Top ten signs you might be in a Walmart bathroom

Recently I had occasion to go shopping at Walmart, which is something I generally try to avoid. This can be challenging, though, since out of all the businesses in Logan, 75% are either motorsports or small engine shops, 5% are in the mall and the other 25% are Walmart stores. I realize that  adds up to 105% but that's how we roll in Cache Valley.

Even though I do sometimes violate my own rule to not set foot in Walfart, it is rare that I am desperate enough to go within 40 feet of the bathrooms in that place. Unfortunately, I had a personal emergency that forced me into one recently. I won't go into details. Let's just say that since I had my baby, sneezing has never been quite the same for me.

Anyway. I was thinking how the state of grossness in Heckmart's bathrooms is virtually the same every single time I go in there.  So, in case you get confused in a Walbarf store and wonder whether you are in the bathroom or have died and gone to The Other Place (I call it Heck), here are some helpful hints to remind you that you're in the bathroom:

(If you get grossed out easily then this post is not for you. And maybe this whole blog, because I talk about bodily functions a lot here)

1. The floor is somehow strewn with toilet paper and paper towels, even though you have just seen the janitor walk out as you were going in.

2. You spot more than one person walking from their stall to the exit without washing their hands.

3. Someone is barefoot.

4. Someone is changing into their prom dress or wedding gown.

5. There are at least 4 dirty diapers on the floor. One of them is probably unrolled.

6. Someone is either in labor or giving birth.

7. None of the toilets have been flushed.

8. All the toilet seats have some sort of liquid on them. One of the liquids is always unidentifiable.

9. There is poop somewhere other than the toilet bowl.

10. -Maybe the grossest of all- Someone's half eaten lunch on the floor of the handicap stall.

If you are in Logan and you really have to go to the bathroom, I suggest the following businesses whose bathrooms are usually bearable: Chick-fil-A, Olive Garden, Aggy's, ... and that's it.

Although any other bathroom would be better than Walwart's.

What if this post is all a dream?

Today I had occasion to be a little bit nervous. I may share sometime soon what made me so nervous but for now suffice it to say that today I was nervous. By nature, I am a nervous person. I get nervous about a lot of things, but the major causes of anxiety for me is caused by one of the following reasons:

Hearing the phone ring
Speaking in public
Singing in public
Going to the doctor (where I am always convinced that I am about to be diagnosed with a terminal illness)
Going to the dentist (where I am always convinced that they are going to have to pull all my teeth)
Driving
Seeing a cop on patrol while driving
Strange men
Weapons
Strange men with weapons (We live in hunting territory where this is not uncommon)
Noises outside my tent while camping
The first night after I've heard a ghost story, no matter how un-scary, lame, or ridiculous
Going to the DMV

...I think that about sums it up. Yeah, I'm a nervous person.

My nerves present themselves in some very interesting ways. For example, every time I go to the dentist, my body starts to shake uncontrollably. A couple years ago when I had my driver's license renewed, I got so nervous that I had to make a sudden trip to the restroom and I was in there so long that my test timed out and they had to reset it. I won't say what was going on in the bathroom, except that it was a natural bodily function that happens to people all the time. I aced that driving test, by the way.

When I have an important meeting to go to, my mind makes up ridiculous scenarios that could prevent me from making it to the meeting--scenarios that could never, ever, in a million years ever happen. I had a meeting today. It was fairly close to home at a place I have driven by about a million times, and I left in plenty of time to get there and even was able to run a few errands first. My outfit was washed and crisp and my car had plenty of gas in it. And yet my mind kept thinking things like this:

 "What if those headlights 3 miles behind me are actually the flashing lights of a cop who is trying to pull me over and just can't get to me fast enough?" (It wasn't)

"What I'm part of one of those 3-car traffic stops that cops make and I don't know it and I keep going and I don't notice the cops and I get arrested for fleeing?" (I didn't)

"The place of my meeting is coming up soon. I think it's right after this intersection. Oh, no! It's not! What if it got sucked up by an extra-dimensional energy field?" (It didn't)

"What if they moved since three days ago and didn't tell me? Oh, never mind, it's right there." (Yup.)

"I need to go to the bathroom really bad." (Hold it. No way I am asking to use their bathroom. This is due to another serious phobia I have of public restrooms. It all goes back to a very bad experience I had once in an outhouse in Ukraine.)

"What if I suddenly forget all knowledge of traffic laws and make an improper left turn?" (I have actually come close to doing this before.)

"What if I am mistaken for a criminal, pulled over, and arrested?" (Nope.)

"What if it switched to daylight savings and nobody told me and I'm an hour late?" (No.)

"What if this is all a dream?" (Sadly, no.)

"What if this whole day has been a dream and I'm just now waking up?" (Still no.)

Yeah. I have issues. But! My mystery meeting went great, I got the desired outcome that I went for, and I made my way home without even thinking about getting pulled over. Well, maybe I did have just one obsessive thought about law enforcement. I know, I have way too many cop issues, but that is because of a few very ill-advised strategies that I employed once to try to get out of a speeding ticket. Words of wisdom: When trying to get out of a ticket, do not tell a police officer that he is any of the following:

a) stupid
b) inexperienced
c) prejudiced
d) pulling people over for fun
e) lying

Yeah.

Please don't be like me.

New Years Resolution

Every new year I make some sort of unofficial resolution and almost every year it involves working out more and eating healthier. Last year my resolution was to get my Etsy shop off the ground and it seems like that panned out pretty well. This year I want to try to focus on losing some of the 25+ pounds of baby weight that has been extremely stubborn and doesn't want to come off. I don't want to be skinny, I just want my waist back.

I decided that I should get up and do my exercises early in the morning so that it will be done and over with and I can get on with my day. Also, I was hoping to be able to get it done before my toddler wakes up, because working out with kids underfoot is about 1000 times harder.

It turned out to be an ill-fated attempt. Here's how it went this morning:

6:00-6:45 am: Woke up. Spent 45 minutes convincing myself to get out of bed.

6:45-6:50 am: Brush teeth, drink a glass of water in an attempt to get the morning breath taste out of my mouth. I cannot STAND panting and breathing hard and knowing that my breath smells like sheep guts that have been dead for a week. Am I the only one?

6:50-7:05 am: My todder wakes up. Usually he sleeps a little later. But, like a bear's instinct that tells it to come out of hibernation, my kid always knows when I'm about to work out.  I get him out of bed, change his soggy diaper, get him milk, after which he is still not happy so I decide to fix him breakfast. I get him settled in to his breakfast and start my 45 minute Zumba game on the Xbox 360.

7:05-7:20 am: Things are going pretty well up to this point. I was doing my workout and JC was behaving relatively well. Mostly he stood in front of me and stared at me. I don't blame him. Imagine a retarded manatee performing sexy Latin dance moves and that's basically what I look like. I know that I am a horrible dancer, that I have no rhythm, and that I have no business trying to, but that problem is outweighed by the far worse problem that I just find exercise and sports to be horrendously boring. Zumba is basically the only thing that doesn't have me crying/almost falling asleep/quitting early/making up stupid poems in my head to pass the time.

7:20-7:25 am: JC wants me to pick him up and dance with him. I sense that things are about to go wrong if I don't do something quick, so I send him in to the bedroom to play with my husband, who is still in bed asleep.  I know he won't mind being awoken from his blissful slumber by a screaming 2-year-old.

7:25-7:45 am: I hear my husband yell for me to come quick. I ignore it at first, hoping that he will be able to take care of whatever mini-emergency it is. Then he yells again and tells me to hurry and bring a wet washcloth. Maybe my husband is calling me for a good reason after all. I run into the bedroom and see my son sitting on the bed with my husband, blood drips all over the sheets. JC had cut a gouge in his foot somehow. We still can't figure out HOW in the world it happened but it looked pretty gross at first. I thought it might need stitches but in the end it turned out to be minor. I try to ask JC how he got his owie but he either can't or won't explain. He's more interested in ripping off his band-aid than telling me what he was doing when he hurt his foot. I go get him some socks and some more food to take his mind off the band-aid.

7:45-8:10 am: I go back to the workout but this time it is worse. Now that Josh is up I have an audience for my retarded manatee dance moves and so I try even harder to make my hips move to the beat which results in me mangling the choreography even more than usual. Basically for the next 20 minutes I just do a blend of random hip gyrations and elements of the macarena. JC really, really wants me to dance him and when I won't, he throws himself under my feet kicking and screaming. I ignore it and drag him out of the way. My husband tries to distract him while I finish my workout.

I was proud that I actually made it through but then I thought to all the times last year that I tried to work out and I remembered why I wasn't very consistent. Ever heard that saying, "Raising teenagers is like nailing Jell-O to a tree"? Yeah. That is what working out with a 2-year-old is like. Nailing Jell-O to a tree.

It will be a New Year's Miracle if I make it through this week doing a 45-minute workout every day, let alone the whole year.

So if anyone figures out a magic way to get a kid to be happy for 45 minutes without being entertained by me, needing food, medical care, or discipline, let me know.

After Christmas Sale!

This one is for you after Christmas shoppers who like to go out and snag those great deals. I'm having a sale in my Etsy shop this week. All my Christmas digital scrapbooking items are now 50% off. They are normally $6 each so you can now get them for $3. Once they're sold, though, they're gone and I won't be relisting them until next year. So that means you need to hurry and jump on this deal! Perfect if you have lots of Christmas pictures to scrapbook!

Check it out here.

A Fairy Tale

Here I am! I know that I said I wasn't going to post this week but my husband and I have been going through some of our storage recently and I found a little gem that I just can't help but share with you all.

It's a story book that I wrote, illustrated, and self-published when I was 11 years old. And let me tell you, it's so awesome. My husband read it to me as a bedtime story last night and I literally could not stop laughing.

I had an obsession with princesses as a kid. I am pretty sure I was a princess every Halloween clear up until the time I was about 20. All my favorite books were about princesses. I had a collection of princess stories that I read at least once a month until I was at least 16. So it just makes sense that I would have written a story about them.

This might take me a couple blog posts to cover, since apparently I was as long-winded as a kid as I am as an adult. I am preserving all spelling, grammar, punctuation, inhumane abuse of commas, and random capitalization as it is in the book.

Just a few notes so that you can get the full effect: I did my best to make this book look legit. It is bound in a cereal box covered by an old wallpaper sample with tulips all over it in super nasty '90's colors. All the text is hand-written in my 11-year-old handwriting which at the time I sincerely believed was better than my teacher's handwriting (I remember bragging to my mom about this - "Mom, look, my handwriting is better than Mrs. C's!"). On the front cover in big letters written in dark green marker, it says "A FAIRY TALE" and then in smaller letters, off to the side, it says:

A WICKED WITCH

An Enchanting Princess.

A Handsome Prince.

Prepare for an adventure you'll never forget.

Then on the inside cover,  it says 

The Jessica Roberts

PUBLISHING CO.

And then on the corner in tiny handwriting it says

copyright

like that was going to give me some sort of legal protection? I guess I thought that people would be clamoring to plagiarize my magnum opus? That this was the most original work of literature ever created? No, no, and no. In fact I'm pretty sure it rips off just about every fairy tale story ever written.

On the first page is an illustration of a sunset (?) and  on the opposite page is an illustration of a black-haired woman in a yellow dress, standing next to a rose and vase that are taller than she is. The writing says this:

Long ago and far away, there was, and still is, if I am not mistaken, a land so beautiful and so close to being perfect that whoever made it decided that it had to be secret (I loved princesses as a child but apparently commas were a close second). This land had but one fault (Nope. It has more. I checked). This fault was a young princess whose name was Briar Rose, named after her grandmother, Sleeping Beauty. Rose was very beautiful, but she was so nasty and mean and had such a bad dispossition that her father, the good King Calvin, finally had enough of her.

The princess was very beautiful, but nasty and mean (I really wanted to drive this point home).

The third page has an illustration of people at what is supposed to be a royal ball. Everyone has huge hair and huge skirts, and all the men are drawn with either pigtails or a pony tail. The opposite page has a drawing of a table full of food with Briar Rose's angry-looking legless torso rising out of a large stuffed turkey.

ONE DAY, AT a ball, the princess made her entrance, looking as beautiful as ever (you'll notice that throughout this book, basically Rose's only redeeming quality is that she's pretty). Then she found what the cooks had made for the banquet, and she stomped out of the room in a rage, all the while crushing the toes of the unfortunate people who were standing in her path.

The next page has an illustration of Rose slapping a very short, bald, flat-headed, beak-nosed, red-faced, fat man in breeches while a maid looks on in horror. Opposite that is an illustration of a well that looks a lot like the one in the Disney movie Snow White.

THE PRINCESS stomped her way to the kitchen and began slapping the fat old cook's face 'til it turned purple.

The cook began to beg, "Princess, stop, oh, stop!" but that made her even ANGRIER! She dipped his head into a pot of boiling water (Obviously Rose is a lunatic) and then brought it up. Then she let go of the poor man altogether. He began to stagger about the kitchen and out the door to get some cool water from the well. 

HER FATHER, the king, was, of course, very angry with Rose and so he decided to punish her (not by pressing criminal charges, though). He would send her to a friend, a King, who lived on the other side of the earth in another secret kingdom. She would stay there until she could learn to control her temper.

THE WISE old King Calvin devised a plan to get her to  his friend's kingdom. He talked to a magic carpet, and the magic carpet agreed to carry her there when she stepped on it.

EVERYTHING went as planned. The princess stepped inside her bedroom door and the king watched as the carpet wisked her out of the palace and into the night air. The King had also fastened a message to the carpet. It said:

(The next part is written in very curly letters) 

MY FRIEND, King Frank,

I regret to inform you that my daughter has been so horribly behaved that I have come to my wity (I meant "wit's") end. I wish you better luck with her than I have had. 

MANY SHANKS to YOU,

KING CALVIN 

I've got to stop it there because, wow. It really reveals a lot about my 11-year-old self. I remember that I meant for King Calvin to be a wise old father character who knew exactly how to help spoiled (spoiled in this case = immature, and dangerously violent criminal) daughter like Rose. I don't know how I could have been so confused because KC is obviously just super lazy, sending his problem daughter off for someone else to fix. And Rose needs to just be locked up in the dungeon because she is a psychopath. At 11,  I thought that someone stuffing a person's head into a pot of boiling water qualified as merely mildly spoiled behavior. With this philosophy, it is a miracle that I did not get into a lot more trouble as a kid.

Also, why is KC wishing Frank "many shanks?" Psychopathy runs in the family, maybe.

This week I'm going to slack off posting both in the blog and in Perfect Printables. The reason for this is that I need a semi-vacation. Occasionally I might give in to my compulsion and put a new scrapbook pack in the shop but I'm hoping that the other 1, 394, 532 things I have to do will keep me distracted from the fact that my hand and fingers are not permanently fused to my mouse and the CRTL+F key.

Last night was a particularly hard night in our house. My son traded one virus for another this week and so I've been up at all hours with him, wiping up his various bodily fluids and feeding him diluted fruit juice. Last night, thankfully, there was no vomit, a welcome relief from the past month or so, but there was a whole lot of diarrhea, which is also no fun. Giving a tired, screaming 2-year-old a bath at 4:30 am to wash off his dry, crusty bottom is not an experience that I would like to repeat, although I'm sure I probably will. The only person I pity more than myself right now, is my little guy. As a mom I would basically do anything to see him feeling better.

On an unrelated note: I've heard that my last post about driving has offended basically everyone I know, to the point where I've been victim of bricks thrown through my window and flaming bags of something unidentifiable left on my doorstep... so some people might be worried whether I'm coming back to write more insulting things on the blog. Don't worry. I am. You can't get me down!

MERRY CHRISTMAS! I hope everyone takes a break from what can sometimes be a crazy-making holiday, to enjoy it and to take a minute out of our busy schedules to give thanks for the one who makes this holiday possible in the first place.

1-F-er's vs. U-tards: Driving in Logan

Today I took a trip by myself to Logan for some holiday shopping. My diligent husband stayed home with my 2-year-old while I went out and spent our entire fortune on gifts.

It is a 30-minute drive to Logan from where I live. I am not a big fan of driving. It is a frightening experience for me. Usually I spend half my time avoiding cops, looking for a red car in the parking lot (which I did today for 15 minutes before I remembered that my car is blue) or sit in my car wondering what I did with my keys before I realize that I've already put them in the ignition.
 
Aside from my own stupidity, there are 3 main reasons that I dont like to drive:

1. I get very anxious scanning the road for cop cars who are lying in wait to pull me over. Several of my nervous breakdowns have been triggered by the sight of a patrol car.

2. I know without a doubt that every jerk or shudder or strange noise means that my car's engine is about to blow up and scatter all over the road.

3. Utah drivers scare me. So do Idaho drivers. For different reasons; but I'll get to that a little later.

Before you think that I am being unreasonable on the first two counts, you should know that both numbers one and two have actually happened to me before. Getting pulled over and ticketed by a sneaky cop is a story for another day. So is the time when my husband and I were driving down the road and our engine exploded and metal chunks went flying all over the road and I walked along, sobbing and gathering up the bits of engine in my shirt, hoping that maybe I could just glue it all back together and everything would be fine.

To explain the number three a little more, you should know that Logan typically has 2 types of drivers, which are storied rivals: The U-tards and the 1F-ers. Both of them think that the other is the worst driver in the entire world. I think they are both the worst for different reasons.

Most of the Idaho drivers are from Franklin County, which you can tell because the Great State of Idaho codes all their license plates by county. So you can look at an Idaho car and know what county it is from. Franklin county's code is 1F. The Franklin county drivers are affectionately called "1F-er's" by some (me).

My brothers always call Utah drivers "U-tards" which is not quite as an affectionate a name as "1F-er." I'm not sure where they got that name. I suspect they might have made it up by themselves. So there we have it. Logan roads are driven by "U-tards" and "1F-ers."

You might wonder why make such a big deal out of this, but let me tell you, there is a HUGE difference between a 1F-er and a U-tard. Their driving styles are totally opposite but equally dangerous. To illustrate:

A U-tard will typically do one or more of the following things while driving:

1. Cut you off
2. Pull out in front of you so close that you have to slam on your breaks to avoid an accident
3. Tailgate you no matter how fast you are going
4. Drive fast in the slow lane
5. Go at least 10 mph over the speed limit
6. Run a red light
7. Refuse to use their low-beam headlights.
8. Not know how to drive in the snow.

In contrast, you can usually tell a 1F-er the following ways:
1. They never under any circumstances use their turn signal.
2. They sit at an intersection for about 30 minutes, waiting for the road to be clear of oncoming traffic before they even think about turning.
3. They stop their cars in the middle of the road, blocking both lanes, to have a conversation. If you drive up behind them, you have to wait for them to finish chatting before you can be on your way.
4. They drive slow in the fast lane.
5. 1F-er's will always drive at least 10 mph below the speed limit.
6. 1F-er's will sit at a stoplight for 10 minutes before they realize it's switched from red to green.
7. Their cars are usually held together with duct tape, bailing twine, fencing wire, or a combination of the three.
8. They refuse to drive any vehicle in the snow unless it is a tractor.


Being an Idaho girl and a Utah resident, I'm still on the fence about which type of driver I would like to be. I believe I possess some of the characteristics of both. And some of my own special driving habits that are unique to me. I also worry about which type is most likely to kill me on the road. Then I look down at the sandwich I'm eating and wonder if I will get into a wreck with a 1F-er or a U-tard before I've finished it. I worry that I might look stupid in front of the paramedics who come to the scene of the accident if I have food all over myself. Also I am afraid that such a delicious sandwich might go to waste and wonder if the paramedics would just gather the bacon off the road and save it for me to snack on from my hospital bed.

Maybe I'm not a 1F-er or a U-tard, but a special breed of driver all my own.