CostcoWarrior

1-800-flashback 15 January 2010

The other day I had a dr’s appointment that I knew I’d spend a lot of time waiting for…you know the drill: show up, check in, sit in the waiting room, wait to be called, sit in the exam room, etc. I’ve learned there’s no guarantee of good magazines, and even if they are good I am scared to touch them. <cough> Swine flu. <ahem>

Anyway, to ward off boredom I took a book: The Little Prince. Quick read, super great story, and I haven’t read it in a long time. Grabbed it from my bookshelf and headed out. Got myself checked in and started waiting. Pulled out said book and had a serious flash back to 1998. Yup. Nineteen Ninety EIGHT. Whoa. Hold on to your hats as you turn your heads, folks, that’s a ways back there!

I had just started my freshman year at BYU. I was living in the dorms and had a sweet desktop computer with a top-of-the-line dot matrix printer. Never mind that it was also out-of-date and my parents gave it to me to justify their upgrade to inkjet.  The important thing is I had my own printer and a huge box of dot matrix paper and thus I was so cool. My roommate on the other hand disagreed with the printer coolness.  (Hi Meagan!)  I would have to print papers early in the morning before I left for class and somehow the line by line ee-aaaccc-zzzz ee-aaacc-zzz sound just ANNOYED her so much! I’m sure that printer is the only thing she ever considered killing me for. However, she exercised extreme control and only ever yelled at me once.  But this is all a digression.

Continuing to the true point of this post: stuffed in my copy of The Little Prince was a dot-matrix print out of an email my dad had sent me that freshman year.  He and my mom were struggling with this new phase of parenting called “first child to move out freak-out”.  They wanted me to be able to call home for free, so they got themselves a 1-800 number. You know, for me to CALL them OFTEN. Even though the root truth of the situation is in the last two lines of my dad’s email: “The challenge is if you can ever use this ‘800′ number. Will there come a time when you think of calling home before your Mother calls you?”

And suddenly in that drab waiting room all the emotions of Freshman Year come flooding over me: the freedom, the excitement, the adventure, the challenge, the homesickness, the classes, the dorms, the friends, the solitude, the food, the friends, the dances, the parties, the EVERYTHING that makes up moving out and far away and starting college. The beginning that marks a major end.

And I realize sitting there looking back that at the time I thought I was breaking free, starting new, and finally getting AWAY from everything that was so obviously imperfect and restrictive and thus BENEATH me.  When in actuality, I was rounding a bend in the same road I had always been on.  One big bend in what eventually lead me back to those who love me the most. Even when I didn’t use the 1-800 number before they did.

Thank you, Mom and Dad.  Thank you for trying so hard to keep in touch.  Thank you for letting go and trusting that I would find my way back.  I love you.

Hot Chocolate? 5 May 2009

Last night TW told me one of the funniest stories.  We had just left a fast food drive-thru on our way to school.  I had ordered an oreo milk shake, and I complained to TW that they literally hadn’t mixed it:  all the ice cream was on on the bottom, all the crushed cookies on the top.  He laughed and told me that it reminded him of a similar fast food drive-thru experience he’d had years earlier:

It was the night before Black Friday sales and he had given up waiting in the freezing cold extra long line for what ever electronic deal he was interested in.  On his way home he decided to stop at a nearby fast-food place for a hot chocolate to warm up.  He pulled into the drive-thru lane, ordered the hot chocolate, pulled up to the window and paid $1.25.  They then proceeded to hand him his hot chocolate which literally consisted of a cup of hot water and a packet of Swiss Mix.  He didn’t even get a stir stick.

Um.  Thank you.  How convenient and “fast”.  I always wanted to OVERPAY for an unmixed hot chocolate packet on a freezing cold night.

Four Fours… 25 August 2008

So the title of this post looks totally french.  Not that I’m all that familiar with that language, but somehow it looks french to me.

Here we go with a fun little meme.  Feel free to put yours in the comments…

• Four places that I go to over and over:  Costco, the bathroom, David’s cube (at work), my bedroom
• Four of my favorite places to eat:  Cafe Rio, Cheesecake Factory, Famous Dave’s, my kitchen.
• Four places I would rather be right now:  Reading a good book, with TW, with friends, on vacation.
• Four TV shows I watch over and over:  Bones, So You Think You Can Dance, Numbers, Without a Trace
  

Team Work 29 April 2008

This story actually took place on the 24^th of July. I don’t know the exact year, but it was around 1995. A group of my friends and I were asked to do some volunteer work for the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers. We were asked to wear light clothing. So we decided to go hit Shopko’s clearance rack! We found some golfing shorts, and some bright white T-shirts, with a nice pocket. We wore those newly purchased uniforms to the parade. Afterwards we decided to go to Lagoon, since we all had purchased Lagoon season passes. Needless to say we definitely turned some heads, and that wasn’t just from our good looks. After making our “Appearance” we decided we were more than they could handle and headed back to the car. Did I mention it was very very hot! (just in case you cared.) We climbed into my friend’s parent’s Cutlass Supreme, or as we called it “Gutless Supreme”.

During our travel home we spotted a car-full of girls. They noticed we were trying to keep up, so the sped off. As we were trying to catch up we noticed a decrease in what little power we had. Moments later I noticed the temperature light had turned on. I told Justin to turn on the heater, in hopes it would cool our engine. We continued to lose power, so Justin pulled to the side of the interstate so we could get a closer look at the problem. Danny and I stayed seated, in the well heated car. (remember the heater was on full blast, as was the stereo) We heard a yelp come from under-the-hood. At first it was hard to discern what the noise was. Then just moments later we heard Justin yelling, “TURN IT OFF! IT’S ON FIRE!!! IT’S ON FIRE!!” So of course we shut the car off and sprung from the vehicle. Not knowing how to extinguish the flame we began to collaborate. Finally we decided to cover the flame with dirt. So we ran frantically back and forth throwing dirt on the smoldering engine. This was to no avail. We send Justin for help. Then Danny and I came up with the idea of smothering the flames by closing the hood of the car. (yeah we were pretty brilliant, seeing how the air could also come from beneath the engine). So after a few moments we opened the hood and the flames had grown, much to our surprise. Seconds after a Highway Patrol vehicle entered the scene. He came running up with his extinguisher. As he pulled the trigger to extinguish the inferno we thought the panic was over. BUT there was no umph left in the extinguisher. So he ran back to his patrol car and radioed for another officer to assist. Eventually the other officer arrived, extinguished the flames and there was much rejoicing… yeah …. We were wrapping things up just as Justin had returned, after phoning for a ride home… We heard sirens approaching and then saw the red fire engine approaching. Much to their dismay the flame was extinguished. The fire fighters looking at our “stunning” uniforms and commented,” You guys look like a team, how come you couldn’t put out the fire!?” Needless to say we never wore those outfits again.

The Summer of Gum 12 June 2006

As children, my mother had just a few absolutes when it came to rules. These were the few that had no bending room, and carried strict and immediate punishments.

Absolutely NO biting.
Absolutely NO spitting.
Absolutely NO gum.

Yep–when we squabbled, anything else was overlooked or wrapped in the whole “punishement for fighting”, but if you overstepped the biting or spiting lines, the fine print just killed you–you’d get immediate and double punishments–one for biting or spitting, and one for fighting. Even if you were winning the sibling rivalry, you totally lost the war if you used biting or spitting.

Amazingly, all 5 of us learned the 3 rules VERY young. And while we were very conscious and careful not to bite or spit, we all struggled with the gum rule.

GUM was forbidden.
GUM was messy.
GUM made you look like a cow chewing cud.
GUM got stuck in terrible places–your hair, the carpet, the furniture…
GUM was always relinquished from the collected halloween stash.
GUM was not allowed.

When I was 6, my family and I lived in a suburb of Houston Texas–completely elevationless, Houston is totally flat. Each of the 5 of us had our own bikes and we’d spend the days riding around the neighborhood, winning races, planning to ditch the younger riders, feeling badly about it and going back to show them how to get home, reading the funny mailbox numbers, having the greatest of childhood summers.

The whole neighborhood also fell in love with gum. It was the new craze. And it was still against mom’s rule. When you’re 6 and in hot, humid Houston, all you want is GUM in all it’s sticky fruity bubble-busting glory. All your friends chew it, and they can blow bubbles as big as their faces with the right kind. Just watching? Not being able to compete? No gum? This was a problem and it needed fixing.

Unknown to mom, I and two of the neighborhood girls one day decided to ride all the way to the supermarket to buy some gum. As we got within sight of the store, we realized two contingencies we hadn’t planned for: crossing the VERY busy intersection to the store, and actually paying for the gum. So we dropped the bikes to conference solutions in an empty lot still on the safe side of the busy road.

Daredevil that I was, there was no getting my scaredy-cat friends across the intersection. And we didn’t find any money on the ground to pay for the gum. But while searching for change, we found something even better…a goldmine of free gum. Yep, all the gum that people spit out on the ground? We noticed it for the first time. It was free. It was gum. We’d never have to ride far to get some. It even still had some good color to it–pink, green, red.

Face the busy intersection without any money? Or chew the gum from the sidewalk?

And at 6 we went with the gum from the sidewalk…

It wasn’t that bad, if I remember right. It was even fruity after we worked the stiffness out of it. Our jaws got some good exercise. And it made for The Summer of Gum.