Chapter 41: LIke a worm from the bird

I for the most part get along with Motor Mouth. I really do, I’m not lying. Okay, so maybe that is mostly due to the fact that I have been out of town for a majority of this month. And lately when I’m in town I’ve been over at my parent’s house a lot. But last night I got home from North Carolina and I was in my room, I don’t really remember what I was doing, but I know I had a movie going and I was just ready to fall asleep. In North Carolina 9:30 seemed like 1:30 so I was tired by that time the whole weekend, so being home I was still in that. I was already up half an hour after my weekend bed time and I hear a knock at my door. There’s no guessing who it is, no, really, no guessing, I know who it is. Diva would have called me on the phone and I believe that Jellybean’s boyfriend was here so it certainly wasn’t her. Without realizing it I rolled my eyes and sighed. How long would it be this time? With Motor Mouth it always starts with a simple, “Just wanted to make sure you’re alive” (because I mentioned once that I believed I could die in my room and no one would realize it for days because I always hang out in my room, big mistake, now she’s just got a reason to come to my door at least once a day) or “just wanted to say welcome home.” But she’s got other intentions. Last night she pulled the ‘welcome home’ card and I said ‘thank you’ or whatever you’re supposed to do and then I don’t even remember how she got going but I got to hear about how sick she’s been and how crazy her life is, and how she’s taking too many classes at school. The next two weeks are going to be hell and then she’s got three projects due the week after that (see, I do listen to people, even when I don’t want to). And she’s trying to be nice to Bull (okay, intro of a new character). Pardon me while I introduce you. Bull, why do I call her that? First off, because I keep thinking of someone else’s last name every time I say her first name, that person’s last name happens to be “Bull”. Beyond that, she happens to be full of it, and what do you say when you are too lazy or too polite to complete the phrase “Bull Shit”? That’s right, “Bull”. You still get the idea out without saying the complete phrase and you can even say it to your mom because it’s edited, you know, should your mom happen to be full of it some time. So now you kind of know how I feel about her. And isn’t it odd that Bull and Motor Mouth disdain each other? Two mortal enemies locked in combat with me constantly in the middle. Oh did I mention that Bull and I have to work closely in church? And then there’s the obvious roommate-ship between me and Motor. All of this compiling to wrap me up in drama most of the time that I am at church or at home.
However, Motor Mouth seems to be making an effort to get along with Bull. She tried the “Kill her with kindness” approach and that backfired, I don’t know if she knows it backfired. I do however, because remember, I’m in the middle. Then she decided to just be nice, which I think is helping, I know that it’s helping me to get along with her better because I get to see the ever worsening side to Bull, who I am slowly coming to believe is about 87.4% evil. The fact that she can’t just accept the try on Motor Mouth’s part but rather assume that Motor Mouth is trying to go for world domination, which I personally never even noticed, I don’t mind other people being in charge. The part that kills me is that from the looks of it Bull is also rallying to put herself in the world domination role. All while trying to seduce a man that she cannot have…probably because he’s gay but knows it’s wrong so won’t admit it…oh that was mean, so mean that I would almost take it back if in the deep recesses of my mind it wasn’t the only solution that leaves the world making sense. She probably, no, I take that back, it’s not probably, it is definitely hates Motor Mouth stemming from a prior affiliation with Coz, oh that’s right, the guy I’ve been talking about is Coz. Coz seems to be the kind of guy that once he can have you he doesn’t want you and there’s no way to figure out if he ever wanted you because of this. He’s not shy about going after girls that he doesn’t think he can get, I’ve seen plenty of that. But back to Bull, as I said this hatred stems from Coz, Coz is not all encompassing. I suppose it just happens when two control freaks ram heads. Just seems like a lot of drama over a boy who doesn’t seem interested in attainable women.
But back to the story at hand, whew, we really get off track when we introduce new characters. So, Motor is trying to help out Bull in probably the most extravagant event in the history of the church. I “unfortunately” will be unable to attend due to work obligations, but I hope for budget’s sake that the event turns out well, otherwise what a waste of money. So that was in Motor’s spiel as well. At this point I am leaning against the door frame with one arm inside my room as though if I let go I wouldn’t be able to return. The thing that bugs me a little about Motor Mouth is that when you think the conversation is over and she’s about to say ‘goodnight’ or something, she tries to start a new subject. She’s like a fire you can’t put out. You douse it in water and yet it keeps coming back. Better yet, she’s like those birthday candles that relight. Those are so annoying.

Chapter 40: New Beginnings

So, it’s official, I don’t believe that my dog is ever coming back. Today while cleaning up my room I finished packing up his stuff and I’m not sure what to do with it all. Right now it’s sitting in the laundry room next to my other failed attempt to have a pet, the remains of what my mouse used to live in. I’m hesitant to throw the dog food away, so right now it’s just sitting there. But it’s out of my bedroom and that’s half the battle. I don’t know why I’m saving the stuff; in all honesty I don’t believe that I will ever get another dog. I wasn’t really a dog person to begin with, maybe I’m just not supposed to have pets, period, all I do is lose them and kill them.
So my sister is finally getting married and I know that I need to ask off for the wedding and the bridal shower (mostly because it is up to me being the only sister within a 4 hour drive to throw the bridal shower) but I keep thinking that I won’t be at that job by that point, and I’ll have my Saturdays off with my new job. But I haven’t applied for any jobs, so why do I keep thinking it’ll be that way? I need to e-mail the human resources department for the city and the county and see what I need to do to start teaching but in all honesty I’m scared to death that they’ll let me start right away and I don’t feel qualified to be teaching just yet, but it is something that I want to do, and I know that I don’t want to keep the job that I currently have, even though I love it most days. I love the training, I hate coming up with things to do and I still hate the random schedule (real surprise there). I don’t think I should feel bad about looking for a new job, how long did they really expect me to keep this one? It’s certainly not a career for me, just a job. Teaching, if I do succeed and like it, will be a career. I also shouldn’t feel bad because one of the other trainer’s was telling me how he’s been looking for a new job (not TDH, I think TDH will always be a trainer). It’s just who he is.
But I need to just swallow my fear and apply to the job. I think I would be happier. And you know what? I know it sounds bad but I would have my summers off. What would I like to do with those summers? I would like to go live in some small Podunk town and learn all about the people and write a book about my experiences. I really want to write a book and it occurred to me this weekend (and actually always has been at the back of my mind) that I have no talent for fiction. So maybe non-fiction is my best bet. Even if I can’t actually write a book how would it be to just experience the other side for once? I grew up middle class suburbia, even when we were poor I didn’t know about it, and since then I can pretty much have whatever I want/need. I’m not trying hard to make ends meet, and I lack the ability to be purely interesting. My dad never had a drug addiction, my mom didn’t stay Catholic so there goes any hope of an interesting childhood, and I’ve never really been the rebellious type. I truly believe the principles that keep me grounded so there’s no way I’m going to experiment with anything, I don’t even watch ‘R’ rated movies, because they are “R” for a reason, language or soft porn (let’s face it, that’s what it is now). I just want to see how it really is because you can’t always trust the movies to tell you what life’s like. I think Disney taught us all about distrust when it comes to movies telling you how real life should operate. I just want to be interesting or at least be able to say that I tried.

Chapter 39: Secret Talents

I’m wondering two things right now, the first being why am I about the cry? The second, why is it the beginning of summer and I am freezing? Being a woman can be difficult, we don’t know why the hell we do some of the things that we do.
TDH told me tonight how he used to write for his school newspaper and he gave me the web address to read some of the articles that he wrote. I was reading the first one and it was absolutely fantastic. It was funny and it brought up issues that I have brought up before and I seriously loved it. A very good start to reading some of his “work”, however, it left me misty eyed. I don’t understand it wasn’t sad. A woman’s sadness can hit at any time under any disguise. She could be laughing and suddenly the weight that she has been secretly carrying is jarred loose and come tumbling down over her face. I suppose this kind of thing doesn’t happen to those who openly wear their sadness (like the self pitomizers do), but for people who’d prefer to not let on that they are sad it could attack at any moment. Yeah, I still miss my dog; when I drove up to the driveway the other night after having been out of town for almost a week, sadness swept over me. My dog is gone. I got over it and came into the house. Maybe everything that builds up can secretly come out when you think nothing’s wrong, because you’ve convinced yourself that nothing is wrong. But slapping on a smile when you don’t want to is kind of like sticking a band aid over a gash, you can try to convince yourself that it will do the trick, but the band aid and the gash prove inadequate companions. Wow, digression at it’s finest.
Then I went to go get something to eat because I haven’t eaten all that much today. I sit back down to read some more articles and I’m seriously shivering. I have a hoodie on in June…in Virginia and my teeth are still chattering. But seriously, back to the articles from TDH, I think I may have just slipped into love with him. I say slip because “slip” seems less painful than falling, and is a whole lot easier to recover from. Today I had every intention of not looking at him the way I usually look at him, of not seeing him as a potential because he’s not a potential. I tried my darnedest to just see him as a coworker. Somehow when you make up your mind that something in particular is not something you want it gets easier to show that you want it. Does that make sense? It’s crystal clear to me. When I want something, in particular a boy, it becomes very difficult for me to express myself around that individual. It’s hard for me to be myself. I didn’t really have a hard time being myself around TDH, I think I brought my A-game in the wit department; and I can eat peanut butter crackers in front of him (that’s saying a lot, how many people would you chance eating peanut butter crackers in front of?) My difficulty came in showing I was interested. Sure, I stared too long, I smiled too often, but I always kept a certain physical distance. I’ve never been a good contact flirter.
To speak in all honesty I think tonight is the most physical contact I’ve had with TDH. Even though at times he seemed a bit much with the cocky persona, I simply attributed that to the fact that he lost a very important notebook and this is what he has to do to keep from crying. At one point I told him that he didn’t take compliments well, he let them all go straight to his head. At the end of the night we were trying to figure out someone’s voicemail. She’s a part-time trainer who usually works all by herself in Williamsburg but she’s in town helping us out because we are down a trainer due to a new store opening. I was doing pretty good getting everyone else’s voicemail numbers, the other two trainers I got on the first attempt. But this one was proving difficult. TDH thought he would help by calling out all possible four digit numbers that could lead us to the right inbox. He said 3-0-4-8 and I obediently dialed only to hear my own voice on the other end. I looked up at him and backhanded him in the stomach telling him it was mine. I’ve never play hit him before and tonight I did at least twice. I don’t think I’ve non-play hit him either, but you know what I mean, the elementary school level of flirting. Hit the one you like.
Then we were leaving a note for our manager on her desk and she has a Dilbert day planner (yes please). I love Dilbert so I started to read the cartoon it was open to. I was cracking up before I could even finish, it was probably one of the best ones. This unknown character was talking to someone during an interview for a managerial position and he just kept talking about how he loves to talk and how his ideal job would be one where people where forced to listen to him and just smile and nod. TDH wanted to know what was so funny and I told him I was reading the cartoons and then I said, “This one makes me think of you” so I hand the book over and point to the square where the guy said the thing about smiling and nodding and TDH read it and then laughed and said, “Yes, that’s me”. I know.
Later he had me edit his e-mail and there was a point when I was trying to figure out what tense the word he had should be used and my finger was up, kind of pointing to the words in the sentence as though it were suspended in air as I thought and he said, “oh no,” and started to laugh, I asked him what that was about and he said, “you’re dialing your imaginary phone again, something’s wrong.”
Anyway, when we left the building for the night I walked him to his car as usual, just kidding, but he was parked closest so I did walk him to his car, but this is the first time. We don’t usually talk personally on the way to the cars. We talk about a crazy trainee or what the rest of our week looks like or something like that. Instead I found myself listening to a crazy story about bad bacon, his dog, and a swarm of army flies. It was pretty entertaining, of course after having read his articles I think he was preparing me for his desire to over exaggerate things…sounds like someone I know. Then he starts talking about his notebook and how it had to be in his car because why would he take that into his house and not his other notebook. He starts digging in and I was going to just walk to my car but I asked if he wanted help and he accepted the offer. So I set my stuff on the trunk of his car and climbed into his car looking for his notebook. I didn’t think it would be hard until I entered the landfill, err, I mean, front seat of his car. My first response was that I thought my car was dirty. I was beginning to wonder if he actually lived in a house or if he lived in his car. I also asked him if he had a plastic bag and suddenly my main concern seemed to become more environmental rather than helping him find his notebook. Maybe he wouldn’t lose so many things if he didn’t hang on to every fast food wrapper he’s ever received. I had no idea how I could seriously help him find his notebook in that car since I feared really digging in. I finally just gave up and gathered my stuff and told him I would see him later. As I walked away I told him good luck and warned him not to get hepatitis while in pursuit of the missing notebook.

Chapter 38: Random Thoughts While Sitting in the Airport

I find myself actually missing TDH, which surprises me a little because I thought I was coming to the point where I convinced myself it would never work out, mostly due to the fact that it never would work out. So to find myself missing him is a new thing for me, or more like a revisited thing. Something I had forgotten that I felt once upon a time but somehow the distance seemed to literally pull on a heart string and open a chamber filled with longing. A surprise because it is not a feeling I expected to possess. Not just for him or so much for him, though I do find myself really missing him, but for a lot of things in my life. It’s a weird feeling, like a deep rooted regret of things not said or actions not taken. It literally makes my heart feel heavy. It feels like I have left home for an undetermined amount of time, though I know my return date. At the same time, I don’t know if I want to return home.
I’ve also decided that I’m not the only person who over analyzes life. In those moments when a group of people sit in silence and everyone seems to be looking at some invisible, stationary, hypnotic object everyone is thinking about things in their life. Not that I can ever prove this because even if I decide to be honest in answering the “what are you thinking about?” question, it doesn’t guarantee that other people will make such a commitment and when I ask the question I will only get the answer of “nothing”. The nothing answer I have concluded comes from three roads. The first is the embarrassment road, when a person is left to think or day dream about whatever they want to and then are pulled out by someone trying to inch their way into their minds they are reluctant to admit what they were thinking about so they go for the stock answer, “nothing”; the second road is that when asked they have no idea how to word it, there are so many different thoughts swimming around in their head and they are quickly visiting each one when interrupted and they have no clue how to answer so they say, “nothing”; and finally the third road is the “none of your damn business” road, at which point it’s best not to pursue delving into that individual’s mind.
I just think that for the most part people think about life in general and how they’ve come to where they are at, and as an outsider I have to wonder, “Are they happy?” Has life left them content? I wonder is what they have what they expected from life? Do they feel short-changed or is everything as it should be? You look at people’s faces when they are “zoning out” and it’s not like the norm is having a smirk steal across their face, but they are straight faced and you just have to wonder what is making them so somber?
It makes me think, what is happiness? Can it even be defined? Can it be attained? Is happiness simply something to be hoped for, dreamed about? Have we focused so much on what happiness is to us that when we do not obtain it we are miserable? Maybe the lack of happiness is just within ourselves. If we are unhappy we need to change what we think happiness is. That’s something that I know I will need to work on.
Another thing, why do you whisper when there is no chance people will hear you? There was a couple sitting in the middle of the terminal, no one was around them for three to four rows at least and they were very close together while whispering something. Is the whisper for the intimacy? Because you could have just talked in a low voice, no one would have heard you over the roar of planes taking off, the crying of babies from unseen places, and the regular hustle and bustle of the airport that seems to echo off of the walls.
Oh and another random thought from sitting in the airport, when I die I want my voice box and my lungs removed so I don’t make any noise if for some reason I am stored on the bottom of a plane and my lungs compress and air passes over my windpipes, sounding like a depressed and lonely corpse, just in case I kick the bucket anytime soon, or especially while I am away from home. Didn’t happen to see a coffin on the flight home, however, I was reading a book where one of the main characters had to sit in the cargo of the plane and thought she was going crazy because she could hear someone moaning. Then she came to realize it was the coffin and she freaked out thinking the person wasn’t dead and the pilot told her that with dead bodies in air the lungs compress or depress causing air to move over the vocal chords. Could I please just be silent once I’m dead?

Chapter 37: Back to Screwed Up

I’m trying to resist the urge to move. Nothing is going on with the roommates or anything. Nothing’s wrong in that respect. But I just feel like it’s time to move on. I’m hoping that this feeling is just a need to get away for a while and I’m leaving next week to go on vacation for a week and hopefully that’s the only break I need.
I saw a moving van today; people outside packing up the last things of the house and you could look into the windows and see that there is nothing left in there. I felt like I could smell it, you know that smell of an empty house? Well, maybe it doesn’t smell like an empty house, but the smell I had in mind was the apartments we lived in and you do a complete scrub down before you move out. It was a mix of fresh spring air and cleaning supplies. Something about it was nice. In an empty house your footsteps echo as you walk around to collect the last items to put in the van, walk through one more time to soak in old memories and to give a last goodbye to a place that more than likely left you with many good memories. And to know that you will never return to that house, at least, not to live in, and not as the same person as you were. Maybe people leave because they don’t feel like they are the same people that they used to be; maybe they leave because they have changed and now they feel they need to change where they live.
I don’t know, all I could think was that it must be so nice to be moving. I know that I hate the whole not being settled part, but you’ve got to admit that there is a certain appeal to starting over. Coming into a bare house and making it yours and it will actually be clean for at least the first day after you’re completely settled in. I guess I’ve gotten into the habit of moving from so many years in school, having to move all the time and personally, even though I hated it part of me really liked it. I love “setting up”. Sometimes I rearrange my room to simulate the feeling of moving, but it’s not always the same and honestly, I don’t think it’s going to cover the bill this time.
At first I thought the reason I wanted to get away was because I lost my dog, I just wanted to move and forget I ever even had a dog. That may sound harsh, but maybe I deal with things differently than other people. I just, didn’t want to be here. I still don’t want to be here, I don’t really like hanging out in the house, mostly because no one is ever here. I used to love not having anyone home, now I can’t stand it. I don’t like this house like I used to. I’ve been thinking that I don’t have to leave Richmond, maybe find an apartment somewhere…I’d just have to find a roommate because I can’t afford to live in Richmond by myself. Unless I go ahead and change jobs too, there are plenty of jobs that have requirements that I fit that pay better then this…at least I think there are. The only problem would be in getting one of them.
I just don’t think I’m happy, and I know happiness is a long shot in everyday life and “content“ is probably what I should be settling for, but I don’t even feel that most times. Like I said before, hopefully this can be fixed with a vacation, if not, I’ll let you know.

Chapter 36: Have You Seen Me?

I’ve lost my dog…
I was really tired yesterday morning so I put him in the backyard and went back to bed, I’ve done this before, he’s always been fine. There’s no way for him to get out of our yard. Yet, he has. He’s no where to be found and I’m panicking. I have to go to work, I don’t feel like this is a justifiable reason to call in. I can only hope that for some crazy reason one of my neighbors have my dog in their home. My roommates have done a great deal to help out and even gone and asked neighbors, none have seen him, but hopefully he’s safely inside there. If not…then I don’t know.
I’m an idiot. What if he’s been kidnapped? He’s a boxer, people kidnap boxers. What if there is a crazy animal killer out there stealing puppies for their fur or something like that? What if I’m overreacting, worse, what if I’m not?
I was going to get him a tag on Saturday, but I didn’t have a tag for him yet. It’s like when you plan to make spare keys for your car and the day before you’re going to go do it you lose your keys, or lock them in the car.
I’m a bad owner. I surprise myself every time I start crying. I suppose you don’t realize how attached you are until you can no longer be attached. Now I am beginning to think that when I cried when my mouse died it was actually because I loved him. I just feel so stupid, why didn’t I sit outside with him and bring him back in with me? Why did I think it was okay to just let him loose in the backyard? He’s still too little, hasn’t walked his way around the neighborhood…at all, so how can he find his way home?
I remember when my friend from high school was very upset because she had to get rid of her dog and all I could think was that it was a blessing in disguise. I couldn’t understand why it was so hard for her to get rid of the dog or why she was so attached to him. I was such a jerk.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes before but this is probably one of the biggest ones I’ve ever made, carrying regret equal to it in weight. Part of me feels like I’ve lost him forever and there’s a very small fraction that holds hope that he’s going to just show up at the front door, chaperoned or not, just scratch at the front door, I’ll open and he’ll come in and everything will be back to the way that it used to be, only I won’t be so stupid and careless this time. But I’ve always been a person who has squashed out my own hope because things hurt worse if hope accompanied them and they turned out to be fruitless. I’m trying to have hope though, belief that I will get to see my dog again, because part of me can’t believe that God would let me stay like this, doesn’t want to believe that he will. There’s another part of me that feels like if I don’t prove to God that I believe he can return my dog then he won’t, and I’m not that strong. I’ve always been a doubter I want to believe that no matter what my dog will come back in a week’s time, I want to prove that I knew God would do it. I don’t know how to let go of doubt and just believe.
Only God really knew how lonely I’ve been and I don’t want to think that He could let me go back to that. It’s stupid, I know, crying about a dog, but I can’t help it. I prayed a lot last night, begging, pleading, and waiting for some kind of answer or peace. But I don’t know if I can recognize peace or an answer. I finally e-mailed my sister this morning to let her know, I think in the back of my mind I was hoping that I could put that off as long as possible and that maybe the dog would return and I would never have to mention it to her. But I told the Lord last night that I figured he wanted me to tell her, and he probably wouldn’t return the dog until I did. I promised that even if the dog returned I would tell her, so I had to write a very difficult e-mail to her. I wish I could have tagged on at the end that the dog was safely home, just given a bath and sleeping next to me while I wrote…but I wasn’t able to do that.
In the meantime, I haven’t told many other people, my roommates may have, but I don’t like to tell people when things are wrong. I need them to not know that anything is wrong because then they can be my escape, they can help me forget, and they aren’t even trying to do that. They are just acting normal, and they help me feel normal. This is part of why I didn’t want to tell my sister about all of this; Because now I don’t know when I’m allowed to just be normal around her. Not that I just want to forget all of this, but sometimes I do. I like to be an emotional wreck in the privacy of my own room, and then to everyone else seem like nothing is wrong; but when they know something is wrong then I feel like I have to bring that private sadness to the public view, and I’m not a performer nor do I want to feel like one.
Is it odd that I feel like life is falling apart? I’m sure it doesn’t all have to do with the dog but I feel like there’s something more than just the dog missing. Maybe the dog is just the tip of the iceberg and I’m going to find myself slowing sinking in the middle of nowhere not knowing what to do.
I want to be alone, and yet I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t know how anyone could understand that right now but it’s how I feel. I came home last night to an empty house and I stayed in my car just crying. I didn’t want to talk to anyone, I didn’t want to see anyone, but I didn’t want to be in the house alone.

Chapter 35: Spandex?

I’m not really in the mood to write today. But I feel a strange obligation to do so. Probably because Diva reads this now and she thinks that it’s time for more. More of what? What is it that is so fantastic about all of this? I think it’s more entertaining to the people who are living with the same characters that I am writing about. She is probably more entertained by Brutally Honest 2, as Sweet Pea is probably more entertained by the first one.
The problem with this entire thing is that the entire time I have actually been trying to be a better person and I think that when you reread everything that has been written you can tell that I have made some improvements. The downside to improving and becoming a better person is that you are likely to remove a lot of drama from your life, my life minus drama means that I just can’t be as interesting. I thrive on over-exaggerating the drama that lays within the threads of my discorded life.
You know, I think I need a new nemesis. Without a nemesis there is no hero. It’s not enough for a superhero to have cool powers without anyone to use them against. If all the superhero’s friends are in eminent danger of getting a paper cut at work, a fender bender on a crowded street, or their heart broken then there really isn’t much holding the interest of the readers. Would Spiderman have been as cool without Doc. Oct or Venom? Would Superman been as cool without Lex Luther and Kryptonite? No, they’d just be reduced to grown men wearing red and blue spandex. Sure they could fly or “web”, but why would anyone care beyond the initial jealousy that one feels every time they realize that they are genetically declined the ability to be uniquely endowed.
Without a nemesis what am I beyond a rambling, incoherent, individual with a computer and plenty of time to spare, not to mention some killer typing skills which helps me to write more in less time, even when I didn’t think I had much to say in the first place. Why is it that when I feel forced I can just write and write and write but have no idea what I am saying. Superheroes? I mean seriously, where did that come from? It’s true, but where did it come from?

Chapter 34: Different Dimensions

So...I went to my first concert tonight, it happened to be Weird Al at Innsbrook after hours, but it was a concert nonetheless. I'm not quite sure how to describe the experience. I'm not sure what is typical for a concert and what was probably special for this kind of concert.
I guess the only way to really begin is to just jump right in. If you've ever had the feeling of changing dimensions suddenly then you'll kind of know what it was like for me, tonight. However, the likelihood that you know what I am talking about when I say changing dimensions is slim to none unless you ever watched the show Sliders. It all started in line. I guess I actually knew before it all started a little of how it would all be, but I somehow suppressed it and still found myself surprised once I was in the mist of it all. To begin there seems to be a theme amongst the fan of Weird Al and the only way I can even really begin to describe it is, White and Nerdy. For anyone familiar with Weird Al they realize right there I have used a song title. And in that respect I've got to give Weird Al a hand, he knows his demographics. It only leaves the question, which came first, Weird Al or the White and Nerdy's? Did he create them or did they create him? Not too sure. Of course there were the exceptions, not all fans there tonight where White and Nerdy, there was the group of closely knit goth kids who I swore would start a mosh pit but never did, some Asians and a black guy. That's right..."a" black guy. Just one. There were a whole lot of kids though, which means he has parental approval...or that his audience consisted mostly of white trash folk, the kind who would take their children to the bar in their PJs so they can still have a beer or two with some friends. Did I mention the girl wearing the cat ears? Yeah, jury's still out on that one. Don't worry, I took lots of pictures, however, it's all a matter of if I can get them on the blog...we'll see. I got a picture of a kid, whom I'll call Christopher Robins, as he scooped up water from a giant puddle with his mom's umbrella...she seemed pretty pissed about it. We had a security guard frisk our camping chairs, I don't even want to get into what his emotional problems may be. Randomly a collection of children grew to the side of the line. I'm not sure how many of these children actually knew each other, but it's odd how children do that. Adults don't do that, they don't say, "Hey, looks like someone my age let's see if they want to play." But children will gather in any groups, wherever and whenever they can...I wonder what makes them do that? Do you think it's because they are all shorter?
We (my roommate, Diva went too :) finally got our seats and sat down to enjoy the festivities. Long before the performance began a man with long brown hair and wearing a white shirt was getting escorted out by a police officer! Who was met by another police officer and together they took this man by one arm behind his back presumably out of the concert. The concert hadn't even started and things were already getting heated up! I could tell that there was going to be trouble with such a large group of disgruntled Weird Al fans who were told that the gates would open at 6 but didn't actually open until 7 and the show which was supposed to start at 7 hadn't yet started by 7:30.
In the meantime I drank in my surroundings. We had people sporting the "White and Nerdy" sweatshirts, a woman who was putting on lipstick, I could only assume in preparation for seeing Weird Al, because let's face it, we all want to look good for him in case we get the chance to kiss him. Then her boyfriend/husband came over and she helped him fix his handlebar mustache. Then there was a kid who couldn't have been more then 10 but I've been wrong before sporting his cell phone (look for upcoming blog entitled "The deterioration of the moral fibers of our society"). There was even a guy who wore a shirt openly admitting that he lived with zombies. Not quite sure what that means or how deep that is supposed to be. But maybe he feels that his roommates can't think for themselves and they are just the zombies of society, buying what they are told to buy, liking what they are told to like...I know, I know I'm giving the shirt too much credit.
We got to sit in front of a group of teenagers (I think they were teenagers) who almost peed their pants when the accordion was brought on to the stage. The people at the concert seemed to idolize Weird Al...which to me is just a foreign concept. Yes, I'll admit the guy has some talent, you ever hear how fast he can talk? But this is just creepy.
Once the music started it really got interesting. We had Hot Pants, sporting some hot pink shorts and some amazing hips who I could easily picture being one of those individuals who sways like crazy even if it's just a slow song. She would get those hips going without thinking about her surroundings and when she bumped into a chair she would turn around with a pissed off look on her face, but that didn't last long as she realized that she was the only one involved in the confrontation. She really got into though, several times I looked to her for the entertainment instead of the stage.
It really came full circle when he sang a song about Star Wars and I looked around at the group and realized, yes, this would probably be the same group. Trekies and Star Wars wanna-bes. It's okay to want to be a Jedi...when you're 6, but pretty much, anything beyond 12 years old should have probably moved on from that and made the connection that being a Jedi is just not a career option. It was just...another dimension, I really can't think of any other way to put it. As he sang his parodies and I watched an older couple in front of me sing along to a song that was a parody of a Rage Against the Machine song, I thought to myself that Weird Al is their connection to real music...without the burden of being too cool. Would these people ever listen to a Rage Against the Machine song? Probably not, even though it's the same tune and same tone, just different subject matter.
You want to know what else? There's something odd about older people dancing. It's like a really bad car accident, you've got to slow down and watch. I don't know if it is honestly because they can't dance or if it's just because we don't expect them to. Have they lost their rhythm? Has anyone ever seen an older person break into dance moves and think, "Wow, they've really got it!"? And I don't mean people you're used to seeing that way. It doesn't count if it's one of the Rolling Stones or someone whom you'd expect that kind of dancing from.
At one point in the concert I see the arrested man make is grand return. It wasn't so grand, he just walked past and seemed to go back to his original group...but did he sneak back in? He was hard core, so were the goth/emo/something kids, who at one point got so excited they were all holdings hands...at least that's how I remember it. Oh and the glow sticks! They threw up their arms on more then one occasion with the glow sticks and swayed them back and forth. But I got to hear "Amish Paradise", "White and Nerdy", "Eat It", and "Fat"...it would have been complete with "Oreo"...but oh well, we 80's children can't have it all you know!!
All in all this was better then the late night Denny trips to Idaho Falls, and that's a hard thing to top.

Chapter 33: Public Enemy

So Non-friend and I had our first fight. We’ve known each other for at least 7 years and we had our first fight today. I’m not good with fights; it stems from my bad communication skills. The only way I know how to fight can be pretty dirty and usually is very damaging to the relationship. I either say something I’ll regret, or they say something that they should/will regret because I’ll go to ignore mode. Either way I have a very hard time letting fights go. Non-friend seemed fine when I first saw him today and then not long after I was up in the break room with him and I was telling him how I locked myself out of my office. I went and finally got it unlocked and went back to sit with him. He was reading the paper so I picked up the Classifieds and looked at some of the cars. I don’t think I did anything out of the ordinary, and I can’t place where I pissed him off, but he was being incredibly rude today. He said that I was aggravating him (which to me is a pretty strong word, you only say that when you’re really upset with someone) and then he got up to throw something away and asked if I was going to cry. (Not in a, “Wow, I think I’m being an ass, did what I say come across rude, I’m sorry” way, but in a, “I’m being an ass today, and this is just the beginning” way.) I told him ‘no’ but then I felt like maybe the desired effect was to have me cry. I forget the sequence of events but I finally just ended up getting up out of my seat and telling him that I was leaving and I would see him later as I walked away.
What did I do to him? The worst part would be my original thoughts of what to say to him next time I see him. If he should try to apologize I feel like just shrugging it off and asking him, “Why bother?” since according to him we were never really friends to begin with. I mean, why try so hard to maintain something that doesn’t even exist? The other part of me feels like he needs to apologize, and if he doesn’t then I just ignore and avoid. It’s easy enough to do. And it’s probably what I will do since I have a pretty good feeling he won’t apologize. It just makes me angry because no matter if it was me or if it was something else bothering him he shouldn’t be handling it this way. If it’s something else he shouldn’t be taking it out on me like that, and since we aren’t friends I don’t have to take that crap. If it’s something I did to him then he needs to learn to just tell me.
I’m just trying really hard lately to have a good attitude about things, about my whole life right now. I’m doing pretty good most of the time but every once in a while someone comes along and just puts a big dent in it, and to be honest it’s mostly coming from this store. Sometimes I think maybe it’s time to look for a new job.
I think I made my manager nervous last night because I was saying how I’m taking a class this summer and also when she was talking about contracts for teachers and how some of them make you stay on for 4 years sometimes, I said that I didn’t like contracts because I don’t like to make long term commitment. I didn’t say it with the intent for her to read into it and worry about if I’m looking for another job or not, but in a way it’s a good thing that she knows it could be coming. I was hoping to do it when the kid who took my place as a part-timer got trained, but he came with an expiration date so that’s a no go. It’s coming though because to be honest, I’d rather be in an office during the summer, getting my 8 hours everyday, whether or not I have something productive to do. I don’t want to have to account for every single minute. I’d rather just be on the clock and have the clock say whether or not I worked eight hours. I also am kind of tired with the people that I have to be around, and the fight with Non-friend didn’t help to make me feel anymore comfortable at that store.
Sometimes I just wish that I were a teenager again. There were a lot less problems then; it just didn’t seem that way to me at the time. Life was definitely different back then, I can’t say if it was better or not, just different.
I think I need to go make a visit to my happy place.

Chapter 32: Well That's Not Going To Hold Up In Court

So I have this thing apparently with 17 year olds. We were hitting 50% as of December. There was one 17 year old in love with me and I was in love with a different 17 year old. I know I have problems. I don’t really want to bother with how this shouldn’t even be happening. I just want to get on with my story.
Now, at my new store there is this kid, I remember him from before I started working there. I had helped out training there one day and all I remembered about him was that he had the nicest eyes I had ever seen! So when I started working there it wasn’t hard to remember that I had seen him before. Of course, trying to rid myself of bad karma I didn’t really bother trying to get to know him, because when a guy has the prettiest eyes you’ve ever seen you’re bound to want to just look at them all the time. But he slowly got to know me. He would say something to me here or there when we ran into each other in the store. I think I got the stamp of approval one night we he said something about shooting himself because he was so bored and I told him to wait until he got home so we wouldn’t have to clean up the mess. Apparently my sick humor attracts some people. I may have made a mistake a couple of weeks ago. I gave him a gold star (they are pins that we get for doing something good and he had brought a trainee upstairs for me so I wouldn’t have to). I gave him a little too much attention with that I suppose. Then he starts coming over to me and “bumping” into me. Let me just put a disclaimer that I’m not good at flirting and I’m not good at telling when people are flirting with me. But I can tell that this is kid is a flirtatious little twerp. He has a strange way of making me feel a little uncomfortable and a little flattered at the same time. He’s the kind of kid that a married woman would have an affair with. It’s supposed to be a compliment but I realize that it probably doesn’t come out that way. He just makes me think of characters in books that have had affairs with older women. He’s just that kind of charmer I suppose, and to be honest, I almost feel like the married woman in the stories. I don’t know if that makes sense, but it’s just that I feel like maybe I like him and I know that I shouldn’t, and I also feel like he knows that I like him. Which is exactly how it is in any story where a woman has an affair with a younger man; the worst thing is when they realize that the woman likes them.
I can’t go to straight ignore so that I don’t bother myself with this kid, I was never good at going to straight ignore mode when someone didn’t do something to piss me off. I just have to be careful what I say and do to this kid and I have to resist the urge to flirt back when he flirts with me and then maybe one day either he or I will quit and that will be that. I will keep you abreast of any further developments.

Chapter 31: You're Not The Boss of Me

It’s one of those writing nights I can feel it. It’s not because my roommate has ditched out on me and chosen a guy over me. That doesn’t really bother me, I honestly could care less. I have just been feeling this way most of the day. The first hint to me is that I didn’t sing along with my music while driving today. That means I’m too contemplative to even open my mouth and sing along, which in turn just makes me feel like maybe I am depressed. I love singing along to my music.
At work today I was talking to my friend and while we were talking the thought came into my mind, “how many conversations could you really have about the same topic?” How many times can you repeat the same conversation, just not verbatim? You just beat the common interest into the ground until you are left sitting there wondering how many years you were friends based on weak conversations scattered here and there.
Which in turn just depressed me. Well, it just made me more contemplative which made it seem to those around me that I had quite possibly become depressed in a matter of seconds.
And while I’m thinking about repetitive conversations I am also trying to figure things out with this friend. I call him a friend but he is apparently the Non-friend. At least he stands by that. One summer when I was home from school we had a conversation about guys and girls being friends and he made the statement that guys and girls can’t be friends. This is a guy that I would spend a lot of time conversing with at work and I had assumed we were friends and I said, “Well we’re friends right?” and he said, “no”. His whole take on things is that guys and girls can’t be friends because one of them is always going to like the other one whether or not it is reciprocated. The whole sexual tension thing gets in the way of there ever being a good friendship. I of course stand on the other side of the argument because I have had friendships where I am not interested in the guy and the guy is certainly not interested in me. We are just friends. Years later I still stand by my side and he is standing by his side.
When I took the job as a trainer at the store I’m at he happened to be working there so we started to pick up conversations again. He came in once and ate lunch with me on my break. I bought him a birthday dessert (just one person…what does he need a whole cake for?). We have been talking constantly and yet he is still holding firm to the idea that we are not and can not be friends. I have called him socially inept (there is certainly more then one reason for that). Lately it’s been more than just conversation. We both really like this one show but I am always working when it comes on and every week he is asking if I saw it and he’s laughing about how funny it was and I never get to see it! So one night he says that he can e-mail the latest episode to me. So I give him my e-mail address and the next day I had gotten an e-mail message saying that he wasn’t able to do it but he would keep trying. Then he said that he had the episode on his computer he just needed to get his hands on a burner. A few weeks later he buys a burner and a day or two after that he has a DVD for me with a few episodes on it. Before I left work that day he had come back to work to drop off another DVD for me. Granted I haven’t been able to get either of them to work on my computer, but that’s not his problem, that’s mine. Needless to say I am left wondering, knowing his philosophy on how guys and girls can’t be friends, what does that make us? It leaves two options, he is either assuming that I am the one with feelings for him or he is the one with feelings for me. Because by his rules we can’t simply be friends.
Oh, and also, I randomly got an e-mail message from him the other day and he was saying how he liked my quotes page (a long while ago I was playing around with HTML and made a webpage and one of the links was a page with my favorite movie quotes). This means he must have googled my name on a random night and found that webpage. I haven’t even touched that page in over two years.
He told me the other day that he likes how I repeat the exact way he says something. Like when we are having one of our more dynamic conversations and I do the woman thing and use his own words against him. I figured it was a compliment and he told me later that it was, apparently he likes that. So today we were talking and he was telling me about a customer that I had been helping earlier. I was trying to train two individuals and a customer had asked me to help him a little bit with his shopping list. I figured it wouldn’t take long so I did it but it ended up taking half an hour, if not more. Non-friend came up and asked if he could help us find something and then asked if I had trainees. I told him I did and he said that he’d take over so I could get back to work. Then he just explained to the customer what was up. When we were talking he told me that the customer had said that he didn’t “want to hold that pretty girl up from doing her work.” I used this as an opportunity to pull out one of his phrases and I can’t remember how he used it, I just remember that he used it and said, “I’m surprised you didn’t say, ‘yeah she’s not ugly’”. I don’t even remember if he used the “not ugly” line on me or while telling me about some other girl that he saw somewhere but I felt like it was a good slot to throw in some of his words. It is just one of the many reasons I call him socially inept, with all the words he knows he can’t just says someone is pretty he’s got to say that they’re “not ugly”. Okay, so maybe I am beginning to like him a little bit. But that can’t end well, whenever I start to like someone I start to act differently around them and then before long I have pushed them away and out of my life just for good measure. I don’t want to end up with Non-friend actually being a non-friend. I doom myself to Buddy land, I realize this, but in some situations it is the only option. Because of this I refuse to bring up the contradiction in his theory about girls and boys not being able to be friends, because I’m afraid if I confront him about it then I will be given a truth that I am not actually prepared for and that in my immaturity will not handle well.
So I have all of that kind of on my mind. But that’s not it, there’s more in the mix leading to me being so pensive.
Power corrupts, and what bugs me the most is when it corrupts an individual whom you expected would be an ally and the one who would best understand your situation. I suppose for some people it may be easy to forget the unity of understanding and to forget what it was like for them when they were in your spot. I understand that this is bound to happen, I mean, it happens to each of us, or most of us I should say. As we grow from child to adult we forget how it was to honestly not know or comprehend certain things. But this process of forgetting takes years to get through. When we are throwing in time frames here what is a good adjustment period? Three months? I personally think that is too soon. You should still know what it was like. Yes, I’m talking about one person in particular and it happens to be the person whose job I took when she stepped down from it. She works in the same store with me and lately she has just been a bitch, and not just to me but to the people working in the store with her. It’s not an “I’m such a bitter individual” thing going on here, it’s more of a, “now I have the power you do what I say” thing. She is constantly coming up to me talking to me about new people and complaining about it, and of course blaming me for anything that they do. Some things are not training related, some people just make mistakes. No one is perfect, but when they make a mistake it does not mean that there is a line of responsibility to follow, a mistake is a mistake, and it is not due to bad training. I will be the first one to admit that I am not the world’s greatest trainer, but I’m not an idiot either! Lately she has even been telling me that I need to call certain people because they didn’t show up for work. Excuse me? Just because I trained them does not make me their mother and I almost even told her that today because she was pissing me off. She had me call this girl the other day even though she had already worked in the store for a day. I made the phone call and it turns out that the front end manager already knew what was going on and she hadn’t talked with him. None of them communicate with each other and for some reason it falls on me, it’s not my fault they can’t tell each other what is going on, it’s got nothing to do with me. Then today she was telling me that I had to call this other girl because she didn’t show up today. I guess I gave her a look and she said, “well, she’s still JSD right now because she hasn’t had her first day.” I simply told her that other stores don’t have that kind of opportunity to have me call their associates. Then she got an attitude and said that if there was going to be a tiff because of it then never mind. I told her there wasn’t a tiff; I would call her if she wanted me to, but only as a favor not because it was my responsibility. I call the girl who wasn’t even scheduled to come today because it’s her prom and she’s going to it. I ask her if she had been given a first day and she said that all she had was the schedule she had from the store for next week. So I told her to go ahead and just come on her first scheduled day. I went and told D-bag what the girl had said and then she acts like it’s my fault this girl wasn’t scheduled for an official first day! I just train the people, I don’t make their schedule, and I don’t call them if they don’t show up for work because it’s not training! She goes ahead and corrects it on the schedule, like I really give a damn. I’m sick and tired of looking like a fool because these guys can’t talk to each other and properly run their front end. ‘Cause guess what? I’m not a front end associate, I have nothing to do with the front end of that store, I help them out when I can bag groceries and get on register, but I am not theirs. I don’t belong to them and they can’t tell me what to do.
I don’t like being bossed around; it’s not one of my favorite things. The way that things are going I’m bound to just pull her aside and let her have it. I feel like reminding her that she had this same situation happen to her at a store that she used to train at, and she told me that she didn’t like when the manager there would boss her around like he was her manager, and I feel like I have to tell her that she’s not my manager and she needs to back off! How quickly can she forget that she was in my spot, she knows that these mistakes people make have nothing to do with her training, and she damn well knows that calling people because they didn’t come to work is not the trainer’s responsibility. She sugar coats it by saying that I’m a friendly voice. Guess what? I don’t care, what these new people need is to have their front end management make the call and get to know them because all I can do is get the information for them, if they have a problem with the information what the hell am I supposed to do? I don’t run their front end, I can’t tell people when to come and when to go. I’m not anyone’s manager. I am in charge of these people for a day or two and then that’s it.
D-bag isn’t even a manager, she’s what they call a “fill-in” and that means that she’s just a cashier who fills in as a manager when they need the extra help. But she’s pissing off people left and right and I’m certainly one of them on the list.
And you want to know something? It does kind of piss me off that my roommate said that she would be here tonight and that we were going to hang out and she has chosen to do something else and never bothered to even tell me about it! I am just fed up with people right now.
If that weren’t enough I have recently discovered that my family is more dysfunctional than I originally thought. As if a cousin who can be both Jack and Diane in one lifetime, an aunt and uncle who both served time in prison and family members on one side trying to kill their spouses weren’t enough evidence. It pretty much just boils down to my sister-in-law right now. And the fact that I had to say “right now” just makes me feel like this family of mine is always suffering in some form or another. The good news and the silver lining here is that my brother and his wife have finally decided on a house, they made an offer and they got it! So in less than a month they will be moving out of my parent’s house and left alone to their crumbling marriage and family. Don’t get me wrong, I do feel sorry for my brother, but his bed is made and the rest of the family shouldn’t have to continue to suffer because of it. I wish things were different for him, I still hope the best for him, but part of me hopes that his wife gets whacked on the head, gets amnesia and either leaves him or straightens up and starts to act like a woman who actually loves her family.
You know, with all this pent up anger I’m still reeling at why God would want someone like me in the Relief Society presidency. He sure does have a sick sense of humor doesn’t he? I think we would get along really well.

Chapter 30: Anniversaries

We are coming up on Memorial Day, and that day marks the one year anniversary of when I moved into this house. The will make it the longest period of time I have lived in one place since I graduated high school, six years ago. Of six years of developing the habit to pack up and move about every 8 months this is a strange sensation. Yet, I don’t feel the need (right now) to pack up and move. I was talking to a friend yesterday who is getting ready to move with a friend from church to a new house and it got me to thinking that I don’t have to live with these girls until a life changing event occurs. Sometimes you just move, and you can live with any one you like. It feels weird. Granted, moving out to live with someone else from church would create a bit of drama, and I have to admit, right now there is no one I would rather live with then these three girls.
It’s not that people aren’t trying. Well, most people aren’t and mostly that’s due to the fact that I still don’t know that many people in the ward. My sister-in-law is certainly trying but I think she’s overlooked one important little factoid, I can’t stand her or her two daughters. I love my brother, I’m not too happy about his choice in a wife. I don’t think she married because she was in love, I think she married because it’s her survival instinct. The children? Well, she doesn’t really want them, that’s just her idea of what’s supposed to happen. She doesn’t pay enough attention to them, but she “dotes” on them because that’s what the perfect mom would do. Dotes…not showering them with attention, but buying them whatever their hearts desire. She takes them to get their pictures professionally taken every stinking holiday. But she won’t stay home with them, she’d rather put them in daycare and work then take care of them. She has a two year old who I’m pretty sure has never had her diaper changed by her mom. She hasn’t gone outside to play with them since she’s been here, and the one time she went on a walk with them (and my sisters and cousins) she was on the cell phone barely paying attention.
One big mistake that she has made is that she doesn’t realize how vindictive my sisters and I can be. We out number her, we have sharper tongues and we aren’t afraid to use them. I’m not afraid to smack my niece, I haven’t done it, but if one of my nieces ever hits me or hits Burrito or my nephew one more time I swear I will walk right up to them and slap them across the face…or at least spank them. Their mom gives them options and to me with children there are no options…there is “do”, and they will “do”. What my sister’s and I hate the most is how she treats my brother. Any girl would be lucky to have a guy like my brother and she overworks him and abuses him and doesn’t care that she has a good thing and one day she may lose it. I hope one day she does lose him. She pays no attention to the fact that he is exhausted. He works all day, when he comes home she bosses him around the moment he tries to just sit down, and where is her lazy ass? On the couch. Watching T.V. or napping, she is so much like Thorn that it’s unbelievable, and the women in this family don’t like to put up with Thorn and we don’t like to put up with this sister-in-law either.
And still, she tries to get me to move in with them when they finally get their house. I have a dog now and she was asking how my roommates like him and if they are going to let me keep him and she told me that if they didn’t I could always move in with them. Hell no! I don’t like her daughters touching my dog. So the other day she asked how it was going and I said that all my roommates really like him and even Motor Mouth said she didn’t have a problem with him and she was going to be the hardest one. She seemed disappointed. I doubt because she actually likes me and wants me to live there because while I may not be good at reading people I can read right through her, I know she doesn’t like any of us girls. She’s just ticked she won’t be getting rent from me.

Chapter 29: Family Relations

My brother is living up here in Virginia now and yesterday he left to go to Florida and retrieve his family. Is it bad of me to not want them to come? They were all up here about a month ago so that they could look for houses and such, and I couldn’t take it. He has two little girls and they are squealers, his 4 year old talks like she’s two and runs around the house on all fours pretending to be a dog. The two year old isn’t so bad, when she’s not squealing. I know, I’m a bad aunt. My sisters agree with me though, they aren’t too thrilled at the thought of them occupying my parent’s house until they can move into the one that they are buying.
My mom had a good point though, one night when my sisters and I were complaining about the seemingly unruly behavior of our nieces. She said that they are not undisciplined or unruly, they are normal. It’s just not normal for the kids we have in our family. I mean, my nephew has a form of Autism and he still knows the rules better then these two perfectly normal (aside from being spoiled) girls. I guess we just aren’t used to having spoiled children in the family. None of us were what we would call spoiled and none of my siblings really spoil their children. My other brother and his wife make their son earn the money to buy things he wants (he’s only 7) such as movies and snack items. If my other nephew throws a fit he doesn’t get a, “oh, please don’t do that,” he gets a, “okay, time out.” And he goes to the corner and stays there until he’s ready to come out and play. Where did the spoiling come from? Oh wait, that’s right, their mother. I don’t think my brother got a large enough dose of his sisters when he was younger, otherwise he would know how manipulative we are and he would have learned some survival skills and he would have learned how to get his own way every once in a while. Instead, she runs the show and he’s her personal assistant who makes sure everything she wants happens. I’m sorry. This may come across as mean. I love my brother, I do. I just don’t know how I feel about his family.
It doesn’t help that the whole family has this understanding of our sense of humor and she is missing the connection somehow. No matter how much time she spends with us she thinks that we are the meanest, cruelest, people. And while that may be true for the circle of people she knows, there are certainly meaner people then us. When I was at Sweet Pea’s house this past November the way her family spoke to one of her sister’s made me want to cry, so see? We can’t be the meanest people, and in a family where everyone understands that it’s just that way and it’s not a form of verbal abuse, it works. Ringmaster just doesn’t get it. And now she’s been christened “Ringmaster”. Fabulous.
So while my family prepares to have an extra family in the house, I am preparing for my puppy to come spend the night tomorrow night. I’m pretty excited. I just have to remind myself that no matter how cute the puppy is, he’ll probably pee and poop just about anywhere right now. If I keep that in mind then I will still love him at the end of the weekend.

Chapter 28: The One Who Makes You Laugh

I haven’t written in quite some time. Remember that stress thing I was trying to deal with? It’s taking on a physical form, I have blown up to 300 pounds and started to sport a mustache. I’m totally kidding. But I have started to grind my teeth in my sleep. At least I think I have. A couple of weeks ago my tooth started to hurt, thinking it was a cavity I tried to ignore it hoping it would disappear (since we all know how I feel about the dentist office). When the tooth ache turned in to a “teeth” ache I began to think maybe sinuses were the culprit. When the “teeth” ache turned into a Charlie horse in my jaw I began to seek help. So about a week ago I called the dentist to set up an appointment to get my teeth cleaned, and possibly fix my jaw if that was an option. But later that same night that I made the appointment my jaw hurt so badly that I went to Patient First. The doctor there…well, he’s not what I would call the best, but probably only because he didn’t have an answer for me. He prescribed some sinus medication and told me that if the pain didn’t stop I might have to go to an Ear, nose, and throat doctor. Yippee. The next morning I went to the dentist expecting to have to get an emergency root canal or at least have a cavity. Good news, no cavities, no need for a root canal; bad news, my jaw still hurt. I’m almost out of that prescription and I’m not fond of taking 4 ibuprofen at a time, so I suppose next week I need to try and get over to my regular doctor and see what he thinks. In the mean time I am wearing a mouth guard at night, which makes me feel a little weird, like a football player, or a horse. I am examining the mouth guard to see where the wear and tear is. Sure enough it’s on the side that hurts all the time, so it looks like I either grind or clinch my teeth. I bet this was probably the most interesting thing that you have read in a long time. Glad I could help.
Ok on to topics that I personally enjoy. A bit of sad news first though, this past Tuesday was the last time I work with TDH for a good month. We may run into each other here and there and we may have a team meeting that we’ll see each other at, but I have been so used to working only with him during our training classes that I think I may go through withdrawal. The good news is that this past Tuesday I worked with TDH. There was only suppose to be a night class on Tuesday and I was supposed to teach it, but our manager’s manager (our manager is out of town) called me earlier on Tuesday saying that there was a girl there who had been told it would be okay to come to the noon class because she couldn’t make the 5 o’clock class. The big miscommunication there is that there wasn’t a 12 o’clock class. But I live no more then 5 minutes away from the building so I agreed to come down there and make a special class for this girl. She kept apologizing and I told her not to worry about it because all it meant was that I didn’t have to teach the afternoon class, which would be about 20 times bigger then what we had going on. So I thanked her for the mistake. TDH came in when we were finishing up and he just smiled and told me how he got the voicemail too late but thought to himself that I would jump at the idea of teaching a one on one rather then teaching the evening class. He knows me too well. I finished with that class and then TDH and I spent the hour in between to fix up the room for the larger class. Manager’s manager came up to us when we were in the hallway and started to talk about our new store opening in about a month, as she was talking I looked over and TDH was just looking at me. I smiled and he just kept making eye contact with me. I was always under the assumption that you make eye contact with the person who is speaking. Which I quickly returned to doing. Later, when TDH was teaching the class he mentioned eye contact to the trainees, and how you make eye contact, but don’t hold it for too long because then it becomes a stare down. He said that 10 seconds was way too long to hold eye contact, and the whole time he is saying this he is looking directly at me so I start laughing because it was more then 10 seconds and I think we were having a stare down. But he always does that. When we have team meetings he is always looking at me when he talks and I don’t know if I am just the only one who is actually looking at him when he talks or what. Then he always uses me as an example, the last team meeting we were talking about something and he used me as an example for it, giving me a nice weekend in Florida. It was fantastic, unfortunately I no longer have family connections in Florida to make that vacation a reality. Now, I realize that I may be reading into everything with TDH because I want to read into everything. I want him to like me, doesn’t mean he does.
I like to pretend that I am the only girl his age that he knows. Of course this is impossible, unless I somehow isolate him from all that he does know. There’s a thought…no, I won’t do that, it’s too much of an undertaking and to be honest I think I am too busy for that right now. I’ll admit though it hasn’t stopped me from pretending that he is madly in love with me but afraid to say anything about it because of how small our team is and how closely we have to work together. Which of course, in the end, just can’t end well.
I’d like to believe that we are at least friends, because it certainly does feel like we are. I don’t think you make that much eye contact with someone who you don’t want to at least be friends with right? But sometimes I wonder if I am just coming across as stalkerish if I e-mail him or leave him a message on the ever so popular Myspace. I’m not about to have a friend DTR (define the relationship) with a guy at work. I just hope he would feel comfortable enough to tell me to not stalk him anymore, and then I would stop…at least stop letting him know I was. Ha-ha.
To jump back into the story from this past Tuesday, after the class was finished up he was writing up evaluations on people that didn’t do so well on the test and he was trying to write, “in light of” but I may have already mentioned, he is a horrible speller. So he asked me if “light” would be l-i-g-h-t or if it would be l-i-t-e. I sat there for a second and finally said, “You know, I don’t think l-i-t-e is actually a word. I think it’s a slang spelling.” To which he replied, “Bud lite,” and just had that look of, “of course it’s a word.” I only looked at him and said, “Seriously? You’re going to get your vocabulary from Budweiser?” He chose to put l-i-g-h-t but I don’t think he fully came to terms with the fact that Budweiser would lie to him about spelling. Sigh. He’s my favorite person to work with.
To go along with this, however it’s possible that only I can see the connection, I will admit to the fact that I love the show “Sex and the City”. I know, bad me, slap myself across the face at least two times. I don’t know, there’s something that appeals to me about it. Of course I am getting the edited version on TBS rather then the full on scandalous version on HBO. Still there are times when I just change the channel. I don’t necessarily agree with the idea per se of the show, but there are good quotes. These women, aside from there hussiness of sleeping around, relate very closely to my friends and I. There was an episode on the other night talking about Modelizers, which by definition are similar to womanizers, except it’s only with models. Luckily I don’t have this exact problem in Richmond, Virginia. But Sarah Jessica Parker’s character is a journalist and she writes about her experiences and so she’s doing research on why it’s so difficult to find a descent guy, especially as you are always getting older.
The part I liked best was the introduction of Mr. Big. Which name Sarah Jessica Parker’s character has given him. It’s a lot like what I do, I give people these nicknames to protect their identity so I don’t feel bad posting this or anything like that. Through the episode she thinks that Mr. Big is a modelizer. At one point he is asking her what she does and she explains that she writes a column and is writing about men who date models and asks him if he had any insight into that (in a sarcastic, “I’ve already figured you out” way). He says, “Just that they are the luckiest men,” or something to that effect. She writes…or narrates, after this party where she had that conversation with Mr. Big, that she had never felt so invisible in her life. Mr. Big tracks her down near the end of the episode to the coffee shop that she sometimes writes her articles at, while she’s writing a somewhat bitter approach to modelizers. He comes in and sits across from her and says he’s on his way to a meeting but wanted to tell her that, “After a while, you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh” regarding their conversation about modelizers. I thought it was the greatest thing for a man to say. By the way, they end up dating.
I think it goes both ways. Men sometimes just want to be with the woman who makes them laugh and girls sometimes just want to be with the man who makes them laugh. It kind of reminds me of this story a lady at church told. She was teaching a lesson on marriage so she decided to ask her children what they looked for in a future spouse. She had her 17 year old son and a 14 year old daughter. When she asked her daughter she said that she got a far off look on her face and said, “He’ll be tall and blond and athletic.” She moved on to her son (at a different time) and asked him what he would want. He said, “mom, honestly, I just want someone who doesn’t annoy me after three months.” …Good answer. You can tell by the answer who has had more experience with the whole dating game.
Take home message here is that my new motto in life is that after a while you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh. Here’s the B.H. salute to Mr. Big.

Chapter 27: Something Has to Change

So I am about to tell you about the weirdest dream that had it’s own stream of consciousness. I don’t remember how the dream started, but I’ll start where I remember. I was putting together those little trains that are magnetic, you know, there for little kids and the one end hooks to the end of another train piece because a little magnetic bulb at each end. I was having trouble with them because I wanted to put something else magnetic in between them, also some of the pieces had circles cut out of their tops so that they could fit little Chinese checkers pegs in them. Suddenly the train was actually a boat and instead of Chinese checker pegs they were people. There was someone that was kind of hooked up to the back of the boat with a kite like apparatus attached to him. He was trying to get a birds eye view or something like that, of a shark. Then the weather changed suddenly so everyone was trying to get to their stations (The little circles for the pegs were the stations). The guy with the kite like thing got pulled away by the wind and the chick on the ship was saying something about her station and one of the guys told her it was the most dangerous spot on the boat. So she went with the two guys to a different station and hers got crushed by a giant pole. Then the boat was gone and I was the girl suddenly and I was worried about that shark we had been trying to watch but also worried about finding everyone else. I found one guy but the other one and the kite guy most have died or something. We were rescued and taken back to land.
Then suddenly (I hate dream transitions because they really don’t make any sense) I was with Baby Face and we were getting ready to walk into this old lady’s home. She had a million and one cats and I was trying to avoid stepping on them as I walked with the lady, she seemed to know that we were coming. I had a blanket wrapped around me like I had when they had pulled me out of the ocean, so I felt like I had just survived a ship wreck. She handed me these two books, the covers were leather and they looked like they locked together at one point and let’s face it, they looked really creepy. She said, “I finished reading your books” and when she said that I felt like I had written them. My response was, “Oh really? I haven’t even read my books yet.” And she told me not to. Not because they sucked but because just as their appearance what was written on the inside was more creepy then the look of the books.
Then Baby Face and I sat down next to each other on the lady’s couch sitting across from her. There was other things on the couch (looked like little packages she was getting ready to send out) so Baby Face and I were sitting really close to each other. She handed each of us what looked like a Christmas Card. On the cover was a picture of my Aunt and Uncle who probably haven’t seen each other for three years now, but they were smiling and waving at the camera like they were normal people (not the white trash that they normally appear (and are) to be). I glanced quickly at Baby Face’s and I swore that I saw my name on his in nice old lady cursive. I wanted to know what it said about me but I knew that was inappropriate to start reading his card. The inside of my card was completely filled with writing on both sides and the first line was, “Because how often do we see these two together?” referring to my aunt and uncle. I was tired (probably from being shipwrecked) so I started to lay my head on Baby Face’s arm but then I pulled up because I wasn’t sure if that was alright. There was some cue that it was okay so I put my head back down and I started to fall asleep, but I was concentrating on my breathing, I didn’t want to snore and I didn’t want to drool, but when I breathed through my nose I was congested and when I opened my mouth to breath it sounded a little funny too, but finally I just fell asleep. When I woke up Baby Face was asleep too. I panicked for a second because I remembered the packages on the couch next to me and worried that while I was asleep I laid on them. But they were gone and the old lady was still sitting where she had been but there were other people there too, one being my sister who just had a baby. The lady told me that she had already mailed out the packages a couple of months ago, apparently Baby Face and I had been sleeping for 5 months! I started to wake him up all panicked because not only is 5 months a long time but he had been sleeping through his mission. It was a big controversy with the people in the room and they all blamed me for it. This guy that I didn’t know decided that they should grab another piece of paper and reassign him for his mission since he had already missed 5 months of where he was supposed to be. For some reason I was objecting to this because it wasn’t fair, Baby Face had been looking forward to going where he was assigned. Someone in all this chaos I started to talk to my sister and she was saying something about how big she was and I asked if she was pregnant again and she gave me this look and I was like, “Oh duh, of course not that would take a couple more months” (since her husband is in Iraq right now). Which actually only upset her more so I left everyone and walked outside of the room and ended up going into a kitchen.
Someone was throwing muffins and biscuits onto storage shelves for cooling. I was looking at them thinking it would be fun to open my own restaurant or bakery when I noticed that something behind the shelves was leaking. I saw a miniature pitcher hanging from the wall full of some liquid that looked like water. I followed where the drips were going and they were falling into a container that held kiwis. I turned to the only other person in the room and called out to her, she scowled at me and I just innocently smiled and she said, “Oh you little heart warmer” and smiled back. Then I asked her what was in the pitcher and she said that she didn’t know and didn’t want to find out. So suddenly in my brain someone was trying to kill someone else, I just had to find out who wanted to kill who. So I run out of the room and am in one of the grocery stores that I train for, and this kid that I kind of dated in high school was working there again. He was putting away a cart when I came out of the room and he said some smart ass comment about how I made Baby Face sleep for 5 months. I really don’t like that kid anymore. So I ignored him and found someone (I thought it was one of my sisters, but I’m not sure) and started to ask her who was allergic to kiwis. She told me I watched too much law and order. Then a lady came over with a carry out cart and tried to put it away with the shopping carts and got an attitude with me for not helping her put it in the wrong place and I told her that they belongs up front and took it up there. There was a feeling that I was no longer a trainer, and may have even been new to the store, but a lot of the faces had changed and I went to a register with this kid who was trying to scan a green onion (they don’t have bar codes) and so I told him the code (4068) and he hit 4-0-6-6. I told him that was wrong and told him the code again; he hit 4-0-8-8. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with this kid but I stepped up and entered the right code for him. I saw Bulldog and I asked him if he was allergic to kiwis. Then I woke up and it was 11 o’clock in the morning.
It’s dreams like this that make me realize that I need to change my job. It’s stressing me out more then I originally thought it was and I am not handling the stress well. I’m more frazzled then ever, I mean, forgetting my age, sincerely forgetting my age? My vocabulary has shrunk, my dreams are peppered with moments in a grocery store, and if I’m not dieing someone is. I would like to really fall asleep for 5 months, I wonder how I can go about making that happen.

Chapter 26: Hitting The Books

After much thought and contemplation I have decided that May 21 of this year I will be returning to school. Well, I will be taking one class at least. You’ll never guess what the class is, or under what department it is in. It’s not sociology. That’s your only hint. I have decided that I will be taking “Family Law” other wise known as “LGL 1178”. I figure it’s a good class to start with because it’s on Monday nights, and I don’t work Mondays. The class is under the “Legal Assisting (Paralegal studies)” department. Never thought I would be doing that, and no it’s not because I love all three types of “Law and Order”. I knew I wanted to go back to school, but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do once I got there, so therefore, I wasn’t doing anything. I wanted to be a guidance counselor and while part of me still wants to because I love teenagers, the other part of me doesn’t think I should because I love teenagers. I don’t want to end up on the front page of the Metro section on trial for getting romantically involved with a student. I believe this defect in me is due to the fact that I was romantically stunted in high school, so for some reason I find myself not seeing some teenagers as younger people, but equals. Then I have to remind myself of my age which sadly, at the moment I can’t even remember. Part of me thinks it’s 23 and the other part thinks 24 (this internal debate has been going on for the past three days)…I didn’t think the memory loss was suppose to happen until after my 45th birthday. Oops, I’ve digressed.
Back to the fact that I may be finding myself just getting a second Bachelor’s degree instead of a Master’s or becoming the eternal student my dad warned me against becoming. I figured that I have to take things into my own hands because if I didn’t before long my mom would be filling out job and college applications; the police academy and pharmaceutical school among some of the options. I’m scared to death to take this class though, it’s not really a big deal but it’s the whole fact that if this class convinces me that maybe I can do it then I’m going to take the plunge, I’m going to once again leave my comfort zone and what if I go down in flames after I’m halfway through the program? Of course the other voice in my head (the one who knocked me into the edge of a shelf earlier today and into a trunk on Saturday) tells me that no matter what comes up I’m taking the course, if I don’t like it, so what. It’s a pretty smart voice, just self destructive at times. Besides, if I don’t like the Family Law class then next semester is a marketing course.
I think that another reason that I am scared is because let’s face it, I am always doing things that I am overqualified for, because I know I can do them. Why do I still work at my high school job? Because I know I can do it. I’m afraid to take a chance because I’m afraid of failing, I don’t ask guys out because I’m afraid they’ll say ‘no’, I just don’t take too many chance in case I won’t be able to succeed.;
I’m just tired of people trying to tell me what to do with my life, and I’m already tired of sitting around with my job waiting for something better to just magically appear, because guess what? It’s not going to magically appear (you probably already guessed that, you’re so smart). I don’t know if this is something that I want to do, but I’ll never know until I just jump right in. I have to admit though; a part of me is getting really excited about returning to school, I feel like I need to go stock up on school supplies.

Chapter 25: Break Time

I’m sick and tired of trying to read people. I’ve got my job where I am trying to figure out if people are going to be able to do well or not. Then I’ve got my personal life where I am trying to figure out if people even want me around, much less trying to figure out if they like me. Experience has taught me one thing and now I am trying to do the complete opposite.
I have a problem with guys because in the past I have misread guys and in one case there was a guy who really didn’t even have a high tolerance for me. The guy that I got closest to in high school made out with my best friend a month after graduation. Not to mention that for the past five years I have been surrounded by guys of the most idiotic nature who say one thing and do another. Needless to say I have become quite guarded around guys. I have trouble expressing an interest in guys that I truly like (who are we kidding, I can barely talk to guys I like), I turn tail and run if a guy likes me (whether or not I had previously liked them). I can’t read into anything they say or do because I only convince myself that there is no way that they could like me. Several times I have persuaded myself that I will die alone…even if that is a depressing thought.
For a day or two recently I have tried to sway myself in the other direction. I’ve tried to talk myself into putting my heart on the line, though I have discovered that I don’t really know how to do that. Upon a self-evaluation I feel that my attempt to put my heart on the line may just come across as stalking, and that’s illegal in all 50 states. On my drive home today I wondered at how some girls date and some girls don’t. What makes them so different and is it something that can be taught or are those of us who lack the capacity doomed to hopelessly float around life all alone. Am I going to miss out on something because I just can’t let my guard down? Because I can’t believe that someone could like me?
It all comes back to Buddy land doesn’t it? Do we all start out with a hopeful palette and then slowly each experience moves us towards normalcy or towards Buddy Syndrome? There is no way to prevent it, no one can know what life is going to hand them. It’s a sad thought though, but how do you overcome it?
Right now I am ready to take a break, I hope it won’t prove to be a mistake, but considering that I am still having dreams about dying I think I have enough stress in my life, so I need to cut some of it out. This is the only type of stress I can do anything about. It’s not like I can force myself to no longer like people, or to stop getting nervous around them, but at least I can just stop trying to impress them, stop pretending that maybe some day he’ll recognize that I am exactly what he’s looking for and that he fell in love with me without even realizing it. Something tells me that it just doesn’t work that way.

Chapter 25: Neurosis

I have a difficult time realizing that there are things wrong with me. I don’t know, maybe it’s my pride, but as the light bulb comes on I feel silly and can’t figure out why I am the way I am. I have recently been called “neurotic” and I was not sure whether or not to be offended by this until I finally looked up the actual definition. I am a bit offended by it and I was in denial about being neurotic until I asked my own mother if I was. Her answer, “somewhat”. Somewhat? I thought maybe that I was a bit quirky or maybe was undiagnosed as A.D.H.D. but neurotic? Just to give you an idea of what neurotic means the synonyms for it are as follows: anxious, fearful, phobic, disturbed, irrational, obsessed. I know that maybe I am these things, but don’t tell me that I am. It really bothers me, which in turn may make me more neurotic, I just can’t win.
To keep along with the first sentence, today Motor Mouth told me that I had to come home in time for her “Oscar Night” which was her cleverly disguised “girls night” that she has been trying to get all of us “roomies” to participate in for a couple of months now. I told her that I was a sociologist and she asked what that meant, and I told her it meant that I didn’t like to watch award shows. Okay, so it doesn’t make sense, but my idea of a good night is not watching a bunch of rich movie stars get awards. Don’t get me wrong, I love Will Smith, Harrison, Ford, Christian Bale, and Hugh Jackman, along with many others, but I don’t need to do fondue with a group of girls and act like I’m excited that they won something. Motor Mouth told me to at least come for the fondue then, and I reminded her that I don’t eat chocolate. It wasn’t a confrontation and I didn’t feel angry, I just felt weird.
I don’t watch “The O.C.” or “Grey’s Anatomy”. I don’t watch Bond movies just because the guy who plays Bond is always good looking, I don’t call Matthew McConaughey “McCon-a-hottie”, and I’ve never seen “The Notebook”. I’m not like other girls am I? Granted this isn’t at all connected to neurosis, but just another little way that I have noticed that I am different from most people.

Chapter 24: Flood or Famine

I have heard it said before that with guys it’s either flood or famine. Now with this in mind I go on with my story. This past Saturday night there was an activity at church. I was debating whether or not to go and I was already an hour and half late for it when I decided to call Sweet Pea while on my way to it. I talked to her for an hour. Unfortunately she finally cut me loose and told me to go to the activity. At this point the activity had turned into a dance and I decided to at least find one of my roommates so that I could prove that I showed up, and then the plan was to leave. As I walked down the hallway to the door someone came out and was dancing towards me, with their eye on me. At first, from the distance that I was, I thought it was my roommate, but then I realized that it was my friend from school (who I also grew up with). I’ll call her my therapist because that’s what I called her at school. Anyway, so my therapist comes dancing down the hall towards me. I was so excited to see her, she was living in Costa Rica but now she’s in North Carolina, so I rarely get to see her. We sat in the hallway talking for a bit and another girl came out to the hall to join us. Then this guy sees us so he walks over and starts talking to us. I will call him Agent L and the story will unfold. He starts talking to us and asks us all whether we are working or students or what, basically…what our story is. So I tell him where I work and he says that he works there too (different location though) and that I should come by and see him sometime. Then my therapist tells him that I am the funniest person that she has ever met and he says that he can see that. So he decides to go back into the “dance” and us girls talk for a bit more. We finally go in and I take my spot sitting on the stage (I’m not much of a dancer). Therapist is going at it on the dance floor, she’s good, she enjoys dancing. She comes over to take a breather and Agent L comes over noticing that we’ve made our way into the gym, he asks if we are slowly moving towards the dance floor and I told him this is where it tends to stop. Then he grabs my wrist (I have a major problem with wrist but to avoid looking like I freak I just took it and gagged silently to myself). He pulled me on to the dance floor and tried to get me to dance; he even pulled out the Hitch moves and told me where I live. It didn’t help, I always feel like an idiot on the dance floor. Sometimes, if I’m comfortable with the people that are around me I can dance. I have danced before, Oreo was there and we pulled out moves…I can’t recall Sweet Pea being there though…sorry. I just couldn’t dance then. Of course right after that the dreaded slow song came on, Therapist went and got someone to dance with and then it was just Agent L, me, and the girl who had been in the hallway with us. She started to step away, so I did too and said something like, “now’s the time we awkwardly step away from each other.” He laughed a little but I didn’t just walk away, even though I’m uncomfortable with people I’m still well aware of what is rude. Naturally we danced because if two people just stand in the middle of the dance floor during a slow song that looks weird. I warned him that I’m not good at slow dancing either and he said he’d help me out. We did the “Deacon shuffle” and if you don’t know what that is it’s probably the most awkward slow dancing two people can do. Knees and elbows locked and you just waddle back and forth. Oh I almost forgot, while we were talking in the hall Agent L said something and therapist said that he was a liar (I wish I could remember what he said) so I stuck my hand to my forehead with my fingers making the L-shape. He was a bit offended but I told him that it stood for “liar” and not for “loser”. (The Agent part of his name comes from interactions on Sunday but we must talk about one day at a time here). After the dance Agent L came up to talk to me for a bit and then I ran into another guy that I had met that previous Monday. I don’t have an interesting name for him, Right now I can’t think of what would make him stand out to me. But he was talking to another friend of mine. A bunch of us decided to go to IHOP and he asked me if I was going. The Enforcer came to IHOP too and we got to sit together. To let you in on a little secret I have a little bit of a crush on The Enforcer, I’ve had one on him for a while so to be sitting next to him is pretty exciting for me. Unfortunately he is in love with a girl who relishes in the attention, but has no intention of ever being romantically involved (she’s one of those girls who all the guys want but she’s not willing to give up the attention from so many different people that she won’t settle for one of them and therefore keeps all of them…if only these guys would get a hint from the dancing analogy in A Beautiful Mind.)
Anyway, so Sunday after Sacrament both the guy from IHOP…how about I just call him IHOP? I don’t think it will get too confusing. IHOP comes up to me and we are talking and then Agent L comes up and starts talking to me too about how he’s glad to see me in the ward (because we just met at the dance but we had been in the same ward for months). I felt weird talking to both of them at the same time, I’m not sure why I felt this way but I did. Some of it may stem from the fact that I may be A.D.D. and when two different people are trying to get my attention neither one can. It’s much easier for me to hide my handicap if only one voice is going at a time. Sure enough I wasn’t able to have a substantial conversation with either one. We moved on to Sunday school, the first time that I’ve really gone to Sunday school in a long time. I saw Agent L across the room so I kept hoping he would look over so I could do the L-sign at him but he didn’t. After Sunday school though he was walking past and we made eye contact and I threw my hand up to give the signal. He pretended like I threw a dagger at him and it hit him in the heart. Jelly Bean only saw bits and pieces of this interaction and was left completely confused. Before Relief Society started though I was talking to Jelly Bean and I happened to catch Agent L leaning in the doorway of the room and he ever so quickly made the L-shape on his forehead and disappeared. I almost didn’t catch it, I happened to look over at the exact second he was doing it and I don’t think he was even going to attempt to make sure I saw it, just get it out there and see if it worked I guess. So I got up quickly and went out and told him that he may think he was clever and stealthy but I saw him! I came back and sat down and IHOP was in the row behind me talking to this girl that we both grew up with (but the two of us hadn’t met until recently). A girl got up to start the class and IHOP gets up quickly to get out and I turn around and called out to him and told him he should stay. He just smiled and got out. I don’t know why guys get so embarrassed about being in Relief Society when it first starts, they act like they just walked into the girls shower room by mistake and they have to rush out of there.
Jelly Bean called me a flirt (not just with IHOP but with Agent L), but I corrected her. I wasn’t flirty I’m just friendly, and he should have felt welcome in Relief Society. After church The Enforcer was interrogating Jelly Bean, Diva, and me because his car got pranked the night before (yeah sure it was us but we were in denial). Agent L joined our conversation shortly after and I was on the other side of the circle then him so I slowly backed up to where he was standing and talked to him without facing him like we were trying to talk without anyone noticing that we were talking. His ride came and I rejoined the main conversation. The Enforcer kills me, yes, as I have already admitted, we pranked his car, it was Jelly Bean’s idea to use pads and tampons on the cars that we pranked (there was more then just one car). I personally don’t like the use of feminine hygiene products during pranks. Anyway, so The Enforcer was going off about the “stickums” and I asked a question about that and he gets this upset look on his face and says, “Stickums…pad stickums.” He was so serious and had such a serious face while saying a word like ‘stickums’ that I busted up laughing. We ended the conversation after we were certain that he was convinced it wasn’t us who had pranked his car.