A Normal Day

7 Dec. 2012

Tonight was hilarious. I’ll start at the beginning of my day, mmmk? So, I woke up this morning with only one of my diamond earrings in my ear. That got me out of bed fast and I definitely didn’t accidentally sleep just a little too late like I normally do. (Oh, and let me note that not even a month ago, my dad decided to sell the earrings on my ears. Of course he felt bad about it and replaced them with an even bigger pair of diamonds… bigger than I’ve ever worn before). So, needless to say, I was a little worried about one being lost in the clothing that needs to be put away/letters from Chris/blankets mess on my bed. I went to the bathroom first, so I could actually concentrate on anything other than my bladder about to burst. As I peed, I worried that the diamond could have been stuck to my PJs (and possibly fallen in the toilet when I sat down). So of course I looked through my own urine before flushing the toilet. TMI? If so, then sorry. So anyway, then I went back to my bed on the search for the diamond. I pulled my blanket up and saw the back of the earing laying… lying… laying… not sure which word to use, but anyway, the back of the earring was there. So I was like, “Okay, that was easy, the front can’t be that far away.” I turned my head and there it was, neatly placed on my nightstand next to my bed. What a miracle! As soon as I saw it there, I suddenly remembered what seemed like a dream just a few hours before. I had woken up in the middle of the night (in what I thought was a dream at the moment), felt that my earring was off, reached around the bed in the dark with my eyes shut, found the earring, and set it on the nightstand for morning when I would have the mental capacity to put the earring back on. So, it turns out, I knew where it was the whole time. Or at least my subconscious mind did.

So, then I said a prayer thanking Father in Heaven for helping me to find that small earring (except, like I said, it was kind of a big one). And then I took a shower and went downstairs and contemplated what to eat for breakfast for about 15 minutes. Nothing looked yummy? But could I eat nothing? No. Okay then. Eggs? Yogurt? No Cinnamon Toast Crunch, so is it even worth it to eat anything else? No. But I’m hungry. Okay, eggs. Scrambled. In a tortilla… a breakfast burrito! So I made that real fast and then hurried off to work. This is the story of my life ever since my mom told me that it wasn’t healthy eating so much Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Work was good. Uneventful yet busy. Oh, but I’ll pause my day here to tell you about my day at work yesterday. That one was indeed eventful. It was CRAZY busy. It seemed like every Mormon in the OC was at there shopping for Christmas presents. And none of them knew what they wanted, so of course, they came to us employees for advice. So I was running around non-stop, which I really don’t mind. I like being busy. About half-way through the day, I was behind the counter checking people out (not to see how hot they were, but so they could pay and get on home). Well, one lady asked me about a Christmas CD as she checked out and wanted to know if it was worth buying. I told her I listened to it all the time on my mission and that I absolutely loved it, which is true (David Archuleta Christmas CD). But that’s beside the point. When I mentioned a mission, I saw a spark in her eyes. She started to ask me more questions. Where did I serve? Spanish speaking? Did I like it? Was I dating a boy before I left? (Woah, we’re getting personal here!) Did he wait for me? What’s happening now? Are we still together? Why did you decide to do that? There were a few people waiting in line behind her, but I wasn’t too worried about her many questions since I was answering them as I checked her out and she had lots of stuff, so I still wasn’t done checking her out. Phil, on the register next to me, couldn’t check anybody out because of a lady determined to use a gift card with no barcode or way of redeeming it. Debbie, our supervisor was helping that situation. That’s not the point. The point is that I had to hurry so I could check out the rest of the customers.

“So, your boyfriend waited for you?”

“Well, he left also to serve a mission. He’s still gone. He’ll be back in January.” I explained quickly.

“So what’s going to happen when he gets back? Are you going to… you know… continue to…” She couldn’t find the words. I decided to help her out.

“Yes, we plan on dating again. I think the sparks will still be there.”

“Oh.” She said and looked disappointed with my answer. Well, that was a different response. Here’s the normal response of people: “No way! That’s so cool that you guys both went on missions and waited for each other! So are you gonna get married?! How exciting!!!”

So yeah, I was a bit curious why this lady was asking so many questions and why she seemed so very interested in the life of a random girl behind the counter checking her out of the bookstore. And to add to my interest, I wanted to know why she seemed so disappointed in me. Or was it in me? Okay, so maybe I started scanning her stuff a little more slowly, just so I could hear her story. Maybe not, I’m not sure. It’s definitely a possibility. Somehow, her story came out. All of it. Her son was 30. He had dated a nice young lady for 9 years. This woman (the woman in the bookstore) really liked her son’s longtime girlfriend. But they had broken up just a month before. Now he was dating a 23 year old girl who was about to leave for a mission. I could hear the anger in her voice as she spoke of this girl. “She’s playing with his heart! Why would she date him if she’s leaving for a year and a half? They’ve only been together for a month!” And then she started crying. I don’t know what I did or said at this point, but this poor woman somehow felt that she could trust me enough to cry to me and tell me the deepest worries of her heart. I asked more about her son and she told me he was a good boy. Active in the Church. But I think she really wanted him married. To the ex-girlfriend. Like 5 years ago. I told her that he would make the right decision (of whether to wait for this girl or not). She didn’t seem comforted, but she did seem calmer. Maybe because she got out her thoughts or maybe because she, too, felt that everything would be okay. So she cried and told me more about how she was feeling. The lady in line behind her was at least 15 feet back and I don’t know if she could hear anything this woman was saying to me. I highly doubt she knew the woman was crying, or else she wouldn’t have said was she said.

She rolled her eyes, moved her hand in a circular motion as if to say to hurry up the process and said, “Could you speed it up a little? I have a back problem.” I’m sure I looked embarrassed. I really wanted to tell this waiting lady to go take a seat on the comfy couch and that I’d call her up when I was done with this customer, but I thought maybe my supervisor would overhear me and think I were rude. So instead, I just looked blankly at her, and then back at the crying lady and I think I said again, “Everything will be okay.” The crying lady looked confused and said, “Did she just tell you to hurry up?” I didn’t want to say yes, but then again, I didn’t want to lie. So I kind of just nodded. I told the crying lady her total and reassured her yet again that everything would work out. I so badly wanted to say, “Hey, just go wait at the door and when I’m done checking out this next grumpy lady, I will come over there and we can talk and you can pour out your soul to me.” But I just couldn’t get myself to say something so very strange to an absolute stranger. So she left with tears in her eyes and all I said was, “have a good day!” Oh it was a horrible feeling. Then Mrs. Impatient came up. I began to ring her up. “I want that bowl over there,” she pointed to a bright yellow, beautiful bowl on a high shelf that she couldn’t reach, but that I probably could.

“Mmm k,” I said. And I went to get it. Then I went to scan it. No barcode. I looked for a SKU number. No number. Great, I thought, this is just what we need right now. I hurried to look for the bowl in the computer system, but found nothing. The impatience of this lady was not improving. She babbled on about how she was in a hurry and just wanted to get out of the store. My pride didn’t allow me to say sorry just yet, only to say that we were really busy with Christmas so near and that I couldn’t ring up the bowl with no SKU. I felt just as annoyed (by the fact that this woman had interrupted a poor, crying lady) as she did (by the fact that she was not getting in and out of that bookstore fast enough). What I failed to recognize was that maybe Mrs. Impatient was struggling deeply with one of her own burdens and just never got the opportunity to let it out, at least not in that moment. I eventually found the SKU for the yellow bowl and I think I also apologized to the lady for the long wait. She left in a bad mood. And I stayed at work in a bad mood… for a few seconds at least… until I was rushing to help another customer again. With lots to do, I soon forgot about the bad mood situation. I was going to the back to find a book. To the computer to see if we had something in stock. To the register to check a price. Back to the back to find another book. Answering questions. To the back again. To the phone to give someone directions. Then to a friendly customer with lots more requests and lots of questions. But that’s never a problem. That’s why I’m there! So I answered. I found. I looked. I helped. I tried at least. And then I rung her up. She thanked me over and over again for helping her and “running around and finding everything” she had requested. I liked doing it for her. She had a gracious attitude and it made me feel productive and useful. Then she bought me a truffle to say thank you. I tried to refuse, but you can only refuse so many times without offending. That made my day. I felt so grateful to work with and work for such nice people. She was an answer to my unspoken prayer. No more bad mood.

So, that was all yesterday. Back to my uneventful day today. I went to work. Then after work I went to my sister Kelly’s house to help her clean. Things go back to a normal level of eventfulness now. She was having the missionaries and a family they’re teaching over for dinner and wanted her house to look… not how it normally looks (which is really messy). So we cleaned for a few hours and I bossed the kids around giving them chores to do. I was going to stay for dinner, but my brother Ryan texted me and told me that Penelope (his daughter) wanted me to come to their ward Christmas party that night because she would be performing. So of course I said yes, especially with everything Ryan, Penelope, and Victoria are going through right now (divorce). They need all the support they can possibly get. And I want them to know that I am here for them. I want them to know they have an advocate. Of course they ALWAYS have Christ. But I think Christ would want me to be there too.

And boy, am I grateful I went to that Christmas dinner tonight. It was absolutely hilarious. All the kids preformed something. The Boy Scouts, a few songs using metal chimes (each kid had his own note). The Activity Days girls, a dance. That’s when Penelope performed. The Young Women, a Christmas song sung to their new, made-up lyrics. The Young Men, a Christmas song with each young man on a different instrument. And lastly, the junior primary, the story of Christ’s birth… the Christmas story… the Nativity. And it was the story as I’ve never seen it before. It started with all the kids dressed as Angels, except for a few. There were 2 narrators, a Mary, and a Joseph. The narrators mumbled into the microphone as little kids usually do, reading the story of Mary and Joseph. And they paused every couple of sentences so the other kids could act out what they spoke. Everything looked very nice. All the kid angels sitting in a very organized fashion in the corner. And the 2 narrators, dressed nicely, in the opposite corner with their microphone. The adults off to the side, hardly being seen. And then one narrator told the part of the story when an angel came to Mary to tell her that she was pregnant. When the primary boy dressed as an angel came onto the stage, he too looked very nice in his costume. But he clumsily scurried into the middle of the stage while dragging a chair behind him. He tripped over his chair and pulled it to where Mary was standing. He loudly set the chair down and then stood up on the chair to be tall like an angel and started to say his line, “Mary, you’re going to have a b—.” He couldn’t seem to finish his sentence without laughing. He said it maybe 5 more times, each time laughing before he could say the word “baby.” Finally, an adult came over to him with a piece of paper and whispered for him to read his line. The boy said into the microphone, “I know what to say, I just can’t say it,” and then he laughed again. The cutest giggle that got the whole crowd laughing too. “I can’t help it.” This poor kid was trying so hard, but he just couldn’t say his line without laughing. He finally got it out with a lot of laughter (from both him and the crowd). Then the narrator said that the angel went to Joseph too. The same problem occurred when this boy had to tell Joseph that Mary was going to have a ba—. Again, he couldn’t get it out. I sat in the front row, laughing and laughing. The boy’s dad was beside me, videotaping (do we use that phrase still? Videotaping? It was actually recording on his iPhone. Same thing, right?) and his mother sat behind me rolling her eyes at her silly son. The whole situation was just hilarious. Next came the part where Mary and Joseph go to a stable and Jesus is born. Mary and Joseph went and stood under the stable. Then the narrator said, “There was a cow.” The second narrator simply said, “Moo” with absolutely no animation in her voice.

“And there was a chicken.”

“Bock bock.” Totally monotone.

“And there was a sheep.”

“Baaaaahhh.”

Then, as directed by the adult leaders, all the little angels went and stood under the stable. Then the stable fell. The roof just dropped right on top of all the kids. The whole crowd gasped. The kids were fine. They were mostly giggling. The show must go on. But the kids were so distracted that nobody could say their lines. The whole thing was just so funny. Maybe you had to be there. I dunno? But just try to imagine it, because if you can see it the way I saw it, you will be laughing for hours! Do you think it’s as funny as I do? I just can’t stop laughing about it. So there’s my entertaining day for you.