I went to the mall today*, primarily to pay off my dress**, but of course I wandered around for at least two hours going into stores, leaving, going back, walking back and forth as is my custom. I really like the mall. I think this is partly because during most of my growing up years the mall was a few hours away, and I only had Wal-Mart and JC Penney during the inbetween times. Whatever it is, I still really like the mall and it's always a little bit exciting to go. But today I decided there are a few things that I don't really like, and even though these things can happen at other store-type places, I encounter them mostly at the mall. Let's review.
- Interested employees. I can appreciate employees when they ring me up or when they organize things in a pleasing fashion, but mostly I want them to leave me be. The worst place this can happen is at the underwear store. Is it just me or is it a little uncomfortable to have a stranger hovering about when you are rifling through the clearance underwears?
- The pushy booth workers. There's nothing better than someone just sitting at their kiosk reading a book and completely ignoring me. I don't want a new cell phone plan and I don't care about having fingernails with the sheen of a newly waxed floor. On the other hand, the Hickory Farms people may stop me as often as they please because I'm always in need of beef stick and smoked cheese.
I guess there wasn't much of a point for this blog. Just a few random things that caused me minor vexation for a few minutes. I still like the mall.
*I started this blog on Monday and finished it on Tuesday, so technically I should say yesterday.
** I would love to post pictures of the ensemble, but a certain Intended frequents this blog so you will have to wait until after August 15th.
Dear roommate:
I know we haven't known each other long. Really, we don't know each other at all because you are never home and I'm never home. I'm always asleep in my saggy bed by the time you get home. I like being asleep. It's relaxing and a good thing to do in the night times. So when you come in in the wee hours of the morning and turn the light on, it really angers me in my half-awake, irrational state. I'd really like to get a little more uninterrupted sleep before your crazy alarm goes off with the singing and the sitar. Plus, I don't want to despise you because I don't even know you, but at 5:30 this morning I did feel a little twinge of loathing mixed with my vexation.
The hall light is your friend and mine.
Sincerely,
Me
It's story time again and the topic isn't really anymore pleasant than fire. So many of you faithful readers have no experience with the thing I'm going to discuss--demonstrated by your confused looks and use of the phrase "A what?" I feel compelled to enlighten you. Or I should say, I feel compelled to make you all share my dread. Plus, these stories are pretty good (though maybe not as good as the spider babies, you be the judge).
The subject of today's stories is camel hoppers. Technically they are camel crickets, but they were called camel hoppers in Alabama, where I was first exposed. And so their name has continued. Let's take a look:
(Words cannot express how horrifying it was to have a whole page of those pictures on Google. Augh.)
Here are a few facts you should know about hoppers. First off, I love grasshoppers. They are charming! Camel hoppers are like horrible, mutated grasshoppers that were experimented on by a shady government organization. Their weird hunched backs remind me of aliens (partly because of a dream). They jump crazy high and really spastically--you never know which way they're going! They get really big. They're ugly and foul. Also, they're tough to kill because they've got steroid-enhanced exoskeletons. Now, let us continue.
I've had several duels with hoppers. I'm not really good at killing bugs, I will admit. I often use shoes and I jump around a lot, but I'll do it. But hoppers are hard because of all those reasons I mentioned, mainly the jumping. Here are two of my battles:
The time: Several summers ago. The place: the hallway outside my room. It's mid-morning. I start walking down the hall. There's a hopper, just chilling there on the floor. I confess I hollered for my Mom but she was in the shower. What was I supposed to do? Well, I got my Mom's math book* that was handy. And I threw it at the hopper. I missed. I got it again. This process continued until I finally landed that book smack on top of that thing. But I knew its crazy exoskeleton had protected it and I had to do something else. So I stood on that book. For a while. My Mom wasn't really impressed with my tactics, but that may be because I let her clean it up.
The time: two summers ago. The place: the hallway between the laundry room and the garage door. I was going to go to Girls' Camp in a few weeks and I had a case of water bottles sitting near the garage door for that occasion. Around this time I did some laundry and I saw a real beast of a hopper skulking around the freezer, but I just hurried out and forgot about him. The morning I was supposed to leave, he came back, as big as ever and I had to do something about him. So I picked up that case of bottled water and dropped it on him (I had to get a lot closer...cases of water bottles don't throw as well as books). I'll admit it was kind of satisfying. Unfortunately I had to take the case with me, so not long after my victory I had to pick it up and scrape the corpse off the bottom. And yes, I left it for my Dad to clean up. It's how I roll.
Are you starting to feel like you have bugs crawling all over you yet? Well, this next story is my best AKA my worst. Is it the root of all my fears? Pretty much. This is the story of my stalker hopper.
The time: mid-1990's, bedtime. The place: my room downstairs in Missouri. I was lying in bed, all cozy. The door was open and the hall light was on. I looked over. There was a hopper in the middle of my floor. I knew it would crawl all over me in my sleep so of course I got out of bed and crept upstairs to my sister's room to sleep on her floor. Problem solved!
Except when I woke up in the early hours of the morning I saw that hopper. Sitting on my pillow. Looking at me. I got in my sister's bed and my groupie was gone by the time real morning came.
Later that day I was sitting on the floor in my sister's room. I looked over and saw that hopper. On my shoulder. Looking at me. What followed was a lot of screaming and jumping and shuddering and more screaming. We killed that thing, for the most part, with a binder and dumped its still-twitching body out the window.
And that, my friends, is a faithful narrative of all my dealings with camel hoppers. Or some of them anyway.
*I know it's cruel to use a book like this. But it's a math book so it's okay.
As some of you know, I recently finished a book called Tantalize by Cynthia Leitich Smith. I read it because even after the failed endeavor that was Vampire Academy I still wanted to test the Twilight-knockoff waters. I just can't be satisfied knowing there are a bunch of super awful vampire books out there, I have to read them. One of them.
Anyway, so I found this book while I was shelving and did some more research on the handy dandy Internet. It look promising! The author was know for her realistic fiction, the premise sounded interesting-ish, and it wasn't part of a series. Yeah, the cover is dumb and completely uninformative, but I was willing to overlook that. After all, there was a hunky half-werewolf love interest involved.
Spoilers ahead. I don't think you'll care.
So yeah...this book was kind of weird. The basic idea is that the main character, Quincie, is renovating her dead parent's restaurant along with her uncle to give it a vampire theme. After their chef is murdered, Quincie has to find a new chef. She's also trying to get her werewolf hybrid best buddy to make out with her. So...in the end she's turned into a vampire by the chef, who is a vampire (as is her uncle, but his girlfriend is a Cat...a werecat) and he makes a lot of the restaurant guest vampires too by feeding them baby squirrels (in a honey cream sauce!). Oh, did I mention that the hunky werewolf hybrid (Kieren) is hardly in this book? In the end he has to leave to be with his wolf pack, and Quincie has to suck his blood to save his life from the chef.
The book takes place in Austin, Texas, but apparently there are were- animals all over the place. And not just cool animals, mind you! Oh no, Kieren/Hunky Werewolf Hybrid's best friends are a "werearmadillo" and a "werepossum." You never get any sense of the scope here though. You just have to infer everything, and that makes me crazy.
OK, almost done. This book also has details of the most random things. My favorite is how Quincie wears a dark blue lace dress. With "a beige thong." This thong is mentioned throughout the rest of the book. We are told repeatedly that it is "still in place."
To sum up, my favorite sentence.
"[Kieren] even knew when I started my period, and not just because he could smell it."
So I was sitting in Sunday School today and I happened to look around and what did I see? Fleece blankets. I've seen this a few times in my home ward, but I didn't know that it had spread to the far eastern borders of the Middle Kingdom. So what's the problem with fleece blankets? Let's examine the evidence:
- It's August.
- They are called nylons.
- Fleece blankets are often loudly patterned. I have seen plaids, dogs, tie-dye and stripes. Thus, they are exceptionally distracting.
- Who wants to carry a blanket to church anyway? A binder and scriptures are plenty for me.
One expects church buildings to be cold, it is the Mormon way, and one must plan ahead. I guess some people think bringing blankets and hoodies are practical, but don't sweaters and nylons work? That is the whole point of sweaters and nylons after all.
I realize this is kind of a ridiculous thing to complain about, but isn't it kind of like wearing flannel pajama pants to school? And let's not get started on texting or Gameboy playing during church.
