A Rather Strange Occurrence...

So...it's a tradition in our little family to finish all of our Christmas shopping before Halloween. It's all due to Ty. He's the guy that's always on top of things around here. He thinks ahead. He plans stuff, and he's super organized. I am SOOO very grateful for this, because although I do have many fabulous qualities, being a super-organized planner is not really my thing. But if you want to know THE RIGHT WAY to load my dishwasher, or THE ONLY WAY to organize my silverware drawer, I'm your girl.

Anyway, this year being like most others (despite the fact that my classes are keeping me crazy busy with massive amounts of studying), we went...well...Christmas shopping. (Shocking, right?)

We went to Salt Lake, to the Gateway, in fact. There, I hoped to find all of the things that I was looking for at the time: A gift for my mom (failed--I ended up finding something elsewhere), a gift for my sister (failed--didn't have what we wanted, had to get it online), and certain elements for my chosen Halloween costume for this year (found about half of what I needed--had to go to two other stores to find the rest). I also wanted to make my traditional homage to my favorite store: Lucky Brand. I'm incredibly obsessed with their fabulous, high quality, leather handbags. In the end, I actually ended up getting a new one. It's so pretty. So very, very pretty...

Ahem...er...moving on...

Anyhoo, in our time at the Gateway, I noticed a pattern. A very unusual pattern.

I'm used to seeing a bunch of faces at malls and other such shopping centers, you expect such things, right? But this time...well...about 75% of the faces I saw were...Asian. I mean, authentic, from Asia, don't speak English Asian. Groups and groups of them. It was very unusual--and that's not even the strangest part of the day.

While we were waiting outside a shop for Ty to finish up a purchase and join us, the chiddlers and I were just sitting on a bench. Well, to be more accurate, CT was sitting on the bench, and AJ was climbing all over it while I stood there and worried that she would fall off and crack her head open. You know, the usual.

Then...about three Asian women stopped and one of them started rummaging around in her bag. She pulled out a cell phone and started fiddling with it. She handed it to one of her friends, and then looked at me and gestured toward AJ. Her meaning was clear: "May I take a picture with her?" I nodded, and the girl sat by my daughter, had her friend take a couple of pictures, and then nodded to me and put the phone back in her bag. All of the women fawned over AJ for a couple of seconds, one of them just touched her chin with her finger tips and smiled at her. Then they all walked away just as Ty was joining us.

I mean, I know my kids are adorable. Irresistibly so, actually. But strangers wanting photos with one of them was rather unexpected. Especially since they pretty much ignored my son throughout the whole incident. I considered the idea that she was wearing an Angry Birds t-shirt...but I can't be sure that that was the reason. At least, that's the theory I presented to CT as an explanation.

Oh well. Now I have an interesting story to tell, I guess.

Oh, and here's a picture I took in Barnes and Noble of what has to be THE best book title I've EVER seen. (I burst out laughing aloud. A lady was passing by and gave me the old "I'm totally judging you right now" look. Screw her. It's not my fault she has no sense of humor!)

PS: We did drive past the big arena in town, and saw that there was some huge Nuskin/electronics-type convention in town. Ty saw most of the Asian visitors at the mall wearing badges for it, so that's more than likely the reason they were all in Salt Lake that weekend. Just in case you were wondering.

Tough Love for a Friend...

Okay, I've got a friend. (I know! Shocking, right?)

I've known her since Junior High School, but we didn't really know each other or become friends until the end of our Sophomore year of High School. From then on, she's been my best friend--my only close friend, really. I have a lot of people that I consider friends, but none of them have really reached the inner sanctum of my trust. That is not an easy thing to do with me. There are very few people who I trust implicitly: My parents, my husband, and my friend, "Callie". 

We have one of those friendships where we can go months at a time without actually seeing each other, but when we get together and hang out, it's like no time has passed at all. Callie is really funny and sweet. She's smart, too...in all things but one: Her dating choices. 

For years I've wondered why my fabulous friend hasn't been in a really serious relationship with anyone. She dates, a lot, but every single one of these guys has "douche bag" stamped plainly on his forehead. She'll show me pictures that these guys have posted on their Facebook walls, and I just can't help but shake my head and say: "Seriously? This guy has 'Asshat' written all over him!" Whenever I ask Callie why she even goes out with these people, she says "But he's so pretty!" While she's only half kidding when she says this, I know she's not that shallow. She wouldn't date a guy based solely on his looks. However, I do have to wonder what does keep her coming back to this same old routine over and over again, especially when she's been burned so many times in the past. 

She came over to my house last night, and we hung out for a while, and we had a brief conversation about this. And then Callie looked at me and said: "I just can't help being attracted to these guys, and I really can't figure out why. Why do I do it?" It wasn't a rhetorical question, she really wanted an answer. At the time, I didn't have a good answer. But having thought about things a bit more, I think I've figured it out. I just don't think she's going to like hearing it very much. 

Callie is a wonderful person, (she wouldn't be my close friend if she wasn't.) But she is very hard on herself, seeing all of the mistakes she's made in her life, and sometimes she feels like she won't really be able to live them down. Because of this, I truly believe that Callie is attracted to these guys, not only because they're physically attractive to her, but because she knows they're douche bags. She knows they're only going to use her, try to sleep with her, and then disappear when she says "No"--randomly reappearing when they need something from her, or want to have another go at getting her into bed. 

I, as her friend who loves her to pieces, honestly think that Callie seeks out these guys because she knows that they'll make her feel good for a little while and then walk away--and she honestly believes that that is the best she deserves. So she puts up walls, and so she won't have to get really close to any of these guys, she deliberately chooses the ones that she knows aren't going to care. She doesn't think any of the good guys will be interested in her once they find out about all of her past mistakes, so she's mentally "taken them off the list" of people she's able to date--thus avoiding the pain of giving her heart to someone, and being rejected.

And guess what! Because of this attitude, these shallow, douche-y guys seem to be able to sense it like some sort of radar, and swoop right in so they can waste her time for a few days. She pretends she doesn't care, but she can't hide from me. I can spot fake from a mile away, especially when it's coming from her, and I can tell you, this pattern is affecting her much more deeply than she's letting on. 

Anyway, this rambling is just the kind of crap that randomly pops into my head from time to time as I mull things over. Don't worry, I will definitely be talking to Callie about this stuff in person. However, I wanted to clear my head a bit, and get my thoughts into some concrete form, so I can express them more clearly. 

Thanks for bearing with me, Internet. Good night. 

True Confessions of a Truck Racist...

I hate semi trucks. They're huge, menacing, and make me ridiculously nervous whenever I have to drive behind or next to them. I live in constant fear that a freak gust of wind will come blowing over the freeway one day and push one of those monsters over onto me and my poor little minivan. Irrational? Maybe.

But then I actually have to drive next to one and then I think NO! Absolutely not! That thing is going to kill me!

I know that those huge trucks serve a good, useful, even vital purpose. I know that they're used to cart vital supplies cross country, there and back again, as the Hobbits would say. But can't they drive on their own roads? Or during a time of day that's NOT when I'm on the road? Maybe it's my natural paranoia kicking in, but I just can't trust them! It's not the drivers--mostly. I know a few things about what most of those drivers are like. I just don't trust that crazy, ginormous machine barreling down the freeway at 70 miles an hour.

I am not entirely ignorant of this work field. No, I've never actually driven one of those hulking beasts, but I worked in a call center for Flying J's in-house gas card company, TCH (before the company went bankrupt). I took inbound calls from truck stop cashiers, the truck drivers themselves, AND from their bosses--known as carriers. I took care of various customer service calls. Authorizing gas purchases, verifying card numbers, and fixing any bugs or problems that came up. Most of the carriers were really pleasant to deal with--mainly because I was very good at not screwing up and fixed their problems the first time every time. The cashiers were mostly polite. We had a few grouches calling in, and there were one or two who were so nice they could make my day when they called in.

However, the truck drivers were their own spectrum of humanity. We had the quiet ones, who just called in and got their authorization numbers and that was all I ever heard from them. We had the lonely ones, those who spent WAY too much time in those trucks and were in desperate need of another human to talk to for as long as they could keep me on the phone. Then there were the ones that were genuinely kind and friendly, but didn't overstep any boundaries of appropriate conversation.

Then there were the select few who seriously creeped all of us customer service girls out. There was one who always made sure he got one specific girl on the phone every time he called. Her name was Anne. I was on a training call for one of these incidents, so I was able to hear everything this guy said--though he couldn't hear me. This was a good thing, since I was seriously freaking out. This guy had figured out the general location of the main office where we worked, and kept inviting Anne out for dinner. He said: "I'm going to be in your area this week, do you like The Olive Garden? You should meet me there..." This was not his first attempt to get Anne to meet up with him, and this call was the last straw for her. She was terrified, but didn't know what to do. Finally our supervisor, who knew about the situation, saw what was going on and took the phone from her. He spoke: "This is Kyle, can I help you?" And the guy hung up. After that, Kyle convinced Anne to go to the person who took care of such situations, as as far as I know, she took care of it from there.

I had a guy who decided that he needed to creep me out too, for a while. Since we always answered with our name: "TCH, this is Candice, how can I help you?" This guy said: "Candice, what I nice name. You know there's a song with your name in it." The first time he said this, I just said something neutral but friendly, like: "Oh really? That's interesting." And then turned the conversation back to the customer service call. But the more he called in, the more he would bring up this song, he even called once just to play that song for me over the phone. I didn't recognize it, but then he came back on the phone and said: "Yeah, I'll just put that song on in my truck and play it over and over again and think about you."

This was the final straw for me. I reported him to the appropriate people and apparently he was a multiple offender, so apparently he got fired. I didn't even feel bad about it.

Anyway, this has gone off on a bit of a tangent. The point here is, I can't help but be completely distrustful of those 18-wheeled trucks. Maybe that makes me a jerk, but I'm pretty sure I'm not the only person who's a jerk about this. Those things are scary! The end.