Don't Trust The Crows

   This morning, as I was leaving my apartment for work, I heard a strange thud over to my left as I stepped out from under my building's entryway. Looking over at the object that had thudded, seemingly from the sky, I noticed something rather alarming. The object was a bone. A largish bone, nasty, which some fragments of meat still attached.
    Then I heard the cawing. Already knowing what I would see, I still looked up, at my roof, at the two crows peering down at me - and the breakfast that had escaped them. I stared, they stared, and then they started flapping and cawing some more, and not needing any further signaling, I stepped away from the bone.
    I stepped away from the bone and I wondered; what the hell where those birds pulling up onto my building's roof and eating? That bone sure didn't look like any kind of a chicken bone. The crows have pulled chicken onto the roof of my various apartment buildings many times. Back when I was still living with my mom and my sister, our townhouse apartment that we shared had a skylight (a misguided attempt at being 'upscale') and one time a crow even had a chicken breast piece up on that roof, and he ate it over the skylight, so that we could all get a good view of him eating his fried chicken carrion.
    This bone didn't look like those bones, nor did all the other bones littering the ground around our building. I mean, sheesh. People were going to come by after the crows had left and they were going to think some messed up voodoo doctor/witch/blood mage was living up in that building. And what the hell kind of animal were the crows eating on up there??!! That's not chicken bones! Whatever animal that was - I somehow doubt that the crows scavenged it from the eyesore dumpsters. I think they went hunting.
    I looked at the crows again, still looking at me from their higher ground, and I realized that they had the perfect ambush spot for passersby, and I wondered if those were the bones of Fluffy the dog or Spooky the cat. Except they seemed a little big for a cat, so maybe Bruiser the dog was up there instead. And I wanna know - who's next? Are those crows going to be up on that roof one day munching on people? The way they were looking at me, I believe that they were at least considering the idea.
   So I did what any sane, rational person would do. I left. If those crows were fixing to decide to try a people hunt, I had no intention of being next. And now I know; and now you know. Don't trust the crows. 

My Super Power Is Breaking Shit

   So I went to vacuum the other day, and found that my vacuum wasn't working. Not even a little, which was pretty terrible because my daughter, niece, and nephew had been running in and out of doors all day long. And not one of them were taking their shoes off to come in until I noticed and started screaming like a banshee. But too late, the damage was done, and my carpet looked like the forest floor.
  I waited until the kids were all done playing before I tried to clean up, because the damage was done, and although they were now taking their shoes off, I figured clean up at the end of the day, get it all done at once. This turned out to be a good thing, because my vacuum, as I have stated, wasn't even working a little bit. Which turned me into a dragon, I mean, I was breathing fire and everything, the whole works. No one wants to see that in the middle of the day. You want to see that at the end of the day, so that you can go to bed and forget you ever saw it.
   I don't know how many vacuums I have broken in my lifetime. I can't keep count; there are too many. And when you add all the computers, microwaves, toasters, and other various appliances, you start to see a disturbing trend. I break electrical shit. I break it. If it is electrical, coming to my apartment is a death sentence; I am gonna end up sending them all to that little electrical playground in the sky. (Except for gaming consoles. Immunity? Whatever the reason, thank heaven for that.)
   Anyway, I was talking to my sister, trying not to be a braying banshee, although I turn pretty rabid when things stop working -especially when they stop working right when I need them most - so I'm not sure I managed to keep my raging inner bitch in check. In my defense, however, my carpet really did look like a forest floor. The kids had tracked in every speck of dirt and pine needle that they could manage.
   My sister, who happens to be a vacuum whisperer, told me that the belt was broken and that I just needed a new one. I insisted that I just needed a new damn vacuum, this one was a piece of shit, and I wanted to kill it with fire. My sister, the brave soul that she is, listened to all this calmly, and then told me to get out my screw driver, and that she would be over to look, and that she was willing to bet money that the belt was just broken.
   Further investigation revealed -- the belt was broken. Easily replaced, and at $3.99 for a two pack, much more affordable than a new vacuum. However, this is me that we are talking about. Things don't turn out as they should around me when electrical gadgets are involved. Either I broke the belt, or the vacuum heard that I wanted to kill it with fire and it's plotting revenge because now, whenever I vacuum -- it smells like fire. 

Chaperoning School Field Trips; Otherwise Known As Hell

   My daughter has a school field trip coming up, and once again, I have found myself agreeing to chaperon this event. Yes, this is a good way to get to know my daughter's teachers, this is a good way to get to know the kids she is choosing to hang out with, this is a good way to meet some of her friend's parents, and this is a good way to participate and support her education. These are all the reasons that I agree to do the chaperon thing (that and the knowledge that if the school does not get enough volunteers, they cancel the trip altogether, which would make me feel massively guilty. Understandable, because there has to be enough adults to keep the kiddos supervised and safe, but pressure, nonetheless.)
   The reasons that I dread field trips are simple. I am not a child person. Never in my life have I ever wanted to be a teacher; I don't have the patience. My sister works in the early education field, and the stories she tells gives me true horrors; even the ones that she thinks are hilarious. You found the kids playing in the toilet? They need to be coated in Lysol now; they are contaminated. Yes, my daughter has done disturbingly disgusting stuff, especially during her toddler years; kinda the definition of being a toddler: gross little mini-human who gets away with disgusting shit by being adorably cute and innocent. I smell a conspiracy, but I digress; with my own daughter, there was no one around to judge as I ran after her cleaning up the messes and disinfecting, all while dealing with massive gag reflex. People are gonna look at a preschool teacher or daycare worker a little askance if boogers and baby shit bring on epic amounts of gagging.
   Of course, these are older kids that I am chaperoning. They might pick their noses, but exposure to society and their peers has taught most of them to do so in secret. What I don't know won't hurt me, right? But older kids bring more issues, albeit ones that do not make me gag. Last year, my daughter's class went to see a limited-time exhibit of King Tut's tomb for one of their field trips. They also did a segment on ancient Egypt, so that the field trip could be incorporated into the lesson plan. This was the first time I had heard of a lesson being given just so that a field trip could be justified, however, as I said, the King Tut exhibit was only there at the Science Center for a couple months. The 5th grade teachers saw a chance to have a really cool educational field trip, and certainly, I can't blame them. So field trip it was, and of course, my daughter wanted me to go. (I kinda like that part though, being well aware that one day, she is NOT going to want me to come.)
   When you chaperon at my daughter's school, they split you into groups of four or five, each with a chaperon, and the teachers wander and bounce from group to group, checking on stuff. Which means that the chaperon is in charge of four or five little ankle-biters, and only one of them is hers(his). Can you say....outnumbered? And there I was with four rambunctious ten year old kids, in a room full of ancient Egyptian artifacts: priceless relics, thousands of years old, and they all want to touch everything. Eight hands. Eight hands grabbing shit that I couldn't even imagine the cost of. Can you say...heart attack?
   And this is just one field trip. I get suckered into most. I've helped the kids plant trees, released salmon into the wild, visited zoos, just to name a few, and I can tell you horror stories about ALL OF THEM. Shovel wars, mud fights, pulling the feathers out of the peacock's tail!!! The list could go on, but regardless, all my daughter has to do is look at me with her sad, chocolate-brown puppy dog eyes, and say, "Please, Mom?" And there I am, saying that I will go. Chaperoning is a hell that many parents endure, but we all make sacrifices for our kids, and I make this one because I actually think that field trips are valuable to education; they give the kids a chance to learn something from a different angle than a school book or a lecture. Plus, going on a trip tends to make learning fun. Win/win. Except the parental hell part, but who counts that, really? Yay, parenting! 

Monorails, Family Excursions, and Seattle

   When I first came to Washington, there was so much that I missed. I missed the heat of the South, I missed the beaches, and I even missed the way people talked. I love hearing a Southern accent; I feel homesick every time I do. However, Washington has become my home as well. There are many things about this area that I have come to love.
  One of the things that I love is going to concerts and ballets and shows in Seattle. I go with my mother and my daughter, and sometimes my sister and her two kids; it's a family thing. I also feel that for the kids, seeing things like a music concert or a play or ballet is something that is very important. I feel that this expands their creativity, but that's a post for another day.
   We go to these shows as a family, and last night, my mother, myself and my daughter went to the Josh Groban concert. We have been to see him three times, and we always enjoy the show. This time, I did not expect to get to go, because with the saving up for the recent Yellowstone trip, I had a tight budget. Unknown to me, my mother purchased my ticket as a birthday present (BEST PRESENT EVER!!!!) so I did get to go.
   My mom works in Seattle, so she is very familiar with the area, thus we rely on her for the navigation of Seattle's busy streets and many sidewalks. One thing that my mother is very firm on is that in Seattle, you drive as little as possible. So we park at a certain garage and we hoof it over to the monorail.
   My mom and daughter and sister and niece and nephew all love the monorail; the monorail scares the shit out of me. Heights, we've talked about how I don't like heights, and the monorail runs on a single track, high, high above the city. Not only this, but the monorail car tilts as it goes along it's demented, merry-ass way. To this side, to that side, and I am doing my best to lean the opposite way that the monorail is tilting. Ya'know, to balance things out. As was the case last night, when my mom and daughter were watching me with knowing smirks on their amused faces. As the monorail slowed, my daughter says in a mock-soothing voice, "Don't worry mom, it's stowing down because we are almost there."

The stage for the Nutcracker ballet. 

   You see, one time, on the way to a performance of the Nutcracker, I really freaked out. The Nutcracker is a ballet that we have been going to see every year, performed by the Pacific Northwest ballet. We LOVE that ballet, but I don't love the monorail. And that day, the monorail was jumping and banging more than usual. I mean, I usually don't hear the thing rattle so much. I guess because usually, the monorail is pretty full, as a major form of transportation in downtown Seattle, but on this day, we had a pretty empty car. So I heard all the little bangs and rattles all the better. And then we slowed to almost a stop, crawling along, slow as a snail.
   After listening to all those bangs, bams, and rattles, I was positive that somehow we have broken down in the middle of the friggin' air. I was freaked, I mean, how were we going to get down??!! And I asked, "Why are we stopping?!" in a panicked manner to my mom. Which of course meant that I was louder than I thought, so the few people that were on the monorail were looking over at me with amusement in their eyes.
   "We're slowing down because we are fixing to stop," my mom says to me, and she's really trying not to laugh. Credit to her, because I probably would have laughed. Which is why my daughter cracked her little quip last night on the way to the Josh Groban concert; my fear of the monorail is a joke between her and my mother, and they love to remind me about the night that I panicked because we were stopping.
   Not that I mind, and I laugh along with them, because as calm and collected as I try to be, there are times when all that just goes out the window, and when that happens -- it's pretty damn funny. Gotta see the humor in things. And the rewards for using the monorail are extensive, we use that to go the space needle, the Seattle Science Center, the ballet, concerts, and so-on. What's a little irrational fear compared to those rewards?

Vacation! For Two Weeks :)

    I am writing this blog post in advance so that my blog can still have a little new content while I am on vacation. At the time that I actually publish this, I will be on my way to Yellowstone!!! So excited. I am going with my mom, my sister, her two kids, and my daughter and we are all going to pile into my sister's minivan and go! We are all very excited. But I didn't want my blog to be completely inactive while I was on vacation, and you can schedule posts to publish, so I thought, why not write a few!
   Of course, you might be wondering why  I don't just take my laptop and publish while I am on vacation. Don't worry -- I will write up some good Yellowstone vacation posts when I come back, but to be brutally honest, my laptop is no longer portable. My family understands that I am a tightwad for certain expenses, so they don't say much when they look at my ancient laptop held together with tape. But what would the public think? Plus, I don't think the tape would hold together for travel. My laptop is stationary at home because when you move my laptop, you can hear the hinges creaking and cracking. I am so going to have to get a new one soon, but I am waiting until after vacation. If I bought one now, that would eat heavily into my vacation money, and I just won't do that. I have been saving for this vacation for a year. I had to scrimp and scrimp and pinch pennies left and right, and I am not wasting that money on a laptop!

Teacups spin, and I get sick, so my sis took the kiddos on this one.

    We will be gone for two weeks, so I am going to write up some posts in advance to publish, so you'll have something to read from me if you want. And then when I come back, I will try to have some good pictures and topics about our family vacation to amuse you with.
   The last vacation that we did as an entire family was to Disneyland, and that was a blast. That vacation was mine and my daughter's second visit, but my sister's and her kids first visit, and we had a great time. The best time we had was on the It's A Small World ride. Now, I know that some people think that this is a dull ride, but I like this ride. And I am curious about whether or not you could actually tip that boat that we ride in. So my sister and I spent several trips trying to do that, and on the last, final good-bye trip, we shared a boat with a dad and his teenage son! They participated in our attempt to tip over the small world boat. We did not succeed, but the attempt was so much fun. I hope that they had as much fun as we did. They were laughing with us, so I think so. Probably this was not the safest activity (duh, no probably to this, it wasn't safe, dumbass. Don't do this!.)
    Anyway, we didn't act like this the entire time. And we never acted like this when there was someone who really didn't appreciate our attempts. We are not the types to spoil someone else's fun. My sister's kids have the same twisted, warped personalities that seem to be genetic in our family, but we usually sat in a boat alone, and the in this case, the other family was willing! Plus, the boats are really well connected, so I was about 90% sure that we would not tip it. And I was right.
     Regardless of wild shenanigans, I will return in two weeks. So if you ask a question, and I don't answer you, hopefully you know that this is because I am on vacation. I will line up a few blog posts for scheduled posting while I am gone, but I won't be responding to questions/comments until I get back. And then I will regale you with my wild pet-the-bear Yellowstone stories. (Joking, joking.)

Disney is freaking awesome; I don't care how jaded and cranky you are. 

   Plan your own trip to Disneyland :)

Hot Dog Stand Hell

   I don't like working in the food service industry. There are several reasons for that; I don't have the personality that is needed to be a server in a restaurant, and I don't give a shit whether or not you want a booth. My brief stint as a waitress has given me a lot of respect for those who are servers; they take a lot of shit and they take it with a smile. But needless to say, when I started working in retail, I thought food serving was behind me.
   Eventually, my career path led me to grocery stores. My first experience in retail had more to do with tanning salons and video rental -- not groceries. I like groceries better. Video rental died with the advent of Netflix and Redbox, and tanning salons are gross. But I did not expect to find myself serving hot food again, especially after switching to grocery and steering clear of the deli. Deli and meat departments are the two departments I have 0% experience in.
    But in the grocery store I worked at while I still lived in Florida, for some reason unknown to me, management decided we were going to have a little side business and open a hot dog stand in the front sidewalk of our store. Beats the hell out of my why anyone thought that this was a good idea, but they ran with it. Before us lowly employees had time to sneeze, management had one of those little mobile food trailers rented -- the kind of little trailers that you see at fairs and sometimes at farmer's markets.
   And I had a manager that volunteered me for everything. Need help in the pharmacy? Marie will do it. Need an assistant in floral? Marie will do that. Need someone to learn to cut up the fresh fruit bar? Well, Marie will do that too. He even put me on the early morning cleaning crew, and waking up at 3 a m to get ready to spend the early morning deep cleaning check stand sucks. But I wasn't surprised when I found out he had scheduled me for a day in the hot dog stand. As the person who had hired me, he knew that I had a food service background. He just didn't know that my food serving skills reeked worse than month-old crusty gym socks.
    But I actually try to be willing and a good sport, so after giving him the glare-of-death, I submitted to a shift in the stupid hot dog stand. Which in the first place, was an oven. Florida, remember? In the summer. Heat. So much heat that you could literally crack open an egg and fry it on a car hood. And I was stuck in a tin food trailer with a fan and a bottle of water. Thanks.
   The second problem? Guess what they gave me to cook the hot dogs with? A grill? A pot of boiling water? Nope. They gave me a effing crock-pot. Have you ever cooked hot dogs in a crock-pot? I had never done it. And when you have a line of people all happy to be getting a hot dog for a buck, cooking hot dogs in a crock-pot is not the way to do things. Crock-pots, as you all know, are slow cookers. And not surprisingly, they cook hot dogs very, very slowly.
    Which means that I kept getting yelled at by people because they wanted these hot dogs fast. And they all had issues with the toppings. We had ketchup and mustard and relish, but we also had frozen onions pulled from the freezer section. And people would scoop up the onions out of this frozen bag, and then complain that they were frozen. Which just got a disdainful "duh" from me. I kinda always thought that if something looked like it was frozen, you would assume that it was frozen. I guess I'm silly like that. Also, apparently I was under-cooking the hot dogs. Having never cooked hot dogs in a crock-pot, and having been given no guidelines, I wasn't sure how long to cook them for. Oops.
    That was bad enough, but the day got worse. Sometime while I was trapped in the metal furnace of hot dog hell, I was bitten by a spider. Spider bites are no fun. They swell to huge sizes, and they get all hot, and they hurt. Those spiders have freaking fangs, and the one that bit me must have been a good size because you could see the mark.
   In case that wasn't enough, someone drove right into the damn trailer while I was in the thing. The trailer was too big to fit onto our front sidewalk, so they put the thing out in the parking lot up front, and some asshole came along and drove right into the side of the trailer. One minute I was grumpily trying to cook hot dogs in a crock-pot, and the next minute the whole trailer was rocking wildly back and forth and hot dog water was sloshing everywhere, and then I was jumping out the side door trying to shout , "Abandon ship!!!" while I laughed my ass off. My manager was not amused, but damn it, I was free!!! I would take that freedom by any means necessary. Even if freedom meant the trailer getting rammed by some elderly person who couldn't see while I was still inside of it. (No one was hurt, not even the elderly guy.) Aaaaaah, sweet freedom. And that was my last stint in food serving service. The hot dog trailer was not damaged, but the next day was manned by some other poor soul. 

Can I Get A Big Yeehaw?

   There was a time, long ago, when I was terrified of speaking over an intercom. I didn't like intercoms, I still don't care for the sound of my voice over speakers, and a mistake was mortifying. However, this is a fear that I had to confront and overcome early in my working life. Once upon a time, before the birth of my daughter, back when  I thought that I would never have kids, I worked at a bar & grill. A bar & grill in the South, that catered to rednecks. 

    I had started out as a waitress, but being a waitress takes a certain personality and skill set, and I am lacking those. I hated waitressing, and eventually I moved from waitress to hostess. Back then, I was painfully unsure of myself, and seating people was better than serving them, but the hostess had one job that I was terrified of. 

   You've all witnessed the singing of happy birthday to people who come to any restaurant, I'm sure. They all have some way of recognizing people choosing their establishment to celebrate. The bar & grill that I worked at, if you will remember, catered to rednecks, so they figured that rednecks would not be impressed by the singing of happy birthday. So what they did, was the hostess would get on the intercom, and the hostess had a speech that went like this: "Listen up, ya'll! (Insert name) is celebrating her/her birthday today! On the count of three, I want to get a great big YEEHAW from ya'll to help them celebrate!" And then the hostess would count to three and the whole bar would bellow, "YEEHAW!!" at the top of their lungs. 

   And inevitably, my time came when I had to preform this dreaded service. I was really a mouse back then, so I barely squeaked out the message, and the ensuing yeehaw was pathetic. The thing about rednecks: if they are expecting something to be big and loud, and they are disappointed, they will make you do it again. I was mortified, but I had a bunch of dudes calling to me, "C'mon, sweetheart, we gotta do that again!" and various forms of heckling, that never got mean, but was insistent. I was very kindly, yet aggressively forced to get on that intercom, and repeat the entire process. Which I did as loud as I could, because even worse than being on the intercom is being forced to get people to yeehaw all damn night, and I wanted to be done with the process. 

    However, this incident did take some of the crippling stage fright that  I used to suffer away. It's kinda hard to be worried about getting on the intercom at work now. A spill? No problem calling for maintenance over the intercom. Way better than getting your whole customer base to shout yeehaw at you. Also, this experience vastly helped me when  I had to do my speech class in college, which is one of the classes that I went to campus for. While giving speeches to a class full of nervous students who were predisposed to feeling sympathetic for me was not such a problem. Of course,  I was still nervous, but not matter what happened, I wasn't going to have to get on an intercom and act a fool. And I was lucky, because none of those customers in that bar & grill were being mean to me. They understood that I was shy, but they were gonna have their chance to holler YEEHAW as loudly as possible; in the long run, this was a helpful experience, because I just don't care about intercoms anymore. They have lost all power to frighten me. 

"Momma! You Lied To Me!!!"

    Ugggg. Tomorrow is the big day: shots. Shots as in multiple, not as in one. I was expecting only to have to get my daughter the TdaP booster, but this morning I spent some time on the phone with staff from her doctor's office, and they kindly reminded me that my daughter needed some shot for meningitis and did I also want to get her starting on the HPV shot while I had her in there. Attack of the multiple shots!
    Well, of course I said yes. I want my daughter as protected against that biatch we call Mother Nature as possible. Every time we think we have her beat: she cooks up some nice new disease. But I am not looking forward to the triple attack of needles (sharp pointy things piercing my baby!!!) and I am really glad that I have the next three days off so that I can monitor her for any adverse reaction. And of course the fevers and not feeling well that always comes with vaccines.
   Which leads me to today's story: the last time my daughter got shots. She was five, and because of the February birthday, had not yet started school, but that was coming in the fall. She just needed the last of her shots. So I made an appointment with her doctor and we were on our way.
   My daughter by that time had learned to be very wary of the doctor's office. After a childhood of vaccines, how could a kid not be nervous? And although you can't tell now, after two years of major growth spurts that left her damn near as tall as me, and after a term in elementary school where she was constantly playing rough with the boys at recess, she was once a very dainty little girl. And she has these big brown eyes that melt you, so when she sat in the doctor's office waiting to be injected, which her bottom lip trembling, all the nurses and staff were trying to put her at ease.
   Of course, I knew what was coming. I had been doing shots with her since birth; due to the move from Florida to Washington, these nurses did not understand the horror that was about to descend. When my daughter started getting those shots, she didn't cry: she screamed. Blood-curdling, glass-shattering, ear-drum busting I am being murdered screams. Screams that had every single staff member and nurse and doctor busting into our little patent cubicle to see what the hell had went wrong and who was dying. Little girls: never underestimate the power of their vocal cords.
   Of course, all this time I am holding her and frantically saying,  "Shhh, shhhhh. These will make it so you don't get sick." But she was screaming so much that I didn't really think that she was paying me any attention.
   Several weeks later, unrelated to the vaccines, the whole household face a plague of stomach viruses. Every time someone would shake the virus off, they would only be well for a day or two before getting sick again. Liquid from both ends, and this is not fun when you are just as sick as your kid and the niece that you are babysitting. Threw up? Doesn't matter, the babies are throwing up too and you better get your ass up and take care of them. Shit yourself? Tough; so did the kiddos (two year old and a five year old) so get your ass in gear and clean them up and if you are lucky you'll have a few minutes break to take care of yourself. And we used up all of my gatorade supply, which is something I keep stocked for illness. My first defense against dehydration.
   So when we were all better, and we were shopping in the store, restocking my depleted gatorade supply, what comes out of my daughter's mouth? You probably guessed, she exclaims in the highly outraged and disillusioned tones that only a five year old girl can manage, "Momma! You lied to me! You said I wouldn't get sick if I got shots, and I got sick!"

A Ramble About Money

   Today, I was checking, because I've been checking all week, because I only got scheduled one day off, and although I decided to roll with it and just work the extra day because I have a vacation coming up and I need the extra money, I am reserving the right to complain about this extra day of work until I am forty. But I digress. I was checking today, was how this story was going, and one of my customers' bill came up to a little over $100, and she had a kid. And that kid's eyes popped out of his little head, and he said in an awed voice, "Whoa, that's a lot of money." And his mom looked at me and we laughed at this little piece of naive childhood, because all of us adults know that $100 in the U.S., that doesn't get you very far.
  But that is also a bit of naivety that I can relate too, and this actually brought to mind a childhood vacation from when I was a child myself. My mom, sister, and I were visiting my dad in Maryland (before they divorced). My dad was in the Air Force (which is why I was born in Japan, because my mom was overseas with my dad when I was born) and for a while, he didn't live with us because he was going to all these overseas places so we went and lived in Mississippi, where he is from, while he did his job overseas. But for a short period of time, he was not stationed overseas, but was in Maryland, so we went to visit him. So I don't suppose that this was a vacation trip for him, but it was for us, and he recognized that, and as a gift upon our arrival, he gave my sister and I both a hundred dollar bill to use as spending money while we were there.
   $100!!! That seemed like a fortune. And actually, to just give that to a kid as spending money, that is a lot of money, but I remember the shock of holding that money. I felt so rich. But even better than this feeling, is my sister's reaction. (Hehe, she's gonna kill me.) My sister was so happy to have that, and so determined that no one was going to take that money, that she took that bill, and stuck the entire thing in her mouth. She figured that no one would want the $100 back if her slobber was all over it. She's such a germaphobe, this made sense to her because she hates other people's slobber, but she was just a kid, so she had no knowledge of how dirty money really is. She is probably highly disgusted that she ever did such a thing. But her taking that money and cramming it in her mouth made my dad laugh and laugh and laugh.
   Of course, now a hundred bucks doesn't seem so much. Buying a game takes over half of that money right away, if you buy it new. And that won't even cover the bill if  I go shopping for books. Don't get me started on the grocery bill -- I try to eat somewhat healthy, and healthy food is way more expensive than junk food. And my daughter's favorite fruit is cherries, the most freaking expensive fruit I've ever bought. A little bag of cherries costs me eight to twelve dollars at the store. Can't that kid like apples the best????
   But I understand that kid's awe (not mine, the customer's), because a hundred does seem like a lot, and I understand the parent's wry  amusement, because what is a lot to a kid, isn't much to an adult. (Although that was a LOT of money to give to a kid just to spend. My dad must have saved up and done without to give that to us.) And the whole point of this blog post might have just been to tell the world that my sister once crammed a hundred dollar bill in her mouth. I'll never admit that though. It's a mystery.....

What Trauma Did You Inflict On Your Nose That Made You Unable To Smell That????

  I have a real issue with something, and my sister laughs at me and calls me strange, and well, that's not really the worst thing that she has ever called me, but I digress. This issue that gives her the giggles is my pet peeve about people buying rotten potatoes, and the fact that I won't buy potatoes bagged in plastic. If I buy bagged potatoes, they have to be in netting, and I have to be able to see every single one of them. Otherwise, I am picking through the potato bin, because to me, there are no smells that I have come across that smells worse than a rotten potato.
   I know, this is strange. I can hardly blame my sister for calling me strange and a weirdo, but I work as a cashier, lets not forget. And this is relevant because all of you little food eaters, you shop at grocery stores. And most of you buy potatoes. And I have to scan those potatoes when you come through my line with them, and when they are rotten.... it's really bad.
   Have you ever smelled rotten potatoes? This is the thing that I cannot fathom: why do people keep coming through my line with a bag of potatoes that obviously has at least one bad one in it? Because that smell, really strong. To describe the smell, I would have to say imagine a three day old dead fish left in the sun to rot, except worse. How can you not smell that? My sister swears that she can't smell that, but I think maybe she killed her sense of smell somehow, because it's really strong. Sick to my stomach strong. And even worse that the smell is the amount of liquid that bad potatoes produce. They produce pools of liquid muck that carries the smell, so that when a customer slams a bag of grody decay onto my belt, the liquid oozes into the cracks of the conveyor belt, which means that I am smelling that God-awful, sick-to-my-stomach, nose-hair-melting smell ALL DAY LONG. Not to mention that when I pick up the bag, usually some of the liquid gets on my hands, and no amount of hand sanitizer removes that smell; you need a full scrub, and I am talking a ten minute surgeon scrub, not some little rinse and dry. Otherwise, that smell is going to stick to your hands and  you are going to smell that smell wherever you go, and frankly, in my own opinion, skunk smells better.
   So good luck with that stink, but me, I'll pass. These days, I've memorized all the PLU codes (codes that we enter for produce, which pulls up the price, if you didn't know) to the bagged potatoes, so if you come across the cashier frantically saying "I don't need the potatoes on the belt!!!" Well,  there's a good chance that you've met me.
   But seriously, this is why my sister calls me weird, but I am not sure that I am willing to take that from her. This woman swears that she can smell fevers, so who's the weirdo?

Conversations With Customers

  We get all types working in customer service, and when you work in a grocery environment, that is no joke or exaggeration. Everybody needs to eat, and at some point or another, everybody comes shopping for food. This means that we cashiers/checkers get into some of the most crazy, zany conversations. I know that I have, and there are certainly some that have stuck in my mind. As I like to share, I am going to record some of them in this blog post. If you are cashier/checker you'll have some of your own, but these are some of the memorable ones that I have had.

Conversation 1: Not Human

   This one was a double act. I had two separate customers talking to each other at first.

   "Everything is going up. I guess that's how it is," she said, "Nothing's free."

   "Oh, I don't know about that," the man behind her chimed in, "A man bought me a free tank of gas once because he had just won the lottery. I was at the gas station and he just offered."

   "Things like that really show you that some people are just still human and not, well, whatever they are." the woman exclaims. 

   The man gets all sly-faced and looks at me and says,"Maybe this nice lady will show us that she's really human and give us our groceries free."

   "That'd be great!" the woman exclaims.

   "Nope," I say. "I'm not human; I'm whatever they are."

  You should have seen the looks that I got. Well, whatever, I thought I was funny.  

Conversation 2: Grandpa-faced

   For some reason, when I first started working at the place that I work now, I got a lot of people who thought that I was Russian. We have a high Russian customer base, and I do have a lot of Russian coworkers, but I am not Russian. Since I was a military brat, I started out my life being raised all over the place, but when my dad retired, we permanently moved to Mississippi. I was nine at the time, and Mississippi is the place that I identify as my childhood home. But I had a lot of customers who would come up to me and just start speaking Russian at me. This was the case with two young woman, probably early 20's. They came up and just started talking away to me in their language. I looked at them, baffled, and told them that I did not speak any Russian.

   "You don't speak Russian? You aren't from Russia?" one of the girls asked.

   "Nope."

   "That's so strange," she replied."You have the face of our grandfathers."

   Well, I have a sense of humor, so I about died laughing at that one. Good to know that I'm grandpa-faced. I'm sure this was an example of a misunderstanding due to language barriers, but it was pretty funny and never let it be said that I can't laugh at myself. 

Conversation 3: The Sheep Spy

   I have this man come through my line on a fairly regular basis and though  I can't be sure, I am pretty certain that he is homeless. He is also crazy, but when he is in a good mood, he can be a pretty fun guy. The first conversation that I had with him cemented the image of the nice guy in my mind. He was carrying the huge backpack that he always have, and he looked pretty gruff and wasn't clean, so I do admit that he did make me nervous. Especially when he leaned over my counter, with a dead-serious expression.

   "Can I tell you a secret?" he asked.  

   Being the verbal genius that I am, I responded with "Uhhhhhhhh......"

   Despite my lack of enthusiasm, he gleefully responded, "I'm a sheep spy!"

   "A what?" I asked, befuddled.

   "I'm a sheep shy. Because I'm not a vegetarian!"

   "Okay," I laughed, "Me too." 

   I finished ringing him up and he paid with coins and crumpled dollars and then he exclaimed "Hey, watch this!" And he began to juggle the oranges that he had just bought. 

    He does come in really grumpy and mean, but I try to remember that he can be really fun too. It can't be a sheep-spying, orange juggling day everyday. 

    There you go: a small but colorful peek into the working life of the cashier. 

The Plight Of A Helicopter Mom

   Yesterday I took my daughter to the show, Shen Yun, which is a performance of classical Chinese dance. We have been to the show once before, and plan to go again, because we really enjoy the dances and the costumes are gorgeous. We go to see them at McCaw Hall, and we always get box seats, which are  up high. Heights are something that make me nervous, but they don't seem to bother my daughter at all.
   Since heights obviously don't bother her,  she is leaning over the rail of the box, which is three stories up, and I am grabbing hold of her and hissing, "Don't do that!" After about 50 times of this, both my mother and my daughter are sick of me and my mom is making cracks about how she's glad I didn't see what they were doing the previous weekend, when she took my daughter to a ballet performance without me.
   And I'm rolling my eyes and exclaiming, "Oh my God, don't tell me!" Because I just really don't want to know. You see, I have a very, very vivid imagination. Sometimes this is a true blessing, but when my daughter is leaning over a rickety-ass railing three stories up, this is nothing but a curse. Because I can see her, clearly, crumpled on the floor with her arms and legs twisted at unnatural angles and blood and brain leaking out of a cracked skull. This flashes into my mind every single time she leans over that damned railing. So I can't help grabbing hold of her, because I panic.
   We make it through the performance and intermission without me causing to much of a ruckus, mainly because my daughter is nicer than I am and stops messing with me and we are in the car going home, complaining about how we were too warm. Now, for whatever reason, McCaw Hall is really warm. This is a great venue, but they do like to be toasty. But my mom is exclaiming that she's too warm even though outside the temperature isn't even 60 degrees, and she mentions that she never acclimated to the south, when we lived in good old MS, because she was always roasting.
   I have to argue with this because in Mississippi in the summer you could literally fry and egg on a car hood. I know this for a fact, because my bestie and I got in a shit load of trouble for frying eggs on her mom's car hood. And that intolerable heat kept us in a constant search for any body of water to jump in so that we could cool off. My bestie has even lost part of her toe to a snapping turtle lurking in the water of one of our creeks, and that didn't even stop us, although it did cause our collective moms to forbid us from jumping in random-ass creeks. We never stopped, so we spent a lot of time grounded. As I'm reminding my mom of this old habit of ours, she turns to my daughter, reminds her of the whole rail business, and tells her, "This is not your mom. This is the alien that took over your mom, and she came from a really wussy planet."
   And you know that your are a true helicopter mom when your parental freak-outs has your own mom calling you a wussy alien body-snatcher. Gotta love Grandmas. 

Security

   I've worked in a lot of places. This job always encompassed some form of money handling, but not always in a grocery store.  The third job that I ever had, I held when I was 18: pre-baby days. I worked for this man who owned his own business; a small, local businessman who had an unusual business plan. This was  when I still lived in Gulfport, Mississippi, and this businessman owned 3 stores, all of them located along Pass Road. One of his stores was a movie rental store, back before Netflicks, when DVD was the new thing and Blu-ray was as yet, unheard of. The other store was a tanning salon. And the third store, the one I worked at, was a combination of tanning salon and movie rental, with a twist. There was a special 18 and older room that people could go into to select and rent porn. Yup. The man was a genius; women would go in to tan and their boyfriends/husbands would browse the kink in the back. He got business from both sides, and this was probably the only tanning salon where dudes where happy to go wait for their chicks to get their tan on.
   We had to wear many hats at this job. I had to know how to run the beds, and I had to know how to audit the videos, set up accounts, turn people in to soft collections, make bank deposits for the store, and I had to play security guard. There were monitors set up all over this place. Of course, the tanning rooms and bathrooms where not recorded, but the areas that sold the lotion, the videos, and the porn room was recorded and we had little TVs were we could watch for suspicious activities. Guess which room I never, and I mean NEVER checked? If you're thinking this room starts with a 'P' then you would be correct. Go get yourself a cookie, friend.
    Why did I never check that? Ummm...you aren't really thinking that, right? If you are anything like me, then you are thinking that if they want to steal that, there is no way in any kind of hell that you are actually going to be the one to stop them. Uh-uh. No friggen' way, I'd rather eat my eyeballs than sit there and watch what goes on in that room. I would never even go shelve the 'movies' unless that room was empty, and checking to be sure that the room was empty was the only reason I ever looked at that particular monitor.
   But griping about the porn room is actually not the reason for this blog post. I didn't mind renting out porn. I would rather people watch that then go rape/molest someone, and further, I don't actually care. Watching porn is not illegal; I just wasn't willing to make a bust and be all, "Dude, I saw you put the porn in your jacket, hand it over." Nope. Can you say chicken? I can. So I don't know if anyone even attempted to steal that stuff, because I was not attentive. Funnily, audits and inventory for that room did not show missing items, so the porn watchers are a little more honest than others, it seems. Because they totally could have robbed us blind with me manning the cameras.
   The real surprise to me was how many people we caught stealing tanning lotion. What a thing to steal, and there is no excuse. You don't need tanning lotion; lotion isn't essential to survival. I have a sneaking sympathy for people who are starving and stealing food, or women who are stealing things like prenatal vitamins (food stamps do not cover vitamins, before you go shooting off at the mouth, and those things are costly). The world is a hard place, and sometimes people have to do hard things. But tanning lotion? Oh, you thief. And of course, not only did we catch thieves on camera, but usually, they went in to tan. Which means that we had all of their information stored on the computer, via their account. Walk-in tans were not allowed; to tan with us, you had to have an account. We knew their home phone, their address, where they worked, and we also had their thumb-print on file, because this business man didn't want people to share accounts, so he had some thumb scanning thingy-majigger all set up to scan your thumb and connect you to your account (it never worked and we were always having to bypass it. Stupid technology.)
   Not the best place to be stealing from, but people can be crazy stupid. However, with all that info on hand, did I ever make a bust? Nope. I saved the tape, gave it to the boss, and let him call them at their happy little homes. Hey, at least I was attentive.
   But really, I was just barely making over minimum wage, and people, yeah, they can be crazy. And Pass Road? A lot of crackheads in that area, and I was not getting all shot up for $5.45 an hour, over a bottle of tanning lotion. But I never did make good security. Good thing I'm a cashier. 

The Kids; They're Multiplying

   So my daughter's birthday is coming up this month and she is going to be 11. Now, you might think that this means a birthday party, but I do not do birthday parties. Oh, she gets a celebration, but I keep this celebration within the family: my mom, my sister, and her two kids. That is enough bodies in the house, thank you; no need to add more people to breath all of my air. And the kiddo gets to pick a special activity; sometimes going to see a movie and out to dinner, sometimes the zoo, things like that. This is all because I did a party once, and it was horrible.
   For my daughter's 3rd birthday, we did a party and invited a shit load of kids. And all these kids, they had to be entertained. And all these kids' parents: they left. I want to know since when a party equaled free daycare. I call bullshit.
   So there are all these little kids running around, and no other adults. Every time you opened a freaking door: more kids. They were like cockroaches, if you saw one, there where more you didn't see lurking around the corner. There were more of them than I initially invited, and they seemed to be multiplying by the minute.What. The. Hell.
   And so I was trying to wrangle kids and serve cake and keep them from fighting, because little kids: they're  vicious. One kiddo snatches a toy from another and they ALL start biting. How is that even a rational response? But try and explain rational thinking to a bunch of three year old ankle biters.
   I sugar them up with cake and ice cream, and it's time to open presents, and they are all crying because they want presents too, and little kids don't always get the idea that on birthdays, only the birthday kids get presents. But I give them all party favors, which soothes them, because at that age they don't care what they get, so long as they get something. Truth be told, all my daughter's toys have been have been pushed aside and they are all playing with the boxes, my daughter included. I'm freaking exhausted, and I don't care what they are playing with so long as it isn't fire or something that got fished out of the toilet, and I'm anxiously awaiting the arrival of parents who should have never left in the first damn place. Of course, they are almost all of them late. And this is when I know that I will never have another birthday party again. Never. I celebrate her birthdays, but in my own way, not in a way that provides free daycare to kids who magically multiply. 

Watering The Plastic Plants

   In Florida, while I doing the working mom thing there, I had the chance to work in the floral department. The flower lady's previous assistant had moved on, Valentine's Day was coming, and she needed some extra help. I jumped on the chance, anything to get out from behind the checkstand, and working floral sounded neat, a chance to be creative or something along those lines.

   She really liked me during Valentine's, and so I became a permanent assistant. Well, after all the Valentin'es rush is over, floral became more of 'let's water the live plants.' I never realized how much I sucked at watering plants before this time. The lady  I worked for had a knack; she could tell if a plant was watered enough by how heavy it was. She never messed up, but she was never able to pass this talent off to me. I tried this, and somehow I always ended up with huge puddles underneath the pots. I don't know why, but whenever I watered, there never failed to be puddles. It was a mystery. 

   Still, I kept being her assistant, and I covered for her when she went on vacation or had a day off. They just started keeping a towel at the floral counter for me so I could clean up my mess. And during one of these vacation periods, I was happily over-watering all the plants that we had out. There were about six plants that  I had never seen before, little tree-type plants, but we were always getting new stuff in and I figured they had just come in and the produce manager had put them out for me. He was often doing things like that for us; he was a pretty great guy. 

   So I was happily drowning this plant when along comes the variety manager and he just has this dumb-founded look on his face, and he demanded to know why I am watering the plants. 

  "Ummm, because I'm supposed too?"

   "You didn't notice the staples?"

    Staples?! Closer inspection of the plant did reveal that there are actually staples in the thing. Okay, that was new, and why would anybody put staples in a plant? So I sitting there scratching my head, trying to figure what is up with this stupid plant, and the variety manager is dragging all the little tree plants away.

   "I'm moving my plants before you ruin them all," he tells me. Yeah, because generally, you don't water fake plants. We all have our 'not the sharpest tool in the shed' moments, and so here's on of mine. To the end of my days at that store, I was known as the girl who watered the fake plants, and considered a menace with the watering can. 

   My floral manager, however, was actually pretty happy about the whole thing. Turns out she hadn't wanted the fake plants there, stealing sales from her real, live product, but was outvoted; she laughed so hard she turned purple. In my defense, I can say I wasn't expecting a bunch of fake plants to be mixed in with the live ones. I was supposed to water all of our product that day.

 Lesson learned; keep your eyes out for staples. 

Apartment Hunting (Yay, I'm Moving!!)

   Oh my lord. A nightmare. A veritable slew of worries, stress, and apartment manager ladies who give you the stink-eye when they discover the amount that you earn. (And you think you can afford to live here?!) Okay, I'm not that friggen poor, and I resent those looks. Don't even get me started on credit checks. A nightmare. My credit, as I have said before, is bad, but the only items in collection are unpaid ER bills from that time when I had no insurance. My student loans are in good standing, but they are high, which lowers my score, some kind of debt-to-credit ratio thing that I don't really get.
   I started looking a while back, but for the longest time, the apartment size that I wanted wasn't available. I remember one conversation with an office lady, which she attempted to have at the top of her lungs.
   Me: "I'm looking for an apartment. I would like to look at one of your one bedrooms or your small two bedroom floor plans."
   Her: "WE HAVE TOWNHOUSES! YOU WANT TO LOOK AT A TOWNHOUSE!"
   Me: "No, I would like to look at one of the smaller floor plans."
   Her: "COME LOOK AT A TOWNHOUSE!"
   Me: "I really am only interested in a smaller floor plan. Do you have a smaller apartment available?"
   Her: "YES! COME SEE OUR APARTMENTS!"
   Guess what she had available to show us when we got there? If you guessed townhouses, then you guessed right, Plus -- she had three other appointments scheduled at the same time. Really?! I think I deserve my own appointment slot. And what part of smaller apartment was hard to understand? My daughter and I don't need much space; also, I want a rent that I can easily afford. I don't want to be eating peanut butter constantly because that's the only food I can afford. If I have extra money because I have a lower rent, all the better. I have some expensive hobbies. I like to game, I like to go to the ballet, I like to travel, and don't get me started on the amount I spend on books. (BOOKS!!!) Plus, I like to eat. Good food, not peanut butter on crappy, cheap-ass bread.
   Well, after many attempts to view an apartment of the size and price that I wanted, I found one. I was ready too. That lady was probably wondering what the hell she got herself into. $150 holding fee? I'll be back in two minutes. Hell yes I'm putting that apartment on hold. I'd been looking for a month; I wasn't losing that place because someone came in and swooped it up from under me -- exactly what my sister did to someone else, by the way. Someone wanted the apartment she got, but they didn't put a hold on the place, so she gleefully swooped it up.
   But now was the nerve-wracking part. Getting approved. Gotta make 3 times the rent, they want good credit, good leasing record, and the list goes on. Well, I didn't have good credit, but I was willing to pay a bigger deposit, which is usually what they want. So I wasn't expecting to get a call from them saying I was not approved because I was breaking my lease. Also, they told the that this was somehow put onto my credit already. What?! No I wasn't, and why was something like that on my credit? (It wasn't. I don't know where they got that.)
   So off to my current home's office to get the paperwork saying that I'm not breaking the lease, which takes about 5 minutes because I wasn't breaking the lease,  and I bum a ride from my mom to the new place, all-in-all taking probably about 15 minutes. Imagine those people's surprise when I bust up in that office, paperwork in tow. Deny me? I don't think so.
   So the official move out date is the 11th, and I'm a ball of nerves because I won't feel that the apartment is really mine until the key is in my hand, the lease is signed, and my stuff is inside. Because anything that can go wrong, will go wrong :p
    Please, just let it go wrong with someone else.

Mass Transit Troubles

   Back when I went to school on campus, something that took hours of my days and reduced the hours available for sleeping an average of four, I spent a lot of times on the buses. One bus in particular, the 174. This was before they changed all the routes and made the bus system a total mess, especially if you need to get into Seattle. Back in those days (not that long ago, really) the 174 still went into Seattle and still worked in the 'free ride' zones, which tended to mean that you would get some pretty crazy people riding.
   One day I was riding home from college (in the days before I owned my eardrum killing Ipod) and I was sitting on the seats that faced sideways instead of towards the front. (I hate these seats because I always feel like I'm fixing to fall, but this bus gets crowded. Not always a choice.) Across from me was a fairly muscular, tall, tattooed guy and an older woman. The woman was obviously not all there, and she was talking to herself pretty loudly, but I didn't catch watch she was saying at first. My policy is to not make eye contact when riding the bus. I've never been directly threatened, but if you meet people's eyes, some of them will talk to you, and I don't want to talk to anybody. Plus, the ones that tend to talk to you often aren't playing with a full deck. I know that this sounds bad, but you'll see my meaning in a few minutes.
   While I try to not make eye contact, I do try to stay alert. Zoning out in a public place with a bunch of crazies is like walking into a zombie infested pit with no weapons. You might make it out alive, but the odds are against you. So I noticed when the big tattooed man started scooting away from the woman, making himself as small as possible. Really, tattooed guy? That little, homeless woman was scaring you that badly? Then I started listening to what she was saying.
   First she attacked the Buddhists, because the bus passed some little place that had the word Buddhist on the sign. I can't really remember what she said, except that it was batshit crazy. Then we passed a cell phone store, and shit!!! I caught her eye. Now instead of talking to herself, she was talking to me.
   "Cell phones were brought here by the aliens! They steal your skin, they steal your skin. They're in your skin with the signal." I glanced at the tattooed man, but he was no help. This was obviously deeply traumatizing to him, and he was scrunched into the bus seat as far as he could go. I giggled. I couldn't help it. I know that laughing at that poor man was mean--I was completely judging him by his looks alone. Tall, muscular, tattooed guys are badass, right? Nope. Not this dude: total pussycat. But the woman, she freaked out because I laughed.
   "Laugh!" she exclaimed in disgust," Sure it's funny. Laugh! It's funny if you're the devil's daughter! It's funny if you're the devil's daughter!"
   And she isn't talking now, oh hell no. She's screaming and the whole bus is looking at us and I'm pretty sure that she is calling me the devil's daughter. Oh lordy, I do the only thing that I can do. I join the tattooed guy in his attempt to meld into the seat and become invisible. 

"You Know Too Much"

   I had an elderly woman and her daughter come through my line, and at first they weren't so much to commit to memory. Nothing really unusual, just a daughter helping her mother. Then when the time had come to pay, the elderly woman hands her daughter a very large amount of bankcards. Split payments aren't hard to do, so that was no big deal, but the daughter tried to apologize to me anyway.
   "I'm so sorry. I don't know why she has all these cards." I assured her that this is no big deal, and as she started sliding them the elderly woman is telling her to put twenty dollars on this bankcard, thirty on that bankcard, one hundred on the next and her daughter is fussing, "Mom, you have too many cards, why can't you put all your money in one spot."
   "What if something happens to the bank? All my money would be gone," and she gives the daughter the final card, and the daughter slides it and puts in the pin without having to ask her mom the pin number. She hasn't had to ask her mom for any of the pins; clearly, paying in this manner is familiar to her.
    The elderly woman, however, gets this cunning look in her eye, and in as ominous voice as she can muster, intones "You know too much."
    "What? What are you talking about?" the daughter demands.
    "You know too much," the woman repeats, "You aren't supposed to know all my pins."
    "Momma, we do this every week," the frazzled daughter says.
   "I was watching Investigative Report-"
   "Oh lord," the daughter interrupts, her face having a 'here we go again' expression on,"You watch too much TV."
   "And they were talking about identity theft," the elderly woman continues, as if the daughter hadn't spoken, "Everybody isn't supposed to know your numbers."
   "But Momma, I'm not everybody; I'm somebody," the daughter exclaims, exasperated.
   "You never can tell." The elderly woman says. The daughter walks away in a huff as I hand the elderly woman her lengthy receipt, and I am laughing by now, because I can't help it. Frankly, I want to get a bag of popcorn and sit back and watch this show: these two are hilarious. As the elderly woman takes the receipt, the she gives me a huge grin and a realization strikes me.  She has been messing with her daughter's head the whole time! This is great, and all I can think is that I want to be just like this woman when I get older. She's exactly the type of woman who whacks the unsuspecting with her cane and causes mayhem in the nursing home. In other words: this woman is now my new role model. 

Butterflies Verses Zombies

  As every parent knows, often, your child will develop a personality that is not at all what you would have expected from someone formed with your DNA. I mean, we all have plans and expectations of what our child will be like. And I got a great child. We have many similarities, such as our avid love of reading. We devour words with our eyes the way a starving man eats. We are both serious gamers and love to travel. We have other similar traits as well, but for the most part,she is stunningly, refreshingly different from me. She loves school, and I was the truancy queen. She likes the color pink, and I prefer black. Her clothes are glittery, gem-encrusted ensembles and mine are usually black. She wears sparkly sneakers and colorful boots and I detest socks, so wear flip-flops until they are impossible. She likes to do things now, early even, and I am the Master of Procrastination. She is outgoing and likes people and I am an antisocial introvert, and so-on and so-on These are differences that I can accept. I enjoy and value these differences. But there is one difference that I am committed to change. She must come to my viewpoint in the matter! I am determined. And what is this difference, you may ask? Well, let me tell you:

   SHE PREFERS BUTTERFLIES OVER ZOMBIES.

   

How is this better than a zombie?

   Whaaaaaaaaaaat???!!! How can that be? That's not right. Zombies are awesome. Zombies inspire such characters like Jill Valentine and Daryl Dixon. Butterflies, not so much. I mean, I understand that they are pretty, and the pollinate flowers and make things grow, but are they rotten, animated corpses? I don't think so. Do they eat human flesh and infect the masses? That's a negatory. How are butterflies more awesome than zombies? This assumption boggles the mind and just is not rational. Zombies inspire long, intense chats with your sister about how we are going to survive the zombie apocalypse, and what we need to have in order to protect the family and how we need to fortify the house. Does anybody worry about the butterfly apocalypse? No, because that sounds dumb. Oh gosh, the butterflies are going to pollinate me! Please. Butterflies are not bad ass. They just have pretty wings. How can that compare to decaying, flesh eating corpses? Really, daughter? But everything is A-okay. I am patient, and one day, you will come to the dark side.

Drug Tests Are Awesome

   The place I currently work at is a drug free zone, and they take this very seriously. After you interview, the very next thing that you do is take your little pee cup (that they provide) and your paperwork and march yourself down to the happy little health clinic and sign yourself up for the pee test. Not really a big deal.
   After hiring, you are not done with the drug tests, because my work does monthly drawings for a random testing, and since my hire date, I have been drawn five times. Yes, five times. I am a pee test pro. However, the very first time I was drawn, I was not the pro that I am today. As I was given, by the store secretary, my plastic cup and paper work, I was slightly nervous because I had just gone to the bathroom, and I didn't feel a real need to go. I was hoping for one of those looooong waits in the waiting room. But, I was not too nervous, because ever since giving birth to my daughter, peeing has not been a problem for me. I always need to go, so I was pretty sure that I could do this drug test - no problem.
   Was I wrong! When she called me back there, and I was struggling with the impossible task of aiming (when you are a chick) into that little cup, I realized that I couldn't go. Not a drop. My bladder had let me down, and my job flashed before my very eyes!!!
   Shamefully I handed the tech my empty cup, telling her that I couldn't go and asking what I had to do now. She stared at me hard, like I was a bad little pot-head trying to pull a fast one. "You have to sit in there," she said and pointed me towards the little exam room, "Don't close the door."
   She left for a moment and came back with a small pitcher of water and a cup (to drink from, not to pee in). Handing these to me she told me that I only had two hours to manage to pee and that this was all of the water that I was allowed to have. I gulped. I wasn't thirsty, but don't image that the pitcher was big, this was probably about a liter of water. I'm not sure of the exact amount, not a lot, but an awful lot if you are not thirsty. Oh, I felt like I was being forced to drink an ocean of water. And I wasn't allowed to leave that little exam room; I had to stay there for the entire two hours. Luckily, I was giving back my belongings, which they take from you when you first get to the back of the clinic, before you get into the bathroom, so I was able to spend some of the time texting my sister. Other than that phone, all I had for entertainment was one very old magazine, and in that two hours I flipped through the entire thing about three times, forcing myself to drink from the pitcher of water that seemed to be bottomless.
    I took the whole two hours. The tech kept popping in and asking if I needed to go yet, but I couldn't. My bladder was frozen with stage fright and I had nothing. I tried speaking firmly to it, tried scolding that unruly bladder of mine, but nothing worked. I just didn't have any urge to pee what-so-ever.  Nothing was coming, and by this time I had multiple techs, nurses, and doctors pop their heads in at me, giving the stink eye to the silly woman who couldn't pee.
   Finally, my time was almost up and the testy little tech told me that I either had to go, or that she had to report to my job that I had not taken the drug test successfully. I gulped; what did that mean?! Would I be fired?! I had not (and still have not) ever been fired and my poor little pride shrunk from the thought. I couldn't be fired. With one last dire threat to my misbehaving bladder, I took the cup, and went to pee. And I did! I did the 'don't flush' chant, because a flushed toilet invalidates a drug test, and proudly opened the door and handed that tech my cup of pee. Let me tell you, no one has ever been so profoundly relieved to go pee as I was in that moment. My job was saved!!! I was not a druggie and I could prove it!!! The absolute relief that I felt, not because my bladder was bursting, but because my pride was saved and I could prove to all those little techs, doctors and nurses that I was not on drugs.
   Since then, as I have said, I have had many more pee tests, but I have never had that issue again. My bladder now understands that the pee test is not an option, and participates without giving me trouble. Still, because of that one time, I always have that moment when my heart stops because I wonder if I am going to be able to pee.