby Doo one. Sadly, the bumper cars were enough to jog my bladder up a bit for a kindergardener, so I don't know why I thought I could have even handled a more adventurous ride.
Jump ahead to my eighth grade year... I clearly remember how cool I thought my Aunt Debi was because she would ride that rickety old roller coaster with me at the Pavillion in Myrtle Beach. I'm not sure if we rode it before or after having a Peaches Corner hot dog, but I remember feeling queasy nonetheless.
Freshman year at UNC during one of my asthma exacerbations (mentioned below) when I was having the closest I've ever come to a near-death experience, I fully remember feeling as though I was riding a roller coaster in the real-life ambulence trip. As I was unconscious, I didn't realize it was an ambulence, and instead my subconscious had me screaming and hanging on for fear of death in some imagined coaster car. As we got closer to the "station", my ex-boyfriend who was riding with me kept encouraging me to hang on due to my screaming to him "I'm not going to make it!" (I've since then equated his role in my subconscious to my spiritual cheerleader, and maybe that was what God was using to cheer me on to waking up.) (I'm not making any of this up, by the way... it freaked me out then and it freaks me out even now that I've shared such a story with the masses or lack thereof online...)
My current roller coaster is a little less exciting, but just as real to my psyche. Dan and I are in the process of looking for and buying a house. I took the forbidden step last week of falling in love with one... now nothing else comes close. We went to several open houses today and realized that if nothing else, we are both on the same page in our love with THE house. We've taken a couple of friends with us to look at THE house, and they keep offering encouragement- "it looks like a Becky and Dan house!" or "oh yeah, I can so see you here."
Enter the roller coaster. Conversations in our house range from "Where will we put the guest bed?" to "Should we wait another year to save more?" I talked to my Dad today who offered fatherly advice of "don't bite off more house than you can chew." Yes, this house is bigger/nicer than we originally thought we could/would have. But we have waited. We have prayed. We have paid off debts. We have fought. We have looked at our options. And now we are in love.
Hopefully I will be able to invite you all to a cookout at THE house sometime soon. If that's not the case, will you please bring a clean receptical for me to throw up in? I might need it anyway... roller coasters often do that to me.
