I Thought The Nightmare Was Over....

I know that I have a coworker/friend who is going to read this title and think that this is another blog about those crappy-ass registers that I keep getting assigned too, but this is worse than that. This isn't about registers, or work at all. This is about (insert dramatic pause here) immunizations. As in my daughter finally needs her next immunizations, which when they told me, back when she was five, that she wouldn't need more until she was eleven, I was ecstatic. That was forever! But that day is now here, six short, short years later.
   I was always that mom when the time came for those nightmarish shots. You know, the mom who flinched as the needle came closer and closer to her precious baby. I always left the doctor's office just a little teary-eyed. I'm sure they loved me, but what can you say? They were sticking sharp, pointy objects into my little baby girl. It's a horrible ordeal, and then your baby feels rotten for a couple days after and you are checking temps and  making sure nothing funky is going on with the injection sites, because there are multiple sites. Usually when babies go to get their shots, they give them three or four at once. I'm not sure why they don't space them out a little? Wouldn't that make recovery easier? But then maybe that just prolongs the misery? Who knows. All I know is that I don't like watching someone stick sharp, pointy objects into my daughter.
   But I am not one of those parents who are against immunizations. They protect your child. I had another mom ask me once why I let my daughter be tortured (tortured? That seems extreme, even to teary-eyed me) and said she was taking her child to a chicken pox party, where they deliberately expose their kids to chicken pox. Okay, folks, I don't like to pull up research, so I am going to let you look this up and find the info on your own, but statistically speaking, more children have died from chicken pox than from the vaccine for chicken pox. And what would we do without that polio vaccine? This doesn't seem reasonable to me. I'm sorry if you are one of the parents that agree with this, because I just can't. Sure, I do agree that they should continue to do research on these vaccines, and make them as safe as possible, but to not give them at all?

She used to have a Florida one, but they switched the card when we moved up here.

   Nevertheless, I am not looking forward to my daughter getting this TdaP booster. She is older now, so hopefully she will just be hugely embarrassed by her mother breaking down, and not break down herself. And I put off the appointment as long as possible, but I had to make the call today. Time is running out. She needs this booster by the time school starts, and for the last two weeks of August, we are going to be in Yellowstone, so I need to get this shot done.
   So we have an appointment Tuesday to see the doctor. Since I am taking her to a new doctor, they have to examine her first, and they may be able to give her the shot then, or I might have to make another appointment for that. I hope we can do the booster shot then and just get the nightmare over with, but who knows? But Tuesday morning, you all know what I will be doing. I dread Tuesday; I'm not ready!!! My daughter is going to be fine, and is rolling her eyes at me as I type, but I:
I feel the need to curl into a fetal position. 

Social Media And Advertising (ACK!!!!)

   I've mentioned that I'm not the greatest with computers, right? Why then, would I choose to start writing a blog, which requires the internet, which requires a computer? Haha! Well, that's me for you. I felt like it. I didn't care if I knew what I was doing, I just felt like I needed to start writing again, and this seemed like a good way to get all those random thoughts and opinions that are rattling around in my head out there. I wasn't sure if I would keep up with writing this blog, and I wasn't even sure if anyone would read my inane ramblings. Who cares what I think?
   But my family has been really supportive! That was great. And then my friends and coworkers have also been super supportive, and that was great too! Then I started looking at the stats to my blog, and while I still have a small readership, there are too many page views to account for just my friends and family, so that meant other people were looking at my blog. And then people started occasionally commenting and/or shooting me messages through my blog's e-mail, and I was happy. Mostly those messages have been positive. Yay!
   I have always liked to write. For a while I was gonna write books, epic sci-fi, fantasy stories (and who knows, I still might) and then I moved to poetry, and all I can say is be glad that I gave that up. The world has enough bad poetry in it already. You don't even wanna see that. But I never, ever imagined something like writing a blog; partly because there weren't blogs when I was a kid (<----haha! I'm getting old) and partly because blogging is like having a public diary, and I never imagined having a good enough self-esteem to allow something like that. And partly, because I am slow to the social media stuff. I just started Facebooking maybe two years ago? Maybe three? Not more than that, though. And I tried to start a Twitter account once, and that shit just confused the hell out of me. I gave that up. I don't understand the sign-up process and all those questions and steps alarmed me. I have a Pinterest account that I never visit or use because I just don't understand the point of that. But even Facebook, which I now use avidly to keep in touch with all my friends and family  that live all over the states, has the power to confuse me. Usually I can work through that confusion, but there you have it: I am not social media savvy. So being the genius that I am, I was all like, I'm going to start a blog.

My Facebook profile picture. Not exciting, but good for now. 

   Okay, Marie, that didn't turn out too bad. I don't think I'm doing too badly, and Google Blogger is really easy to use. Set up was not difficult; and I was off. But then, I decide that I want to go for having people actually read my blog. So I have to look into ways to advertise my blog. Ack!!! What have I gotten myself into? So I have been learning that you can submit your url into search engines like Yahoo so that they will pull your website up on people's searches, and you can get your blog entered into blog databases like Technorati, so I do that, and for a while that's all I do. But I got ambitious on my last days off and looked around for more stuff to do. So I found BlogUpp, and that one is actually pretty easy. Also, it's kinda fun because I keep clicking the BlogUpp link to other people's blogs and looking at other people's blogs. I like that (<--dork, dork, I am a dork!!). Networked Blogs was a nightmare for me, and I'm pretty sure that I did that wrong, so I'm ignoring it. The link is on my page, hopefully it does what it is supposed too, and I am ignoring it with all my might. I cussed at it a lot too while I was setting it up. But the worst thing was (dun-dun-duuun) setting up a Facebook page for my blog, which is linked off to the top corner. That was a nightmare. I've set one up before, right, so what is the problem? The problem is that I am a dumbass. The page is up and running, but I think that I am done with trying to promote this blog for a while. I do like the fact that people are reading it (THANKS!!!) and, sure, I'll get ambitious again, but for now, Facebook gave me bad dreams. Social media is scary; I need a cookie now. And a bottle of whisky.

My cover photo on Facebook. My mom took this pic at Ocean Shores. I use a lot of my mom's photo's in this blog, and a lot of my own. 

We Morphed Into Mole People

The neighbors were all looking me like I was nutso as I took pictures of the sky from my porch.

   Today is yet another gloomy, cloud covered day here in Washington. What else is new though? My daughter and I are used to this gloom, this constant cloud cover that brings with it oceans of rain. And my daughter and I are southern people, so once upon a time, this gloom was a real hardship for us. We had quite an adjustment to make. I had been living in Mississippi since I was 9, and when I was 19 (and pregnant, bah) I moved to Florida, which is where my daughter was born. We moved up to Washington when she was 3, and we have been here ever since.
   And while you think that we must have been long used to the weather of Washington, this is the first year that I have felt fully acclimated. Yes, my acclimation to this cloud covered, rain soaked land has taken almost eight years. But just think of the difference!
   In Florida, we do have hurricanes, so you would think that I would be used to heavy rain, but Washington's rain isn't all that heavy. The big thing is that the rain is constant. Florida's big rain is mostly seasonal, the rest of the time, rain is occasional. Here, one second you could be nice and dry, and the next second you could be getting pissed on by the heavens. There is no way to tell. Another difference is the sun. In Florida, a lot of times when rain did grace us, the sun would still be out, fighting the rain clouds for the right to dominate the sky. They were not wrong when they nicknamed Florida the Sunshine State. Compared to Washington, which is so gloomy that a certain author based her sparkle fairies (hmmm-hmmm, I mean vampires) here. The third major difference is the temperature. In Florida, during the summer it was only a matter of time before you hit the 100 degree weather. In Washington, hitting 90 degree weather sparks heat advisories, and no apartments come with air conditioning because that feature isn't considered necessary.
   My daughter and I were sunshine people, beach people, and we moved to a place where all the beaches are cold, and where the sun rarely graces us. We were used to 90 degree weather as a norm, and we moved to a place were 90 degree weather was considered way too hot. My daughter had never seen snow, and she saw snow for the first time when we moved here. Not only snow, but ice. I had never even heard of an ice storm, but I moved here and found myself walked to work in the aftermath of one, and got pegged in the head with an icicle for my trouble (which freakin' hurts). I didn't know if I would ever like this place, and I surely wasn't imagining that I would ever feel that I fit in.
   Except we both started to fit in, and this year, when we found ourselves facing 90 degree weather, and days without a drop of rain, I found myself stepping outside, shading my eyes even though I had sunglasses on and muttering, "I hate the sun." Whaaaaaaat?! Did I just say that? Not only that, but I found myself longing for 60 or 70 degree weather, and wishing for winter, formerly my most hated season.
   Then I was hit by the realization that I am not longer a sun-child. My move to the North had been a sort of an exile from the South, I needed a refuge from certain people who lived there, and I had family up here who could help me out. But if I moved back to the South this minute, I would be miserable. I couldn't take the heat, I couldn't take the constant sun in my eyes, and the humidity would just slay me. This is because, beyond all explanation and reason, I have morphed into a mole person. And if I have morphed, then I insist that my daughter has morphed with me. I will not be alone in my mole-ness. We are mole people now. 

Haha! I Win; A Zombie-Fanatic Is Born

   I've been attempting to convince my daughter that the love of all things zombie is only natural. For a long time this was a downhill battle. She just wasn't interested. She wasn't interested in Resident Evil, she wasn't interested in any of the old zombie movie classics, she didn't care about the Walking Dead (and still doesn't, what the hell?)
   But I wore her down, and finally, I was able to convince her to read this book called The Forest of Hands and Teeth, by Carrie Ryan. Now, this book was enough to convince her that she might actually like some of the zombie stuff that her mom was trying to force down her throat. This book didn't turn her into a full blown zombie-lover, but this book did open the door. And yeah, it's in the young adult section, but this isn't some love story that makes zombies seem sexy. Zombies were the undead, and they did eat people and infect the masses.
   Then I found this wonderful book that I really got into. I loved this book. I bet many of you can guess the name, but for those of you ignorant in all things zombie, the book was called World War Z, by Max Brooks. I couldn't put this book down, despite the fact that I don't think that this book is the easiest book to read. You don't follow a main character; this book takes the form of a multitude of interviews, never with the same person, and through these interviews, you see how the shape of the zombie war unfolded. As soon as you get into one person's story, that story ends and you move on to the next person. This book should have been annoying as hell to read, but it wasn't, and I read the damn thing in one night.
    My daughter has made the comment to me that I always chose the best books for her to read; a fact that does make me pretty happy. I like being able to provide people with suggestions of good reading material, and I am always really glad when they like a suggestion. Yay! I don't know why I like this; I just do. We all have our little quirks. And I guess my daughter decided that since I had always given her good books to read, that she wanted to read the book that I got so into that I spent a whole night reading the book. So she read the book, and she liked it! I was surprised, because I actually do think that this book has the potential to be hard to follow, and though my daughter reads on a high level, according to school testing, I didn't know how she would like or be able to follow this book. But she read the book, she was able to follow the story line, and best of all, she really liked it.
   She liked the book so much, that when they came out with the movie, she begged to be able to go see it. Now, I know that this movie was rated PG-13, but I carefully read the previews, and I had decided that if the movie just got too graphic for her, that  I would be prepared to usher her out of the theater. She really wanted to see the movie, and after letting her read the book, it seemed asinine to refuse to let her watch the movie. But not only did I worry about the violence, I also worried about the quality of the story. Obviously, this movie was going to follow Brad Pitt's character throughout the whole of the movie, and I worried that they were going to take this really good zombie story and turn it into a Brad Pitt flick. But we went to see the movie on the 4th of July, and I thought the movie was really good, and I also thought that the story could have fit right into the book. The book is basically a collection of survival stories from different people, and not the whole of the stories, just the critical moments. This movie followed that structure, in my own opinion. This was the key part of this man's survival of the zombie war, and when his part was over, the story ended. I've heard complaints over the abrupt ending, but the book is full of abrupt endings. I liked the movie, and so did my daughter!
   Woo-hoo! The first zombie movie that my daughter has liked. Also, the first zombie movie that my daughter has ever really watched, due to lack of interest. But she liked this one, and if they make another, she has already informed me that she wants to go see that one too. This, I tell myself, is the birth of a zombie fanatic.

   (Side note: I also got my mom to go see the movie. Which was a mind-blowing achievement for two reasons: she doesn't like anything scary or gory, and she hates Brad Pitt almost as much as she hates Tom Cruise. I now consider myself a master-manipulator. Mwahahahahahahaha!)

Dear Customer; All The Things That I Wish I Could Have Said

Dear Customer,
   You might not realize this, but when I came in to work today there were not many people shopping and work was slow. But in a grocery store, there are always things to be done, and so when they asked me to help with go-backs, I willingly turned my register light off. In case you don't know, go-backs are all the items that customers decided they didn't want and gave to the cashier or stuck on some random shelf. Someone has to put them away, and they needed some help back there because of the holiday rush. Of course I agreed, better than standing at the register and twiddling my thumbs.
   I realize that when they called me up to check that we had gotten slammed. So I didn't dither; I came as fast as I could, and I took the next person in line from the register next to the one I was assigned to. See, where I work, we don't make the announcement that so-and-so register is open. I've worked in stores that did this, and what usually happens is that the person refusing to stand in line and prowling around for a new register gets in line first, so what we do is we go take a person directly from a line. This person has been waiting in line, and deserves the chance to be next. According to store policy, this is what we are supposed to do. Of course, one cashier cannot take every next person first; we are only human after all and are not capable of cloning ourselves and running multiple registers.
   I had taken the next lady in line, as I said, and had rung her up and sent her on her way and moved on to my next customer when you came up and said, "Excuse me, ma'am, can I ask you something?"
   You were so polite, and I turned to you with a smile and a, "Sure," expecting to need to direct you to whatever item you were looking for. So you can imagine my shock when you went from polite to rude and condescending. I wasn't expecting you to condemn me for not announcing a lane opening over the intercom, and I surely wasn't expecting to be queried about whether or not I knew how to do my job and if I was new to the store. Since I am female, I can go from happy to pissed faster than the speed of light, and this happened. In fact,  I was seeing red, but I was proud of the way I kept my cool and kept the smile on my face. I explained our policy to you, and explained that I had taken the next in line on a different register for the simple fact that this register was the closest to mine, so taking from that line made the most sense as all the lines were long.
   The thing is, I could see the disappointment on your face, and while I do not have psychic abilities, I do believe that you were hoping for a stammered apology from a flustered cashier or outright defiance so that you could get management involved. My calm, collected explanation gave you no opportunity to feel superior to me. My smile and friendly manner gave you no opportunity to become indignant and feel justified in your anger. You came over not to correct what you saw as a wrong, but to bully and make someone just doing their job feel small. And I feel justified in this belief, because I heard you call me a bitch as you walked away.
   But while you did make me angry, because I do get angry whenever I see someone trying to make themselves feel better by making others feel bad, you did not make me feel bad. I know my job; I know my store's policies, and I know that I did nothing to justify such rude, disrespectful behavior. And in the long run, I am glad you came to me with that bullshit, because we do have some shy wallflowers working the registers for us; some young girls who have not yet grown the thick skin that they need to function in the role of a person who works customer service in retail. I am glad you did not go to one of them; all we need is another cashier crying in the bathroom because someone was mean to them. Poor girls, they'll harden up soon, but I've already gotten there, so as  I said, I am glad that you came and blasted me and not one of them.
   And I want you to know that I also feel sorry for you. Yes, you read that right. I feel sorry for you because I just can't imagine what you are going through that makes you able to derive comfort and/or pleasure from trying to pick on an honest person just doing their job; from trying to make them feel small and insignificant. I hope that whatever is wrong, you feel better soon. Me, I already feel better, so don't worry about that at all. I have a loving family waiting at home, I have the best friends in the world, and I work with the greatest people. My life is awesome. I hope yours gets better soon.

Sincerely,
The Cashier You Tried To Pick On