Checkout Cheat

Yesterday I was standing in line at the grocery store checkout patiently waiting my turn when the manager came over and said, “M'a’am, we can get you over on Aisle 1 right now, if you’re ready.”

Aisle 1.

This has happened to me on more than one occasion and it upsets me.  Now I realize that it may sound like the height of stupidity to be upset about someone getting me out of the checkout line in a timely manner, BUT…  The problem is that, Aisle 1? That’s 15 items or less.  And I had about 35 items.  So, I come out looking like the checkout cheat who is trying to ignore the rules and believes that her milk and Pringles are more important than everyone else’s 15 items.  Not the case.

Once again my irrational need to please people is pitted against my irrational need to obey the rules.

Weekend, Part 2

If you missed the first two days of my weekend scroll on down and check it out.  On Sunday I invited some friends to join me at the Denton Jazz and Arts Festival.  I love a festival, I love fun music and I especially love people watching, so I knew that I was in for a good time.

On with the pictures:

Chelsea, Cortnee and Dara

Ready to Go!

Dara and I were both ROCKIN’ our Sperry’s, while Chelsea opted for a 1996 throw-back courtesy of some Jellies.

Chelsea and I preparing for the walk to the fest.

When we got to the festival, the first thing we saw was this woman, on stage with her band, rockin’ out on the keyboard with both legs stretched WIIIIDE apart in her short little dress.  She had a voice that kind of sounded like a character from Sesame Street only she was singing about magic and dragons.  In retrospect, I’m kind of disturbed on behalf of those poor girls standing in front of the stage to have their picture made.  But, at the time, all I could think was “THIS is what I want to see at a festival”.

Next, we headed over to grab some lemonade, and thus, begin our trip through the festival via awesome/terrible foods.  Prepare yourself for a montage of our favorites.

Lemonade.

Cotton Candy (making all my dreams come true).

Iced Tea.

Funnel Cake (making all Chelsea’s festival dreams come true, and doubling the festival blessings for me)

 

Finally, after eating our way across about 20 acres of festival we sat down and enjoyed some tunes.

I didn’t get a picture of the belly dancers (you can thank me later) or the Vigilante Band (a favorite band of ours that only played 16 measures at a time) or the man walking around on stilts (because, obviously…).  But, I think you get the overall impression of how awesome the Jazz Fest was.  Maybe next year you can bring your Jellies (or Sperry’s) and eat your way across town with us!

Weekend Recap Part 1 (AKA The Baby Days)

I had a JAM-PACKED weekend and so I will be splitting it up because it really deserves two separate posts.  It was so full that for today, and today only, I’m going to lay off the comedy (if that’s even possible) and go straight to the photographic evidence.

On Friday I got to have lunch with this cute girl:

And her cute Mama:

A few side notes about this picture.  1. I feel like Katy and I look like the Double Mint twins with our toothy grins and 2. I really enjoy that you can see my ‘Stretch Armstrong’ arm reflected in both mine and Katy’s sunglasses.

I’m going to miss these two an awful lot when they head back to their real lives in North Carolina this week.  I was so glad to get a little more time in with them.

She is the cutest, most accessorized baby!  I can’t believe how much she’s grown in the last month and a half.  And I can’t wait for many  more lunch dates to come.

After lunch, I had to pick up my friend Yumi so we could go find a gift for our friend Rachel’s shower.  And Yumi brought a snack for us to have on the road…

Fish Snacks.  Or, as the label on the package calls them “Fishnacks”

And these smelled extra fishy.  Yum.

We got our gifts and got them wrapped.

 

On Saturday we headed to Rachel’s baby shower.  Rachel is a friend from grad school and there is NEVER a dull moment when she’s around.  Case and point:

Her middle name is Drama.

The shower was at a really cool tea house and we had “grand tea”:

They brought each of us our own tea pot and we got to choose our tea.  I was all about this (I was also all about the scones- yum!).

Best of all we got to celebrate Rachel and baby Aria.

I lived a lot of life over the past three years alongside these women and it was really good to be with them.  I still can’t believe Rachel’s going to be a Mother.  It’s going to take some time to get used to that.

So, that was the first two days of fun in my weekend, but you’ll have to wait for tomorrow when you will get to enjoy several photos of me partaking in festival food.  Sorry.  I know you’re crushed to have to wait.

I hope your weekends were as glorious as mine.  Happy Monday!

Thursday Thoughts, 4.22.10

1. I am really in love with Spring.  I have to say God has gone above and beyond the call of duty this year and I am appreciating Spring more than ever.  This could potentially be caused by the unusually long, wet, cold winter we had this year, but all I know is that the wildflowers are out in full force and I am a big time fan.

2. Speaking of wildflowers.  While I love and adore the bluebonnet (the state flower of Texas) I am also a huge fan of Indian Paintbrushes (the tall red flowers) because they remind me of the pasture in front of my parents house.  In fact, one spring I picked about 250 Indian Paintbrushes and then walked next door and gave them to my Mamaw as a little present.  Those were happy days. 

3. Sitting in the movie theater freaks me out.  Half of me loves it because I love seeing movies and the other half of me despises it.  I just start thinking about all the possible things that could happen to me while I’m sitting there and I panic a little.  Crowded theaters are the absolute all-time worst, but theaters that have the entrance behind the seats (where I can’t keep an eye on the comings-and-goings) are a close second.  This is a relatively new development on the list of things that make me a little bit crazier than the average human.  It had never happened until about two years ago when Chelsea and I went to see “I Am Legend” and I nearly had to leave the theater because between the zombie/vampires and the throng of people I made myself almost sick with worry.  The second worst was going to see “The Dark Knight” on opening day- even now I can’t think about it without getting a chill.  I will confess that I occasionally feel this way in church too, but it usually isn’t dark in church so I’m ok for the most part.  Something about being restricted to my seat makes me feel like a sitting duck.  I don’t know what I think is going to happen but it just makes me nervous.

4. Today is Earth Day and in honor of that I purchased the new Sun Chips (Garden Salsa) which are packaged in a compost bag.  But, after I got the bag home I realized I was slightly uncomfortable because I wasn’t sure if the bag had been MADE from compost or was just compostable.  I’m still a little unsure and wary of the whole thing.  Which makes me sad, because “unsure” and “wary” are two words I never want associated with “Sun Chips”.

5. I know everyone (including me) says that girls talk more than guys, and I still think that’s true, BUT I have to say that when it comes to my students the roles are reversed.  The girls come in and we get right down to business, but the boys?  Maybe it’s something about my room that encourages boys to talk, but MAN ALIVE they are talkative.  So talkative that yesterday, in order to actually accomplish something, I finally had to start playing and singing over both my male students’ talking to get started for the day.  Somehow we discussed everything from their voice problems to the new Pokemon video game.  It made me realize, all over again, that the male of the species is still one big question mark for me.  Because, honestly, why a 7th grade boy would be willing to admit he’s still interested in Pokemon is completely beyond me.

Words, Words, Words

I don’t know about you but there are some words that I constantly have trouble spelling.   Trying to write without the assistance of my computer would probably be next to impossible nowadays since spell check has become my accomplice in ignorance.  I’m embarrassed to say that I have never learned how to spell certain words correctly. 

For instance, “rhythm”.   5 years of undergrad (because I crammed 4 years of college into 5) and 2 and a half years of grad school combine to equal nearly 8 years of writing papers and being very confused about how to spell rhythm.  If you think my papers took a long time to write then you can imagine what my notes looked like in theory class.  It’s just too many h’s for my brain to compute.

Also, “reimbursement”.  This is a word I hate to have to use, but it does occasionally become important in the billing portion of my job.  Other words I have to rely on spell check for:  perseverance, Massachusetts and embarrassed (I’ve already misspelled and respelled it once in this post, which I am very embarrassed about).

Do you have any spelling words that embarrass you?

Romantic Reunion

Do you guys remember this story about a man named George, me, the library and new levels of social awkwardness?  Hard to forget, huh?

Recently, I was at the Kroger parking lot, minding my own business, heading to my car.  As I put my groceries in the backseat a (creepy, white) van pulled into the parking space next to me.  The driver had to wait for my friend Yumi to close her door before he could get out and when he finally opened it he smiled and spoke (in an accented voice) ‘I didn’t know if she saw me’.  I would recognize that voice anywhere…  GEORGE.

I looked up and we locked eyes. 

Then I jumped in my car and locked the doors. 

If I wasn’t sure before, then seeing George again confirmed two things for me:

1. I am seriously disturbed by him and his creepy van.

2.  If, for no other reason than the van, George and I simply aren’t meant to be.

At least I made good on my promise- I’ll never be able to forget him.

So, You Think You Can Blog…

Y’all.  It’s finally happened. 

It only took a year and two months but I am officially blogxhausted.

I have nothing interesting to write about or say, so I decided to do a little brainstorming and came up with nothing.  Then I decided to go through all my old facebook photos in hopes of coming up with an entertaining anecdote and all that did was waste an hour of my time.  I stopped myself before I went through old wall posts.  Facebook is such a wonderful and convenient research tool, it makes me really thankful that I went to Graduate school just to learn that databases will get you nowhere, but facebook succeeds every time.

When people find out I have a blog they usually ask me two questions:

1. “Why?”

Haha!  It’s totally understandable, why do you blog?  Who wants all their thoughts out there in the public domain?  Most women who blog are “Mommy Bloggers” women who want to keep a record of their everyday family lives or important milestones.  In case you haven’t noticed, I have no children and the only milestones I keep track of are whether or not I’ve hit any exceptional sales that week.  There are also people who blog about home decorating, fashion, weddings, sports and politics.  But, since I excel at none of those things I have a blog about nothing.  Thus, making me the Seinfeld of the blogging world.  Basically, I blog because I’ve always enjoyed writing (minus the constraints that language arts can put on a girl) and because I have some thoughts on some things that I figure other people might be interested in.  As odd as it sounds I’ve felt like blogging has become a way for me to praise God for the little moments in my life that I may not have recognized in the past.

2. “How do you do it?”

Most people are also curious about how I write so often, which is slightly mortifying considering I only blogged 3 days last week.  I know it’s shocking, what with my pressing social calendar, but I try and set aside some time to try and write each night.  The main thing that keeps me writing is my need to please people (if that comes as a surprise to you then you must be new here.  Hi!  My name is Crystal and I am a people pleaser.).  I realize that’s slightly unusual to try to blog for my 3 readers since I speak to each of those 3 readers on a daily basis, but it’s my cross to bear.

And now after posting all about my blogging success I’ll be lucky if any of you have survived the boredom to make it to the end of this post.

When You’re Right, You’re Right

Chelsea and I have been best friends for over ten years now.  For the most part, we understand each other and spend our time trying to make each other laugh.  However, we also have a tendency to bicker with each other- usually done in love, but with a careful sheen of sarcasm to cover our true feelings.

Since we’ve known each other so long we sometimes feel more like family than friends and will occasionally fall into classic birth order archetypes.  I am a youngest child and as a result am typically fairly easy-going and agreeable (what some might call a pushover) although I’m also attention-seeking (read: ham) and, at times, dramatic.  Chelsea is an oldest child but is probably the most easy-going and agreeable girl I’ve ever met- until something sends her over the edge and then she starts talking at a pitch only small dogs can hear (Luckily, that’s only happened about 7 times in 10 years of friendship).  Basically, we both come from the “don’t-rock-the-boat” school of thought.

Chelsea only displays her eldest-child sensibilities when it comes to one thing: being right.  The girl is plain stubborn and when she decides she is correct about something no amount of convincing or proven data can dissuade her.  Charts and graphs are lost on her. 

For example, a few months ago, we were watching the Grammy’s and Chels asked me which Jonas Brother was Joe.  I told her I thought Joe was the one with the really dark hair and nerdy glasses.  She said “no, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong.  Joe’s the little one with the curly hair.”  I wondered why she asked me if she already knew the answer, but told her “oh, ok.  Well, you must be right.”  The next day I got a text from Chelsea saying she momentarily confused her JoBros and Joe was, in fact, the dark-haired glasses wearer.  Note that there was no admission of guilt there.  I realize it doesn’t sound like a big deal, and I realize that bragging about knowing my Jonas Brothers may not win me cool points, but magnify Chelsea’s reaction times 10 years and you feel my pain.

Well, I am here to report that finally, last Saturday I heard the first “you were right” of our 10 year friendship.  About 8 years ago I told Chelsea that casual dating was pointless because it just has to be headed somewhere.  She said I was insane and why would I say that.  Last Saturday, after a week-long, whirlwind “romance” (consisting of Starbucks, bowling and several hours wasted on text messages), which began and ended in a matter of 7 days Chelsea finally said I might be on to something about casual dating.  Her actual words were: “you were right”.  And that’s all I needed to hear.

An admission ten years in the making.  Not that I’m counting or anything.

Life… Or Something Like It

After taking last Tuesday off to pal around with my friends my return to work on Wednesday was a little overwhelming.  My students were preparing for a singing competition on Saturday and this competition is pretty much a litmus test of how prepared my students are and how good of a teacher I am.  No pressure. 

So, in the midst of preparing for all that insanity I got a call from my landlord telling me they wanted to show my apartment to a potential leaser (Have I mentioned I’m moving out of my apartment in precisely 8 weeks?  Have I mentioned I’m freaking out about having to move out of my apartment in 8 weeks?).  Basically, the landlord told me they wanted me out of the apartment at a few specific times and I agreed, but then I panicked and began to clean like a maniac.  Somewhere between dusting the baseboards in my dining room and alphabetizing my DVD collection I realized that my need to please people was running rampant and since I am not the one trying to sell the place I needed to release it.  So I gave up and spent the rest of my night watching The Cosby Show.

Finally Saturday rolled around and the competition was on!  I had one complete and utter melt-down from a student- the poor girl stopped singing on the last verse of her song, turned around and looked at me with huge tears in her eyes and started to bawl.  In front the accompanist and her judge and I.  Luckily, the judge was very kind and understanding and let my student leave the room for a minute and collect herself then come back and finish her song.  My student ended up doing very well and learned an important life lesson- which is really the whole point.  That poor girl had spent all day the day before at a volleyball tournament, stayed out late the night before then had to sing at 8:00 in the morning before heading back to play more volleyball.  Which really makes me want to get up on my high horse and preach about how overextended kids are these days, but I’m going to hold back this time (There will be plenty more opportunities for me to preach at you, since this is my blog and all). 

All said and done, I had 21 students sing at competition and ALL of them received I’s (the highest possible ranking)!  I am one proud and excited teacher!

After basking in the glow of success I headed out on Sunday to meet my people for lunch.  My buddies Sarah and Justin (The Dr.s’ Ward) were in town and we had to celebrate.  Among our group of friends celebration means ONE thing: Mexican food.  We had the best time.  You know you’re with good company when you can talk about any little thing with friends.  At the end I wanted something to commemorate the fun so I took a picture.  But the picture only had half the table in it because I didn’t want to stand up to take it and cause a scene.  So, I made a difficult decision and took a picture of the half of the table that had two of my twitter friends on it so I could send it there and show everyone what a great time we were having.

However, I never ended up sending it to twitter because:

  I don’t know what I ever did to Justin, but apparently he’s unhappy with me.  Or at the very least, he doesn’t have any control over his eyes.  Ironic, since he’s an optometrist.

Happy Monday!

Ladies Who Lunch

I know this confession may shock you, but here it is:

I LOVE having lunch with friends.

Lunch?  Good. 

Friends?  Great. 

Lunch with friends?  Stupendous.

It truly is one of life’s greatest pleasures to meet friends for lunch.  Lunch has always been a special treat in my world.  When I was younger my Mother would pick me up from school when we had a half-day and we would go have lunch at our favorite cafe in town Conrad’s.  I would always get the Chocolate Chip Pecan Pie for dessert, and if that’s not reason enough to love lunch, I don’t know what is. 

So, yesterday when my students had testing all day I decided not to rearrange my schedule and instead met my friends for lunch. 

Miranda didn’t have long to get away from work so she, Katy, Ginger and I headed over to Sonic for lunch.  Which we ate in the car.  I realize it doesn’t sound all that awesome but it ended up being really fun.  We could be as loud as we wanted and there were tater tots involved so it’s pretty much a win-win situation for yours truly.

Katy was excited about Sonic!  (It bears mentioning that this little Mama had a baby less than two months ago.  Seriously.  She still looks like she did when we were 18. Not fair.)

Here’s the backseat where Miranda and Ginger were staring lovingly into one another’s eyes:

We had the best time chatting and eating.  Except Ginger, who didn’t get to try any tots and got a little upset about it.  I can’t wait for Ginger to be a bit older so we can go out for lunch, go shopping and teach her all the important things about being a girl! 

Finally, all girl’s know that one of the most important things about a good lunch is a good view…And nothing whets the appetite like “Urethane Foam”.

Raindrops on Roses and Whiskers on Kittens, 4.6.10

A few of my favorite internet things from today:

1. This Color Career Counselor.  I find this so fascinating, unfortunately, my job path is pretty set in stone considering the thousands of dollars I’ve spent getting highly specialized degrees, but nonetheless- this is fun!  And was pretty accurate for me.

2. My friend David is SUPER talented and generous and right now you can be the benefactor of his generosity by heading over to this site where you will be able to download his album for FREE.  That’s right folks, music greatness all for the low, low price of zero dollars and free cents.  Make sure you get there before 5 p.m. today though or you’ll miss out on all the wonderful free music.  After you’ve got his music in your possession listen to “Deal Me In” and you can thank me later.

3. Recently, I was catching up on Lost and spent a good few hours on Hulu last Saturday (why yes, I do have an extremely busy social life).  Anyway, this commercial came on approximately 72 times but I didn’t even care.  It’s almost on par with Hallmark commercials for me, because I truly don’t mind watching it.  In fact, I really enjoy it.

4. I have a friend who was recently set up on a blind date, and I decided to lend a helping hand to prepare her for the awkwardness of it all.  Now, in this particular case all names have been changed to protect the innocent (and by “innocent” I mean my friend strictly forbade me from mentioning her name in connection to this on my blog.  Why she’s so worried about one of my eight readers letting the cat out of the bag is beyond me, but I can’t afford to lose any friends on the road to expanding my media empire, so we’ll just call her “a friend”) but I ended up finding this article for my friend.  It’s full of helpful and insightful tips.  My particular favorite is the suggestion that, during an initial phone call you should give intentional responses and share something about yourself.  The author says that, when asked ‘how are you?’ the girl should respond with “I am great. I just returned from an exhilarating run with my college best friend.”  So, I told her she should speak in that same weird broken-English and when the fella asks ‘how she is’ she should tell him something completely inappropriate like ‘I am well.  I just returned from dropping it like it is hot’.

5. What did we ever do before Etsy?  Anyway, I want everything from this Etsy shop.  But, I especially want this one and this one and this one.  Just to name a few.

Have a great day my friends!

Bargain Shopping In The Haunted Graveyard Of Our Mistakes

This weekend, in addition to all our Easter fun my family had a garage sale.  The garage sale doesn’t exactly qualify as fun, but it did happen.  My mom has had a ton of stuff in the garage that she’s been wanting to be rid of since their latest home remodel and I am getting ready to move so I’ve been trying to weed out things that I don’t love enough to carry up and down a flight of stairs, so it made perfect sense to try to make a buck or two in the process of getting rid of our possessions, or as I like to call them, mistakes.

We were up bright and early on Saturday morning and by “bright and early” I mean well before that slacker the sun ever came up.  Here are all of our wares set up:

   

And, in a stroke of pure genius, here is our trailer which we set up as a table:

I kept telling Mom that we were like the Beverly Hillbillies because at a low point in the crowd we were sitting in our lawn chairs next to the trailer with Mom’s laptop watching videos on YouTube. 

Thus, making this the classiest garage sale in history.

Here are Mom and I looking our absolute best!

In a related note, this is the first and last time you will see me with zero makeup on in a picture.  Mainly because of my vanity, but also because I learned that if you are me and you don’t wear your makeup then you don’t get the SPF protection in your makeup.  Hence, the sun burn I am currently sporting (there’s nothing fair about fair skin).

Oh, wait.  That won’t be the very last picture of me with no makeup:

Apparently, I’m not to sure about this early morning business, while Mom seems perfectly content (And to answer your question: no.  I don’t know WHAT is happening with my hair).

Dad was a big help.  He offered to let us sell his shoes right off his feet.

Look who else showed up to help (and by “help” I mean mock):

Chelsea.  She’s all sunglasses and attitude.

So much about this pic cracks me up.  Mainly, the fact that Chels is wearing a short-sleeved v neck and I have on two shirts and a scarf and I was still cold.

My favorite item up for sale was this wooden box that my Mother used to carry as a purse!  HA!

The low point of the day was a toss up (besides waking up in the morning) between the time I accidentally left my camera on the table and a lady tried to buy it and when I displayed my haggling prowess by telling a lady I would take 25 cents for two shirts.  That’s a serious two-for, folks.

I learned a hard lesson from this garage sale and that lesson is: garage sales are not fun.  Sure, it was nice to see neighbors and we couldn’t have picked a more beautiful day to have it, but seriously?  It was a lot of work for not a lot of payoff.

Plus, did I mention the sun burn??

On Sunday we were a very tired little family.  Including Mom, although I had to take three shots before I got a pre-approved blog-worthy photo of her at the right angle.  Apparently, Judy’s not a fan of having photos of her asleep on the couch finding their way onto my blog.  And you wonder where the diva in me comes from…

All said and done our garage sale made us a little money and we were able to get rid of a bunch of our junk.  And once I catch up on all the sleep I lost this weekend I’m sure I’ll remember it fondly.  Or at least remember it.

Happy Easter!

 

But the angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you seek Jesus who was crucified.  He is not here, for he has risen, as he said. Matthew 28:5-6

Wandering On The Road To Nowhere

I have been awful tired this week and between that and an absence of post-worthy material in my life the blogging thing has felt a little impossible. 

BUT.  Then I was reading my friend Morgan’s blog and she just had a baby 7 days ago and has blogged almost every day since then.  So, I figure if she can do it then she is much better at multi-tasking than I am, and also I figured I might as well squeak out another post this week.  Unfortunately, I don’t have adorable pictures of a sweet little baby to fill up my blog and entice (or blackmail, depending on how you look at it) people to come visit.  Of course, I could fill it up with pictures of me doing cute things and wearing my most adorable outfits but I’m betting no one will fall all over themselves to see those.

So you’re stuck here, once again, reading about me.  And even though it probably won’t be cute or adorable here are three little known facts about me:

1. I DESPISE ladybugs.  HATE, LOATHE and want to SMITE ladybugs (if I had smiting abilities).  Katy already knows this because she was there the moment that the ladybugs revolted against me.  My sophomore year of college my roomie Alison and I had a beautiful room overlooking the pool.  During the warm days at the end of that Fall we would leave our window open and one day I came home to find that ladybugs had infested our windowsill and were breeding like bunnies.  There were hundreds of ladybugs all over our window and no amount of bug spray could get rid of them.  To this day, any time I see a ladybug I get itchy and twitchy.  The SICK me out.  Don’t be fooled by their sweet depictions in children’s stories.  They’re gross.

2. I love to organize things, however, big projects stress me out.  So, I’ll organize a drawer and go all out- make everything incredibly neat, clean and nice looking and then I’ll stop with that one drawer.  In other words, while I do have OCD my ADD will always win in an obsessive compulsive vs. attention deficit war.  Aren’t I a delightful bundle of neuroses?

3. I just realized that it’s April 1st and I really wanted to go back and re-write this post and turn it into an April Fools Joke, but then I realized I am too lazy for that.  (This one is little known because it just happened 2 minutes ago.)

Happy Thursday, y’all!  Have a great one!