Say Whaaat? Wednesday

I was going to write a Jack Attack's Jammin' Tuesday post, but I realized I missed Tuesday. So I guess I'll write something for Say Whaaat? Wednesday. This is a short one, though.

Oddly enough, this little anecdote is also customer service related. I was buying something a couple days ago at the grocery store, and as I was leaving, this is what the cashier told me: "Thanks! Have a great life!" I was just like, "Thanks, man. You, too!"

Say Whaaat? Wednesday

Keeping with what I wrote the other day, I'm going to try to write more regular blog posts. Today, I am trying out "Say Whaaat? Wednesday" (you hold out the a when you read it...and you will then know how I say it.) On Say Whaaat? Wednesdays, I will mention something a little strange/somewhat amusing/mildly interesting that I overheard, read, saw, etc.

This week, I would like to share something I heard at work. I was helping a gentleman check out, and I asked him my standard, "How are you today?" After asking people this day in and day out, I would say I get the standard "I'm good," or "I'm fine," 95% of the time. Every once in a while I get a "fantastic," "wonderful," or "peachy," (peachy is one of my favorites). Sometimes, (usually from men) I get a sarcastic "I'm great," or a "Fair to middlin'" (I've never really understood that one.) This particular gentleman responded as such:

"I feel adorable."

I stopped ringing for a second, looked at him to see if he was kidding or not, and then continued checking him out when I realized he was completely serious.

I feel adorable.

That was a first.

Jack Attack vs The Arachnids

Life has been dreary as of late, hence me on a Friday night completely alone doing pointless things on my computer. But at least now I can write a blog post. I already decided what I wanted to write about. Spiders.

I am very much a stereotypical girl when it comes to three things: spiders, snakes, and mice/rats. When there was a mouse in my house last winter, I literally climbed onto the kitchen table and screamed as it ran circles around my kitchen floor while my rat terrier (yes, a breed that is bred specifically to KILL rodents) was more interested as to why I was on top of the table freaking out than the scurrying, disease-riddled, unbelievably fast mouse that was doing laps in my kitchen. (Okay, it probably wasn't disease-riddled but those things freak me out!)

And snakes? Don't even get me started on those. I have a story about the time my lovely friend Miss Roro and I saw one at the river (slithering up onto the rock where we were sitting, I might add) where I literally fell down about four times trying to run away from it.

Oh! I forgot to add, I'm also absolutely terrified of bats. That includes a story where I came across one in the woods one summer when my brother and dad and I were out chopping wood. (We're mountain folk.) There had been a bat in the tree my dad had fallen and I poked my foot around in the wood chips and it popped out hissing at me. I turned and booked it into the middle of the woods screaming my head off. I had no idea where I was going, I just decided that running into the woods was my best option. My dad, (who is becoming hard of hearing, anyway) had his ear muffs on and the chain saw going and he could still hear me screaming like a banshee.

But the thing about mice and snakes and bats is that I don't come across them very often. There are only a handful of times I've encountered those particular shriek-inducing creatures, but spiders, on the other hand, are always around. They're everywhere. I think that's probably why they terrify me the most.

It's been unbelievably hot here in Colorado the past couple weeks, and I have been leaving my windows open. As a result, the spiders have been coming in. I probably have been killing, I would say, about three spiders a day. That means, on average, I've killed 21 spiders in a week. 84 spiders in one month?! This is just not right, I say. Not right at all. This is one of the times that makes me wish I had a man around because I've never been good at killing spiders.

While I never particulary like killing spiders, I feel like I am much more capable when they are of a certain size. Nickel sized or smaller, I can handle it. It's the big ones where I really freak out. All my life, I have always had someone else to call to come and kill the behemoth, hairy ones. Until now. Now I have to do it on my own. And let me tell you, it hasn't been pretty.

I've found two very large ones in my bath tub, and instead of squishing them (I will get to that in just a second) I run the shower and aim the shower head at it so it will go down the drain. One of these spiders and I had an epic battle. I aimed the water at it, and it did its creepy fast-crawl thing as it desperately tried to get away. (You know what I'm talking about? Whenever you first see a spider, it's always stock still and completely unmoving. But the second you make any movement to kill it, it suddenly goes into some sort of turbo mode where it is all over the place and you don't know where the hell it's going to go and its eight legs are flying like crazy!)  Anyway, this particular spider abandoned the creepy fast-crawl strategy and instead decided to cling to the side of the tub for dear life. I tried desperately to break its death grip with the shower water, but I had to resort to collecting water in my hands and splashing the spider with it for it to finally let go. Then it curled up into a gross little ball, and I thought he was dead so I turned the water off only to see him unfurl himself and start doing his creepy fast-crawl again. The battle waged on. I finally watched it get swept down into the drain. I sat for a moment, reveling my victory, when I saw the bastard crawl its way right back out. I finally had to buck up and squish him.

I don't like the squish for two reasons. Number one: I don't like the way it feels when you squish them. I have to use about 50 paper towels just so I won't feel that moment where it pops. Ehh. I'm getting the chills right now just thinking about it. Number two: I mentioned before how they do their creepy fast-crawl thing. I'm always worried that as I go to kill it, it will jump on me or get on me somehow. I don't know about you guys, but whenever there is a spider on me, all hell breaks loose. So, lately, my squishing weapon of choice has been the shoe. I don't like that it is more messy than the paper towel method (Because then you have to wipe the guts off your shoe! And that's just gross.) but it creates more of a barrier between the spider and myself.

Today, I came across the biggest spider yet. This one, my friends, was a Goliath. He might not look that big in this video you are about to watch, but trust me, he was huge. (I have no idea why I make the noises that I do. It just comes out.)

Victory. 

secrets, work shop, and missionaries

Do you know what's cool? Yesterday, I was in class, and we were discussing an exploratory essay we are soon going to be working on, and my teacher brought up six word memoirs (which I have read, and I think it's totally awesome) and a student asked my teacher if he had ever heard of Post Secret. Another girl in my class said, "Hey, that guy is on campus today." And I got super pumped and asked her what time he was going to be giving his presentation and she told me it was right after our class. So I ditched my fiction work shop class (Because how often am I going to be able to hear Frank Warren give a presentation? Never, that's how often.) and I went and watched his presentation. It was awesome.

He talked about how Post Secret got started, and what it was all about, and he shared post cards with us that hadn't been put on the website or in the book. (I have been following Post Secret pretty much since it started, five years ago.) The last portion of his presentation was an open mic to the audience to share their secrets. Seriously. I wasn't sure how personal people were going to get, but my goodness, did they get personal.

Some people kept it light (thank goodness, because there needed to be some relief) and one guy said he didn't like using urinals because he didn't want other guys looking at his junk. One girl said she still slept with her teddy bear. But some people shared some really personal secrets. One girl shared about her ex-boyfriend, who was a cop, who held a gun to her head and abused her. Several people talked about how they used to cut themselves. Then there was one girl that walked up to the mic holding a baby. She talked about how her little girl was turning two weeks old tomorrow, and every day she considered herself blessed because she loved her so much. Then she said she had an abortion when she was seventeen years old, and she can't help but but think every time she looks into her little girl's face what her other child would have been like, and she was filled with so much guilt and that she felt terrible and then she started crying. And then I started crying, not because I related to her story or anything, but it was such an emotional thing she was sharing with us and I felt as though I could literally feel her pain. (I consider myself an extremely empathetic person; I honestly believe that I can really feel other people's pain.)

It was really awesome and I'm so glad I got to go to it. He's traveling around the country doing presentations, so I would highly recommend going to one if it's in your area.

What else? Well, I had my short story work shopped in my fiction work shop class and I was absolutely terrified. But it went okay. I didn't get ripped apart, and most of the responses I got from my class mates were really nice. My harshest response was from a boy who said he felt like "I gave him a chunk of excellently cooked meat, but I didn't cut the fat off first." Hey, I can live with that. Now I have to work on my second short story, which is up for work shop at the end of October.


I had a Mormon missionary come up to my door today. The dogs were barking like crazy, and I went to the door to see what they were barking at and there was a person standing there and he scared me half to death and I actually jumped and shrieked. It was pretty embarrassing. He kept on saying he was sorry he scared me, but then he went into his whole spiel.

He asked if I went to church, and I said no. He asked if church had ever been a part of my life, and I told him yes, it had been. Then he went on to say that people may stray from church due to different things happening in their lives, but Jesus was the way. He asked if I had ever read the book of Mormon, and I told him I had.

I could tell he was a little surprised, and he asked me what my thoughts had been. I have to say, I think I was pretty polite. I told him I didn't agree with a lot of what Mormons believed in. He pressed further, and said, "You say that with a smile on your face. Why is that?" And I just told him that anything I had to say about it would probably offend him, and I didn't want to do that.

He then told me that there were a lot of misleading ideas about what Mormonism was, and gave me a a little pamphlet and said I could contact them if I was interested. I said thank you, and when I thought he was going to leave, he said, "Can I help you with anything?" I was confused about what he meant. Spiritually? Emotionally? What, exactly, was he going to help me with? Then he said, "Can I take out your trash or do some sort of chore for you that you need help with?" And I actually thought that was really sweet. I just told him that was very nice to offer, but I was okay.

Those Mormons. They sure try to butter you up, don't they?

Free the Lady Bugs!

We get a ton of coupons in the mail, and I go through them and cut the ones out that I want to use. (I've become a coupon lady...shoot me.) But the other day, we got a coupon booklet for a Home & Garden Showplace, where there were coupons for flowers and plants and gardening tools. If we had a nice yard or a garden, I would totally be interested, but we don't. Just as I was about to toss it, I noticed a coupon for lady bugs. I took a closer look. There was a coupon for $7.95 in which you would get a bagful of 2,000 lady bugs, and there was even a picture of the bag with all the poor little lady bugs inside it. It made me incredibly sad. What do they do if no one buys them? Do they all just die, or do they end up releasing them without any profit? I mean, how sad is 2,000 lady bugs crammed into a teeny tiny bag? Pretty sad, me thinks. I'm giving some serious consideration to going and buying a couple bags so I could release them. Unfortunately, at $8.00 a bag, I think I'm going to have to wait until I get some more moolah before I can embark on my Free the Lady Bugs campaign.

A Weak Week

I had a job interview, in which I didn't get the job. (Bummer.)

I read a book that I had been optimistic about, entitled Not My Daughter by Barbara Delinsky. I just finished it this morning and I was pretty disappointed with it. It is a fictional story that revolves around four teenage girls who make a pregnancy pact (remember that story in the news a couple years ago?) and how their mothers deal with it. I thought it sounded interesting...it wasn't. The four girls are basically the same exact character, and the dialogue is so unbelievable I found myself rolling my eyes more than once. The main character, Susan, who is not only the mother of one of the girls but the principal of the high school, takes a lot of heat for her daughter's pregnancy and has to deal with the possibility that she may lose her job. The story gets repetitive (the mothers are angry with their daughters, but wonder if the pregnancies are their fault because they're bad mothers...over and over and over) and the author tries to throw a curve ball by having one of the babies diagnosed with CDH (Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia) in which plenty of drama and personal angst ensues. And somehow, the book ends on a happy note, with three of the four girls taking care of their babies while not furthering their education, the mothers adore their grand babies, and Susan ends up happily ever after with her keeping her job, buying a new house, and marrying her daughter's father after 18 years apart. Blech. On to the next book on my bookshelf.

I did go watch Sex and the City 2 this week. I was stoked on it. There were a few parts that were over-the-top cheesy and I think the whole thing with Aidan was just fluff and unnecessary, but overall it was a lot of fun. I know it has gotten bad reviews, but I liked it. I enjoyed the TV show, though, so the movie would have to be pretty bad for me not to like it. I went by myself on Thursday afternoon, and I almost had the theater all to myself. There were only three other women, who also showed up by themselves, and I almost felt like asking them if we could all sit together and act like we were our own little group of Carrie, Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha for the duration of the movie. But, I didn't. (I would have totally been Carrie, by the way.)

Also, my apostrophe key on my keyboard has decided it doesn't like me this week, and I literally have to bang on it for it to show up. I hate that - it totally disrupts the flow of my typing.

Here's hoping to a better week this week.

Neighbor-Dogs

I try to take my dogs on walks as often as I can. I walk them to a near-by park and let them run around off their leashes as I sit down and read a book. During our walks, we come across other neighborhood dogs that I have made nic-names for. Want to meet them?

First, there is our neighbor's dog who I call the Evil Dog (I'll blog about it some other time) who ferociously barks and batters against his side of the fence as we go by. Then, on the corner of our street, there are the two dogs that I have dubbed Bizarro Ellie and Bizarro Sophie. (You know, like Seinfeld? Where there are characters who physically look like George, Jerry, and Kramer, but there personalities are complete opposites?) Anyway, these two dogs look similar to my dogs, with one being a medium-sized, blond Golden Retriever (Sophie) and the other a small, white, hairy counterpart (Ellie). Everytime we go by, they bark at us incessantly as my dogs have learned to politely ignore them.

There's also a dog right near the Bizarros I refer to as The Spazz because he spastically throws himself against his living room window in an attempt to reach us. Then, there's a dog that I like to call Sophie's Boyfriend. He is only out in his yard every once in a while, so we don't get to see him that much, but when we do, oh my goodness. Sophie is beside herself when she sees this dog. She tries to cross the street to get to him, and she cries and whimpers because she wants to go see him so badly. She won't stop craning her neck to look at him until we have rounded the corner and he's out of sight. Oh, puppy love.

When we get back from our walk, our other neighbor's dog is usually waiting on his side of the chain-link fence, watching for our return. This dog is one of the cutest dogs I've ever seen. He's a little skittish around people, but he's warmed up to me and I was able to read his name tag. His name is Koko. What kind of name is that for a boy dog? So instead, I affectionately call him Bruiser. He's full of character. He is able to jump over to our side of the fence by using a stump, and he performs very interesting tricks with his rope-loop toy. He flings it into the air with his mouth, and then catches it around his neck. I was impressed the first time I saw him do it. He sometimes sits atop his stump and watches me if I'm doing something outside. I don't like his owners very much, though, because I never see them play with him and he's always alone. They leave their gate open all the time, and as a result, I've caught him in the middle of the street more than once. I've had to herd him back to safety into his own yard. He's pretty cute, though, that Bruiser. Here's a picture of him supervising my outdoor work:
And those are our neighbor-dogs.

Flower Thoughts

Recently, my street has exploded with lilac blossoms. I always see lilacs as the sign that spring is here. There are at least four huge lilac bushes on our street, and they are overflowing with lilac. I love walking by them, it smells so wonderful. Lilac is one of my very favorite scents because it's so soft and delicate-smelling. It has a sweet fragrance, but it is not too sweet.

It makes me miss our old house back in California, where we had a lilac bush in our backyard. I used to cut some lilac to bring into the house and our rooms would smell so good. We also had a lavendar border planted in our front yard, and I would cut that and bring it into the house, as well. The lavendar smelled good, but I always liked the lilac better.

We had three rose bushes in the front; I don't know the names of the specific types of roses they were, but there was one that had tiny, pink roses. Another had really large, yellow blossoms, and the third had medium sized roses that were yellow and red. My favorite rose bush was in the back, though, right next to the lilac bush. That rose bush produced the most beautiful, perfect, dark-red roses. I used to set up vases of roses around the house. I love the way roses look, but I don't like the way they smell due to an early childhood memory that I'll share some other time.
As much as I liked the other flowers I would put around the house, the lilacs were always my favorite. So, I've been thinking about whether or not anyone would care if I went and cut some lilacs off of one of my neighbor's bushes. I mean, they are sooo big and there's sooo many blossoms, would anyone really miss them? But, I feel like it would be weird to just walk up and start cutting flowers off my neighbor's plants. I think I'm going to have to be really stealthy about it. The thought of a lilac-scented house is just too tempting for me to pass up.
(All these pictures of lilacs are pictures I took of the ones on my street. Isn't the first picture crazy? That is the biggest lilac bush I've ever seen!)

I'm a little behind.

I'm behind in everything. I'm behind in studying for my finals. I'm behind in completing an essay that is one of my finals. I'm behind in my housework. I'm behind on this blog. I'm behind on a Mother's Day post. So here we go...

I don't have any children except the furry variety. Want to hear how my Mother's Day went? I'm pretty sure my two little furry girlies knew it was a special day, because they let me sleep in yesterday, which they usually don't do. When I got out of bed and started getting ready, they greeted me with plenty of licks and wagging tails. I'm pretty sure it was their way of saying happy Mother's Day. When I sat down later, they proceeded to pile all of their toys around me, which I like to presume were their Mother's Day gifts to me. (Really, they were just trying to get me to play tug-of-war or fetch, but I like my version better.) What sweet little chil'en I have.

But, in all seriousness, I like celebrating Mother's Day with my mom. This was the first Mother's Day that I didn't actually spend it with her. It was kind of sad. But I called her and wished her a happy Mother's Day and all that. She was actually spending Mother's Day with her mom in New Mexico. So, at least I know she had fun.

Do you spend an insane amount of time picking a card out for someone? I do. I always have. I look at almost every single card that's there. It can't be too mushy, but it can't be unfeeling, either. Most of the time, I try to go for something funny, but it's hard to find the right humor that I may share with that particular person. Sometimes I pick a card that's a little more sentimental, but I consider what kind of card I gave the person last year in order to decide whether or not I should be sentimental or funny this year. See how complicated it gets?

So a few weeks ago, I was looking for the perfect Mother's Day card. Most of them were so mushy I could only take one look at it and then put it immediately back. After looking for a good thirty minutes, I found one that wasn't too embarrassingly sentimental, but it was a little plain. I started to head to the check-out counter, when I noticed a card with a picture of Sarah Palin on it. I immediately picked it up, hoping it was anti-Palin. It said on the front: "Sarah Palin could be our next President of the United States." and on the inside it said: "Guess there are scarier things than raising kids." Bingo.

I hope all you mothers out there had an awesome Mother's Day!