Thursday, June 10, 2010

Don't make me bust a cap.

Today we had a fairly large volunteer group from a well-known hotel chain that will remain nameless helping us out. Some stayed in the warehouse to work, and some went and did senior food box deliveries.

Three of the food box deliverers were girls in their late twenties with fairly high-maintenance appearances. They came in late on the tail end of the instructions, so we tried to re-explain the instructions to them but they weren't listening because they were too busy visiting with their coworkers.

They returned from their deliveries half an hour before anyone else did, and the following conversation ensued:

Me: Hey, you're back already! How'd it go?

Oblivious Girl: It was gree-eeat! But some of the seniors said they usually give them more food than that. Some of them were pretty grumpy about it.

Me: Oh. Well, you grabbed the bags from the fridge and freezer too, right?

O.G.: Yep!

Me: Well, they usually just get their box and then a fridge and...

O.G.: Oh, we were supposed to take a box?

Me: (hoping she's joking) ...Uhm, you didn't take any food boxes?

O.G.: Well no one told us to.

Me: (looking outside at the pallet full of food boxes right next to the bags they took) Well...

O.G.: And by the way, the seniors weren't that excited to visit with us or anything. You should probably not tell people to visit with the seniors because they were pretty ungrateful about what we were giving them.

Me: Well, that's because they were expecting... Nevermind. How many clients did you deliver to?

O.G.: Fifteen.

Me: (inwardly groaning that thankfully only came out as a sigh) Okay. Well, these seniors are also going to need their box, so if you want to load those up and head back out there...

O.G.: Today?

Me: Yeah, you guys still have an hour with us and they're all in the same complex. It won't take you that long.

O.G.: (glancing at her boss out of the corner of her eye and seeing that he had heard the whole thing) Well, yeah I guess.

Me: Good. (pointing) The boxes are waiting out there, you can just load them up at that dock.

The girls turn around and head toward the door. Just as they leave I hear one girl say to the other, "I thought we were DONE with the west side."

In one quick motion I impulsively grabbed the staple gun that was in front of me on my desk, pointed it at the door that was just about to close behind them, and fired three staples across the room in their direction. Nothing hit them, and it wasn't meant to. (Mostly). But I turned around to see two of my coworkers staring at me.

I sat the staple gun down. "They insulted the west side," I explained.

"Oh." Then they went back to work.

That's all the explanation they needed, because they know me pretty well by now.

Thursday, June 3, 2010

A long one... go grab a snack.

I'm sure motherhood and wifedom has joys that I won't comprehend until they happen to me.

I'm positive that those roles at moments will fill my eternal soul with absolute joy in its purest form.

I'm confident that it is through the building of families that one can fulfill their purpose on earth unlike any other accomplishment can.

...And I'm not being facetious.

But it is definitely hard for my mortal mind to understand how there is even MORE room in my heart for those future joys, when it feels like every single corner of it flows over with happiness when I get to do things like this:


I am in absolute love with the desert; particularly the red rocks of Southern Utah. So imagine how happy I was to go with some people to hike around Zion National Park over the weekend.


Also...

Seven of the eight girls I went with were unknown to me prior to the trip. Hanging out with a whole lot of girls hasn't usually been my idea of a good time, especially if I don't know their personalities and how much crazy they might have in them. Believe me, there's lots of crazy to be had.

But, the longer I am in the land of the singles and the more I find the gender odds not in my favor, I've been forced to spend more time with more of my kind.


And more often than not, I'm not sorry.

There are some remarkable young(ish) women out there, and spending time learning from them definitely enriches my sojourn in singleness. At least in my wanderings I'm in excellent company.

Speaking of wanderings, guess what time of year it is?

That's right! June 1st happened this week!

Long-time followers will remember that every June 1st for the last several years I have set out to do something I've never done before. These activities cover quite the spectrum, and you can read about past ones in this post.

This year it fell on a Tuesday, and so I convinced my good friend Jenny to take the extra day off with me and head down to Manti.

We first attended a temple session, since I've been to Manti several times without attending the temple. Then, we attempted to go geocaching.

Since I had never before geocached (is that a verb?), I started out simple with a well-established geocaching adventure at Palisade State Park just south of Manti. I did underestimate how long it would take us to figure out the GPS gadget, so when we finally did we didn't have too long to explore. We did find two of the caches though before we called it quits.


And lastly, a couple of plot-altering events are on the horizon, including a possible job change at work and a possible summer theater opportunity. Stay tuned!

Okay, very lastly I have a quick story. We have a group of special needs kids that come in to volunteer once a week or so. One of them came in wearing a pair of women's sunglasses that were huge and bejeweled with diamonds. He pointed to them, said "Hey, I'm like Elvis!", and proceeded to do Elvis legs and sing something along the lines of "Hunka hunka burning love."

It's among the reasons that part of me hopes I don't get the new position at work.