Stooping

Kitty and I encountered our little neighbor (you might remember him from this post) on our way to get John from school. As I was thinking to myself, "Gee, Kitty is taller than him... I wonder if he has a kidney problem like Emmanuel Lewis and Gary Coleman..."

I hear him say to her, "John's mean."

I turned, looked him square in the eye and said, "No. You're mean."

Then I practically stepped over him and went to pick up my smiling boy who was proud to report another good day.

People watching

I like to watch people. I am an observer. Sometimes my thoughts about them and their stories are harmless, other times not so much. The airport is one of the best places to watch and listen to people.

The other night I was waiting for my flight and an overweight man in sweatpants and slippers walked up slowly pushing a luggage cart with nothing but an old briefcase on it. He plopped down a few seats away from me and proceeded to cough, snurfle, and pass gas. I was disgusted. He had a cell phone and was apparently trying to call someone, "HELLO? HELLO? ARE YOU THERE?" When the call finally went through I heard him say, "Yeah, I'm fine, I just HAD to get out of that house..."

A few minutes later an overweight woman in her 40s was wheeled up in a wheelchair. "I can walk from here," she said with an exhausted sigh. She remained in the chair.

Our flight got cancelled and so here I am waiting again. The overweight woman is back. I have listened to her make at least three calls since she was wheeled over. Apparently she has been quite sick with a cold. She mentions it throughout every conversation. She also explained that she fell down two steps yesterday but did not file an incident report because she did not want to go to the hospital. She just walked slowly by and I noticed she has a brace on her wrist too. She has a hiking pole but does not limp.

I listen to conversations around me. I look at what people are wearing, eating, and reading. An older woman near me is reading a paperback with a homemade quilted book cover on it. The tanned young woman in the strapless tube dress has to keep adjusting the top, seems super comfortable. An elderly woman is wearing a corsage. A business man makes a phone call to ask, "Did you ever decide what to do about Brad?"

Mostly I am just annoyed by the overweight lady with the hiking stick and wrist brace.

I'm a quitter and a cheat.

There have been a few times in my life when I have realized something about myself that was so apparent it's a wonder I never realized it before. Like the time in college I decided I really did not care for bell peppers. I had lived through my entire childhood thinking I had to eat them-- imagine the freedom when I finally admitted out loud: "I do NOT like bell peppers." Ahh... the liberation.

Recently I have come to another such conclusion and I am ready to say it out loud *ahem*, "I am a quitter." When it gets even a smidge too hard my first instinct is to quit or find a way to cheat.

This is nothing new. When I was in ski school at the age of 6 I quit. I pretended to go down with a sprained ankle and sat in the lodge all day while everyone else learned to ski.

In high school I would lightly write all of my French vocabulary words in pencil on my test "cover sheet". In Shakespearean Lit. I would write the Sonnet we were supposed to memorize a few pages back in my notebook and pretend to write it during the quiz just to tear out the pre-written one to turn in.

In college I never even counted the number of laps I had run on our fit test and just stopped when it looked like all the other runners were finishing up. They were suspiciously more out of breath than I was, even though I thought I might die.

Another time in college I made up names, dates, cities, etc. just to get my big genealogy project turned in on time. I didn't know the teacher was sending the disk to Salt Lake to be downloaded into the main church archive. I know I will be spending the eternities paying for that little slip up.

Once when writing a final paper in my Near Eastern studies class I decided I was sick of writing and just stopped. I turned it in without finishing it. I knew the professor probably didn't read the papers that closely anyway. I was right and still got a B in the class.

I decided to go to graduate school so that I could have a "valid" excuse to quit my job in Kanab.

I was not so secretly relieved when I got pregnant with John because it meant I didn't have to keep working forever.

I could go on but... my name is Alyssa and I am a quitter.

Random questions

Last night when Jared told me Corey Haim died I asked him which Corey that was, the dark haired one or the light haired one. He just looked at me and said they both have dark hair. I beg to differ. Clearly Corey Haim had lighter hair than Corey Feldman. Right? Isn't that a perfectly adequate way of telling the two apart?

I then asked him if it was the one that hung out with Michael Jackson or the one that was in Licensed to Drive. That seemed to make more sense and we were finally able to move on.

The other thing I want to know is how long is it going to take for this 3D movie fad to play itself out? I can see that in 15 years our kids are going to reminisce about the period of time when every freaking movie was in 3D and how retarded that was.

And really, local news drives me crazy. Why did they interview the semi driver who couldn't even speak English about the road being closed? Could they not find a driver who could form a sentence? Why does the news agree to do stories that are shameless promotions for a particular product or service? Why?

Why do some overly confident children bug me? Why do they feel no fear when approaching me with questions, requests, demands, etc.? They should be timid and should know not to question me further when I tell them no or roll my eyes and sigh before I answer. But if they are too shy and seem to nearly cry in my presence that is just as bad. Just to be safe, keep your children away from me. Except on Sundays, I love the Primary kids on Sundays, I promise.

That's all. What do you think? Seriously, I want to know.

Kitty's dream

This afternoon Kitty was telling me about the dreams she had last night.

"... then I had another one but I only remember one thing... and it's too dirty to tell you."

That got my attention.

"What was it about?"

"I can't tell you."

"Was it like you got in the mud?"

"No. Please don't tell anyone I had a dirty dream, it's too embarrassing."

"Don't worry I won't tell anyone," (except those who read my blog).

"Well, it was dirty and that's all I remember."

Of course I couldn't let it go...

Finally she said, "Ok, fine. I had a dirty face and lots of people saw it."

She was right, that is an embarrassing dirty dream.

Yucky.

Do you know what sucks?

Carrying a bowl of hot dog and cottage cheese throw-up to the toilet to dump it and accidentally spilling it all over the floor, including all over your slippers.

Are you vomiting yet?

I almost was. Lucky thing Jared hooked me up with a mask, some Mentholatum under my nose, and gloves (this was his get-up when he had to change John's diapers-- a story for another day). Lucky thing for him he chose to be the comforting father while I cleaned up my mess.

It was actually a dinner John liked, poor kid.