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.