Walmart and Biker Dudes

The funniest things seem to happen to me, I mean you, at Walmart.

Imagine you go with your mom to Walmart to pick up some last minute things before you head up to girls camp. You tell her you need to go to the men's hat section to get a hat big enough to fit on your huge noggin. She says she'll be in the food section.

You find the hats. They are all for sports teams. You don't know anything about sports teams. Why would any team pick a pair of socks to be their mascot anyway? You stand there trying to find something that won't make you look like too much of a poser.

A short, stalky, bald biker looking dude with a long gnarly goatee comes up to the side of you.

He says, "The first thought that came to my mind was, 'this must be where all the beautiful people come.'"

You think to yourself, "Yes. They come to Walmart." But you say out loud, "Yep! They hang out in the men's hat section!"

He continues walking away and turns back flashing you a sly smile.

That was weird. You continue in your shopping. About five minutes pass by and you STILL haven't been able to make a decision.

The short, stalky, bald biker looking dude with the long gnarly goatee emerges from the mens socks aisle.

"I missed you," he says, barely above a whisper.

He melts back into the aisle.

"Mother!" you shriek in your mind and take off running. Seriously. You were running.

Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus

Imagine you are at a Salt Lake Bees game last night. You end up sitting by a boy who has some developmental problems. He’s hilarious. He keeps screaming, “Getcher head in the game!” and “Come on!” He knows more about the sport than you do.

He has a habit of telling every girl he talks to that she looks like Hannah Montana if she is blonde. Or she looks like Miley Cyrus if she is brunette. 

You are a brunette, so he tells you that you would have the best of both worlds if you had a blonde wig, because then you could look like them both. 

You don’t really like Miley Cyrus. She is a little crazy these days. So you tell him that you don’t look like her at all. You just look like yourself. 

He responds, “You are right. You look just like yourself. And you have the right to remain FOXY!”

RIP Mailbox. You have been good to us.

Imagine your house has a three car wide driveway. Your mom’s car is parked in the center spot. You have a cute happy-go-lucky little 16-year-old sister who is glad as can be to have her driver’s license. She is extremely responsible, so your mom trusts her with her car.

Your dad pulls up in his ginormous truck while she is trying to pull out. 

Really, his truck is ginormous. And it’s blocking her vision.

She backs out and finds that the mailbox is somehow underneath the car and she is on the mow strip.

How did that even happen?

The mailbox lays there for a few days. But the best part is, the mail man keeps delivering your mail. 

What a guy.

Dancing Bananas

I have had a request to post a certain story. Here goes. 

Imagine you are in your second semester of your freshman year of college. You go to a university that has 1.3 million students and about 10 parking spaces for said students. So you start your classes as early as possible so you can get a prime parking spot. Like 7.30. Yes. You ARE a smart freshman. After too many months of perfect attendance, you decide to skip your 7.30 math class so you won’t have to be on campus till 9.00. What you don’t realize is that EVERYONE thinks starting class at 9.00 is a good idea. You are no longer feeling like a smart freshman. You get off the freeway exit to find a gi-normous line of stop-and-crawl traffic. The roads are a little slick from the dust storms and rain the night before.

Your anxiety concerning being late starts making your stomach as tight as it’s ever been. At this rate, you are going to be late to class but you will have the buffest abs of your life. You finally reach a little shopping mall that means you are just about there. Traffic picks up. Your stomach relaxes a little. 

And there you see them: two dancing bananas standing on the side of the road just before the traffic light. 

You can’t peel your eyes off of them. They are just too weird. Dancing bananas? You let out a guffaw. 

You turn back to traffic.

But it’s too late. 

You slam on your brakes, but the road is slick and you were looking at the bananas for too long. Your car is a crumpled mess but still drive-able. You pull off to a side street where a young college student jumps out, takes a look at her bumper and says, “Wow, it didn’t do anything to my car! But let me get your information just in case. I have to go to class, I can’t miss it!” 

You give her your info and she takes off. You stare at your car in disbelief. The hood is crunched up to where you can’t see over the top. The headlights have popped out and are swinging sadly off to the sides. You definitely are going to miss class now.

You have to get home. So you unlatch the hood and flatten it out as best as you can. The lights are gonna have to hang out where they’re at. The 1.3 million students are all heading toward the school. But traffic going the other direction is clear. 

You start driving along and come to the first stop light. 

As soon as you stop, the hood flies up. 

You turn to the facing traffic and see fingers pointing straight at you and hear loud ringing laughter. 

Yep, that really just happened.

Your ingenuity comes up with a solution to the problem. You take the drawstring of your hoodie and tie the hood down to the latch.

You make it home without further incident.  

Turns out, your car is totaled.

You decide you really don’t care much for bananas.

Update on the Snickers

So, remember the Snickers you ate yesterday? Well you go home and tell your mom that someone has been going through the fridge and eating half of her candy bars.

She looks at you and laughs.

"Where did you get it?" she asks, still giggling.

"In the fridge outside," you reply.

"Well, after the quad-stake Olympics on Saturday I went around and gathered the extra candy and snacks and that must have been in the bag."

You don't know who ate the other half of your Snickers, but that doesn't disappoint you as much as feeling like you got punked by getting a bite sized Snickers.

Snickers

Imagine you are running late for work.

You rummage through the fridge to find something easy.

You grab a Snickers.

You get to work.

11:45 rolls around.

You get hungry. Why wait?

So you grab your Snickers.

Only to find out that it was already half eaten.

What was supposed to be your full size candy bar is now bite sized.

...And you're still hungry.

The Renaissance Pokemon Master

Ok, imagine you get set up on another date. He gets your number from a source that will remain nameless. He calls you that afternoon. You chat for a bit and let him know you are leaving for Mexico on Friday. He asks if you can go out on Thursday night. You say, “Sure.” He adds you to facebook that day. This is all going very fast. 

Thursday rolls around. He picks you up. “He seems very nice,” you think to yourself. You start chit chatting, when he reveals that he has some really interesting hobbies. “Ok,” you think to yourself, “I’ll bite.”  

“What are your hobbies?”

“Well, I make chainmail.”

Instantly, the image of chain mail letters you get in your inbox from your 10 year old sisters saying that if you break the chain, you will be cursed with seven years of bad luck pops into your head.

“What exactly is chain mail?”

He whips something out of his pocket. A key chain he made. “You know that chain armor knights used to wear? That’s chain mail.”

“Oh, how very interesting,” you say.

He gives you a not so quick run-down (he’s a chatter box) on what is involved in making a shirt, for instance. Apparently it’s not very expensive, but very time intensive. You’ve got to hand it to him. It is an interesting hobby, who else do you know that makes chain mail? No one.

He then starts telling you about how he likes to wear the shirt he has made to Ren Fests. You quickly deduce that Ren Fests are Renaissance Festivals. Yes, he is one of those running around campus wielding a sword and speaking in gothic letters. 

You say, “I like four wheeling.”

You get to the bowling alley. You cream him. But you couldn’t help it. He wasn’t very good and last year you were very seriously considering buying your own pair of bowling shoes to make your weekly outing more affordable. 

He wants to go for ice cream. So you drive down State Street looking for a place to stop. He spots a Costco(never mind the Coldstone across the street. Not to be high maintenance or anything. But Costco?). You get some ice cream and get on the subject of your favorite job.

He chimes in, surprise. “My favorite job was when I was 15. I worked at a game shop. But since I wasn’t 16 they wouldn’t let me work the registers. So basically, I got paid to learn how to play the games and teach them to patrons. I loved it! But the best part was this: This was during the Pokemon craze. Every authorized Pokemon dealer had to have a Pokemon Master. And I got to be the Pokemon Master. “

Mondays

Imagine you really want to leave work. You have 20 minutes left. You really really really want to leave. But you have to stay. It kinda sucks.

Mother's Day

Today I want you to imagine you were asked to speak in your parents' ward in honor of Mother's Day. They moved into the ward while you were in college, so you don't really know people there, though you have met several of them at various activities you have participated in. Your mom is the Young Women's president, and a real fixture in the ward. She has given many lessons and has had many, many meetings. Therefore, you know your status as a single is known amongst the members of the ward.

You start your talk.

"Good morning..." Your stomache feels like you are jumping on a really bouncy trampoline.

Then you launch into it. You explain that buying gifts for your mom is really hard for you. If she says she likes something, you file it away as a good gift idea, but the next thing you know she is strutting around the house wearing it, or serving food out of it, or whatever.

So you say this year you have a really good gift for her.

It's something she has wanted for several years.

She prays for it every day.

And she would be getting her spare bedroom back.

You look straight at your mom in the congregation and say, "Mom, I'm engaged."

She sits there stunned for a second. Her jaw drops.

The congregation gasps in delight.

And then you say, "Just kidding. I'm not. You know I'm not. I'm not even dating anyone. But happy mother's day."

Ok, stepping out of the scenario, it was a riot. Seriously. You should have heard the bishopric behind me, "Did you see the look on Malia's face?!" It was classic. I wish you all could have been there. Happy Mother's Day!

The last few weeks

It’s been an incredible few weeks. I just love my family so much, and it all has to do with them. To start off, my little baby Chinese fatness sister Shawna graduated from BYU with a Bachelors of Science in Public Health. I can’t believe she’s old enough to have done that! I am so proud of her. She’s so ambitious and it makes me prouder than a peacock’s tail feathers. 

After that, my sister-in-law Courtney went through the temple. I’m still emotional thinking about it.  It was so wonderful. I love to go to the temple. It’s one of my favorite places. I’m so excited to have more family able to go, especially since it was in preparation for another person to be sealed to my family. I seriously have the greatest family! I am so happy for Courtney and that she got to go through the temple and that I was able to be a part of it. It helped me to feel closer to my family on both sides of the veil. 

The following Thursday, Paul and Courtney were able to be sealed in the Draper temple. I am so proud of them! I am so happy for them. I really couldn’t be any happier! I am so excited that they are now sealed. It’s such a great blessing! Really, I have the greatest family!

Then this last weekend, I headed down to Hurricane on Friday night to watch Alana run a half marathon. I still get emotional thinking about this one too. Last year Alana was bed ridden and I was afraid I was going to lose another sister. It was a real possibility. Before she was hospitalized, she couldn’t even walk to her work a block away. To see her come running down the street at mile 12 this weekend was a real miracle to me. She ran it in 2 hours and 3 minutes, 12 minutes faster than her goal time. She did such a great job and worked so hard. I am so proud of her! I am so grateful that she has a healthier body and that she can do the things that she wants now.

Anyway, that’s pretty much what has been going on around here. Love ya.