Cute Blindness (Baby Specific)

I'm pretty sure I have a previously undiscovered vision problem that I will call cute blindness (baby specific), hereafter referred to as CB(BS). It works the same way as color blindness, but I lack the ability to see certain forms of cute. Just like some people are red/green colorblind, I can't see the cuteness of babies. Like, at all. AT ALL, at all.

Now that I'm at an age where my old college and high school acquaintances are building big Mormon families and posting lots of pics on facebook, I truly believe my cute blindness is becoming even more...acute. An old roommate posts a pic of her new offspring, and her friends all gather around to ooh and aah and proclaim this child to be the most adorable possible minihuman in the history of the universe. The baby looks like this:



But I'm unable to see the cuteness. Instead, the optic information that gets relayed to my brain is this:



Yeah. Not kidding. Really, I would love to understand what the fuss is about. I'd love to think it's just totes adorbs when a baby screws up its wrinkly old lady face and opens its toothless old lady mouth and starts screaming. Instead, I see Mama from that awesome movie entitled Throw Mama From The Train.

What makes it weird is that I'm not completely cute blind. I mean, I can totally dig some cuteness like this:



I mean, look at that. The kitten is wearing a scoodie! Can more cuteness possibly be infused into one picture? Here, let's try:



So, my point is that even though I know I'm supposed to coo over these baby pictures I see in my newsfeed, I just don't know how. And I could type the empty words, but false praise horrifies me. So the best I can do is to say nothing. Because I suspect that after spending thirty-six hours in grueling labor, no mom wants to hear me say, "Hey, your larva looks just like an unhappy old Jewish lady!"

And I think that's something we can all agree on.

Today My Life Reached Its Pinnacle

Work today was epic. This lady came in with a very whiny little girl who refused to sit down in the cart. The lady was working with her daughter and trying to convince her to behave, and she suddenly turned to me and said, "You'll take her, won't you?"

"Of course!" I replied, cause I knew it was a joke.

"See? She'll take you if you don't be good." The girl continued whining, so her mom stepped aside from the cart. "OK, take her." She told me.

I walked up to the cart as if to grab it and wheel it away, and the little girl recoiled in horror. "No? You don't want to go with me?" I asked. "Then you better be good." Yeah, that was me. I terrified a small child into behaving. When they left the store, the child was quiet and good.

Decisions: They Are More Complex Than You Might Think

Not too long ago, an elderly lady walked up to me at work while I was greeting. She told me that she had scheduled a pickup from a bus that stops right in front of the store, and she had written down the time she had scheduled, but she couldn't remember it and her macular degeneration prevented her from reading what she had written. She asked me if she could use a phone to call the company and see what time the bus would come.

This was a very reasonable request, and I did exactly what I would have done if I had run into this lady in the street -- I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and offered it to her. I didn't want to direct her to the other end of the store to use the payphone, I just wanted to help her, and this seemed like the best way.

"Oh, I don't know how to use those." The old lady dismissed my cell phone. No matter.

"Do you know the number?" I asked.

She read the number off, and I dialed it. When the operator came on, I asked about the schedule for the bus that stops right in front of the South Walmart. ("North!" the old lady corrected me. She didn't know where she was.)

"Oh, there isn't a bus that stops in front of the Walmart." The operator told me.

"Oh, I'm sorry, I must have been mistaken." I thanked the operator and hung up, thinking I would get more information from my customer and call back when I had my facts straight. But as I turned back to the old lady, it was as if someone had flipped the bitch switch. She laid into me, ripping me a new one before I could even explain what had happened or ask for more information. I stared at her with openmouthed shock. I was so thrown of balance that I had no idea how to respond. I eventually had to interrupt her tirade to suggest that we simply dial the number again.

"Yes, and let me talk to them this time, if you can't do it." She grumbled. She very politely spoke to the operator and got the information she needed (apparently my mistake had been asking about a bus instead of a scheduled pickup -- the difference is in wording) and gave me back my phone, but I was already shaking with anger. After all, I had pulled out my own phone, using my minutes, to help her. How dare she speak to me that way? Just because I work at Walmart, that doesn't make me any less human. I'm a college-educated member of the Logan community, and yelling at me is not OK. Not even a little bit.

I was angry for the rest of my shift that day. I wanted to get away from the customers. I went home growling about it, and I resolved that above all, I would never, ever, try to help a customer with my own phone again. I would send them down to the payphone no matter how decrepit they were.

Then, a couple of nights ago, a very old man came in from the frigid night. He was dressed in his Sunday best, with a gray suit and dress shoes. He had gotten a cart out in the parking lot and used it to steady himself as he walked inside,but that was his only concession to his age. I glanced at him from time to time as he slowly, carefully made his way toward me.

He said something in a voice so weak and quavering that I had to have him repeat himself three times before I understood he was asking about a phone. From the cold, dead, burned-out place where my heart should have been, I said, "There's a payphone over by the customer service area. It's along this front wall almost to the other door."

Then I helped and greeted other customers while he made his way. His progress was so agonizingly slow that I had plenty of chances to glimpse him. I watched how painfully and carefully he placed his right foot. I had lots and lots of time to ponder the value of compassion, as well as my belief that many of our elderly men are war veterans. In my defense, this fellow spoke so softly that I wouldn't have been able to dial the number for him, and if he couldn't have manipulated the small buttons on my phone we would have been at an impasse anyway. The payphone would have been technology he understood and the buttons would be big enough for him to push. But I wondered how he could possibly make his voice heard over the line, when I couldn't even hear him in person.

In time, I saw him come back my direction. He passed me on his way out, and I asked if he would like to take a scooter to get out to his car. He seemed exhausted from the long walk across our store, and I wondered how he would even get out safely, what with the icy pavement. He shook his head and said something I couldn't make out, in a voice so weak it manifested itself as a helpless wheeze. I wanted to walk him out to his car, and clock out and drive him home and make sure he got up the steps safely. But none of this was possible, and I sensed an air of pride about this old man that told me he didn't want that sort of attention anyway. He passed the scooters at a turtle's pace and pushed his cart out into the night.

Potpourri

Shayne and I left the house today to go meet Shayne's dad, and our leaving coincided with some sports game or another. Someone USU-related had blocked off the right side of the parking lot exit to set up a pay station where people could come in and park in our (residential) parking lot for $5. Which is usually fine, but on this occasion there was a line of cars down the street to park in our lot, and they were coming in and pausing to pay, and they were blocking our way out of the parking lot. Annoyance! One pickup truck stopped to chat with the fellow who was taking the money. The fellow kept pointing toward the stadium, so probably the old codger was asking for directions or instructions, but I wanted to believe they were merely shooting the breeze because that gave me the opportunity to hate them more. Shayne and I waited there for several minutes while the line of cars on the street grew longer and showed no sign of letting up. I told Shayne there was no use trying the other exit from our parking lot because it was probably the same thing, but he wanted to go anyway. Yeah, it was exactly the same. I played the role of Lady MacBeth, goading my gentle husband into using the aggressive driving tactics that I've found to be necessary in Utah. We basically muscled our way past the pay station in the gap between the truck they were using to block our way and the truck that was trying to come in and park. This is why you buy a small car, my friends. People must have seen the determination in my expression and the shape of my mouth as I was urging Shayne to "Go! Go!" and they got right out of the way.

So that was good.

*WARNING! RANT ALERT!*

In other news, I think I may be coming down with strep throat again, and I don't like it. If I went to jail, I would at least get medical care. Heck, prisoners of war get medical care. But gainfully employed Americans with college degrees just have to suck it up. If I were on Wall Street, I would be occupying too. Hey, instead of bailing out a corrupt bank that contributed to the housing crisis, why don't we fund health care? Donate it to free clinics so human beings can go to doctors. Oh yeah, I remember. America doesn't care about poor people. Poor people just didn't try hard enough. If they had worked harder, they wouldn't be poor at all.

*Rant concluded*

Some people at work gave Shayne a bunch of apples from their tree, and I made some stuff called Walnut Apple Dessert. We like it.

I also made soap today. It's very easy. Soapmaking manuals read like one of those survival shows, where the survival expert describes in detail everything that could go wrong during the process, then he does the horrifically dangerous thing, and...nothing. So a soap book will say something like, "Be extremely careful! Wear a hazmat suit! When adding lye to water, it can explode like a volcano!" They like to use the volcano imagery. When you're adding the lye solution to the oil, it can also explode like a volcano. Now I'm not denying that it could be dangerous if the lye solution splashed back into one's face, and that's why I carefully lean back when I'm adding lye to water or solution to oil. The first time I made soap I bought gloves and safety goggles and face masks, and I was actually kind of disappointed not to see an explosion. Now, I just casually lean back away from the mixture. In any case, enough soap to cleanse the Prussian army is now saponifying in my kitchen, and nothing interesting happened in the process. Lame.

The Days Of The Idiot Girl

I used to get really upset about the silly things I do -- like, I would hunker down and weep with embarrassment cause I would do something stupid. Like, one time I needed to call a dentist's office, and I nervously made the call, left my name on the answering machine and asked for a callback. After I hung up, my roomie pointed out that even though I had asked them to call me back, I hadn't left my number.

"It's OK, just call back and tell them you called a minute ago and leave your number." She told me.

So I brought out the business card with my dentist's phone number on it and called again. I told them I had called a minute before , gave them my name , and, for no good reason, I read the dentist's office's phone number off their business card. Yeah, that was a painful one. I tearfully called back a third time, to give both my name and actual phone number. I felt only relief when the office never called back. But when I went in a few weeks later and gave them my name, I think I noticed a flicker of recognition and a struggle to keep a straight face. I bet they laughed long and hard over my answering machine messages.

Well, the days of agonizing over my Idiot Girl moments are behind me. With the help of my guru, Laurie Notaro, I am learning to laugh at my absent-minded, scatterbrained schemes. Sometimes I even look at it as part of my service to humanity. I mean, the people around me probably feel a lot smarter and cooler by contrast with my pathetic flailing. So if you are someone who likes to think of yourself as being collected and competent, please enjoy this list of my Idiot Girl moments from the past two days.

• Yesterday I woke at 5:30 AM and by some miracle I managed to shower, dress, and do my hair without incident. I got my makeup on, but I forgot the mascara. Who in heck forgets to put on mascara? Isn't that, like, the most important part?
• I bribed myself to go to work by promising myself breakfast at McDonald's. Sometimes this is the only way I can stop myself from just crawling back into bed.
• At work, I brought out my car keys to open the combination padlock on my locker.
• At one point I noticed that my Telzon (scanning gun) had a dead battery, so I asked someone to get me a new battery, as I am not allowed to walk away from my door while working. They walked away with the dead battery, and about thirty seconds later a customer walked up with a return. Yeah, I tried to scan their item with the Telzon that had no battery in it.
• Today, I decided to unwrap a vitamin C lozenge and attempt to eat it, which proved more difficult than one might think. the lozenge dropped on the floor and shattered. I repeatedly tried to pick up the pieces, but they kept slipping out of my grasp and falling again. Butterfingers (not the good kind.)
• The store was dead slow on this snowy Sunday night, and I was bored. I wandered into the customer service area where two other bored employees were working, caught their attention and danced an impromptu jig. Now, I have worked with people in the past who get my dancing and understand that it is supposed to be funny, but these guys were not among them. My silly dance sank like a stone. I belatedly remembered my resolution to try to pretend to be normalsauce at Walmart, but since nobody has ever been able to clearly define to me what "normal" is, I'm left with trial and error.
• When the night finally ended, I went back to clock out and get my purse out of my locker, but my purse was not at all in my locker. Not even slightly. The last place I had it was in the break room, so I went in to check, and there it was 0n the table I had sat at during my lunch break. The break room at this time was full of overnighters who had gathered for their start-of-shift meeting, and they were not impressed with my absent-mindedness.
• I checked to see that money was still in my wallet, which it was -- whew. I thought I would fetch something for dinner tonight, like a butternut squash or...something. I didn't like the produce I found up front, so I made as if to leave the store. I got up to the checkstand and nearly pulled up before realizing that I hadn't actually put anything in my cart. I guess this is like the antithesis of shoplifting, where I try to pay even though I don't have any merchandise.

In the end, I made it home in one piece, miraculously. Now I get two days off to try to recharge my brain, but don't worry -- I will never really have it together. There will always be Idiot Girl days.

The Singular Case Of The Grouchy Customer

I end up helping out lots of handicapped people at work, and I'm completely OK with that. I'll help find scooters for them to ride while shopping, try to balance a basket in the lap of a wheelchair shopper, lift things down for them. One lady asked me to rearrange her wheelchair seatbelt that was lying dangerously close to her no-no place. It's no big deal.

But sometimes things get a little awkward, like today. a lady took a scooter and came back when it started to die -- like all things electric, their charge doesn't last forever. She was sitting in the scooter with two big boxes of cat litter under her feet, and she asked me to grab them and put them into a regular cart so she could continue shopping. She spread her knees apart. "I can't lift them," she told me. So I tried to be as casual as possible and I reached in between her knees to lift the first box of cat litter.

It was *way* heavier than I expected. "Hawoo!" I grunted, having forgotten to act tough.

"Come on, woman, get a grip!" The lady admonished. "It's only thirty-seven pounds, it's not that heavy! Just lift it." She was kind of barking at me, and I was at the end of my shift, severely sleep deprived, aching all over, and emerging from a grueling work week, so I was just tired enough to react without thinking.

"Says the person who says she can't lift it!" I exclaimed. I mean, that's what she'd told me a few seconds earlier.

"I can lift it! I lifted it with one arm to put it on there! Now get it in there!"

By this time I had remembered that I was a servant there. "Ah, OK." I sighed and hoisted the two boxes into the regular shopping cart. I still think there are a lot of women who wouldn't have been strong enough to lift those boxes over the sides of the cart like I did.

I helped her transfer the rest of her groceries into the cart, and she was very particular about how the items were stacked, ordering me several times to rearrange them for her. And I did. When we were finished, she got up out of her dying scooter and strode back into the store to finish her shopping.

As she walked away, another employee came to join me. "You can tell she feels sick," he told me. I could hear the concern in his voice.

"Oh? What does she have?" I asked.

He shrugged. "You name it, she has it." I glanced at the lady again and a list of conditions came to mind based on her appearance, courtesy of my time working at Healthways -- diabetes, heart disease, osteoarthritis, acid reflux, COPD, and back pain, just to name a few. I didn't ask for specifics. It was time to clock out.

Riverwalk

Today I decided to go for a drive because I couldn't sleep, and I wanted to just get out of the house and stop making the noise that was preventing Shayne from sleeping. I didn't really know where I was going, but I thought I might drive up the canyon a ways and take a stroll by the river. So I started up the canyon and marveled at the water. It had nearly washed out my favorite walk, so I kept driving. After awhile, I had gone quite a ways. I noticed a little turnout, so I pulled over and got out to take my stroll.

I didn't go far. I have a cold right now and I deplore strenuous exercise when I have a respiratory infection. Do I think I'm going to suffer a collapsed lung and suffocate? I don't know. But I opted to amble very slowly, just enjoying the sound of the water and the smell of the air, and the sunshine that somehow felt gentle and soothing instead of oppressive. I was enjoying my stroll quite a bit when I glanced back at my car and thought about how much I liked it.

I like my tiny blue car, I thought. It looked pleasantly shiny in the sunlight.

And that's when it happened: I was overcome by the absolute certainty that when I went back to my car, it was not going to start.

There was no actual precedent for this thought. My car had never actually failed to start in the entire year-and-a-half it had been in my possession, not even in the dead of winter when I had forgotten to give it antifreeze. But I just knew it wouldn't start when I turned the key.

I patted the pocket where I normally kept my phone, and of course it was empty. I pondered -- I hadn't woken Shayne up to tell him where I was going. Really, when I left the house, I didn't know where I was going either. So I didn't have my phone and nobody knew where I was.

I considered my situation again. I was right next to the road, and even though it wasn't busy, cars were coming by every couple of minutes. If I tried hard enough, I could flag someone down and ask to use their phone. Eventually someone would let me. But what if they didn't get reception up here? Did I dare ask for a ride?

I decided to get back into my car to think about it further, and while I was there I thought I would try to start it up, just in case. And of course, after my near panic, it felt very anticlimactic when the engine turned over smooth as cream and the music came on right where it had left off.

Well, then. That was a very nice walk, I thought as I drove away.

Gazpacho vs. Gestapo

Shayne: "I put all the vegetables in the blender and then put them in a pot. Do you want some? It's like Gestapo. That soup."

Me: "Um, no...see, Gestapo is Nazi police. Gazpacho, on the other hand, is a Spanish vegetable soup that's traditionally served cold."

Shayne: "Oh. And I'm cooking it, so it's not even cold. Do you want some?"

Me: "No, thanks. The peppers were moldy. I can't eat them."

Shayne: "But I'm cooking them. Doesn't that make a difference?"

Me: "I don't want to risk it. I'm already sick." *Tuberculosis-like coughing fit*

Shayne: "Hey! Nobody gave you permission to die. You should eat tons of garlic. It will make you better. You should make garlic tea."

Me: "Yeah. That will help my social life. No, I don't want to stink."

Shayne: "But it will make you better. You've been sick forever. You should eat a bulb of garlic. Maybe there's a recipe online for garlic tea that you would like."

Me: "I don't wanna. I'll smell like rotting garlic."

Shayne: "Well too bad. You need to get better."

Me: "Can't I just have some gazpacho?"

Shayne: *Guffaws* "Don't you mean Gestapo? I'm sure Gestapo would be much yummier."

Me: "No! Remember that lady I used to work with, the nutritionist? She gave me a recipe for V8 gazpacho where you just blend the V8 with some other veggies and four cloves of garlic. I would much rather do that."

Shayne: "But that's hardly any garlic. You need more than that. You should eat the whole bulb."

Me: "I don't want to."

Shayne: "Then you can kill everyone with your stench."

Me: "No. I told you, when I eat raw garlic it gives me really stinky gas."

Shayne: "And you can set off the carbon monoxide detector with your gas. It will say, 'gross! You stink! Come on!'"

Me: "I'd rather not."

Shayne: "It'll be fun."

Me: "No. It won't."

Shayne: "It will."

Me: "No. Really, it won't."

Shayne: "Hey! You could put a whole bulb of garlic in the gazpacho and then eat it with the Gestapo. Isn't that a good idea?"

Me: *Facepalm*

The Long, Slow Death Of Vinyl

The Archive from Sean Dunne on Vimeo.

Even though I am not actually a musician, I've studied it enough to gain an appreciation for it, and I've listened to it enough to develop a deep love. I've gone through all sorts of phases. I've made repeated attempts to delve into historical music, but with limited success. I remember the disappointment I felt as a teenager when I decided I wanted to explore Big Band music, and I found very little on the subject. The tapes and CDs I found seemed to feature a limited playlist of "favorites" from the genre, but not a wide variety. The same thing happened when I became curious about what people were listening to at the turn of the twentieth century. And again when I developed a taste for 1920s hot jazz.

I don't mind listening to a CD that sounds like a record. If I can't hear the music live, I prefer to experience it as people of that time period did. Surface noise and static don't bother me. If I hear an old-fashioned song on Glee that I like, I usually end up opting for the original version rather than the Glee recording, because it sounds grittier, less polished. I want to tell this man, "I get it. I understand."

On the other hand, I don't have a place to store these records either. Space in our apartment is already limited, and I'm incapable of keeping our belongings organized as it is. I love the convenience and portability of an ipod, or listening to music in my car. As much as I would love one of those old-fashioned record player cabinets, there's no place for it, or the records, in my life.

I'm more concerned about what we lose when we lose this music. I also want to preserve it, mainly for my own use, but also for future generations to enjoy. But the task of converting all this music to a digital format seems insurmountable, and the tragedy feels severe. Sean wouldn't want his record collection digitized anyway. His goal is to keep it all on the records, whereas I would argue that digital recordings don't have to be autotuned to death. I can enjoy a Sophie Tucker CD that's so quiet I have to turn the volume all the way up to hear it, and the static is so loud it almost drowns out Sophie's voice. I'm always perplexed by the idea that the people around me can only enjoy top 40 music.

As much as it pains me, I think Sean is probably right. He's not alone, but not enough other people care about old music to save it.

The Scariest Night

I lived next door to a graveyard when we lived in Battle mountain, NV. It was like this: I could walk out the backdoor of our house and walk about three steps before coming to a chain-link fence. If I stood at that fence, there were graves inches from my feet. It was really creepy at first. Not that they were graves, necessarily. The thing that creeped me out is that so many of them didn't have headstones. Maybe the section over by our house was the paupers' area, but the lucky ones only had little plastic cards stuck into the dirt to identify the remains. These plastic cards reminded me of the things people stab into garden soil to differentiate tomatoes from cucumbers. Once the markers were knocked down by the wind, the graves became silent mounds of dirt. No grass, no flowers, nothing. It made me wonder how many unmarked graves there were in the world, and how often I stepped over someone's bones without knowing it. I remember standing there, fourteen years old, and pondering this, realizing that the graves were not so unsettling to me as the fact that they were unmarked, and that nobody cared about the people buried there.

When I tell others I used to live so close to human remains, lots of people shudder and shiver. They tell me they would have been creeped out all the time, and that they would never have slept in that house. Some even go so far as to insist that they would have somehow prevented their parents from renting there. The brave ones start to ask questions about what I experienced while I was living there. Did I ever smell decomposing bodies? No. Never a smell. Did I hear creepy sounds at night, like of someone singing? No, but then my bedroom was on the opposite side of the house from the graveyard. And I usually listened to music at night. Did I worry about ghosts? No. I never had any reason to believe that the people buried there might somehow wish me ill after their deaths. I felt sorrow and compassion for their loneliness, but not fear.

The truth is, you can get used to just about anything. It only took a few days for the cemetery to become commonplace. Since it didn't really assert its presence in my life, I was able to think about it only when I chose to do so. My mom could send me outside to get something out of the outdoor freezer that stood next to the fence, and I could do so without even thinking about it.

There was only one time the graveyard became creepy at all, and it was Halloween. A specific Halloween. There was something special about one Halloween when I was living there. If memory serves, It was a full moon, and the instance of a full moon on Halloween wasn't terribly common. I remember newscasters advising people to stay in their homes that year because there would be a higher possibility of Halloween mayhem. More to the point, people were advised to bring their pets inside just in case some crazy people decided to have an animal sacrifice.

I don't remember where my mom was, but it was just me and my dad that night. We decided to just stay home and hand out candy to trick-or-treaters. At one point, my dad walked past me through the living room, mentioning something about how he could hear our cat, Rugby, having a problem outside. He thought he would just go bring him in. A moment passed, during which I passively watched TV. My dad came back in with the cat in his arms, and both of them were seriously spooked. Rugby ran into my parents' bedroom to go back outside through a window they kept open so the cats could come and go, but my dad closed it. Rugby stood on his hind legs, with his front feet propped on the windowsill, growling and hissing. He wanted nothing more than to get back outside and show whatever it was out there who was boss.

My dad needed to talk about it. He slumped limply in the living room chair and described the scene. To my teenage mind, it sounded woefully anticlimactic: My dad went outside and found the cat pacing back and forth in front of the fence, growling and hissing at something he perceived in the graveyard. the full moon illuminated the area well, and my dad didn't see anything out there. No people, no cats, no raccoons, nothing. There was just...nothing there.

Again, I was a teenager. "Nothing" just didn't seem very frightening. To my dad, however, "nothing" was a lot worse that "something." If it had been raucous teenagers or feral cats, that would have explained why a big, tough tomcat like Rugby would feel threatened. Pranksters and animals can be chased off with shotguns and brooms. but nothing? What do you do about nothing? How do you fight it?

He didn't let it go. He kept talking about it throughout the evening, and he didn't sleep well that night. It took a long time for Rugby to calm down too. My dad kept getting up and looking out the window, hoping to see something tangible out there that would tell him the source of Rugby's agitation wasn't supernatural. He went back out with a flashlight but found...nothing. In the morning he took a walk into the graveyard to examine the soil. he was an experienced hunter searching for any disturbances in the soil, such as footprints, human or otherwise. he returned to the house grumbling and fretting about it. My mom told him to forget about it, but he couldn't. For weeks, he continued peeking out of windows and puttering around the corner of the yard where he'd found Rugby pacing. He settled down a little, but he never really got over it. He didn't stop telling the story, even after we moved away, even after Rugby died and there was no clear reminder of that night.

For me, I think the effect was cumulative. The events of that night didn't spook me at the time. It was years of hearing my father complain about it that made me start to feel a little unsettled. Also, it probably didn't hurt to outgrow my teenage imperative to Show No Fear. The graveyard became a little scarier when it was far away and I could no longer see it in daylight. The banality of the blank mounds faded under my dad's insistence that there must have been something out there that night. Something was lurking in that graveyard, he believed. We just couldn't see it.

watching my father succumb to fear of the supernatural made it the freakiest thing that ever happened when we lived next door to the graveyard.

The Domino Effect

The other day I decided to order pizza. Not just any pizza. Domino's (my favorite). I wanted to make it as inexpensive as possible, so I used a coupon and reluctantly chose the "carry out" option at checkout.

I had a good plan. I set out in my car and stopped along the way to obtain a beverage from another local establishment, rather than pay more for a soda. All was going well. Feeling pretty confident about myself, I parked my car at the pizza store and went inside.

"Hi, I'm Cydni. I placed an order for carry out a little while ago. I'm just wondering if it's ready yet." This is what I told the friendly girl behind the counter.

"Just a moment." She tapped the keys of her computer. "What was your name again?"

"Cydni, but it's spelled all crazy so most people read it as Cindy." I replied helpfully. You know, in case she was reading my name wrong.

"Hmm." She stared at her computer screen and tapped a few more keys. "Um, I'm not finding you here. Are you sure you placed an order? And it was for takeout?"

"Yeah. I got the screen that said 'thanks for your order.' I'm positive I placed it. You don't see it there?"

"No. Are you sure you ordered from Pizza Hut? It could have been someplace else. Domino's?"

I experienced a peculiar sensation at that moment, as I pulled my gaze away from the girl behind the counter and focused on the counter itself, where my clever brain had perceived writing but had paid it no mind. I stared in horror at the words, "Pizza Hut," which were emblazoned at least once on every surface in the store.

"Do you think maybe you ordered from some other place?" The girl continued.

"Um, that's probably it. I should check." I mumbled.

"Ok, have a great day!"

"Ok, thank you!"

I was backing out of the establishment with full awareness that my face was as red as a lobster. In my car, I googled 'Domino's Logan Ut' from my phone and came up with a phone number, which I called, but the nice fellow who answered had no record of my order. He did, however, mention that perhaps my order had gone to the North Logan store.

Too embarrassed to ask where the North Logan store was, I thanked him and hung up. Then I began driving north on Main Street in hopes that I would see a Domino's sign. If that failed, I hoped to simply go home and see if the restaurant would change my order to Delivery, since I clearly had no idea what I was doing.

In case anybody was wondering, the North Logan Domino's is in full view on Main Street. It's on the left as you travel North. The sign and store are both lit up like Christmas, which does not account for why I had never seen it before. Feeling greatly humbled, I parked my car and went inside.

"hi, um, a little while ago I tried to place an order online. Do you guys have any record of that?"

"Oh, sure." My pizza was safe and sound on a warming table. I could see it. "What do you mean you tried to place an order? Did you have trouble?"

"Oh no, I, um, went to the wrong store. The South Logan store didn't know anything about it." I hoped she would infer that I had only gone to the South Logan Domino's and not, you know, to Pizza Hut.

My discomfort must have been obvious.

"Oh, don't worry about it." The girl reassured me as I paid and gathered up my dinner. "It happens all the time. Every day, lots of times a day. We're used to it."

Thanks To My Grandmother

I wasn't able to be as close with my Grandma Perkins as I was with my Grandma Lindt. My father's parents lived in California during my childhood, and we only visited every few years. (By contrast, my mother's parents lived in the same state, and they frequently camped in their camper in front of our house, presumably to be closer to the family.) My older siblings had the opportunity to live with our grandparents, but I didn't have that. By the time my Grandma Perkins sold her San Diego house and moved to Washington, I was at a stage in my teen years where I had already cut myself off emotionally from other people as a defense mechanism. I didn't think she and I had anything to talk about, so I simply didn't talk to her much.

In my twenties, I thought I could only write to her about happy things, lest I set off her severe depression. My own depression prevented me from seeing much happiness in the world, so I simply didn't write much. Now, in my thirties, I know that I love talking to the elderly about their life experiences, but at the time I didn't know. By the time I was old enough to realize what an interesting person she was, her Alzheimer's had set in to the extent that she no longer knew who I was. In hindsight, I realize I probably still could have asked her about things that had happened many years earlier, but I couldn't get past the feeling that I would upset her terribly by walking in and claiming to be her granddaughter. Thankfully, I still have a strong belief in heaven and the afterlife, so I know I won't let the opportunity to know my grandmother pass me by again.

When we moved to Utah, I began to use her as inspiration. After all, if she could could leave home at age 12 and go into "service" (she was a housemaid), couldn't I swallow my pride and fold up my college degree and go to work at MacDonald's? Hadn't she survived the Great Depression with her hard work and resourcefulness? And more than this -- she survived the death of her husband, and the trial of a daughter-in-law with whom she couldn't get along. For a woman with only one child, this must have been a crushing blow. And she endured it all so gracefully that after her death, when her estate had been dispersed, there was money left over for her grandchildren to inherit.

I didn't even realize what a heavy burden my debt was until just now, when I paid off my computer. The debt was manageable with the income:expenses ratio I enjoyed in Washington, but after coming to Utah and earning much lower wages...when I was even earning wages at all...my defense mechanism, to keep it from being overwhelming, was just to pretend I didn't care. Especially during the months when I was sick, and I would mostly just go to work, endure my workday, and come home and sleep. I didn't have energy to care about money and the disaster my finances had become.

But my computer is mine now. This computer, on which I now type, belongs to me, clear of debt. I felt such a sense of elation when I pushed confirm and sent the payment. My grandma gave me a computer. I moved on and logged into my Mastercard account. I'd opened this card in an effort to build credit, but it was over a hundred dollars overlimit and I had only been making the minimum payments. This time, when I clicked confirm, I started sobbing with relief. The sense of helplessness and hopelessness I had felt regarding money was just...gone. I could hardly see to pay off my last two bills because I was crying so hard. I'm still crying.

I'm not out of debt. I still have my student loans, and the only way to get out of those is to die. But the sense of gratitude I feel toward my grandmother is overwhelming. She helped me so much! She could have gone shopping. Those doubleknit pants, that I thought were funny when I was a kid? She could have replaced them. She didn't have to live so frugally, and no one was forcing her to be so generous in her will.

And how can I express it? She's dead, but not gone. I will negotiate terms of repayment in the next life, when I see her again. I can apologize for being such a deeply flawed person and for being so confused and depressed. Since she struggled with severe depression all her life, she's probably uniquely qualified to understand the sickness behind my madness. In the meantime, if I ask Heavenly Father very nicely, maybe He will pass on my gratitude to her, and let her know I'm remembering her and that her gift is incredibly meaningful to me.

Form Or Function?

This Could Be Me!

Now that spring is (slowly) on its way, I've been experiencing cravings for not just rollerskating, but also cruising around on a bicycle. It's been a few years since I've ridden one. I crashed good and proper on my last bike, and while I didn't ever swear off riding it, I just sort of...didn't want to after that. Then it got stolen, and I was a little relieved to be rid of it.

But now that I've receiving my inheritance from my Grandma Perkins, I thought maybe I would invest in a bicycle and go out riding again. Like, instead of staying in and doing a workout video. Maybe I could even go out and ride around for fun, like I used to when I was a kid.

The problem is that I'm drawn to really adorable bikes like this. And this. So cute! Oh, and this too. Notice the prices? These are not only the cute bikes, they are also the less expensive ones.

But they don't go up hills well, or rather, my legs don't. What I mean is, when I have a bike like this, I tend to ride it downhill and then walk it uphill because I basically have an asthma attack when I try to propel my bicycle uphill on these one-speed wonders.

What I should be wanting is a bike like this. It's a much more sensible model with different gear settings that I can use to help me go up hills, and it's really not at all expensive. It's just not cute.

Well, there's also a sort of hybrid. Here it is in all its wonderfulness -- 21 speeds, pretty color, wide tires, padded seat, cute -- everything I want in a bike, but for three times the price. I must decide, but how? Maybe I'll check craigslist and DI for really vintage bikes.

31 or 32? (You Do The Math)

"How old are you?" A coworker asked recently. My mother used to try to convince to believe that people ask me this question because they think I'm acting immaturely, and the older I get the more I think she's probably right.

"Thirty-one." I replied. "Actually, thirty-two. I just recently had a birthday." That's when I realized that more time had passed than I thought, because "recently" meant six months earlier, and for that matter....was it my thirty-second birthday? Or my thirty-first?

I caught myself drifting into a dreamy contemplation of this question rather a lot over the next several days. I pondered my "system" of knowing how old I was in a certain year. I was born in July of 1979, so I was less than a year old, or zero, in 1980. In 1981, I was one year old. Then I turned two. This system is roughly accurate, and I depend on it. I can estimate that I was eleven years old during the Gulf Conflict because (I think) I remember it happening in 1991. I was seventeen when I graduated from high school, because it happened in 1997. I still had a firm grasp on my age back then. I turned eighteen a month after school ended.

It's a useful system, but imperfect. I was seventeen in 1997, but I was also eighteen for the second half of the year. So sometimes I get confused when roommates or others try to make me pinpoint my exact age at a certain time.

I was...maybe...twenty-one or twenty-two the first time I remember feeling confused about my age. A guy at Convergys asked me how old I was, and without thinking I blithely answered, "Nineteen." I thought about it for a few seconds, then corrected myself. "Ha, just kidding. I'm twenty." When I realized I was still wrong, I decided to just let it go.

But at least I could come to a satisfying conclusion after just a few seconds of contemplation. Back then, I could. But now? After days of thinking about it, I was no closer to an answer. One could argue that thirty-two years had passed between 1979 and 2011, and one would be right. But I was born halfway through the year. So, subtracting...or adding?...six months...

In the end I gave up. I concluded that since I don't feel completely comfortable being the age I am anyway, and I've proven myself utterly incapable of actually acting my age, I decided to go with the lower number. I'm thirty one, and if anyone wants to dispute it, I'll let them do the math.