So I've realized that my blog is dying. Gasping it last breaths. No heartbeat. And that's completely my fault. And I am not okay with it. So I am doing some blog CPR to try to resuscitate it. I always feel like I have nothing to write about, but then I realized, there are incidents of monumentous stupidity all around me every day, which could make excellent blog fodder.
Take the other day, for example. I had just started working at my Walmart job, after having worked all day at my other job (a temp job at Rust Consulting, Inc.). So I'm tired, but still trying to do my job the best I can. Pretty soon a family comes through my checkout line. They had an entire cartful of food and candy and dog food and stuff. So I get it all rung up, and then at the end, the guy hands me a Coinstar receipt. Now for anyone not familiar with Coinstar, you take your buckets of loose change to a Coinstar machine and put it in, and the machine will print out this weird little receipt with your info on it and a bar code. You take the receipt to a register in the store, and after the cashier has gone through a whole process to make sure the receipt is legitimate, they scan it, and you either get cash for that amount or have it applied to your total.
So the guy hands it to me, just as I'm telling him his total, and he says, "Oh, here, I have this, too." He does not say anything else. I take the receipt and go through the whole process with it, while the guy stands there silently watching. I have to take a minute to rip this weird wavy perforation from the side of the receipt, and then I have to rub this little rectangular area on the back with a penny to see that the Coinstar logo appears, and then I have to rub my fingers along the side of the front of the receipt to see that the Coinstar logo on that part disappears. After I've done all this (and the guy has stood there silently watching me) the guy swipes his EBT (food stamps) card, at the same moment that I scan the barcode on the Coinstar receipt. His total was seventy-something dollars, and his Coinstar thing was twenty-something dollars, which made his total fifty-something dollars. The debit thing pops up on my screen (EBT/food stamps run as debit cards) and I hit my debit button. I also tell the guy his new total of fifty-something dollars, and he starts getting all mad. He couldn't understand why his total was twenty-something dollars less. I tell him it was because of his Coinstar receipt, and he says in an annoyed way that he wanted it ALL charged to his EBT. At this point the receipt has already printed and the transaction cannot be taken back, at least by me. But the guy is mad, and wants some cash. Apparently I'm supposed to be a psychic or something and should have just magically known that he wanted the Coinstar done in a completely separate transaction, even though he gave it to me with his other stuff and said nothing about doing it separately and then watched me getting it ready without saying anything.
I knew that there was nothing I could do to help this guy. The transaction was already done. So I called a CSM, because I figured maybe the CSM could override it, put the money back on his EBT, and give him cash for his Coinstar amount. So CSM Tony comes over, and I hand him the receipts and explain the situation to him (leaving out the part about how this idiot guy didn't bother to tell me he wanted his stuff done in two separate transactions and then got mad at me for not automatically knowing). There is a huge line forming behind this guy, and he starts going off about how he just needed some cash because he was from out of town.
At this point, two separate thoughts are going through my mind. One was that there was no reason for his to be a jerk to me because I had no way to know what he had intended to do and if he wanted cash that badly he should have just said "I'm sorry, no problem, I'll just go to the ATM." The other was that this guy shouldn't even be on government welfare. Half of it was spent on candy and chocolate milk for his kids, and he bought a truckload of dog food. I'm sorry, but if you can afford to have a dog, you can afford to feed your family without the government's help. If not, you should get rid of the unnecessary expense of the dog and use that money to feed your family. I know this was totally judgmental of me, and I didn't need to be speculating on whether or not this guy deserved to be on welfare, but he was really irritating me, and I'd already been working for around nine hours that day.
So Tony tries to override the transaction. Pretty much anything can be removed from a transaction by a CSM, even after the transaction is finished. Except for, come to find out, Coinstar. When he scanned the Coinstar receipt to remove it from the transaction, it said that that barcode had already been redeemed. We try to explain this to the guy, who keeps on insisting that we give him his twenty-something in cash. Finally Tony asks the guy to come up to the service desk and he'll take care of him up there so I can help all the other customers in my line. So they all leave to the service desk, but the transaction is still on my register from when Tony tried to void out the Coinstar receipt. I abort the transaction, which requires CSM approval (they just have to push a button on their palm pilots). Then I realize that Tony has left his palm pilot at my register. I apologize to the customer waiting at the front of the line for all the waiting, and take the palm pilot up to customer service so Tony can approve my request. I get up there, and he's still there with the jerk guy, who is complaining about me and how he hadn't wanted me to put his Coinstar on with all his other stuff and he just really wanted some cash. (For one thing buddy, I'm not a mind-reader, and for another thing, you are literally standing three feet away from an ATM, so quit your complaining, shut up, and let's all move on with our lives.) I don't say this, of course, I just think it. I hand the palm pilot to Tony and ask him to abort the transaction on my register. I go back to my register, and it's been approved. I apologize to the customers there again and start ringing up their stuff. (Luckily these are nice people.)
So it's going fine, and about ten minutes have passed, and I've noticed that I never saw the guy leave the customer service desk. I wonder to myself if he's still over there being an idiot or if I just didn't see him leave. A minute later I see one of the assistant managers go in to the customer service desk, and I'm thinking that Tony probably called him on the walkie to come talk to this guy. Another five minutes pass, and I finally see the guy leave, looking really annoyed. A minute later I see the manager and Tony leave the service desk. I put it all together, that the guy was mad at me for not being able to read his mind, and since I couldn't help him and the CSM couldn't help him he went to the store management, who also couldn't help him, which is why he left looking so annoyed. Tony comes over later and tells me that the problem was with the Coinstar being on the same transaction with everything else, and I said, "I know. He never told me he wanted it done separately. Apparently I was just supposed to magically know or something." He said yeah, just not to do Coinstars with other stuff, with a look that said that he completely understood about stupid people like that.
And you know what? I really think I don't deserve to have to help all these stupid people all day after I've already been working at my other job all day. I'm worth more than that. And it makes me think that maybe the time has come for me to quit my job at Walmart.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Tuesday, July 21, 2009
The Pot Calling the Kettle Black
I have a lot of issues with my parents. Or rather, they have a lot of issues with me. One of my mom's favorite things to argue about is how I am a packrat (guilty) and keep tons and tons of junk that I don't need. While I fully admit to being a packrat, it is really not nearly as dire a situation as she makes it out to be. I get rid of things that I have no use for anymore. Most of my stuff is made up of books and papers. (My mom doesn't understand why I would want to own a book--she figures once you've read a book once, why would you ever want to read it again when you know what's going to happen? But to me my books are like my children, and I read them over and over again, which is why I like to have them around.)
Now, it wouldn't bother me so much to have my mom yelling at me about all my stuff and the messiness thereof, if it weren't for the fact that her room is also very messy and full of things she doesn't use or need anymore. She is always quick to say that it is all my dad's, and it's a genetic thing which she shares no part in. I know that is somewhat true--my dad is a packrat, and his parents were, too. Their house always had rooms and rooms that they didn't really use because they were completely full of stuff. They weren't hoarders or anything, they just had a lot of stuff. So my mom is always quick to say that it's just a Brown thing and she has nothing to do with it. (Although anyone who goes in the parents' bedroom can tell you that a fair amount of the stuff is my mom's.)
And it is true that my mom's family is the opposite. One thing that always drives us completely crazy is how my mom and grandma love to throw things away. I'm not exaggerating; they actually feel joy when they put things in the trash. I do not understand it. My grandma does it because that's who she is; my mom does it to try to prove that she doesn't ever keep anything around that she doesn't need anymore. (If you watch closely, though, it's always other people's things she's throwing away.) But she's always on my case because I supposedly keep all these things I don't need (as I said, I love books, and I have some toys and gifts that I like to keep for sentimental reasons, but if it's something I can't or won't use again and there is no sentimental attachment and no possibility to offend someone, then I get rid of it pretty quickly), whereas she has never once in her life kept anything that she wasn't going to be using again soon.
So I've got the house to myself for a brief couple of days, so I decided to do some poking around in the basement. I threw out some food down there that was several years past it's prime (which my mom will probably freak out about when she discovers it, because she figures if it's sealed it will never ever go bad, no matter how many years have passed), and I found something interesting down there with all the old cans that I just had to laugh at. It was a bottle of prescription medicine. This is not in and of itself funny, until you realize that my mom has been keeping it down there since 1991. No joke. This bottle of medicine was filled for my older brother Jeremy on January 11, 1991. Hello! How can she say she never keeps anything she doesn't need anymore, and here she is with a child's prescription that is eighteen years old?!
Okay, you're probably thinking, maybe my brother got better so she decided to keep it in case he got sick again or something, and then it was just forgotten until I dug it out. But there are two clues on the bottle that suggest that this is not the case, that she had some other reason for keeping it. The first is a sticker near the bottom of the bottle front. It says: "THIS CONTAINER IS NOT FULL BUT CONTAINS THE EXACT AMOUNT PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR." So this was not one of those prescriptions where you just take it when you feel like you need it so there could be some left over after you are better. This is one of those where they give you an exact amount to take and you must take all of it, even if you get to feeling better. If you don't, the germs may not be fully killed off, and they can become immune from the effects of the drug. And if you decide to self-medicate with it later when you think you have the same sickness, you will be dealing with different germs which will react differently, with the usual effect that they become more drug resistant. Just look up antiobiotic resistance on the internet for some good examples of this. It's also caused by thinking that antibiotics work on anything (similar to how various painkillers will dull nearly any pain), when in reality they have no effect whatsoever if you don't have a bacterial infection. Many people refuse to believe this and insist on taking antibiotics whenever they have a cold or other ailment, and since most doctors won't give them to you nowadays if you don't have a bacterial infection (they do absolutely NOTHING to viral infections, people!), I think people save them in case they think they need them some other time. Which goes back to the other problem of people not taking all of the medicine and innoculating the bacteria rather than killing them. And I personally shook my fist at and mentally cursed all the people who have done this and thus helped the germs evolve and become resistant when I had strep throat for nearly a month that was penicillin resistant.
Okay, so on to the second clue. This clue is not so obvious, so I'll explain. It is the date itself. On January 11, 1991, my family was still living in South St. Paul. We didn't move down to Faribault until four or five months after that. Now moving is a time when most people, even terrible packrats, get rid of a lot of their stuff. They have to get all of it out of their house, and in the process they find lots of things that they forgot they had that they obviously don't use anymore and decide to get rid of it. They also find that the less stuff they have to move over the easier it is, so even things that they like and use on rare occasions, they get rid of to make the move slightly less of a hassle. So surely an old bottle full of prescription medicine would be thrown away. Why would you take that with you when you move? But apparently my mom cleaned out our cupboards, found this old bottle of prescription medicine, and made the conscious, mental decision to keep it and move it with her to the new house. Why would someone who NEVER keeps anything she doesn't need keep this? She is worse than me! I never keep old medicines. If I decide for some reason not to keep taking a prescription, I will dispose of the remainder. I wouldn't want to risk taking the wrong amount or something by deciding after a long time to self-medicate rather than getting a doctor to write a new prescription. And I wouldn't give my prescriptions to someone else--the doctor prescribed them for me, for my specific ailments and my specific body, and therefore shouldn't be used by someone else.
Heck, for that matter, I don't even keep over-the-counter medicines after they've reached the expiration date stamped on the packaging. This also drives my mom crazy. She says that medicines never go bad or "expire" and that the FDA requires every single thing to have a date stamped on it for legal reasons, so drug companies just make up a date that is a few years in the future to put on there because they have to, not because it actually expires then. But if you do a little research into the shelf life of medications (which sadly, I have, and even more sadly, I was doing it for my own personal edification, not for a school paper or something) you will find that, after time, the various components in medicines start to break down and separate. In rare cases this can be harmful. Usually it's not harmful, but rather renders the medicine useless because once the elements have broken down it doesn't act the same way. Extremes in weather can also boost this process (which is why the packaging will recommend certain temperatures you store your medicines at). If you don't believe me about all this, and don't believe all the medical science backing me up, do yourself a little experiment. Get yourself a bottle of Excedrin, and leave it sitting in your hot car for a couple of months, or in the back of your medicine cabinet or closet for a year or so. Then open it up and sniff it. I can pretty much guarantee that it will smell strongly of vinegar. That is because the ingredients in the pills gradually break down and form new substances, one of which is vinegar. And while Excedrin works great at relieving aches and pains, vinegar--not so much. So once they've reached the point where they aren't as useful anymore, I get rid of them. See, I'm not so much of a packrat as some people.
It kind of irritated me, because she's keeping things around like this that she doesn't need anymore, and criticizes me for keeping things around that I actually do use and need. I think we each have our own inherited brand of packrat-ism. (Case in point, my grandma is always carrying around and keeping prescriptions that are years old, and/or belonged to other people, and she thinks I'm being silly and stupid when I have a terrible pain somewhere and, when there aren't any over-the-counters readily available, refuse to take the pills that were prescribed to her sister Jeaner in 2005 that she for some reason carries around in her purse.) I just wish the pot would quit calling the kettle black.
Now, it wouldn't bother me so much to have my mom yelling at me about all my stuff and the messiness thereof, if it weren't for the fact that her room is also very messy and full of things she doesn't use or need anymore. She is always quick to say that it is all my dad's, and it's a genetic thing which she shares no part in. I know that is somewhat true--my dad is a packrat, and his parents were, too. Their house always had rooms and rooms that they didn't really use because they were completely full of stuff. They weren't hoarders or anything, they just had a lot of stuff. So my mom is always quick to say that it's just a Brown thing and she has nothing to do with it. (Although anyone who goes in the parents' bedroom can tell you that a fair amount of the stuff is my mom's.)
And it is true that my mom's family is the opposite. One thing that always drives us completely crazy is how my mom and grandma love to throw things away. I'm not exaggerating; they actually feel joy when they put things in the trash. I do not understand it. My grandma does it because that's who she is; my mom does it to try to prove that she doesn't ever keep anything around that she doesn't need anymore. (If you watch closely, though, it's always other people's things she's throwing away.) But she's always on my case because I supposedly keep all these things I don't need (as I said, I love books, and I have some toys and gifts that I like to keep for sentimental reasons, but if it's something I can't or won't use again and there is no sentimental attachment and no possibility to offend someone, then I get rid of it pretty quickly), whereas she has never once in her life kept anything that she wasn't going to be using again soon.
So I've got the house to myself for a brief couple of days, so I decided to do some poking around in the basement. I threw out some food down there that was several years past it's prime (which my mom will probably freak out about when she discovers it, because she figures if it's sealed it will never ever go bad, no matter how many years have passed), and I found something interesting down there with all the old cans that I just had to laugh at. It was a bottle of prescription medicine. This is not in and of itself funny, until you realize that my mom has been keeping it down there since 1991. No joke. This bottle of medicine was filled for my older brother Jeremy on January 11, 1991. Hello! How can she say she never keeps anything she doesn't need anymore, and here she is with a child's prescription that is eighteen years old?!
Okay, you're probably thinking, maybe my brother got better so she decided to keep it in case he got sick again or something, and then it was just forgotten until I dug it out. But there are two clues on the bottle that suggest that this is not the case, that she had some other reason for keeping it. The first is a sticker near the bottom of the bottle front. It says: "THIS CONTAINER IS NOT FULL BUT CONTAINS THE EXACT AMOUNT PRESCRIBED BY YOUR DOCTOR." So this was not one of those prescriptions where you just take it when you feel like you need it so there could be some left over after you are better. This is one of those where they give you an exact amount to take and you must take all of it, even if you get to feeling better. If you don't, the germs may not be fully killed off, and they can become immune from the effects of the drug. And if you decide to self-medicate with it later when you think you have the same sickness, you will be dealing with different germs which will react differently, with the usual effect that they become more drug resistant. Just look up antiobiotic resistance on the internet for some good examples of this. It's also caused by thinking that antibiotics work on anything (similar to how various painkillers will dull nearly any pain), when in reality they have no effect whatsoever if you don't have a bacterial infection. Many people refuse to believe this and insist on taking antibiotics whenever they have a cold or other ailment, and since most doctors won't give them to you nowadays if you don't have a bacterial infection (they do absolutely NOTHING to viral infections, people!), I think people save them in case they think they need them some other time. Which goes back to the other problem of people not taking all of the medicine and innoculating the bacteria rather than killing them. And I personally shook my fist at and mentally cursed all the people who have done this and thus helped the germs evolve and become resistant when I had strep throat for nearly a month that was penicillin resistant.
Okay, so on to the second clue. This clue is not so obvious, so I'll explain. It is the date itself. On January 11, 1991, my family was still living in South St. Paul. We didn't move down to Faribault until four or five months after that. Now moving is a time when most people, even terrible packrats, get rid of a lot of their stuff. They have to get all of it out of their house, and in the process they find lots of things that they forgot they had that they obviously don't use anymore and decide to get rid of it. They also find that the less stuff they have to move over the easier it is, so even things that they like and use on rare occasions, they get rid of to make the move slightly less of a hassle. So surely an old bottle full of prescription medicine would be thrown away. Why would you take that with you when you move? But apparently my mom cleaned out our cupboards, found this old bottle of prescription medicine, and made the conscious, mental decision to keep it and move it with her to the new house. Why would someone who NEVER keeps anything she doesn't need keep this? She is worse than me! I never keep old medicines. If I decide for some reason not to keep taking a prescription, I will dispose of the remainder. I wouldn't want to risk taking the wrong amount or something by deciding after a long time to self-medicate rather than getting a doctor to write a new prescription. And I wouldn't give my prescriptions to someone else--the doctor prescribed them for me, for my specific ailments and my specific body, and therefore shouldn't be used by someone else.
Heck, for that matter, I don't even keep over-the-counter medicines after they've reached the expiration date stamped on the packaging. This also drives my mom crazy. She says that medicines never go bad or "expire" and that the FDA requires every single thing to have a date stamped on it for legal reasons, so drug companies just make up a date that is a few years in the future to put on there because they have to, not because it actually expires then. But if you do a little research into the shelf life of medications (which sadly, I have, and even more sadly, I was doing it for my own personal edification, not for a school paper or something) you will find that, after time, the various components in medicines start to break down and separate. In rare cases this can be harmful. Usually it's not harmful, but rather renders the medicine useless because once the elements have broken down it doesn't act the same way. Extremes in weather can also boost this process (which is why the packaging will recommend certain temperatures you store your medicines at). If you don't believe me about all this, and don't believe all the medical science backing me up, do yourself a little experiment. Get yourself a bottle of Excedrin, and leave it sitting in your hot car for a couple of months, or in the back of your medicine cabinet or closet for a year or so. Then open it up and sniff it. I can pretty much guarantee that it will smell strongly of vinegar. That is because the ingredients in the pills gradually break down and form new substances, one of which is vinegar. And while Excedrin works great at relieving aches and pains, vinegar--not so much. So once they've reached the point where they aren't as useful anymore, I get rid of them. See, I'm not so much of a packrat as some people.
It kind of irritated me, because she's keeping things around like this that she doesn't need anymore, and criticizes me for keeping things around that I actually do use and need. I think we each have our own inherited brand of packrat-ism. (Case in point, my grandma is always carrying around and keeping prescriptions that are years old, and/or belonged to other people, and she thinks I'm being silly and stupid when I have a terrible pain somewhere and, when there aren't any over-the-counters readily available, refuse to take the pills that were prescribed to her sister Jeaner in 2005 that she for some reason carries around in her purse.) I just wish the pot would quit calling the kettle black.
Monday, July 13, 2009
A Series of Awkward Events, part the second
Okay, I know I promised to write once a week. And I know that it's been nearly a months since I've written. I had an excuse after the first week--I was out of town, and I didn't have reliable and regular access to the internet. But after that, I guess I just didn't have anything to say. I've been waiting and waiting for something to come to me, and it hasn't. So finally I figured I should finish the story I started back in May, the Series of Awkward Events.
Well the first part ended with me having gone out on an awkward date with Luke, and my roommate Kim and I trying to figure out a day for our double-date with Luke and Kevin. Neither of us really wanted to go out with them, but we'd told them we would, and we weren't going to go back on our word.
I think I already explained last time how I could not just "ask off" for a day at work. It was more complicated than that, and I was not willing to let a coworker be stranded there by themselves so I could go on a date that I didn't even want to go on. But Kim and I still tried to find a day that would work with these boys. It was taking awhile, though. Everytime we all thought we had a good day, something would come up.
So one day I am sitting at the computer doing something on the internet. You see, Kim had a computer that she let us all use, and it sat on a little desk in the corner of our living room. So I was sitting there in the corner using the computer when someone came over. (You have to understand that our apartment was always open--various people were always coming and going, so if someone wanted to come in and see one of us, they just did.) So the person comes in, and it's Luke. And he was a little annoyed. He wanted to know why I couldn't just ask for a day off, that it couldn't be that difficult, etc. I tried to calmly explain why it was proving difficult to find a day. But he got more irritated, and came over to me (as I was sitting there in the corner in front of the computer) and stood towering over me and began to actually yell at me, yelling about how if I really wanted to go out on this date I could find a way to make it work, and it seemed like I didn't want to go on this date at all, and I needed to just find a date. I was not okay with this form of intimidation, and quite frankly it was VERY out of character for him--he was a pretty quiet, timid kind of guy, so I don't really know what his problem was. I was pretty shocked, so I pretty much closed down out of shock and just looked at him and stammered something about how I was sorry. (What I really wanted to do was to shout at him, "Well, Luke, think for a minute about WHAT YOU JUST SAID and maybe you'll figure out that I actually DON'T want to go out with you!" But I didn't.) So he stormed out. Later I told Kim about this incident, and she was kind of surprised, too. So we buckled down and finally figured on one particular Saturday that would work for all of us so we could just get this over with.
We discussed this day with Luke and Kevin and they said it would work alright for them. As it got closer, we asked them what they planned on all of us doing so we could be prepared (you know, what kind of clothes to wear, how we should present ourselves, that kind of thing). They, of course, didn't have anything planned, and I think they were finally getting the hint that we were annoyed with them. So they decided to be gentlemanly, saying that we could choose whatever activity we wanted and they would go along with whatever we decided to do. So Kim and I discussed it, and we finally decided we should all go see a movie. We figured that way, it would be dark, we wouldn't have to talk to them, look at them, or interact with them. I know that may sound harsh, but there it is. So we told them we wanted to go to the movies. They told us to pick the movie and time and let them know and they would get the tickets. We both really wanted to see The New World, and neither of us were morning people AT ALL, so we told them we specifically wanted to see the evening showing of The New World. That was the only directions we gave them, after they wanted us to pick out exactly what we were going to do.
Now I'm not sure about the timing of this, but I think it was about a day or two before we were supposed to go on the date. Kevin talked to Kim and asked her if we were ready for our double date on Saturday, and informed her that we were going to be going to the morning showing of Wallace and Grommit. When I got home Kim told me this, and we were both annoyed. They told us to pick out the movie and time and said they'd do whatever we wanted to do, and then they decided on something totally different? Why would they do that? Especially when they knew we were annoyed with them! We were pretty annoyed because of this, but also because we were NOT morning people and really had absolutely no interest at all in seeing Wallace and Grommit. But we figured, let's just do it and get it over with.
Well the Saturday morning of the date finally arrived. Kim and I were both dealing with some health problems at that time, so we were not feeling well at all, and on top of the just hating mornings in general, we were both kind of, how shall I put this........hormonal. All of this combined to make us really kind of angry. We were talking about the dumb things these boys had done, and Kim couldn't stand it anymore. She called Kevin and told him to come over because she wanted to talk to him. So he came over, and she let him have it. I stayed in my room but could still hear them. She told him it was rude of them to make different plans after they had told us to plan it, and it was rude for Luke to come over and trap me in the corner and yell at me, and how we just didn't feel like going out anymore, etc. etc. So Kevin left, and the date was not to be. We were both kind of glad, although I did feel kind of bad that Kevin had gotten ripped into like that, although he totally deserved it. (That's why I left Kim to it and stayed in my room.) Well a couple of hours later Kevin and Luke came over, and Kim and I each stayed in our rooms because we didn't want to talk to them because we were tired and sick and hormonal and still upset. So they left these cards for us. Apparently Kevin went home and told Luke what Kim had said, so they went out to the store and bought these ridiculous cards with droopy puppy dog faces on them because they thought that would make it all better. I don't know what was said to Kim, but in my card Luke apologized for being so rude, and said that Kim had made him realize that he had yelled at me and he was sorry for that. It was all quite sappy, and make Kim and I a little more annoyed, but afterwards I realized that it really was the thought that counted and that even though these cards were absolutely stupid, these guys really were just trying to apologize and be nice. So I guess I've got to give them props for that.
But wait, that's not the end of the awkwardness. No, not nearly. We started a vigorous campaign of avoiding Luke and Kevin because we were embarrassed about all the awkwardness and didn't know what they would do and were wanting to avoid more awkwardness. And it was kind of difficult, since we all lived in the same apartment complex and went to church together and stuff. But I think they were avoiding us, too, so we managed to avoid the awkwardness for awhile. I think Kim recovered sooner and let it all roll off her back because she knew how to deal with boys and the things they do, whereas I had absolutely no experience with boys whatsoever and so didn't know how to react. So my personal avoidance campaign continued.
Now I must introduce two side stories which will not seem to be connected to each other or to the main story, but trust me, they will all come together in the end at the final, supreme instance of awkwardness.
The thing I have to explain is that all during this time I was nursing a major crush on a guy I knew. (I know there are several of you who know who this guy is, and you had better not say a word to ANYONE, because I am still embarrassed about my behavior, and I am still facebook friends with this guy, so if you know who it is, just please, remain quiet about it.) So yeah, I had a huge crush. I knew that nothing could really happen, partly because I was not (and still am not) the kind of girl guys are interested in AT ALL, and partly because, if anything WERE to happen, I would be the one who had to make it happen, and I didn't know how to make things happen with guys. So I finally decided I would try to find some seeminly innocent way of hanging out with him. And I decided that my twenty-first birthday party would be the perfect ruse. My birthday is in April, and I started planning this major party in January. And I planned and worked on this all through January, February, and March. I wanted this to be BIG. There had to be enough people there so he wouldn't suspect I had planned it just as an excuse to get him to come over. But I also wanted it to be big because, hey, I was turning twenty-one. And of course a Mormon party would not involve alcohol of any kind, so I had to make it big and fun in every other way. So I invited everybody I knew. I invited all my friends. I invited everyone I knew on facebook. I invited everyone in all of my classes. I put up a flyer at work. I advertised the party on provoparties.com. I even sent invitations to every apartment in my complex, as well as all the other apartments within the boundaries of the church congregation. I literally invited several hundred people. And I planned. Oh, I planned. I had all the music picked out. I planned on all the beverages we would be having (basically all the fake alcohol--Martinelli's sparkling cider, apple beer, etc.). I also planned on multiple desserts--ice cream, cakes, cookies, etc. And I was working on all of it even up through the day of the party. In the end, it ended up being a big bust--not only did the guy I wanted come, out of hundreds I had invited, only about six showed up. It was really quite depressing, and that party is the reason that I stopped celebrating my birthday, or even telling people it's my birthday. Nobody cares anyway, obviously, so why cause the awkwardness of acting like they care?
Okay, so that was the first seemingly random story I had to interject. On to the second.
I think it was about March when somebody at church came up with this really cool game we could all play over time. I'd actually heard of lots of people doing this at BYU, and it sounded pretty cool. So I was excited. I know it will sound very strange and maybe slightly disturbing, but I'll try to explain how it works. Basically everyone in the congregation was assigned to "kill" someone else. Each person was issued an envelope containing a popsicle stick and the name of the person they had to kill. Once they killed the person, the person had to give them the name of the person THEY were supposed to kill, and the idea was that at the very end there would be one person left alive who was the ultimate killer and winner of the game. The way you killed someone was by "stabbing" them in the back with the popsicle stick. You pressed it into their back, and they were "dead" and had to give you the name of the person they were trying to kill. There were rules attached to the actual killing--you could not kill someone while they were sleeping (how could they be sure you actually killed them?), you could not kill someone while they were in a bathroom of any sort (because that's just rude), you could not kill someone while they were praying (also just rude), and you could not kill anyone on Sunday (because that's the Sabbath and the day of rest, after all). Now I was excited about this game, and when I got my envelope and saw the name inside it, I was filled with evil gleefulness. You see, the person I was assigned to kill was my old roommate, Lizard Girl (name has been changed). I was excited to kill Lizard Girl because she had not left our apartment on good terms. We all had many problems with her--to make it brief, she kept an extremely smelly lizard in our closet, it's live bait was constantly escaping, she ate our food, she didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom, she sneezed on the side of my face once, and one time I personally witnessed her pick her boogers and eat them. No joke. We wanted her out, and found a clause in the BYU Housing guidelines that said that pets were not allowed in BYU-approved apartments unless the pet owner got the written consent of the landlord and all roommates beforehand. None of us had ever given our written consent, so I sent several letters to management, finally saying that if they didn't move her to a different apartment or force her to get rid of the lizard, I would turn them in to the BYU Housing Office for violating their contract. Getting turned into the BYU Housing Office is of course every Provo landlord's worst nightmare, because if BYU revoked their approval of the premises, the majority of their tenants would have to move out. So not long after that, the apartment management informed us that Lizard Girl would be moving to an apartment a few doors down from ours. I had generally tried avoiding her after that because she annoyed me a lot, and because she honestly didn't know--she thought we were really good friends for some reason. But when I saw that I was assigned to kill her, I was so happy. I can't even describe it. You know in the animated version of The Grinch, where the Grinch is trying to figure out how to stop Christmas, and he suddenly gets and idea, a wonderful idea, a wonderful, awful idea, and curls up his face into a really evil grin? Well that face he makes is the only way I can think to describe how I felt. I definitely looked forward to killing Lizard Girl. I was having difficulty doing it, though. The only time I really saw her was at church, and killing was not allowed on Sundays, so I couldn't kill her then. I even went down to her work on at least one occasion to try to kill her, but I never ended up seeing her there. At the same time, I was really afraid someone would kill me before I got a chance to enact my kill. I was paranoid. I would look behind me when I was walking, I would stand against the wall whenever possible, and I even had all my coworkers be on the alert for me because I figured a lot of people knew where I worked and could easily come down there and kill me. So I stood with my back protected most of the time I was there, and told my coworkers that if anyone came there looking for me to cover for me so I wouldn't get killed. And when I was at home, I was very careful to always try to be sitting with my back against the couch or chair so I couldn't be killed. Someone could easily walk into our apartment and kill me, and one of my own roommates could have even been assigned to kill me. So I figured I'd sit with my back against the couch, and if I happened to be standing and noticed someone acting unusual, I'd make a break for the bathroom where I'd be safe.
Okay, so that's the second seemingly random story. Now to bring it all together.
It was my birthday. The day of my party. And I was still "alive," although I hadn't been able to kill Lizard Girl yet. So I'm putting the last touches on my party preparations. I was sitting there making my famous Hamburger Cookies (cookies that look like miniature hamburgers but taste like cookie and frosting deliciousness), and I was careful to sit with my back against the couch while I worked so no one could come in and kill me. There was a knock at the door, which I thought was kind of strange, but I figured, I'm sitting here on the couch with my back protected, so I'm safe. So I yelled for them to come in. And in walks Luke. After all my efforts at avoiding him, here he was. I didn't know what to do, and he started by saying he had gotten my birthday party invitation but unfortunately wouldn't be able to make it that evening. So he decided to bring me a card instead. He handed me the card, and I said thanks, feeling really confused, when suddenly Luke started leaning over. I didn't know what he was doing. He put his arms out, and suddenly I realized he was going to hug me. I started panicking inside, not knowing how to handle this. He's hugging me? Does he not get the hints and avoidance and somehow think I was interested him in some way? Oh my gosh, his arms are completely around me, what am I going to do? What should I do? So I'm sitting there and he's leaning and grasping me in this huge hug, and I didn't want to offend him but didn't know what to do, so finally I put up my arms and sort of gave him a little pat on his back. I expected him to step back at that point and end the hug, but he didn't. He kept on hugging me, pulling me forwards towards him, and inside I'm panicking, but suddenly I feel a little push of pressure on the center of my back. He lets go and steps away and, with a really pleased look on his face, said, "And now, you're dead." And he held up his popsicle stick. I was shocked, and annoyed that I was dead without getting to kill my old roommate, and I didn't appreciate the way that he had killed me. He was standing there grinning, thinking it was some great joke and that I'd laugh with him, but I just looked him squarely in the eye and said in a total serious voice, "Luke, you are not a cool person." Then I reached in my pocket and grabbed the piece of paper with my victim's name on it and handed it to him, and I turned away from him and continued putting together my cookies. I did not say another word to him. He turned and slunk out of the apartment, kind of aware that he had just pulled the ultimate in extreme awkward moments.
And so that was the end. That's the end of the long series of awkward events. I avoided Luke for another month or so, but then we were both called to the same committee at church so I was forced to interact with him. My strategy was to pretend that none of it had ever happened, and he went along with that, so in the end it was all okay. Still pretty horrifyingly awkward, though.
Well the first part ended with me having gone out on an awkward date with Luke, and my roommate Kim and I trying to figure out a day for our double-date with Luke and Kevin. Neither of us really wanted to go out with them, but we'd told them we would, and we weren't going to go back on our word.
I think I already explained last time how I could not just "ask off" for a day at work. It was more complicated than that, and I was not willing to let a coworker be stranded there by themselves so I could go on a date that I didn't even want to go on. But Kim and I still tried to find a day that would work with these boys. It was taking awhile, though. Everytime we all thought we had a good day, something would come up.
So one day I am sitting at the computer doing something on the internet. You see, Kim had a computer that she let us all use, and it sat on a little desk in the corner of our living room. So I was sitting there in the corner using the computer when someone came over. (You have to understand that our apartment was always open--various people were always coming and going, so if someone wanted to come in and see one of us, they just did.) So the person comes in, and it's Luke. And he was a little annoyed. He wanted to know why I couldn't just ask for a day off, that it couldn't be that difficult, etc. I tried to calmly explain why it was proving difficult to find a day. But he got more irritated, and came over to me (as I was sitting there in the corner in front of the computer) and stood towering over me and began to actually yell at me, yelling about how if I really wanted to go out on this date I could find a way to make it work, and it seemed like I didn't want to go on this date at all, and I needed to just find a date. I was not okay with this form of intimidation, and quite frankly it was VERY out of character for him--he was a pretty quiet, timid kind of guy, so I don't really know what his problem was. I was pretty shocked, so I pretty much closed down out of shock and just looked at him and stammered something about how I was sorry. (What I really wanted to do was to shout at him, "Well, Luke, think for a minute about WHAT YOU JUST SAID and maybe you'll figure out that I actually DON'T want to go out with you!" But I didn't.) So he stormed out. Later I told Kim about this incident, and she was kind of surprised, too. So we buckled down and finally figured on one particular Saturday that would work for all of us so we could just get this over with.
We discussed this day with Luke and Kevin and they said it would work alright for them. As it got closer, we asked them what they planned on all of us doing so we could be prepared (you know, what kind of clothes to wear, how we should present ourselves, that kind of thing). They, of course, didn't have anything planned, and I think they were finally getting the hint that we were annoyed with them. So they decided to be gentlemanly, saying that we could choose whatever activity we wanted and they would go along with whatever we decided to do. So Kim and I discussed it, and we finally decided we should all go see a movie. We figured that way, it would be dark, we wouldn't have to talk to them, look at them, or interact with them. I know that may sound harsh, but there it is. So we told them we wanted to go to the movies. They told us to pick the movie and time and let them know and they would get the tickets. We both really wanted to see The New World, and neither of us were morning people AT ALL, so we told them we specifically wanted to see the evening showing of The New World. That was the only directions we gave them, after they wanted us to pick out exactly what we were going to do.
Now I'm not sure about the timing of this, but I think it was about a day or two before we were supposed to go on the date. Kevin talked to Kim and asked her if we were ready for our double date on Saturday, and informed her that we were going to be going to the morning showing of Wallace and Grommit. When I got home Kim told me this, and we were both annoyed. They told us to pick out the movie and time and said they'd do whatever we wanted to do, and then they decided on something totally different? Why would they do that? Especially when they knew we were annoyed with them! We were pretty annoyed because of this, but also because we were NOT morning people and really had absolutely no interest at all in seeing Wallace and Grommit. But we figured, let's just do it and get it over with.
Well the Saturday morning of the date finally arrived. Kim and I were both dealing with some health problems at that time, so we were not feeling well at all, and on top of the just hating mornings in general, we were both kind of, how shall I put this........hormonal. All of this combined to make us really kind of angry. We were talking about the dumb things these boys had done, and Kim couldn't stand it anymore. She called Kevin and told him to come over because she wanted to talk to him. So he came over, and she let him have it. I stayed in my room but could still hear them. She told him it was rude of them to make different plans after they had told us to plan it, and it was rude for Luke to come over and trap me in the corner and yell at me, and how we just didn't feel like going out anymore, etc. etc. So Kevin left, and the date was not to be. We were both kind of glad, although I did feel kind of bad that Kevin had gotten ripped into like that, although he totally deserved it. (That's why I left Kim to it and stayed in my room.) Well a couple of hours later Kevin and Luke came over, and Kim and I each stayed in our rooms because we didn't want to talk to them because we were tired and sick and hormonal and still upset. So they left these cards for us. Apparently Kevin went home and told Luke what Kim had said, so they went out to the store and bought these ridiculous cards with droopy puppy dog faces on them because they thought that would make it all better. I don't know what was said to Kim, but in my card Luke apologized for being so rude, and said that Kim had made him realize that he had yelled at me and he was sorry for that. It was all quite sappy, and make Kim and I a little more annoyed, but afterwards I realized that it really was the thought that counted and that even though these cards were absolutely stupid, these guys really were just trying to apologize and be nice. So I guess I've got to give them props for that.
But wait, that's not the end of the awkwardness. No, not nearly. We started a vigorous campaign of avoiding Luke and Kevin because we were embarrassed about all the awkwardness and didn't know what they would do and were wanting to avoid more awkwardness. And it was kind of difficult, since we all lived in the same apartment complex and went to church together and stuff. But I think they were avoiding us, too, so we managed to avoid the awkwardness for awhile. I think Kim recovered sooner and let it all roll off her back because she knew how to deal with boys and the things they do, whereas I had absolutely no experience with boys whatsoever and so didn't know how to react. So my personal avoidance campaign continued.
Now I must introduce two side stories which will not seem to be connected to each other or to the main story, but trust me, they will all come together in the end at the final, supreme instance of awkwardness.
The thing I have to explain is that all during this time I was nursing a major crush on a guy I knew. (I know there are several of you who know who this guy is, and you had better not say a word to ANYONE, because I am still embarrassed about my behavior, and I am still facebook friends with this guy, so if you know who it is, just please, remain quiet about it.) So yeah, I had a huge crush. I knew that nothing could really happen, partly because I was not (and still am not) the kind of girl guys are interested in AT ALL, and partly because, if anything WERE to happen, I would be the one who had to make it happen, and I didn't know how to make things happen with guys. So I finally decided I would try to find some seeminly innocent way of hanging out with him. And I decided that my twenty-first birthday party would be the perfect ruse. My birthday is in April, and I started planning this major party in January. And I planned and worked on this all through January, February, and March. I wanted this to be BIG. There had to be enough people there so he wouldn't suspect I had planned it just as an excuse to get him to come over. But I also wanted it to be big because, hey, I was turning twenty-one. And of course a Mormon party would not involve alcohol of any kind, so I had to make it big and fun in every other way. So I invited everybody I knew. I invited all my friends. I invited everyone I knew on facebook. I invited everyone in all of my classes. I put up a flyer at work. I advertised the party on provoparties.com. I even sent invitations to every apartment in my complex, as well as all the other apartments within the boundaries of the church congregation. I literally invited several hundred people. And I planned. Oh, I planned. I had all the music picked out. I planned on all the beverages we would be having (basically all the fake alcohol--Martinelli's sparkling cider, apple beer, etc.). I also planned on multiple desserts--ice cream, cakes, cookies, etc. And I was working on all of it even up through the day of the party. In the end, it ended up being a big bust--not only did the guy I wanted come, out of hundreds I had invited, only about six showed up. It was really quite depressing, and that party is the reason that I stopped celebrating my birthday, or even telling people it's my birthday. Nobody cares anyway, obviously, so why cause the awkwardness of acting like they care?
Okay, so that was the first seemingly random story I had to interject. On to the second.
I think it was about March when somebody at church came up with this really cool game we could all play over time. I'd actually heard of lots of people doing this at BYU, and it sounded pretty cool. So I was excited. I know it will sound very strange and maybe slightly disturbing, but I'll try to explain how it works. Basically everyone in the congregation was assigned to "kill" someone else. Each person was issued an envelope containing a popsicle stick and the name of the person they had to kill. Once they killed the person, the person had to give them the name of the person THEY were supposed to kill, and the idea was that at the very end there would be one person left alive who was the ultimate killer and winner of the game. The way you killed someone was by "stabbing" them in the back with the popsicle stick. You pressed it into their back, and they were "dead" and had to give you the name of the person they were trying to kill. There were rules attached to the actual killing--you could not kill someone while they were sleeping (how could they be sure you actually killed them?), you could not kill someone while they were in a bathroom of any sort (because that's just rude), you could not kill someone while they were praying (also just rude), and you could not kill anyone on Sunday (because that's the Sabbath and the day of rest, after all). Now I was excited about this game, and when I got my envelope and saw the name inside it, I was filled with evil gleefulness. You see, the person I was assigned to kill was my old roommate, Lizard Girl (name has been changed). I was excited to kill Lizard Girl because she had not left our apartment on good terms. We all had many problems with her--to make it brief, she kept an extremely smelly lizard in our closet, it's live bait was constantly escaping, she ate our food, she didn't wash her hands after using the bathroom, she sneezed on the side of my face once, and one time I personally witnessed her pick her boogers and eat them. No joke. We wanted her out, and found a clause in the BYU Housing guidelines that said that pets were not allowed in BYU-approved apartments unless the pet owner got the written consent of the landlord and all roommates beforehand. None of us had ever given our written consent, so I sent several letters to management, finally saying that if they didn't move her to a different apartment or force her to get rid of the lizard, I would turn them in to the BYU Housing Office for violating their contract. Getting turned into the BYU Housing Office is of course every Provo landlord's worst nightmare, because if BYU revoked their approval of the premises, the majority of their tenants would have to move out. So not long after that, the apartment management informed us that Lizard Girl would be moving to an apartment a few doors down from ours. I had generally tried avoiding her after that because she annoyed me a lot, and because she honestly didn't know--she thought we were really good friends for some reason. But when I saw that I was assigned to kill her, I was so happy. I can't even describe it. You know in the animated version of The Grinch, where the Grinch is trying to figure out how to stop Christmas, and he suddenly gets and idea, a wonderful idea, a wonderful, awful idea, and curls up his face into a really evil grin? Well that face he makes is the only way I can think to describe how I felt. I definitely looked forward to killing Lizard Girl. I was having difficulty doing it, though. The only time I really saw her was at church, and killing was not allowed on Sundays, so I couldn't kill her then. I even went down to her work on at least one occasion to try to kill her, but I never ended up seeing her there. At the same time, I was really afraid someone would kill me before I got a chance to enact my kill. I was paranoid. I would look behind me when I was walking, I would stand against the wall whenever possible, and I even had all my coworkers be on the alert for me because I figured a lot of people knew where I worked and could easily come down there and kill me. So I stood with my back protected most of the time I was there, and told my coworkers that if anyone came there looking for me to cover for me so I wouldn't get killed. And when I was at home, I was very careful to always try to be sitting with my back against the couch or chair so I couldn't be killed. Someone could easily walk into our apartment and kill me, and one of my own roommates could have even been assigned to kill me. So I figured I'd sit with my back against the couch, and if I happened to be standing and noticed someone acting unusual, I'd make a break for the bathroom where I'd be safe.
Okay, so that's the second seemingly random story. Now to bring it all together.
It was my birthday. The day of my party. And I was still "alive," although I hadn't been able to kill Lizard Girl yet. So I'm putting the last touches on my party preparations. I was sitting there making my famous Hamburger Cookies (cookies that look like miniature hamburgers but taste like cookie and frosting deliciousness), and I was careful to sit with my back against the couch while I worked so no one could come in and kill me. There was a knock at the door, which I thought was kind of strange, but I figured, I'm sitting here on the couch with my back protected, so I'm safe. So I yelled for them to come in. And in walks Luke. After all my efforts at avoiding him, here he was. I didn't know what to do, and he started by saying he had gotten my birthday party invitation but unfortunately wouldn't be able to make it that evening. So he decided to bring me a card instead. He handed me the card, and I said thanks, feeling really confused, when suddenly Luke started leaning over. I didn't know what he was doing. He put his arms out, and suddenly I realized he was going to hug me. I started panicking inside, not knowing how to handle this. He's hugging me? Does he not get the hints and avoidance and somehow think I was interested him in some way? Oh my gosh, his arms are completely around me, what am I going to do? What should I do? So I'm sitting there and he's leaning and grasping me in this huge hug, and I didn't want to offend him but didn't know what to do, so finally I put up my arms and sort of gave him a little pat on his back. I expected him to step back at that point and end the hug, but he didn't. He kept on hugging me, pulling me forwards towards him, and inside I'm panicking, but suddenly I feel a little push of pressure on the center of my back. He lets go and steps away and, with a really pleased look on his face, said, "And now, you're dead." And he held up his popsicle stick. I was shocked, and annoyed that I was dead without getting to kill my old roommate, and I didn't appreciate the way that he had killed me. He was standing there grinning, thinking it was some great joke and that I'd laugh with him, but I just looked him squarely in the eye and said in a total serious voice, "Luke, you are not a cool person." Then I reached in my pocket and grabbed the piece of paper with my victim's name on it and handed it to him, and I turned away from him and continued putting together my cookies. I did not say another word to him. He turned and slunk out of the apartment, kind of aware that he had just pulled the ultimate in extreme awkward moments.
And so that was the end. That's the end of the long series of awkward events. I avoided Luke for another month or so, but then we were both called to the same committee at church so I was forced to interact with him. My strategy was to pretend that none of it had ever happened, and he went along with that, so in the end it was all okay. Still pretty horrifyingly awkward, though.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Saying Good-Bye
I knew both of my grandfathers were dying. I just didn't know they'd do it at the same time.
One day apart, actually. But that is pretty darn close. Grandpa was the first. He's been sick for awhile now with cancer. All over his body. He was old, and the cancer was in every organ and system in his body, so he decided not to do chemotherapy because it wouldn't have done any good. He chose to spend the end of his life at home with his family. It was difficult to watch the disease progress. I mean, not counting the five years or so I was in Utah, I've been living in the same house as the man since I was three years old. He was always there. So it was difficult for us to see him get weaker and weaker, and it was difficult for him being in so much pain and not being able to do the things he used to do. But for whatever reason, going through this was something that the Lord wanted him to do, to learn from, and likewise, being observers of this ordeal was something the Lord wanted the rest of us to do. We may not understand right now, but He has some specific reasons for us to go through these trials, and we no that He won't give us anything we can't handle. But for the last few weeks Grandpa was really bad, and mostly just slept. He didn't eat, didn't talk. Sometimes I'd sit in his room while he slept. He couldn't be left alone. I would often peek in there on my way to and from the bathroom in the morning to see how he was. Yesterday when I went by he was really terrible, his breathing really labored. We'd been expecting him to pass on for a few days previously, and I felt like this would probably be it. So I went to work, and a few hours later he did pass away. My mom called me at work a little after that and they let me go home early. I wanted to be able to see him one last time because he had wanted to be cremated, which meant that once the funeral home people came to take him away we wouldn't see him again. So I went home and went up to his room. We had some private family time, and my parents, grandmother, and aunt dressed him in white clothing. I felt I'd rather watch them do it, but I did participate by buttoning his shirt and putting his white shoes on him. Then later in the evening the funeral home people came and took him away.
I was having a difficult time. Like I said, I'd lived with the man pretty much since I was three. It would be so weird knowing that he wasn't there anymore. I went to bed and felt sad, although not what you would call grief-stricken. I shed some tears, and I prayed that I would feel comforted. After all, I knew where he was, and I had a good idea of what he was doing at that very moment. But it was hard knowing that I wouldn't see him again in this life. So that's what I prayed for--comfort. The ability to feel okay and happy. And then I went to sleep.
And this morning, when I woke up, I wasn't sad anymore. I'm sure it will come and go. But I really didn't feel sad. I felt happy. Grandpa was happy and not suffering and doing the Lord's work. I was okay. The Lord very literally answered my prayer. I went to work in a pretty good mood, so amazed that the Lord had answered my prayer so literally and personally.
So I was working as a cashier today, and I looked up and saw my dad walk into the store. I thought this was weird, because I work at a Walmart in a different town from where I live, so my family doesn't shop there ever. He and my brother Justin came up to me and my dad asked if I was taking a break then. I said I'd be taking a break in a little while, and he said I really needed to take a break then. I looked at him and knew, and I said, "Why--did Bop die?" (Bop is what my siblings and I always called my grandfather in Idaho, for some strange reason which I still don't fully understand. It was just our silly little nickname for him.) He said yes, that Uncle Bill had called him just a little while before to tell him that their father had passed away.
Bop had been sick for a really long time, even longer than Grandpa. For several years. He just had a lot of medical problems that all combined to make him more and more feeble, and he also was suffering from Alzheimer's. I think he still knew who the people around him every day were, but he was really confused a lot. My grandmother died a year ago, and he got worse after that. The Alzheimer's prevented him from grieving properly, and he became bedridden and fatigued. Pretty much since my grandmother passed away last June, we've been expecting him to go at any time. We were surprised that he hung on as long as he did, at least I was. So I wasn't surprised to find out that he died, although I was surprised that it happened the day after my other grandfather died.
And you know what? I didn't really feel pain or sadness. The Lord had given me the comfort and the good feelings that I had asked for, and He still was. I was okay with this. Like with Grandpa, I knew where Bop was and had a pretty good idea of what he was doing. So I had to explain to my managers that I would need some time off, for Grandpa's memorial service and also to go to Idaho for Bop's funeral. And I think they all thought I was crazy or something because here I was, telling them that my grandpas had both just died, one yesterday and one today, and yet I wasn't distraught or crying. I was calm, happy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sad that I won't see them again for many years. But they both lived good, full lives, and they had more work that they needed to do that they couldn't do in the bodies they had. I guess I should warn you, I'm going to get preachy here. I normally try not to do that because I respect that other people have different ideas, thoughts, and opinions as me and hold to different belief systems. But there is a reason I feel happy today and don't really feel any pain or grief, why I am alright. And I'm going to tell you what it is. If you don't feel comfortable reading these things or would prefer not to for whatever reason, I completely understand. You can just skip to where I officially end the preaching. Although I would wish that everyone would at least consider what I have to say in the hopes that it might help them in some way someday.
I believe that God has laid out a specific way He wants his children to live their lives so that they might be happy and return to live with Him again someday. He has laid out his plan in the Holy Scriptures through His prophets, and since He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He still speaks to us through prophets today. If we live true to these principles and teachings, we will reap the greater blessings. One of these blessings is called eternal marriage. God has said that the man should not live without the woman, neither the woman without the man, and that they should be united in marriage and raise families, to multiply and replenish the earth. But His plan also involved death--something that is difficult but also necessary for our progression. He did not want husbands and wives and children to be separated after they died, so He provided a way that they could be together forever. You may notice that in most modern wedding ceremonies, the couple makes their vows to eachother with the stipulation of "'Til death do you part" or "As long as you both shall live." I really believe that this is not the Lord's way. If the Lord wanted us to be united in so much love to one another, why would he take that away from us when we die? What would be the point of those feelings we had learned and cultivated? So He provided us with the ordinance of eternal marriage. Not 'til death do you part or as long as you both shall live, but forever. After you die, you can be with your spouse and children and parents and siblings again, for all generations. The hearts of the fathers will be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children will be turned to their fathers.
But we have to live worthy, righteous lives in order to attain this. Eternal life is a gift; everyone will be resurrected and receive it, regardless of how righteously they lived. But in order to gain exaltation and live with your own family again, you have to live the way God wants you to live, not the way the world tells you is acceptable. And if you are worthy of this, you can be married in a holy temple of God for time and all eternity. If you do this, not only is this marriage valid as long as you remain true to it on this earth, but it will also exist after we die. And any children who are born to you will be born into that covenant and be yours for eternity. How comforting that must be to parents who have lost a child, to know that they will be able to have them and raise them in the eternities!
My paternal grandparents, Moyle and Betty, were raised in families where they had this knowledge. When they were married in Idaho, the nearest LDS temple they could go at the time to was in Salt Lake City, which they could not afford to do. So they were married civilly at their church, and a few months later were able to go to the temple and be sealed together as husband and wife for all eternity. When children were born to them, those children were automatically sealed to them as well, and when they decided to open their hearts and homes to more children who were without parents by adopting, they took those children to the temple and had those children sealed to them. My dad was born into the covenant of their marriage and is therefore sealed to them.
My maternal grandparents, Ted and Carol, did not always know these truths. They were good Christians and lived good lives, but it wasn't until my mother was nineteen years old that their family finally learned the complete fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and what it could do for them if they embraced it. They were baptized, and later were able to go to the temple and have their marriage sealed for time and all eternity. My mother and aunt also embraced this truth and were sealed to them. And when my parents got married, they decided they wanted this blessing for themselves as well, so they were married in a temple of God, and my siblings and I were born into this covenant. Which means that we will be with them, and their parents, forever.
But what about people who died without ever having an opportunity to hear the gospel, let alone decide for themselves whether or not it was true? God has provided a way, through holy temple ordinances that date back to biblical times, for these people to also learn the truth and have an opportunity to decide whether or not to embrace it after they die. And we on earth can perform those ordinances for them in the temple. This is so wonderful to me! I mean, what happens to the person who is born in some part of the world, in a time and place where they never even hear the name of Jesus Christ and thus never even have an opportunity to know Him? How could a loving God banish these people to hell for the eternities? They will have the chance to learn and embrace these truths. But I count myself lucky to be one of the number who have learned and embraced these truths on earth. I know that Grandpa is with his earthly parents right now, because he went to the temple and had the ordinances done for them so that, if they chose to embrace the gospel in the eternities (which I think they did), they can be with him. He is with his grandparents, too, and other family members who have passed on. I know that's where he is, and he's greeting them. And I know that the Lord has an important work for him to do, and it won't be long before he is out there teaching those spirits who didn't have the chance to know the gospel on earth. And I know that Bop is with his beloved wife, and with his parents, and grandparents, and even his children and grandchildren who have passed on. They are having a wonderful reunion right now, and the angels in heaven will soon be buckling down with their singing under his tutelage. And this is why I am not in pain, or grief-stricken. I know where they are and what they are doing, and that it is all a part of God's plan, and that someday, I too will experience that.
*END OF PREACHING*
Well, what else can I say? Actually, I think the Muppets said it better. Yes, that's right, the Muppets. In my favorite Muppet movie, the whole Muppet gang sings this great song called "Saying Good-Bye," which I think sums up how I feel and how we all feel in these situations. Even though the song has nothing to do with death in the context of the movie, I still think it is applicable, and so I'd like to quote it here:
Saying goodbye, going away,
Seems like goodbye's such a hard thing to say.
Touching our hands, wondering why,
It's time for saying goodbye.
Saying goodbye, why is it sad?
Makes us remember the good times we've had.
Much more to say, foolish to try,
It's time for saying goodbye.
Don't want to leave, but we both know
Sometimes its better to go.
Somehow I know, we'll meet again,
Not sure quite where and I don't know just when.
You're in my heart, so until then
It's time for saying goodbye.
Somehow I know we'll meet again,
Not sure quite where and I don't know just when.
You're in my heart so until then--
Wanna smile,
Wanna cry,
Saying goodbye.
You know, today I couldn't help but wonder if Grandpa and Bop have happened to bump into each other in heaven. They didn't really know each other, although they had met before, and I can imagine them seing each other and being like, "Hey, wait a minute, is that....it is! Hey! You died? Me too! When did that happen? Really?? That's so crazy, I died the day after! Oh, what are those poor fools down there going to do trying to plan all this and deal with it? They must really be freaking out!" Okay, so maybe it won't go exactly like that, but it's fun to think about.
And so I just want to say in closing, I am okay. I'm secure in my knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ and what that means for myself and my family members, and the Lord has answered my prayers and given me this knowledge and comfort. My prayer now is that all of you may also feel that comfort in your lives when you need it most. Adieu.
One day apart, actually. But that is pretty darn close. Grandpa was the first. He's been sick for awhile now with cancer. All over his body. He was old, and the cancer was in every organ and system in his body, so he decided not to do chemotherapy because it wouldn't have done any good. He chose to spend the end of his life at home with his family. It was difficult to watch the disease progress. I mean, not counting the five years or so I was in Utah, I've been living in the same house as the man since I was three years old. He was always there. So it was difficult for us to see him get weaker and weaker, and it was difficult for him being in so much pain and not being able to do the things he used to do. But for whatever reason, going through this was something that the Lord wanted him to do, to learn from, and likewise, being observers of this ordeal was something the Lord wanted the rest of us to do. We may not understand right now, but He has some specific reasons for us to go through these trials, and we no that He won't give us anything we can't handle. But for the last few weeks Grandpa was really bad, and mostly just slept. He didn't eat, didn't talk. Sometimes I'd sit in his room while he slept. He couldn't be left alone. I would often peek in there on my way to and from the bathroom in the morning to see how he was. Yesterday when I went by he was really terrible, his breathing really labored. We'd been expecting him to pass on for a few days previously, and I felt like this would probably be it. So I went to work, and a few hours later he did pass away. My mom called me at work a little after that and they let me go home early. I wanted to be able to see him one last time because he had wanted to be cremated, which meant that once the funeral home people came to take him away we wouldn't see him again. So I went home and went up to his room. We had some private family time, and my parents, grandmother, and aunt dressed him in white clothing. I felt I'd rather watch them do it, but I did participate by buttoning his shirt and putting his white shoes on him. Then later in the evening the funeral home people came and took him away.
I was having a difficult time. Like I said, I'd lived with the man pretty much since I was three. It would be so weird knowing that he wasn't there anymore. I went to bed and felt sad, although not what you would call grief-stricken. I shed some tears, and I prayed that I would feel comforted. After all, I knew where he was, and I had a good idea of what he was doing at that very moment. But it was hard knowing that I wouldn't see him again in this life. So that's what I prayed for--comfort. The ability to feel okay and happy. And then I went to sleep.
And this morning, when I woke up, I wasn't sad anymore. I'm sure it will come and go. But I really didn't feel sad. I felt happy. Grandpa was happy and not suffering and doing the Lord's work. I was okay. The Lord very literally answered my prayer. I went to work in a pretty good mood, so amazed that the Lord had answered my prayer so literally and personally.
So I was working as a cashier today, and I looked up and saw my dad walk into the store. I thought this was weird, because I work at a Walmart in a different town from where I live, so my family doesn't shop there ever. He and my brother Justin came up to me and my dad asked if I was taking a break then. I said I'd be taking a break in a little while, and he said I really needed to take a break then. I looked at him and knew, and I said, "Why--did Bop die?" (Bop is what my siblings and I always called my grandfather in Idaho, for some strange reason which I still don't fully understand. It was just our silly little nickname for him.) He said yes, that Uncle Bill had called him just a little while before to tell him that their father had passed away.
Bop had been sick for a really long time, even longer than Grandpa. For several years. He just had a lot of medical problems that all combined to make him more and more feeble, and he also was suffering from Alzheimer's. I think he still knew who the people around him every day were, but he was really confused a lot. My grandmother died a year ago, and he got worse after that. The Alzheimer's prevented him from grieving properly, and he became bedridden and fatigued. Pretty much since my grandmother passed away last June, we've been expecting him to go at any time. We were surprised that he hung on as long as he did, at least I was. So I wasn't surprised to find out that he died, although I was surprised that it happened the day after my other grandfather died.
And you know what? I didn't really feel pain or sadness. The Lord had given me the comfort and the good feelings that I had asked for, and He still was. I was okay with this. Like with Grandpa, I knew where Bop was and had a pretty good idea of what he was doing. So I had to explain to my managers that I would need some time off, for Grandpa's memorial service and also to go to Idaho for Bop's funeral. And I think they all thought I was crazy or something because here I was, telling them that my grandpas had both just died, one yesterday and one today, and yet I wasn't distraught or crying. I was calm, happy.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sad that I won't see them again for many years. But they both lived good, full lives, and they had more work that they needed to do that they couldn't do in the bodies they had. I guess I should warn you, I'm going to get preachy here. I normally try not to do that because I respect that other people have different ideas, thoughts, and opinions as me and hold to different belief systems. But there is a reason I feel happy today and don't really feel any pain or grief, why I am alright. And I'm going to tell you what it is. If you don't feel comfortable reading these things or would prefer not to for whatever reason, I completely understand. You can just skip to where I officially end the preaching. Although I would wish that everyone would at least consider what I have to say in the hopes that it might help them in some way someday.
I believe that God has laid out a specific way He wants his children to live their lives so that they might be happy and return to live with Him again someday. He has laid out his plan in the Holy Scriptures through His prophets, and since He is the same yesterday, today, and forever, He still speaks to us through prophets today. If we live true to these principles and teachings, we will reap the greater blessings. One of these blessings is called eternal marriage. God has said that the man should not live without the woman, neither the woman without the man, and that they should be united in marriage and raise families, to multiply and replenish the earth. But His plan also involved death--something that is difficult but also necessary for our progression. He did not want husbands and wives and children to be separated after they died, so He provided a way that they could be together forever. You may notice that in most modern wedding ceremonies, the couple makes their vows to eachother with the stipulation of "'Til death do you part" or "As long as you both shall live." I really believe that this is not the Lord's way. If the Lord wanted us to be united in so much love to one another, why would he take that away from us when we die? What would be the point of those feelings we had learned and cultivated? So He provided us with the ordinance of eternal marriage. Not 'til death do you part or as long as you both shall live, but forever. After you die, you can be with your spouse and children and parents and siblings again, for all generations. The hearts of the fathers will be turned to the children, and the hearts of the children will be turned to their fathers.
But we have to live worthy, righteous lives in order to attain this. Eternal life is a gift; everyone will be resurrected and receive it, regardless of how righteously they lived. But in order to gain exaltation and live with your own family again, you have to live the way God wants you to live, not the way the world tells you is acceptable. And if you are worthy of this, you can be married in a holy temple of God for time and all eternity. If you do this, not only is this marriage valid as long as you remain true to it on this earth, but it will also exist after we die. And any children who are born to you will be born into that covenant and be yours for eternity. How comforting that must be to parents who have lost a child, to know that they will be able to have them and raise them in the eternities!
My paternal grandparents, Moyle and Betty, were raised in families where they had this knowledge. When they were married in Idaho, the nearest LDS temple they could go at the time to was in Salt Lake City, which they could not afford to do. So they were married civilly at their church, and a few months later were able to go to the temple and be sealed together as husband and wife for all eternity. When children were born to them, those children were automatically sealed to them as well, and when they decided to open their hearts and homes to more children who were without parents by adopting, they took those children to the temple and had those children sealed to them. My dad was born into the covenant of their marriage and is therefore sealed to them.
My maternal grandparents, Ted and Carol, did not always know these truths. They were good Christians and lived good lives, but it wasn't until my mother was nineteen years old that their family finally learned the complete fulness of the gospel of Jesus Christ and what it could do for them if they embraced it. They were baptized, and later were able to go to the temple and have their marriage sealed for time and all eternity. My mother and aunt also embraced this truth and were sealed to them. And when my parents got married, they decided they wanted this blessing for themselves as well, so they were married in a temple of God, and my siblings and I were born into this covenant. Which means that we will be with them, and their parents, forever.
But what about people who died without ever having an opportunity to hear the gospel, let alone decide for themselves whether or not it was true? God has provided a way, through holy temple ordinances that date back to biblical times, for these people to also learn the truth and have an opportunity to decide whether or not to embrace it after they die. And we on earth can perform those ordinances for them in the temple. This is so wonderful to me! I mean, what happens to the person who is born in some part of the world, in a time and place where they never even hear the name of Jesus Christ and thus never even have an opportunity to know Him? How could a loving God banish these people to hell for the eternities? They will have the chance to learn and embrace these truths. But I count myself lucky to be one of the number who have learned and embraced these truths on earth. I know that Grandpa is with his earthly parents right now, because he went to the temple and had the ordinances done for them so that, if they chose to embrace the gospel in the eternities (which I think they did), they can be with him. He is with his grandparents, too, and other family members who have passed on. I know that's where he is, and he's greeting them. And I know that the Lord has an important work for him to do, and it won't be long before he is out there teaching those spirits who didn't have the chance to know the gospel on earth. And I know that Bop is with his beloved wife, and with his parents, and grandparents, and even his children and grandchildren who have passed on. They are having a wonderful reunion right now, and the angels in heaven will soon be buckling down with their singing under his tutelage. And this is why I am not in pain, or grief-stricken. I know where they are and what they are doing, and that it is all a part of God's plan, and that someday, I too will experience that.
*END OF PREACHING*
Well, what else can I say? Actually, I think the Muppets said it better. Yes, that's right, the Muppets. In my favorite Muppet movie, the whole Muppet gang sings this great song called "Saying Good-Bye," which I think sums up how I feel and how we all feel in these situations. Even though the song has nothing to do with death in the context of the movie, I still think it is applicable, and so I'd like to quote it here:
Saying goodbye, going away,
Seems like goodbye's such a hard thing to say.
Touching our hands, wondering why,
It's time for saying goodbye.
Saying goodbye, why is it sad?
Makes us remember the good times we've had.
Much more to say, foolish to try,
It's time for saying goodbye.
Don't want to leave, but we both know
Sometimes its better to go.
Somehow I know, we'll meet again,
Not sure quite where and I don't know just when.
You're in my heart, so until then
It's time for saying goodbye.
Somehow I know we'll meet again,
Not sure quite where and I don't know just when.
You're in my heart so until then--
Wanna smile,
Wanna cry,
Saying goodbye.
You know, today I couldn't help but wonder if Grandpa and Bop have happened to bump into each other in heaven. They didn't really know each other, although they had met before, and I can imagine them seing each other and being like, "Hey, wait a minute, is that....it is! Hey! You died? Me too! When did that happen? Really?? That's so crazy, I died the day after! Oh, what are those poor fools down there going to do trying to plan all this and deal with it? They must really be freaking out!" Okay, so maybe it won't go exactly like that, but it's fun to think about.
And so I just want to say in closing, I am okay. I'm secure in my knowledge of the gospel of Jesus Christ and what that means for myself and my family members, and the Lord has answered my prayers and given me this knowledge and comfort. My prayer now is that all of you may also feel that comfort in your lives when you need it most. Adieu.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Taking Back the Word "Spinster"
First of all, I have to apologize. I originally declared that I would let no more than seven days go by without posting on here, but alas, it has been more than a week. My exuse is that when I reached that seven-day mark our internet wasn't working, and after a day or two when it was finally working again I realized that I didn't really have anything constructive to say. So I figured, I'm already late on posting, so I'll just keep being late until I actually have something to say.
And I do have something to say today. Nothing profound, or deep, or even depressive. And there will be no literary comparisons today. But here's what I want to say:
I want to take back the word "spinster." Or maybe just redefine it. Being a spinster is considered a negative thing in today's society. I'm sure you've all played the card game "Old Maid" before--where the object is to make matches and pairs of all your cards, but if you end up with the ugly and unwanted Old Maid, who does not have a match, you lose. That says a lot right there. Or the fact that when you make yourself a bag of popcorn the kernels that are useless, that can't "pop," are referred to as "old maids." Well I looked up the word "spinster" on wikipedia, and the truth is, it has never been a positive word. The article began by talking about the original social stigma of being a spinster, and I quote: "...most stereotypes of spinsters are hostile. Other reputations are ugliness, frumpiness, depression, astringent moral virtue, and overly pious religious devotion. Spinsters have traditionally been accused of being overly fussy, of setting their standards too high — to the point of being unable to find a mate they are willing to accept."
Yikes.
The article then goes on to note the "improved status" of the term "spinster." And just how have spinsters improved? By becoming sexually liberated--they can have sex with whomever they want without being socially ostracized, they can pop out as many children as they like without a spouse, and they can do all this while still being hip and fashionable. Like the characters on the show Sex and the City (which I will admit to having watched about two times, and was not impressed at all). In fact, spinsters are expected to do these things. If they don't, there is something wrong with them.
Yikes again.
So either a spinster has to be an ugly, dowdy, strict, sexually repressed religious zealot, or she has to be hip, following all the latest fashions and trends, and definitely sexually active. I don't agree with or follow either of those descriptions, which is why I want to take back the word and redefine it. Why can't a girl be nice and normal, but not have sex and not have children out of wedlock? Why can't a spinster be a happy, successful woman who has complete control of her own body and does not rely on sexuality to make her feel accepted and normal?
Now I know a lot of people will not agree with me on this, and that's fine. I know my lifestyle, the LDS lifestyle, seems too strict for a lot of people. I'm not judging anyone else on how they choose to live their lives. I figure if they are doing whatever they do legally and responsibly (in all the senses of that word), it's not my place to say anything about it. I'm just saying that this is how I'm living my life, and the world shouldn't look on me negatively for it. What's wrong with being a virgin (which, by the way, is not and should not be considered a dirty word), or believing that children deserve to be raised by a mother and a father who love each other and are committed to each other through marriage? If that's what a spinster is, I don't mind being one.
Well in the end all of that is irrelevant. No matter what the reasons or circumstances, it is still apparently a negative thing to be a spinster. According to wikpedia, "...whatever their orientation, most unmarried, unpartnered feminists did not, and still do not, routinely identify as spinsters, preferring more common, and less freighted, terms such as 'single woman' or 'unmarried woman.'"
Blech, too many syllables. Spinster is just easier to say. And type. Why should I have to define myself as "single" or "unmarried?" That's why I want to take back the word "spinster." I am a spinster. I'm embracing it. I'm proud of it. There's no shame in it. There's no longer a negative stigma. I can do what I want, and it's okay. No one should judge me. I'm a Sweet Spinster (which, for anyone who didn't know, is a play-on-words with the term "sweet sister" that pops up in Mormon culture which also has a negative connotation and which I will blog about some other time for the benefit of those who have never heard the term before). So yes, I am a spinster, I'm going to be proud of it, and I'm not going to care what other people think.
That being said, I will still never own a cat.
Friday, June 5, 2009
The Seven Freeway Fence Posts
So some people may remember that back in December I wrecked my car on the freeway while trying to drive to work during a snowstorm (black ice sucks). In addition to ruining all the metal on the left side of the vehicle (you can see the pictures on facebook), I also sort of took out the cable guardrail in the freeway median (basically I bent over/flattened some metal fence posts). I figured that, considering how many billions of dollars the state of Minnesota is in debt, I'd have to cover the cost of those metal posts (even though it was not my fault that I hit them). The cop told me that even though no other vehicles were involved and there were no injuries, he'd have to file a report because I caused "damage to state property." I figured it would cost probably a couple hundred dollars, and I waited for that bill to come for weeks. And then months. And then I figured that since they never sent a bill or police report or anything, I must have been wrong about having to pay for it. And being pretty tight up for money, it was a load off my mind!
So here we are, nearly six months after the accident, and today my aunt gets an envelope in the mail from the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and she thought that they sure did send the new tags for her car quickly. Then she opened it. And there were no tags. Instead, there was a bill for $696.78. And she was understandably shocked. Since the car I drove at the time actually was her old car, the bill came to her instead of me.
But the charges are ridiculous! Over double what I was originally expecting I'd have to pay! And the charges on the invoice are ridiculous:
1 ton dump truck 52 mi @ 1.64/mi=$85.22
1 1/2 to 3 ton special truck 7 mi @ 3.88/mi=$27.19
2 1/2 to 3 ton dump truck 0.50 hr=$32.15
changeable message board 0.50 hr=$0.46
locating pegs 36 @1.12 ea=$40.22
post cap 1=$3.13
line post socketed 7 @ $54.74 ea=$40.22
6 transp. maint wkrs 3 hrs @ 41.74/hr=$125.23
Okay, seriously! Isn't the state already paying its road maintenance workers to be at work? Why should I have to pay their salaries when they already work for and are paid by the state? My taxes are already paying their regular salaries! And what's up with driving out a couple of dump trucks? I've seen them fixing those freeway median posts before (people knock them over all the time, even when there's no ice on the road), and there is no dumping of anything whatsoever. They take a metal post and pound it into the ground. Okay, I guess they need some sort of truck to transport the posts and tools, but that certainly doesn't involve driving a special dump truck fifty-two miles.
And here's the other thing that annoys me. I wasn't kidding when I said people take out those fence posts every day. I drive on the freeway back and forth between Faribault and Owatonna every day I go to work, and I drive on the freeway back and forth between Faribault and Lakeville once a week when I go to church. And at LEAST once a week I drive past a newly-destroyed section of median fence. All the time. They build them right up next to the road, and there are constantly new skid marks pointing straight towards flattened fence posts magically appearing. But the state doesn't fix them right away. They wait and every few months they go through and patch up all the bare spots on the cable guardrail. (If I remember correctly my wreck spot was fixed sometime in February or possibly March.) Which means they don't drive a dump truck fifty-two miles to fix one spot. They drive a dump truck maybe one mile to fix one spot, and then another mile or two to fix the next spot, and then a mile or two to fix the next one, and so on. I happen to know that there were at least like six other wreck spots between Faribault and Owatonna that were fixed the same day as mine. Yet apparently every single person who takes out any posts has to pay for all the mileage of the truck. That irks me.
You know, every few weeks a wreck spot will appear that is really huge. Not like mine, where seven posts were bent over but still attached to both the cables and the ground. In these big ones there will be like twenty or thirty posts that are completely knocked out of the ground and torn away from the cables, and the grass in the whole area is all torn up. I really feel bad for those people. I'm not really sure how anyone manages to do that much damage--I figure maybe semi trucks barrel through them or something. But seriously. Those people must have to pay like thousands of dollars. The state probably even charges them for the grass.
So anyways, this bill that arrived today, for an accident that occurred on December 20, 2008, was sent on 06/02/09, and is due on 07/02/09. I do not have the money to pay it. My aunt is currently unemployed, so she does not have the money to pay it. I think she's going to send the bill to the insurance company, but we're sure they won't pay any because apparently since the car was so old and crappy to begin with it only had the bare minimum insurance--so it would have been covered if someone else had hit me. (And it had towing insurance, which for some strange reason did not cover the cost of towing the car back to town.) But I'm screwed for money now. It took me like a year to save up enough money to buy my laptop (which was only slightly more than $600). And I know I'm also waiting for the doctor bills I've accrued due to having strep throat for the past three weeks and having to go to the doctor not once but TWICE because the penicillin didn't kill it. And even though my new health insurance did start up three days before I first went to the doctor (Walmart gives health insurance to its part-time employees after they've worked there for a year), the only way I could afford the premiums that would be taken out of every paycheck, I had to choose a plan that had a higher deductible, so I know I will be paying all these medical bills out of my own pocket. So it'll be about a million more years before I have enough money to start taking classes of any kind (which is why I bought the laptop).
Hey, I know. I should send an invoice to the state for the damage that their median fence caused to my car (well technically, my aunt's car). After all, I would not have collided with it had they been more vigilant about de-icing the roadway, right? Heck, I was only going fifty at best when I went off. And by the time we finally left that day two other cars had gone off within half a mile of there, one going the opposite direction and the other at the exact same spot I went off, except that car slid to the right instead of to the left, so I guess all they had to pay for was a tow truck to pull them out of the ditch. Too bad they didn't go to the left, because maybe then they would have hit my car and we would have gotten some money from the insurance. Yeah, I think sending the state an invoice would be cool.
Somehow I don't think Minnesota would be very amused. Or willing to pay. Maybe I should write my senator. Oh, wait, Minnesota STILL hasn't seated theirs yet!
So here we are, nearly six months after the accident, and today my aunt gets an envelope in the mail from the Minnesota Department of Transportation, and she thought that they sure did send the new tags for her car quickly. Then she opened it. And there were no tags. Instead, there was a bill for $696.78. And she was understandably shocked. Since the car I drove at the time actually was her old car, the bill came to her instead of me.
But the charges are ridiculous! Over double what I was originally expecting I'd have to pay! And the charges on the invoice are ridiculous:
1 ton dump truck 52 mi @ 1.64/mi=$85.22
1 1/2 to 3 ton special truck 7 mi @ 3.88/mi=$27.19
2 1/2 to 3 ton dump truck 0.50 hr=$32.15
changeable message board 0.50 hr=$0.46
locating pegs 36 @1.12 ea=$40.22
post cap 1=$3.13
line post socketed 7 @ $54.74 ea=$40.22
6 transp. maint wkrs 3 hrs @ 41.74/hr=$125.23
Okay, seriously! Isn't the state already paying its road maintenance workers to be at work? Why should I have to pay their salaries when they already work for and are paid by the state? My taxes are already paying their regular salaries! And what's up with driving out a couple of dump trucks? I've seen them fixing those freeway median posts before (people knock them over all the time, even when there's no ice on the road), and there is no dumping of anything whatsoever. They take a metal post and pound it into the ground. Okay, I guess they need some sort of truck to transport the posts and tools, but that certainly doesn't involve driving a special dump truck fifty-two miles.
And here's the other thing that annoys me. I wasn't kidding when I said people take out those fence posts every day. I drive on the freeway back and forth between Faribault and Owatonna every day I go to work, and I drive on the freeway back and forth between Faribault and Lakeville once a week when I go to church. And at LEAST once a week I drive past a newly-destroyed section of median fence. All the time. They build them right up next to the road, and there are constantly new skid marks pointing straight towards flattened fence posts magically appearing. But the state doesn't fix them right away. They wait and every few months they go through and patch up all the bare spots on the cable guardrail. (If I remember correctly my wreck spot was fixed sometime in February or possibly March.) Which means they don't drive a dump truck fifty-two miles to fix one spot. They drive a dump truck maybe one mile to fix one spot, and then another mile or two to fix the next spot, and then a mile or two to fix the next one, and so on. I happen to know that there were at least like six other wreck spots between Faribault and Owatonna that were fixed the same day as mine. Yet apparently every single person who takes out any posts has to pay for all the mileage of the truck. That irks me.
You know, every few weeks a wreck spot will appear that is really huge. Not like mine, where seven posts were bent over but still attached to both the cables and the ground. In these big ones there will be like twenty or thirty posts that are completely knocked out of the ground and torn away from the cables, and the grass in the whole area is all torn up. I really feel bad for those people. I'm not really sure how anyone manages to do that much damage--I figure maybe semi trucks barrel through them or something. But seriously. Those people must have to pay like thousands of dollars. The state probably even charges them for the grass.
So anyways, this bill that arrived today, for an accident that occurred on December 20, 2008, was sent on 06/02/09, and is due on 07/02/09. I do not have the money to pay it. My aunt is currently unemployed, so she does not have the money to pay it. I think she's going to send the bill to the insurance company, but we're sure they won't pay any because apparently since the car was so old and crappy to begin with it only had the bare minimum insurance--so it would have been covered if someone else had hit me. (And it had towing insurance, which for some strange reason did not cover the cost of towing the car back to town.) But I'm screwed for money now. It took me like a year to save up enough money to buy my laptop (which was only slightly more than $600). And I know I'm also waiting for the doctor bills I've accrued due to having strep throat for the past three weeks and having to go to the doctor not once but TWICE because the penicillin didn't kill it. And even though my new health insurance did start up three days before I first went to the doctor (Walmart gives health insurance to its part-time employees after they've worked there for a year), the only way I could afford the premiums that would be taken out of every paycheck, I had to choose a plan that had a higher deductible, so I know I will be paying all these medical bills out of my own pocket. So it'll be about a million more years before I have enough money to start taking classes of any kind (which is why I bought the laptop).
Hey, I know. I should send an invoice to the state for the damage that their median fence caused to my car (well technically, my aunt's car). After all, I would not have collided with it had they been more vigilant about de-icing the roadway, right? Heck, I was only going fifty at best when I went off. And by the time we finally left that day two other cars had gone off within half a mile of there, one going the opposite direction and the other at the exact same spot I went off, except that car slid to the right instead of to the left, so I guess all they had to pay for was a tow truck to pull them out of the ditch. Too bad they didn't go to the left, because maybe then they would have hit my car and we would have gotten some money from the insurance. Yeah, I think sending the state an invoice would be cool.
Somehow I don't think Minnesota would be very amused. Or willing to pay. Maybe I should write my senator. Oh, wait, Minnesota STILL hasn't seated theirs yet!
Monday, June 1, 2009
An Explanation (And Another Literary Comparison)
I feel right now that I need to offer a note of explanation. You see, a lot of people are reading my blog and getting the idea that I am bitter because I am twenty-four years old and not married. While it may seem that that is the case, I need to explain right now that that is not true. I have no problem being single. It's something else that bothers me. But how do I explain it?
Ah! This is where the literary comparison comes in. Last time I compared myself with the character of Mary Bennett, who was created by Jane Austen. This time I will compare myself to a literary character named Valancy Stirling, who was created by one of my favorite authors--Lucy Maud Montgomery, who also created the character Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables). Valancy Stirling is the main character of one of Montgomery's lesser-known books, The Blue Castle. It takes place in a small town called Deerwood in 1920s Canada. The book starts out on the morning of Valancy's twenty-ninth birthday, and she wakes up feeling what I myself am often feeling. How should I put this? Well, I probably can't put it any better than Montgomery already did, so I'll just quote directly from the book:
"Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.
"Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless old maidenhood. But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet--never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.
"Ay, THERE lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn't possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her."
And that is where I feel the sting. I don't mind so much being single--I'd much rather be single than be stuck in a marriage like a lot of the ones I see young people in. No, that's not what bothers me at all. There are tons of single people my age--in fact, more people my age are single than married. No, what bothers me is that, like Valancy, I've never even had a single opportunity (no pun intended) to be anything else. No man has ever been even remotely interested in me.
And THERE lies the sting. Sure there are plenty of people my age who are single, but the vast majority of them have been in a relationship, or at least had the opportunity to be in a relationship. They have at least had someone who was interested in them on some level. I've never been in a relationship, or even had the possibility of one. And that hurts.
And it's something that no one can understand unless they have lived it. And to be honest, I've never personally been acquainted with someone my age in this circumstance (except for people who had, how can I say this politely, slight mental disabilities). In fact, my friends and roommates have always said things like, "Well, you should actually be glad, because boys are just trouble anyways," or, "Well, I would actually like to be in your position since you've never had to break up with someone." Oh, you poor, poor, simple fools. My best response to this is a cliche: "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." How true that is. I would gladly go through the experience of a terrible breakup, if only because it meant that at one point that other person had cared for me. I mean, even most divorced people say that if they could do the whole thing over again they would because they would want to experience that happiness they had experienced at the beginning of their relationship. Even though they weren't in love anymore, they would go through it again, even the painful breakup, to be able to experience being in love again and having someone be in love with them.
Of course I'm not sitting here bitter because no one's ever been in love with me. That in and of itself doesn't hurt, doesn't really bother me. But it does kind of hurt that no one has ever been in like with me. There lays the sting.
Oh, and on another note of explanation, I feel I should say that writing this blog is rather cathartic for me--that is, it is kind of emotionally soul-purging for me. I write a few of my innermost thoughts, and the depressed feelings that go along with them, and once I get that out of me, I do not feel depressed anymore. I'm not really sure how to explain it. By writing about being depressed, I do not actually FEEL depressed anymore. I'm afraid that people are thinking that I'm just always moping around feeling all depressed because that's kind of the way my writing is, but that's not the case. By writing it all out I can kind of purge it from my soul and be done with it. It's actually very theraputic. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but right now, it's working for me, so I'm going to keep doing it, and I won't apologize for it. And there it is.
Well, what else can I say? Valancy Stirling ended up having a happy ending after many ups and downs, so I'd much rather be a Valancy Stirling than a Mary Bennett. Of course, Valancy is under the impression that she is dying of congenital heart disease for the majority of the book due to a doctor's clerical error, and I definitely don't want to experience that. But still. Valancy created this perfect fantasy world for herself to deal emotionally with being an unwanted, hopelessly single woman living with her mother and aunt. She imagined herself marrying a Prince Charming and living happily ever after with him in a blue castle in Spain (hence the title of the book). And in the end, she ended up getting her Prince Charming and Blue Castle--they just weren't exactly the way she had always imagined them. And maybe that's what will happen to me, too.
Ah! This is where the literary comparison comes in. Last time I compared myself with the character of Mary Bennett, who was created by Jane Austen. This time I will compare myself to a literary character named Valancy Stirling, who was created by one of my favorite authors--Lucy Maud Montgomery, who also created the character Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables). Valancy Stirling is the main character of one of Montgomery's lesser-known books, The Blue Castle. It takes place in a small town called Deerwood in 1920s Canada. The book starts out on the morning of Valancy's twenty-ninth birthday, and she wakes up feeling what I myself am often feeling. How should I put this? Well, I probably can't put it any better than Montgomery already did, so I'll just quote directly from the book:
"Valancy wakened early, in the lifeless, hopeless hour just preceding dawn. She had not slept very well. One does not sleep well, sometimes, when one is twenty-nine on the morrow, and unmarried, in a community and connection where the unmarried are simply those who have failed to get a man.
"Deerwood and the Stirlings had long since relegated Valancy to hopeless old maidenhood. But Valancy herself had never quite relinquished a certain pitiful, shamed, little hope that Romance would come her way yet--never, until this wet, horrible morning, when she wakened to the fact that she was twenty-nine and unsought by any man.
"Ay, THERE lay the sting. Valancy did not mind so much being an old maid. After all, she thought, being an old maid couldn't possibly be as dreadful as being married to an Uncle Wellington or an Uncle Benjamin, or even an Uncle Herbert. What hurt her was that she had never had a chance to be anything but an old maid. No man had ever desired her."
And that is where I feel the sting. I don't mind so much being single--I'd much rather be single than be stuck in a marriage like a lot of the ones I see young people in. No, that's not what bothers me at all. There are tons of single people my age--in fact, more people my age are single than married. No, what bothers me is that, like Valancy, I've never even had a single opportunity (no pun intended) to be anything else. No man has ever been even remotely interested in me.
And THERE lies the sting. Sure there are plenty of people my age who are single, but the vast majority of them have been in a relationship, or at least had the opportunity to be in a relationship. They have at least had someone who was interested in them on some level. I've never been in a relationship, or even had the possibility of one. And that hurts.
And it's something that no one can understand unless they have lived it. And to be honest, I've never personally been acquainted with someone my age in this circumstance (except for people who had, how can I say this politely, slight mental disabilities). In fact, my friends and roommates have always said things like, "Well, you should actually be glad, because boys are just trouble anyways," or, "Well, I would actually like to be in your position since you've never had to break up with someone." Oh, you poor, poor, simple fools. My best response to this is a cliche: "'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." How true that is. I would gladly go through the experience of a terrible breakup, if only because it meant that at one point that other person had cared for me. I mean, even most divorced people say that if they could do the whole thing over again they would because they would want to experience that happiness they had experienced at the beginning of their relationship. Even though they weren't in love anymore, they would go through it again, even the painful breakup, to be able to experience being in love again and having someone be in love with them.
Of course I'm not sitting here bitter because no one's ever been in love with me. That in and of itself doesn't hurt, doesn't really bother me. But it does kind of hurt that no one has ever been in like with me. There lays the sting.
Oh, and on another note of explanation, I feel I should say that writing this blog is rather cathartic for me--that is, it is kind of emotionally soul-purging for me. I write a few of my innermost thoughts, and the depressed feelings that go along with them, and once I get that out of me, I do not feel depressed anymore. I'm not really sure how to explain it. By writing about being depressed, I do not actually FEEL depressed anymore. I'm afraid that people are thinking that I'm just always moping around feeling all depressed because that's kind of the way my writing is, but that's not the case. By writing it all out I can kind of purge it from my soul and be done with it. It's actually very theraputic. I know this doesn't work for everyone, but right now, it's working for me, so I'm going to keep doing it, and I won't apologize for it. And there it is.
Well, what else can I say? Valancy Stirling ended up having a happy ending after many ups and downs, so I'd much rather be a Valancy Stirling than a Mary Bennett. Of course, Valancy is under the impression that she is dying of congenital heart disease for the majority of the book due to a doctor's clerical error, and I definitely don't want to experience that. But still. Valancy created this perfect fantasy world for herself to deal emotionally with being an unwanted, hopelessly single woman living with her mother and aunt. She imagined herself marrying a Prince Charming and living happily ever after with him in a blue castle in Spain (hence the title of the book). And in the end, she ended up getting her Prince Charming and Blue Castle--they just weren't exactly the way she had always imagined them. And maybe that's what will happen to me, too.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Strep!?!
I'm not sure how an otherwise healthy adult who doesn't know anybody with strep throat gets it in May, especially since I haven't been around a single person with strep that I know of, but somehow I have. So I've been kind of sick for the last week. I played with my friend's baby last Monday, and the baby had a bad cold and ear infection. So then when I developed a sore throat later that evening, I blamed it on playing with a sick baby. (Don't worry; the baby had already been to a doctor and didn't have strep and her mom was giving her medicine.) But my sore throat got really terrible, and I was taking a hefty combination of cold pills (the really good kind that they have to scan your driver's license before they let you have it so they can keep track of you and make sure you're not making meth) and pain pills (I like the acetaminophen/aspirin/caffeine combo). But I honestly was starting to be afraid that I might accidentally take too much acetaminophen. You can actually overdose on acetaminophen. That's why all the pill boxes say not to combine them with any other pills containing acetaminophen. It will destroy your liver. (Good thing I don't drink.) So I looked around online and figured that my dosages were still safe. I read an article about a girl who had a severe migraine and took fourteen Tylenols and died. But I figured I was still okay because I was taking between eight and twelve pills per day, and definitely not at the same time. Still, I knew it couldn't be good for my body to have all that stuff in there. But the pain in my throat, especially whenever I had to swallow, was tremendous. So I took more and more pills.
But the sore throat just kept getting worse. I didn't know what the deal was. My ears were hurting pretty badly, too, especially when I swallowed. But I didn't want to go to a doctor because I figured it was just a nasty cold virus, and there's nothing they can do about that. Antibiotics will do absolutely no good if you have a virus. They can actually make things worse in the long run because overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics just innoculates the bacteria and makes them medically resistant. Plus, I can't really afford to pay for a doctor's visit. While I did just finally get enrolled for health insurance, they haven't given me any cards or anything, and even if it was covered it would still just go against my deductible so I'd still have to pay the full cost.
It didn't help that I worked every day this last week, Monday through Saturday. (I don't work Sundays for religious reasons.) I actually wasn't scheduled all of those days, but I took some extra shifts on my days off to get some more money. So I had no time to let my body rest and recuperate. So Saturday I was at work, just suffering. The pills weren't really working. I bought some Chloraseptic strips that you put in the back of your mouth and they're supposed to numb your throat. But no matter how far back in my throat I stuck the things, all I ever ended up with was a numb tongue and the same searing pain in my throat. And even the numbness of the tongue would only last about three minutes, not the two hours it said it was supposed to. I decided that if things weren't better by Monday I'd shell out the money and go to a doctor, but by the time work was over on Saturday I just couldn't stand it anymore. There was an urgent care clinic in Owatonna, and I decided to stop there on the way home from work. But then I couldn't find the place. I was in a lot of pain and had a pounding headache and was feeling somewhat nauseaus, so finally I just went home. But I felt like I really needed to see a doctor, so I asked my dad to drive me to the urgent care clinic. So he drove me back to Owatonna, and we still couldn't find the place. So I called my mom, who called the clinic, and it turns out they were at the place I had originally gone to myself except they they didn't have any signs or anything and the area was under construction so I had no way to know where it was.
So we go in there about fifteen minutes before the place closes for the evening. I explained to the doctor what was going on. I said I thought it was just a virus, but that it was really painful. I also said I wasn't sure it was strep because I'd looked in the back of my mouth as best I could and didn't see any white spots among the red, swollen stuff, which I'd read was the telltale sign. But my mouth cavern was kind of dark so it was hard to tell. The doctor said that it was probably a viral infection, but also that not all strep cases cause the white spots. So she swabbed the back of my throat and did a rapid strep test, which in a few minutes came back negative. So she said it was probably just a nasty virus that they couldn't do anything for, and that it would probably stick around for a few more days and then go away. She said that there was so much fluid buildup in my sinuses and behind my eardrums that it was making it difficult for it to drain out and get out of my system, so she just recommended trying some allergy pills.
So I figured that had all been a waste of time and money. (Still waiting for the bill.) All they'd done was tell me what I pretty much already knew and couldn't do anything for me. Well then when I woke up on Sunday my nose was horribly runny and stuffy, which it really hadn't been before, so I figured the doctor must have been right, and I hoped that this meant it was on its way out of my system. The pain in my throat just continued to get worse, though, and I was also developing a nasty cough, which also caused tremendous pain in my throat. But what could I do?
So night came and I was going to go to bed, so I grabbed my cell phone from out of my purse to take it down and plug it in by my bed, and there was a voicemail message on there. It was the doctor I had seen, saying I needed to call them concerning my throat culture. But it was too late to call them then, so I went to bed worried about what it meant. So this morning I woke up early and called them, and they said they'd ran the second longer strep test on my throat swabbing, and it did indicate that I had strep, so they were going to put me on a regimen of penicillin. So this morning instead of going to the Memorial Day parade I went to the pharmacy to pick up my penicillin. And this evening, instead of going to work and getting holiday pay, I will be sitting here at home, in pain, choking and hacking into my surgical mask.
Okay, I know that may be a bit extreme. A mask? Really? It's not as weird as it sounds. I had a bag of surgical masks left over from back when I used to work at the hospital. (Sick kids are considered a highly susceptible population, so we had to take extra precautions, which meant when you got a nasty cold the employee health nurse would give you a box of surgical masks to wear so you didn't spread the germs around.) So I found them and put one on. I'm not really worried about infecting anyone else; they've all been around me with it for the past seven days. And once I've been on the antibiotics for twenty-four hours I won't be contagious anymore. But the mask just makes it easier because I can cough if I want to and the germs are all contained. I don't have to make the effort to stop what I'm doing to cough into my shoulder or elbow, nor do I have to cough into my hand and then go wash immediately. It's just easier this way. So I'll be wearing a mask until tomorrow morning, when I should no longer be contagious.
And I have to admit, it's kind of nice to be able to skip work and not get in trouble. But I am a little bummed about missing out on that holiday pay.
But the sore throat just kept getting worse. I didn't know what the deal was. My ears were hurting pretty badly, too, especially when I swallowed. But I didn't want to go to a doctor because I figured it was just a nasty cold virus, and there's nothing they can do about that. Antibiotics will do absolutely no good if you have a virus. They can actually make things worse in the long run because overuse or inappropriate use of antibiotics just innoculates the bacteria and makes them medically resistant. Plus, I can't really afford to pay for a doctor's visit. While I did just finally get enrolled for health insurance, they haven't given me any cards or anything, and even if it was covered it would still just go against my deductible so I'd still have to pay the full cost.
It didn't help that I worked every day this last week, Monday through Saturday. (I don't work Sundays for religious reasons.) I actually wasn't scheduled all of those days, but I took some extra shifts on my days off to get some more money. So I had no time to let my body rest and recuperate. So Saturday I was at work, just suffering. The pills weren't really working. I bought some Chloraseptic strips that you put in the back of your mouth and they're supposed to numb your throat. But no matter how far back in my throat I stuck the things, all I ever ended up with was a numb tongue and the same searing pain in my throat. And even the numbness of the tongue would only last about three minutes, not the two hours it said it was supposed to. I decided that if things weren't better by Monday I'd shell out the money and go to a doctor, but by the time work was over on Saturday I just couldn't stand it anymore. There was an urgent care clinic in Owatonna, and I decided to stop there on the way home from work. But then I couldn't find the place. I was in a lot of pain and had a pounding headache and was feeling somewhat nauseaus, so finally I just went home. But I felt like I really needed to see a doctor, so I asked my dad to drive me to the urgent care clinic. So he drove me back to Owatonna, and we still couldn't find the place. So I called my mom, who called the clinic, and it turns out they were at the place I had originally gone to myself except they they didn't have any signs or anything and the area was under construction so I had no way to know where it was.
So we go in there about fifteen minutes before the place closes for the evening. I explained to the doctor what was going on. I said I thought it was just a virus, but that it was really painful. I also said I wasn't sure it was strep because I'd looked in the back of my mouth as best I could and didn't see any white spots among the red, swollen stuff, which I'd read was the telltale sign. But my mouth cavern was kind of dark so it was hard to tell. The doctor said that it was probably a viral infection, but also that not all strep cases cause the white spots. So she swabbed the back of my throat and did a rapid strep test, which in a few minutes came back negative. So she said it was probably just a nasty virus that they couldn't do anything for, and that it would probably stick around for a few more days and then go away. She said that there was so much fluid buildup in my sinuses and behind my eardrums that it was making it difficult for it to drain out and get out of my system, so she just recommended trying some allergy pills.
So I figured that had all been a waste of time and money. (Still waiting for the bill.) All they'd done was tell me what I pretty much already knew and couldn't do anything for me. Well then when I woke up on Sunday my nose was horribly runny and stuffy, which it really hadn't been before, so I figured the doctor must have been right, and I hoped that this meant it was on its way out of my system. The pain in my throat just continued to get worse, though, and I was also developing a nasty cough, which also caused tremendous pain in my throat. But what could I do?
So night came and I was going to go to bed, so I grabbed my cell phone from out of my purse to take it down and plug it in by my bed, and there was a voicemail message on there. It was the doctor I had seen, saying I needed to call them concerning my throat culture. But it was too late to call them then, so I went to bed worried about what it meant. So this morning I woke up early and called them, and they said they'd ran the second longer strep test on my throat swabbing, and it did indicate that I had strep, so they were going to put me on a regimen of penicillin. So this morning instead of going to the Memorial Day parade I went to the pharmacy to pick up my penicillin. And this evening, instead of going to work and getting holiday pay, I will be sitting here at home, in pain, choking and hacking into my surgical mask.
Okay, I know that may be a bit extreme. A mask? Really? It's not as weird as it sounds. I had a bag of surgical masks left over from back when I used to work at the hospital. (Sick kids are considered a highly susceptible population, so we had to take extra precautions, which meant when you got a nasty cold the employee health nurse would give you a box of surgical masks to wear so you didn't spread the germs around.) So I found them and put one on. I'm not really worried about infecting anyone else; they've all been around me with it for the past seven days. And once I've been on the antibiotics for twenty-four hours I won't be contagious anymore. But the mask just makes it easier because I can cough if I want to and the germs are all contained. I don't have to make the effort to stop what I'm doing to cough into my shoulder or elbow, nor do I have to cough into my hand and then go wash immediately. It's just easier this way. So I'll be wearing a mask until tomorrow morning, when I should no longer be contagious.
And I have to admit, it's kind of nice to be able to skip work and not get in trouble. But I am a little bummed about missing out on that holiday pay.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Anniversary/Thoughts
Today right after I clocked in at work the time clock beeped strangely at me, and when I looked at it it said, "HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!" It also did this after I clocked out. And I realized that I had been wasting my life away working part-time at Walmart for one whole year.
Actually, truth be told, I've known for awhile that my one-year anniversary was coming up, because employees get a slight raise on their anniversary, and because part-time employees become eligible for health insurance once they've worked there for a year. So you think this anniversary would be a good thing, right? Not when the job was supposed to be a temporary summer gig. Stupid job market.
But in thinking about this inasupcious occasion, I began pondering how I got to this point in my life. And I can't help but be afraid that I may have made the biggest mistake of my life in moving back in with my parents just over a year ago. Well, maybe I should go back in time a little further. Back to when I dropped off the face of the earth, or at least tried to. I graduated from BYU in August 2007 with a B.A. in history. Which is good for absolutely nothing, except for going to graduate school, which I never had any intention of doing. And even if I had wanted to go down that road, developing CFIDS in college made sure that my GPA was too low to really be considered for anything. But I was finally off academic probation and going to graduate. But to be honest, I had never really planned out what I was going to do after that. In the back of my mind I'd always assumed that I'd be married by the time I graduated from college. After all, I was at BYU, the world capital for single Mormon people. That is not to say that I went there to get married, which I definitely did NOT do. I went there to get an education, and I always assumed that marriage would just happen. And after I got there I always heard that the girls who insisted they were not there to get married were the first ones to go. (I am living proof that that is not true.) But after I'd been in college for awhile I realized that guys there are just as shallow as everywhere else and that marriage was not likely. I would have focused on making other plans for myself after graduation, but about this time I started getting sick, so my focus shifted on simply not getting kicked out of school for my abominable GPA, and then bringing it up enough and passing enough classes to graduate.
Well I was finally reaching the end of my university career. I started job hunting during winter semester of 2007, knowing I'd graduate in August. But nothing ever turned up. I was getting really stressed towards the end of the term because I would no longer be a student and also no longer have a place to live since the lease on my apartment ended at the end of the term. I could have renewed my lease, but I had to know where I would be working before I could do that because I didn't have a car and thus had to live near public transportation in the same town as my job. But I still had no job lined up. All the good jobs I was qualified for took one look at my GPA and rejected me, and for all the crappy jobs I'd go in to interview for they would say, "You have a college degree, and you want to work HERE?" and conclude that there must be something wrong with me. I only had two interviews that I thought went even remotely well--one was as a supervisor of sorts over the cafeteria at LDS Hospital, and the other one was just working in the cafeteria at Primary Children's Medical Center. But I was still freaking out. In two weeks I would be homeless and jobless. Plus at the time I was suffering from depression and had been off my medication for awhile. (I'm in the same boat now, but like I said, since I've been at Walmart for a year now I can get insurance, so maybe I can go back on the meds. We'll see.) Anyways, I was having panic attacks, and things were not going well. And I was having to skip classes sometimes just to get to these job interviews which were often in Salt Lake. As I said, I didn't have a car, and I had no one I could turn to for a ride, so my only option was to board a bus in Provo, transfer to another bus in Orem, ride that bus all the way up to Sandy, then get on the train and ride that all the way up to Salt Lake City, and then either walk to my final destination or take another bus there. All of this took about two and a half hours usually. It was really stressful, and the panic attacks were getting worse. I was praying for an answer, but nothing seemed to be coming. I was also kind of upset that I wouldn't be getting to experience the whole college graduation thing. My parents weren't coming to see me graduate, so what was the point of spending all the money on a cap and gown to walk in the ceremony? Plus, I figured that since my lease ended then I would most likely be moving on graduation day. But it was all still up in the air. My parents said I could move back home, but I really did not want to do that. My relationship with my parents has been strained at times, and at this time it was not the greatest. I would get into yelling matches with my mom on the phone, then hang up and start hyperventilating, and then once the panic attack was over I could look forward to the twenty-minute angry lectures my dad would leave on my voice mail. And I'd always sworn that I would never move back home.
But then it happened. I got a call offering me a job. It was as a cafeteria worker at Primary Children's Medical Center. And I made a huge mistake. I accepted right then and there. What I should have done was ask for a day to think it over and then prayed about it. If I had done that, I would have received the answer that, while this job would pay the bills, if I just waited a tiny bit longer, the Lord would have something better for me. But I didn't do that. I didn't consider the Lord at all in my decision. I just went with what seemed logical to me and my circumstances at the time. I needed a place to live, which I couldn't get until I had a job, and nothing else had come up. So I took the job. And then several days later I got a phone call offering me the supervisor job at LDS Hospital (which would have meant more responsibilities/meaningful work and would have looked better on a resume, not to mention that it paid more money). But I turned it down because I had already accepted a job somewhere else. Big mistake.
Well my mom was able to make some phone calls and find me an apartment within walking distance of Trax so I could ride the train to work. So on the day I should have been walking across the platform in a distinguished cap and gown to receive my bachelor's degree, I was moving into a lonely little apartment in Salt Lake City. I thought that my problems would be over then. I had a job and a place to live. But somehow it wasn't enough. The panic attacks were still happening. I hated my new job worse than I had ever hated anything, even though the work load was fine and the people I worked with were nice enough. (I think my mom knew I was depressed and I think she thought I was going to kill myself or something, although anyone who knows me knows I would never do that. I mean, besides the fact that I don't want to go to hell, I just think way too logically for that. I mean, I lived alone, and it would have been weeks before anyone even had any idea what had happened. But the fact that I thought about this shows how depressed I was.) I know now that it was the depression, the chemical imbalance, but at the time I was at my wit's end and just didn't know what to do. I had failed. I had to admit that and then try to move on. So I finally decided to move back to Minnesota.
I started my job in August 2007, and I wanted to give up and leave practically right away. But I had a six-month lease on my apartment, and if I broke that lease they would charge me like $900. So I was stuck there until at least February. I was living a pretty sad existence. I got up and went to work, and occasionally the grocery store, and I went to church every other Sunday (rotating with the weekends I had to work at the hospital). And since I was on my feet all day every day, I was very tired and in a lot of pain, so when I was at home I was usually just vegging in front of the t.v. or sleeping. (Like the time I slept through the SWAT team in my parking lot surrounding the building next door when they had a stand-off with some sex offender had broken his parole and vowed he was not going back to prison and finally shot himself. I was napping twenty feet away.) And I wasn't making enough money to save anything. I was making just enough to cover my basic expenses and pay the minimums on my credit cards. (The only reason I had credit cards that were nearly maxed out is that people who are flunking out of college are not only ineligible for scholarships, they are also ineligible for federal aid of any kind, so my Pell grants and Stafford loans eventually went out the window, and since I was broke, the only option I felt I had at the time was to charge my tuition to credit cards.) I did make one good decision during this time, though. I went back on the Zoloft, which helped a lot. I stopped having panic attacks and did not feel so hopeless. And I no longer spent time fantasizing that I would die in some freak accident, like some psychopathic freak would hijack a bus and then, after engaging in a high-speed chase through the streets of Salt Lake, finally end the chase by crashing into the Trax train that I happened to be sitting in. Yeah, untreated depression is not cool.
So anyways, I was hopeful now, partly because I was no longer depressed, but also because I figured I could move back to Minnesota and live with my parents for just a few weeks or months until I found a good full-time job (which would be easier because I would have a car to drive). It was finally worked out with my parents that I would move back in April 2008 (which was the only time we could arrange for my stuff to be moved). So I moved back. And after about one day, I wondered what the heck I had done to myself.
Okay, I am a huge Seinfeld fan, and at this point I basically became a female version of George Costanza (minus the immoral parts). At the beginning of one season George moves back in with his parents because he lost his job and couldn't afford to pay his rent anymore until he got a new job. So Jerry and Kramer help him move his stuff over to his parents' house, and since his parents are kind of crazy, Jerry and Kramer skip out right afterwards, and George is sitting there with his neurotic parents wondering aloud what he was thinking to do this. The majority of that season George is looking for a job and constantly being berated by his parents, who think that he should be able to get a job with no problem (he does apparently have a college degree, after all). And that's what it was like for me. I came home, and was there, and then wondered what on earth I had done to myself. But I thought I'd get a job no problem, because I did have a college degree, after all. They mailed it to me a few months after graduation. I even put it in a nice frame, which my parents wouldn't let me put up anywhere in the house because it just didn't go with the rest of the decor, so it is now residing in the bottom of a box, like most of everything else that I own. And my parents also thought I should have no problem getting a job if I just looked for one. So I decided to chill for one week, and then get down to business and get a job. I didn't think that taking one week off to relax was too unreasonable, but apparently it was. I felt the tension and saw the looks and got the lectures, and my little sister told me that she was in the car with the parents once when they were just talking about how lazy I was to not have a job after two weeks. And this is not to paint them in a bad way. That is not my intention. I'm just telling things how they were, how I saw them. Well after a few weeks of applying at all the good places and going in for a few interviews and getting nothing, I decided to apply for all the crappy jobs, figuring that I could just work at one of those temporarily until I got a real job. So after I'd been home for about a month I got a call from the Owatonna Walmart, saying they wanted me to come in and interview for a temporary position in their lawn and garden center. So I went in and got the job. Sure, it was only part-time, and it would only last until they closed the lawn and garden doors in July, but I figured that was fine, because I'd surely have a good job by then.
But then July came. And I'd only had like two job interviews the whole summer. But Walmart was offering other jobs to all the temporary people who were interested in still working there. And I figured that at least I'd have enough money to make my credit card payments, so I said I'd still like to work there and they transferred me over to toys. And here I am. Still working part-time in the toy department at the Owatonna Walmart. And still living with my parents, not even having a bedroom but sleeping in a random bed shoved in the basement. And unfortunately, when I moved to Minnesota I lost my health insurance, which meant that when all my prescriptions ran out I could not afford to go to a doctor to get refills written. So by the end of the summer I had quit all my medications cold turkey because there was nothing else to do. And I've been depressed ever since, although luckily I have not had any panic attacks since moving to Minnesota, nor have I fantasized about dying in some freak accident. Although once I did skip church and stay in bed for thirty hours just to see if anyone would notice. (They didn't.) And not being called in for any job interviews has not helped my state of mind at all. It just makes me feel like even more of a failure. I don't think I've gotten a single interview since like October. The only good thing is that my parents finally backed off after my aunt quit her job, expecting to just get a new one, and now five or six months later she is still unemployed. I guess they realized that it wasn't just me, but rather that it was the job market. Heck, I remember reading an associated press article in the paper about some middle-aged guy in Florida who had been laid off for one year, and in that time he had submitted something like 700 job applications and been called in for four interviews, none of which had ended in a job offer, and he was being forced to sell his house and move into his elderly mother's apartment. I also saw this political cartoon that I really liked. It showed a twentysomething guy and a middle-aged guy sitting at their kitchen table with a bunch of forms and papers scattered all over it. The younger guys says, "Thanks for helping me fill out all these job applications, Dad." And the dad replies, "These are MINE."
So that's why I'm afraid that I made a huge mistake in quitting my full-time job with benefits and moving back here. I had a job. I had benefits. Why did I give that up? Things would have eventually gotten better there, right? My goal now is that I have to somehow be making enough money to move out by March 2010. Because I WILL NOT be listed on the 2010 census as being twenty-four years old and still living with my parents. Heck, I will move into a motel for a few weeks if that's what it takes. If I can't be listed on the census as having a husband, then dang it, I am going to be listed as my own head of household!
But still here I sit, in my parents' house, living a meager existence under their household. I mean, heck, when they were my age not only had they been married for over a year, they already had a baby (my older brother Jeremy). And even he was married by the time he was my age.
I just realized that this ended up being way longer than I intended it to be. Partly because I sat down here at the computer with absolutely nothing to say. I apologize. I blame it on the wicked combination of pain killers and cold pills (and I'm talking about the good kind that they make meth out of that you have to get from the pharmacist). My throat is so sore and swollen that I can barely stand to swallow, but whatever virus I have has not affected my fingers apparently, so here I sit, typing away. But I'll stop now. Because most likely the few people who started reading this have long since lost interest and quit reading.
Actually, truth be told, I've known for awhile that my one-year anniversary was coming up, because employees get a slight raise on their anniversary, and because part-time employees become eligible for health insurance once they've worked there for a year. So you think this anniversary would be a good thing, right? Not when the job was supposed to be a temporary summer gig. Stupid job market.
But in thinking about this inasupcious occasion, I began pondering how I got to this point in my life. And I can't help but be afraid that I may have made the biggest mistake of my life in moving back in with my parents just over a year ago. Well, maybe I should go back in time a little further. Back to when I dropped off the face of the earth, or at least tried to. I graduated from BYU in August 2007 with a B.A. in history. Which is good for absolutely nothing, except for going to graduate school, which I never had any intention of doing. And even if I had wanted to go down that road, developing CFIDS in college made sure that my GPA was too low to really be considered for anything. But I was finally off academic probation and going to graduate. But to be honest, I had never really planned out what I was going to do after that. In the back of my mind I'd always assumed that I'd be married by the time I graduated from college. After all, I was at BYU, the world capital for single Mormon people. That is not to say that I went there to get married, which I definitely did NOT do. I went there to get an education, and I always assumed that marriage would just happen. And after I got there I always heard that the girls who insisted they were not there to get married were the first ones to go. (I am living proof that that is not true.) But after I'd been in college for awhile I realized that guys there are just as shallow as everywhere else and that marriage was not likely. I would have focused on making other plans for myself after graduation, but about this time I started getting sick, so my focus shifted on simply not getting kicked out of school for my abominable GPA, and then bringing it up enough and passing enough classes to graduate.
Well I was finally reaching the end of my university career. I started job hunting during winter semester of 2007, knowing I'd graduate in August. But nothing ever turned up. I was getting really stressed towards the end of the term because I would no longer be a student and also no longer have a place to live since the lease on my apartment ended at the end of the term. I could have renewed my lease, but I had to know where I would be working before I could do that because I didn't have a car and thus had to live near public transportation in the same town as my job. But I still had no job lined up. All the good jobs I was qualified for took one look at my GPA and rejected me, and for all the crappy jobs I'd go in to interview for they would say, "You have a college degree, and you want to work HERE?" and conclude that there must be something wrong with me. I only had two interviews that I thought went even remotely well--one was as a supervisor of sorts over the cafeteria at LDS Hospital, and the other one was just working in the cafeteria at Primary Children's Medical Center. But I was still freaking out. In two weeks I would be homeless and jobless. Plus at the time I was suffering from depression and had been off my medication for awhile. (I'm in the same boat now, but like I said, since I've been at Walmart for a year now I can get insurance, so maybe I can go back on the meds. We'll see.) Anyways, I was having panic attacks, and things were not going well. And I was having to skip classes sometimes just to get to these job interviews which were often in Salt Lake. As I said, I didn't have a car, and I had no one I could turn to for a ride, so my only option was to board a bus in Provo, transfer to another bus in Orem, ride that bus all the way up to Sandy, then get on the train and ride that all the way up to Salt Lake City, and then either walk to my final destination or take another bus there. All of this took about two and a half hours usually. It was really stressful, and the panic attacks were getting worse. I was praying for an answer, but nothing seemed to be coming. I was also kind of upset that I wouldn't be getting to experience the whole college graduation thing. My parents weren't coming to see me graduate, so what was the point of spending all the money on a cap and gown to walk in the ceremony? Plus, I figured that since my lease ended then I would most likely be moving on graduation day. But it was all still up in the air. My parents said I could move back home, but I really did not want to do that. My relationship with my parents has been strained at times, and at this time it was not the greatest. I would get into yelling matches with my mom on the phone, then hang up and start hyperventilating, and then once the panic attack was over I could look forward to the twenty-minute angry lectures my dad would leave on my voice mail. And I'd always sworn that I would never move back home.
But then it happened. I got a call offering me a job. It was as a cafeteria worker at Primary Children's Medical Center. And I made a huge mistake. I accepted right then and there. What I should have done was ask for a day to think it over and then prayed about it. If I had done that, I would have received the answer that, while this job would pay the bills, if I just waited a tiny bit longer, the Lord would have something better for me. But I didn't do that. I didn't consider the Lord at all in my decision. I just went with what seemed logical to me and my circumstances at the time. I needed a place to live, which I couldn't get until I had a job, and nothing else had come up. So I took the job. And then several days later I got a phone call offering me the supervisor job at LDS Hospital (which would have meant more responsibilities/meaningful work and would have looked better on a resume, not to mention that it paid more money). But I turned it down because I had already accepted a job somewhere else. Big mistake.
Well my mom was able to make some phone calls and find me an apartment within walking distance of Trax so I could ride the train to work. So on the day I should have been walking across the platform in a distinguished cap and gown to receive my bachelor's degree, I was moving into a lonely little apartment in Salt Lake City. I thought that my problems would be over then. I had a job and a place to live. But somehow it wasn't enough. The panic attacks were still happening. I hated my new job worse than I had ever hated anything, even though the work load was fine and the people I worked with were nice enough. (I think my mom knew I was depressed and I think she thought I was going to kill myself or something, although anyone who knows me knows I would never do that. I mean, besides the fact that I don't want to go to hell, I just think way too logically for that. I mean, I lived alone, and it would have been weeks before anyone even had any idea what had happened. But the fact that I thought about this shows how depressed I was.) I know now that it was the depression, the chemical imbalance, but at the time I was at my wit's end and just didn't know what to do. I had failed. I had to admit that and then try to move on. So I finally decided to move back to Minnesota.
I started my job in August 2007, and I wanted to give up and leave practically right away. But I had a six-month lease on my apartment, and if I broke that lease they would charge me like $900. So I was stuck there until at least February. I was living a pretty sad existence. I got up and went to work, and occasionally the grocery store, and I went to church every other Sunday (rotating with the weekends I had to work at the hospital). And since I was on my feet all day every day, I was very tired and in a lot of pain, so when I was at home I was usually just vegging in front of the t.v. or sleeping. (Like the time I slept through the SWAT team in my parking lot surrounding the building next door when they had a stand-off with some sex offender had broken his parole and vowed he was not going back to prison and finally shot himself. I was napping twenty feet away.) And I wasn't making enough money to save anything. I was making just enough to cover my basic expenses and pay the minimums on my credit cards. (The only reason I had credit cards that were nearly maxed out is that people who are flunking out of college are not only ineligible for scholarships, they are also ineligible for federal aid of any kind, so my Pell grants and Stafford loans eventually went out the window, and since I was broke, the only option I felt I had at the time was to charge my tuition to credit cards.) I did make one good decision during this time, though. I went back on the Zoloft, which helped a lot. I stopped having panic attacks and did not feel so hopeless. And I no longer spent time fantasizing that I would die in some freak accident, like some psychopathic freak would hijack a bus and then, after engaging in a high-speed chase through the streets of Salt Lake, finally end the chase by crashing into the Trax train that I happened to be sitting in. Yeah, untreated depression is not cool.
So anyways, I was hopeful now, partly because I was no longer depressed, but also because I figured I could move back to Minnesota and live with my parents for just a few weeks or months until I found a good full-time job (which would be easier because I would have a car to drive). It was finally worked out with my parents that I would move back in April 2008 (which was the only time we could arrange for my stuff to be moved). So I moved back. And after about one day, I wondered what the heck I had done to myself.
Okay, I am a huge Seinfeld fan, and at this point I basically became a female version of George Costanza (minus the immoral parts). At the beginning of one season George moves back in with his parents because he lost his job and couldn't afford to pay his rent anymore until he got a new job. So Jerry and Kramer help him move his stuff over to his parents' house, and since his parents are kind of crazy, Jerry and Kramer skip out right afterwards, and George is sitting there with his neurotic parents wondering aloud what he was thinking to do this. The majority of that season George is looking for a job and constantly being berated by his parents, who think that he should be able to get a job with no problem (he does apparently have a college degree, after all). And that's what it was like for me. I came home, and was there, and then wondered what on earth I had done to myself. But I thought I'd get a job no problem, because I did have a college degree, after all. They mailed it to me a few months after graduation. I even put it in a nice frame, which my parents wouldn't let me put up anywhere in the house because it just didn't go with the rest of the decor, so it is now residing in the bottom of a box, like most of everything else that I own. And my parents also thought I should have no problem getting a job if I just looked for one. So I decided to chill for one week, and then get down to business and get a job. I didn't think that taking one week off to relax was too unreasonable, but apparently it was. I felt the tension and saw the looks and got the lectures, and my little sister told me that she was in the car with the parents once when they were just talking about how lazy I was to not have a job after two weeks. And this is not to paint them in a bad way. That is not my intention. I'm just telling things how they were, how I saw them. Well after a few weeks of applying at all the good places and going in for a few interviews and getting nothing, I decided to apply for all the crappy jobs, figuring that I could just work at one of those temporarily until I got a real job. So after I'd been home for about a month I got a call from the Owatonna Walmart, saying they wanted me to come in and interview for a temporary position in their lawn and garden center. So I went in and got the job. Sure, it was only part-time, and it would only last until they closed the lawn and garden doors in July, but I figured that was fine, because I'd surely have a good job by then.
But then July came. And I'd only had like two job interviews the whole summer. But Walmart was offering other jobs to all the temporary people who were interested in still working there. And I figured that at least I'd have enough money to make my credit card payments, so I said I'd still like to work there and they transferred me over to toys. And here I am. Still working part-time in the toy department at the Owatonna Walmart. And still living with my parents, not even having a bedroom but sleeping in a random bed shoved in the basement. And unfortunately, when I moved to Minnesota I lost my health insurance, which meant that when all my prescriptions ran out I could not afford to go to a doctor to get refills written. So by the end of the summer I had quit all my medications cold turkey because there was nothing else to do. And I've been depressed ever since, although luckily I have not had any panic attacks since moving to Minnesota, nor have I fantasized about dying in some freak accident. Although once I did skip church and stay in bed for thirty hours just to see if anyone would notice. (They didn't.) And not being called in for any job interviews has not helped my state of mind at all. It just makes me feel like even more of a failure. I don't think I've gotten a single interview since like October. The only good thing is that my parents finally backed off after my aunt quit her job, expecting to just get a new one, and now five or six months later she is still unemployed. I guess they realized that it wasn't just me, but rather that it was the job market. Heck, I remember reading an associated press article in the paper about some middle-aged guy in Florida who had been laid off for one year, and in that time he had submitted something like 700 job applications and been called in for four interviews, none of which had ended in a job offer, and he was being forced to sell his house and move into his elderly mother's apartment. I also saw this political cartoon that I really liked. It showed a twentysomething guy and a middle-aged guy sitting at their kitchen table with a bunch of forms and papers scattered all over it. The younger guys says, "Thanks for helping me fill out all these job applications, Dad." And the dad replies, "These are MINE."
So that's why I'm afraid that I made a huge mistake in quitting my full-time job with benefits and moving back here. I had a job. I had benefits. Why did I give that up? Things would have eventually gotten better there, right? My goal now is that I have to somehow be making enough money to move out by March 2010. Because I WILL NOT be listed on the 2010 census as being twenty-four years old and still living with my parents. Heck, I will move into a motel for a few weeks if that's what it takes. If I can't be listed on the census as having a husband, then dang it, I am going to be listed as my own head of household!
But still here I sit, in my parents' house, living a meager existence under their household. I mean, heck, when they were my age not only had they been married for over a year, they already had a baby (my older brother Jeremy). And even he was married by the time he was my age.
I just realized that this ended up being way longer than I intended it to be. Partly because I sat down here at the computer with absolutely nothing to say. I apologize. I blame it on the wicked combination of pain killers and cold pills (and I'm talking about the good kind that they make meth out of that you have to get from the pharmacist). My throat is so sore and swollen that I can barely stand to swallow, but whatever virus I have has not affected my fingers apparently, so here I sit, typing away. But I'll stop now. Because most likely the few people who started reading this have long since lost interest and quit reading.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Just Another Mary Bennett
How many of you have read Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, or at least seen one of the many movie versions of it? You may be tempted to dismiss it because, after all, it was written roughly two hundred years ago; how could anyone truly identify with characters whose lives are so drastically different from our own modern ones? In my opinion that's what is so amazing about this story--I think that every girl in existence can strongly identify with one of the main characters of the story. And that is what I'm going to write about today.
In case you haven't read the book or seen one of the movie adaptations, the story revolves somewhat around the romantic adventures (or misadventures) of a young lady named Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth is the second out of five daughters, and we see glimpses into the lives and romatic escapades (or lack thereof) of each. In my observations of myself and other people, it seems to me that nearly every girl falls into one of these five categories.
The first is Jane Bennett. Jane is the eldest of the Bennett girls. She is pretty, kind, quiet, meek, wanting only to see the good in other people and be the peacemaker. She is every guy's dream--a hot wife who will love him unconditionally and completely let him rule the roost without any argument at all. She may weep privately if a guy dumps her, but she will still put forth a good face and somehow never lose hope for him. The modern Janes are good-looking girls (who don't know it or at least don't act like it) who are quiet and kind, always trying to be Christlike, who guys always seem to flock to, mainly for their beauty, but also because they will let the guy take complete control of the relationship.
The second daughter is Elizabeth. Lizzie is pretty, like her older sister Jane, but unlike Jane, Lizzie is opinionated, will not be cowed down by a man, and will freely speak her mind when she feels that it is necessary. Many guys think she is their dream girl because she'll make one hot wife, but when they realize that she actually has her own personality and thinks for herself they back off a bit, even if it is only temporarily. Modern Lizzies are good-looking girls (who, like Janes, don't know they're good-looking or at else don't act like it), but they are not necessarily quiet, have their own thoughts and ideas that you had better pay attention to, and while they would like to see the good in someone, if they have a problem with someone or there is an issue that needs to be addressed, they will not remain quiet about it. Guys flock to these girls as well, mainly for their beauty, until they realize that the girl has a strong personality and will not let them take complete control of the relationship. They may back off for awhile, but like I said, it's usually only temporary--they will soon realize that they are inexplicably turned on by a fiery personality, and so they come running back.
The third (and middle) daughter is Mary. Unlike her other four sisters, Mary is plain. I mean, she's not grotesque or anything, but she's not pretty. And since beauty (or "hotness") is the only thing guys really care about, she is often left out in the cold. She realizes that she will never attract a guy simply with her good looks, so she focuses her time on other pursuits--mainly reading books, studying music (particularly the piano), and doing church service. Guys do not flock to her, even if, like in the case of a certain Mr. Collins, she is absolutely perfect for them. Mr. Collins is mostly interested in church work and reading books, and is looking for a wife to run his household, and his personality meshes perfectly with Mary's, in my opinion. But she is plain, so he does not even consider her, but instead focuses on Jane and then finally proposing to Elizabeth. So Mary recedes into herself, playing her piano to try to impress people or reading her books for her own personal enjoyment. Modern Marys are not "hot," or even "decent looking." They do not fit the world's version of what a woman should look like (through no fault of their own). They try to develop other talents and interests in their lives, such as (but not necessarily) reading, music, church service, etc. But in the end it is not enough and they are alone, and it often leaves them somewhat bitter.
The fourth daugher is Kitty (short for Catherine). Kitty is good looking, and she is somehow completely dominated by her younger sister, Lydia. Kitty does everything Lydia does. She is definitely a follower, not a leader. She spends her time prettying herself up and chasing after boys. Modern Kittys are good-looking, and unlike Janes and Elizabeths, they know it, and they act like it. They are often overly vain and silly. They try as hard as they can to follow the current trends and do what other people tell them to in order to be popular. They are not necessarily troublemakers themselves, but often get into trouble because of the people they associate with.
The youngest daughter is the aforementioned Lydia. Lydia is very pretty and also extremely vain and silly. She spends all of her waking moments chasing after boys with Kitty in tow (much to the chagrin of the older girls). She will do anything to get a man, and she nearly ruins herself and her family in the process. Modern Lydias are good-looking, like Kitty, and they definitely put on airs about it. They are also overly vain and silly. Their lives revolve completely around makeup, clothes, and boys. Many of them also enjoy having a little flunky or two like Kitty who will follow them around and emulate them, and who will try to cover for them when they get into trouble. Which they will inevitably do. They are often troublemakers, and will do ANYTHING to get a man and keep him trapped. Even after they've pretty much ruined their lives, they don't even realize it because once they have caught a man, their lives then revolve completely around makeup, clothes, and showing off their boys.
So let's skip to the very end of the book. Lydia has gotten herself into trouble by running off with Mr. Wickham, a man of very questionable character who has taken advantage of at least one girl in the past. He gets her to come with him by telling her he will marry her (although he doesn't really intend to), which means that not only will Lydia be ruined for sleeping with a man out of wedlock, her entire family will be ruined. But luckily Mr. Darcy intercedes, out of his secret love for Elizabeth, and makes sure that Wickham does in fact marry Lydia.
Jane and Elizabeth endure a lot of continual excitement followed by many letdowns because of their stupid but lovable men of interest. It seems for awhile like they will not end up with the men of their dreams after all, but finally they attain happiness, as Jane and Elizabeth marry Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, respectively, in a lavish double wedding.
Kitty has somewhat settled down by the end of the book since she is no longer under the direct influence of Lydia. Yet she knows that her good looks will take her far, and at the end she moves away to live a life of excitement and fun (all within the bounds of what is proper, of course), with her relatives in the city.
Which leaves poor Mary the only daughter left at home. She is an adult woman who still lives with her parents because she has nothing else to do. She spends her time reading books, playing the piano, and giving service in the church, hoping in her heart that somewhere there will be a guy who will appreciate these things and eventually learn to appreciate and love her, but in the end, being plain as she is, she is left with the knowledge that what guys go for she hasn't got, and what she has got, guys don't go for. Not even her own parents really appreciate her but rather see her as a burden and, deep in their hearts (although they would deny it adamently) as an embarrassment.
Which is the predicament I find myself in. I am a modern Mary Bennett. I feel like I do have talents and interests, which I try to develop, but in the end, I am plain, and thus undesirable. So I am stuck here, living alone with my parents and family. And I don't see it changing anytime soon.
So my call to the rest of you is to figure out who you are. Are you a Jane, an Elizabeth, a Mary, a Kitty, or a Lydia? In the end, I am just another Mary Bennett.
In case you haven't read the book or seen one of the movie adaptations, the story revolves somewhat around the romantic adventures (or misadventures) of a young lady named Elizabeth Bennett. Elizabeth is the second out of five daughters, and we see glimpses into the lives and romatic escapades (or lack thereof) of each. In my observations of myself and other people, it seems to me that nearly every girl falls into one of these five categories.
The first is Jane Bennett. Jane is the eldest of the Bennett girls. She is pretty, kind, quiet, meek, wanting only to see the good in other people and be the peacemaker. She is every guy's dream--a hot wife who will love him unconditionally and completely let him rule the roost without any argument at all. She may weep privately if a guy dumps her, but she will still put forth a good face and somehow never lose hope for him. The modern Janes are good-looking girls (who don't know it or at least don't act like it) who are quiet and kind, always trying to be Christlike, who guys always seem to flock to, mainly for their beauty, but also because they will let the guy take complete control of the relationship.
The second daughter is Elizabeth. Lizzie is pretty, like her older sister Jane, but unlike Jane, Lizzie is opinionated, will not be cowed down by a man, and will freely speak her mind when she feels that it is necessary. Many guys think she is their dream girl because she'll make one hot wife, but when they realize that she actually has her own personality and thinks for herself they back off a bit, even if it is only temporarily. Modern Lizzies are good-looking girls (who, like Janes, don't know they're good-looking or at else don't act like it), but they are not necessarily quiet, have their own thoughts and ideas that you had better pay attention to, and while they would like to see the good in someone, if they have a problem with someone or there is an issue that needs to be addressed, they will not remain quiet about it. Guys flock to these girls as well, mainly for their beauty, until they realize that the girl has a strong personality and will not let them take complete control of the relationship. They may back off for awhile, but like I said, it's usually only temporary--they will soon realize that they are inexplicably turned on by a fiery personality, and so they come running back.
The third (and middle) daughter is Mary. Unlike her other four sisters, Mary is plain. I mean, she's not grotesque or anything, but she's not pretty. And since beauty (or "hotness") is the only thing guys really care about, she is often left out in the cold. She realizes that she will never attract a guy simply with her good looks, so she focuses her time on other pursuits--mainly reading books, studying music (particularly the piano), and doing church service. Guys do not flock to her, even if, like in the case of a certain Mr. Collins, she is absolutely perfect for them. Mr. Collins is mostly interested in church work and reading books, and is looking for a wife to run his household, and his personality meshes perfectly with Mary's, in my opinion. But she is plain, so he does not even consider her, but instead focuses on Jane and then finally proposing to Elizabeth. So Mary recedes into herself, playing her piano to try to impress people or reading her books for her own personal enjoyment. Modern Marys are not "hot," or even "decent looking." They do not fit the world's version of what a woman should look like (through no fault of their own). They try to develop other talents and interests in their lives, such as (but not necessarily) reading, music, church service, etc. But in the end it is not enough and they are alone, and it often leaves them somewhat bitter.
The fourth daugher is Kitty (short for Catherine). Kitty is good looking, and she is somehow completely dominated by her younger sister, Lydia. Kitty does everything Lydia does. She is definitely a follower, not a leader. She spends her time prettying herself up and chasing after boys. Modern Kittys are good-looking, and unlike Janes and Elizabeths, they know it, and they act like it. They are often overly vain and silly. They try as hard as they can to follow the current trends and do what other people tell them to in order to be popular. They are not necessarily troublemakers themselves, but often get into trouble because of the people they associate with.
The youngest daughter is the aforementioned Lydia. Lydia is very pretty and also extremely vain and silly. She spends all of her waking moments chasing after boys with Kitty in tow (much to the chagrin of the older girls). She will do anything to get a man, and she nearly ruins herself and her family in the process. Modern Lydias are good-looking, like Kitty, and they definitely put on airs about it. They are also overly vain and silly. Their lives revolve completely around makeup, clothes, and boys. Many of them also enjoy having a little flunky or two like Kitty who will follow them around and emulate them, and who will try to cover for them when they get into trouble. Which they will inevitably do. They are often troublemakers, and will do ANYTHING to get a man and keep him trapped. Even after they've pretty much ruined their lives, they don't even realize it because once they have caught a man, their lives then revolve completely around makeup, clothes, and showing off their boys.
So let's skip to the very end of the book. Lydia has gotten herself into trouble by running off with Mr. Wickham, a man of very questionable character who has taken advantage of at least one girl in the past. He gets her to come with him by telling her he will marry her (although he doesn't really intend to), which means that not only will Lydia be ruined for sleeping with a man out of wedlock, her entire family will be ruined. But luckily Mr. Darcy intercedes, out of his secret love for Elizabeth, and makes sure that Wickham does in fact marry Lydia.
Jane and Elizabeth endure a lot of continual excitement followed by many letdowns because of their stupid but lovable men of interest. It seems for awhile like they will not end up with the men of their dreams after all, but finally they attain happiness, as Jane and Elizabeth marry Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy, respectively, in a lavish double wedding.
Kitty has somewhat settled down by the end of the book since she is no longer under the direct influence of Lydia. Yet she knows that her good looks will take her far, and at the end she moves away to live a life of excitement and fun (all within the bounds of what is proper, of course), with her relatives in the city.
Which leaves poor Mary the only daughter left at home. She is an adult woman who still lives with her parents because she has nothing else to do. She spends her time reading books, playing the piano, and giving service in the church, hoping in her heart that somewhere there will be a guy who will appreciate these things and eventually learn to appreciate and love her, but in the end, being plain as she is, she is left with the knowledge that what guys go for she hasn't got, and what she has got, guys don't go for. Not even her own parents really appreciate her but rather see her as a burden and, deep in their hearts (although they would deny it adamently) as an embarrassment.
Which is the predicament I find myself in. I am a modern Mary Bennett. I feel like I do have talents and interests, which I try to develop, but in the end, I am plain, and thus undesirable. So I am stuck here, living alone with my parents and family. And I don't see it changing anytime soon.
So my call to the rest of you is to figure out who you are. Are you a Jane, an Elizabeth, a Mary, a Kitty, or a Lydia? In the end, I am just another Mary Bennett.
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