Too Legit to Quit

There's a reason I still own a VCR.

I still have all the classics -- Pretty in Pink, The Princess Bride, Dirty Dancing, etc. -- on VHS, so if I threw out my VCR, how would I watch them?

I know what you're thinking: enter the new era of technology, Tiffany!  You're two trends behind!

I probably wouldn't even have a DVD player if it hadn't been given to me as a gift.  I hate the idea of throwing out and replacing my stuff just because someone came up with something "better."  If I had replaced my VHS collection with DVDs, then I would have had to throw all of them out and replace them with Blue Ray discs, right?  What a waste.  And you know something better will come out in the next couple of years to replace these Blue Ray things.

I'm obviously not big into technology.

Up until one month ago, the only cell phones I ever owned were the ones that came free with the Verizon plan.  I didn't even own a cell phone for a long time.  I bucked the trend, telling people that if I was at work, they could call me at work, and if I was at home, they could call me at home; if I wasn't in either of those places, then I was probably doing something fun and didn't want you calling me anyway.

I caved and bought a big blue brick of a phone that I only got because it made my mom feel better when I drove from Colorado home to Iowa (not that I got any service through most of Nebraska anyway . . . ).

And then after several years I upgraded to what I think they call a flip phone.  It folded in half.  Snazzy.  Way better than the brick, but still bad enough for the kids I worked with to make fun of me.

But you know what?  I could have cared less about the "coolness" of my phone.

And then I married Kevin.

Kevin bought an iPhone right before we got married.  Suddenly my free phone seemed really crappy.  He could do all sorts of fun things with his phone, and all mine could do was call or text people.  How boring is that?

So I caved.  I bought an older model of the iPhone, too.  (They were on sale super cheap after those iPhone 5's came out . . . you were thinking I bought the new kind?  I haven't totally lost my frugal mind.)

Now, of course, I am completely addicted to the thing.  I haven't slept well for a month, staying up past 10PM challenging friends in SongPop and Words With Friends.  I'm looking into 12-step programs.

My new phone also contributed to a rather embarrassing moment yesterday.  I was subbing for a teacher at the high school who has a student teacher this semester.  That meant that my job for the day was basically to sit in the back of the classroom and observe the college kid to make sure he didn't do anything stupid.  It wasn't exactly rocket science.

The morning classes were pretty exciting with freshmen debating hot topics in the election and then mock voting.  In the afternoon, the juniors had a test.  I watched 'em like a hawk for cheating, but it was pretty dull.  Most of them finished quickly and then worked quietly on an assignment, waiting for the last three kids in the room to get done with their tests.

So I got bored and snuck a quick peek at Facebook.  And then I played a move in Words With Friends.  And then I checked out the world clock to see what time it was in India, where my hubby is this week.

I pocketed my phone and walked over to the computer to check on something.  It was then that I heard a quiet but definitely audible sound, like someone's ringtone going off.

I looked around to see who the culprit was.  Phones in class are definitely a no-no.

No one was grabbing for their pockets, though.  I listened more intently . . . it sounded like a muffled MC Hammer . . . coming from my left . . . where there was nothing but a wall . . .

What the heck??  MC Hammer was playing in my pants!  I turned toward the wall and whipped out my iPhone, jabbing at buttons.

Was that President Obama's face I saw on my screen??

The ringer was off.  I'd turned it to vibrate.  I'm not that stupid.  But still MC Hammer was streaming out of it somehow.

I frantically turned the volume all the way down, continuing to jab at buttons and wondering if I had somehow gotten a virus on my new iPhone.  MC Hammer and President Obama?  Was this some sort of Election Day prank?

Quiet now, I shoved it back in my pocket.  I turned around to see how many kids had caught me, but they were all working on the assignment.

Good thing kids generally don't give a rip about the sub.

After school, I asked the student teacher if he'd heard my phone.  I explained the situation and my virus concerns.

"Are you sure you didn't hit Pandora?" he asked.

"I don't think so," I said, touching the Pandora button.

And there he was.  A "Vote Obama" ad filled my screen.

And underneath the advertisement?  Pandora was paused on MC Hammer's "Turn This Mutha Out."

Lesson learned?  Put my phone in my purse, not my pocket.  I'd heard of pocket dialing, but not pocket Pandora-ing.  Geesh.

Also?  Turning off the ringer does not completely silence the phone.  Hmmmm.

Now please excuse me while I go try to figure out how to delete the MC Hammer station from my Pandora playlist . . .

A Walking Hazard

After an incident today that we shall get to in just a bit, I was reminded of something my old high school friend Holly said to me a couple of years ago.  It was during my fifty dates trip, and while sitting in Central Park in NYC, munching on hot dogs and enjoying the view, a bird flew over and pooped on my arm.

"Is it just me, or do things like this happen more to you than to everyone else?" she asked, knowing my penchant for strange luck.

My visit to St. Olaf College today wasn't that bad.  I mean, there was no poop at least.  But some days I seriously wonder how I make it through the day without hurting myself.

I was at St. Olaf to see Ryana, an awesome girl who used to be in my youth group in Colorado.  I met her at the chapel for Sunday morning worship (sidenote: it was awesome!).

Faux pas numero uno: When the time came for the offering, a basket was passed down the aisle.  I took it from Ryana's friend next to me and promptly dropped it.  Luckily I caught it with my knee before it hit the floor.  I was surprised and winced a little, because although it looked like a lightweight wicker basket, turns out it had a WOOD bottom.  Warn me about these things, people!  The good news is college kids have no money, so despite the fact that it had been passed down a couple of rows before getting to me, there was absolutely nothing in it.  Had some kid emptied his pockets of loose change, I would have been mortified.

Faux pas numero dos: Either the pews aren't bolted to the floor or the one in front of me was loose, because when I sat down after a hymn, I wrenched that bad boy right off the tile floor and made a nice, loud thud when I let go.  Ryana did the same thing ten minutes later, so I didn't feel so bad.  At the time, though, I'm pretty sure her friends were wondering who this freak show was that she'd brought to church.

And faux pas numero tres: The granddaddy of the day, my piece de resistance, if you will, happened while Ryana was showing me around the campus.  We were in the science building and walked into the greenhouse.  It made me a little sad, because the smell and humidity reminded me of going to the Lincoln Park Conservatory in Chicago with Kevin, which made me think about how far away he was . . . and maybe I just wasn't focused on where I was going, because my leg brushed a hose that was on this hose-holder thingie, and it somehow pressed the trigger against a bar on the holder thingie.  Before I even realized what was happening, the entire right leg of my jeans was soaked.  And maybe a bit of the left.  And somehow my belt buckle.  It was pretty obvious.

In a demonstration of what a great kid she is, Ryana continued to walk beside me instead of pretending not to know me.  She's pretty awesome. 

So that's my exciting story about my day at St. Olaf.  I'm going to head for bed now and see if I can avoid drooling toothpaste on myself, flushing an item of clothing down the toilet, or missing the bed when I lay down on it.  Lots of hazards could rear their ugly heads at any moment . . .

Teenage Girls

Confession time.  I am addicted to a show for teenagers: Pretty Little Liars.  If you've never heard of it, it's probably because you're not 15.  And no, I'm not watching it as some sort of glimpse into the lives of the teenagers I work with.  Just something I found on Netflix.  Just free, cheap entertainment that totally wastes my time.  Just a guilty pleasure.  I watched one episode and suddenly I can't stop until I find out who killed Ali!

It's like a repeat of Twin Peaks, twenty years later. 

Just your average sixteen-year-olds?  Right.

There are many things that make me inwardly shake my head while watching these teenagers on screen (like the fact that they are all close to 30 in real life . . . ), but the thing that gets me the most is the fact that they are ALWAYS dressed to the nines.  Going to school?  Let me put on a dress and enough make-up for five people!  Going to a slumber party at a friend's house?  I'll put on my casual sweater/miniskirt/jacket combo!  Traipsing through the woods at night searching for clues to my best friend's killer?  I've got some designer boots with three-inch heels that are perfect for mystery-solving hikes!

Seriously.

I was looking at kids in the hallway today between classes, and I didn't see a single girl dressed like the teens on TV.  Rather than looking like they just stepped off a fashion show runway, the girls at my school more often look like they just rolled out of bed.  Our halls are full of t-shirts, shorts, jeans, sweats, and leggings.  Lots of ponytails.  Very little make-up.

And you know what?  I prefer our girls to the TV girls.  I like the slightly awkward frumpy girls who look comfortable.  I like the kids who don't feel like they have to put on airs.  I like that these young women are real, not some Hollywood producer's idea of what young women should look like.

Friends who are raising girls, bless you.  It's a hard road.  The girls they see on TV look nothing like the girls they see in the mirror.  Hug 'em tonight.

And remind them that those fakers are really 27 and had breakouts and bad hair in high school, too.  :)

Church Ladies

In yet another attempt to meet some people in our new area, I thought I'd check out the women's Bible study tonight at the church we're leaning towards.  I almost walked into an AA meeting taking place in the fellowship hall until someone steered me away and into the church library.  I joined five women around a table.  All of them were at least twenty years older than me.

But you know what?  I'm fine with that.  Here's why.

I moved to Colorado when I was 24.  Not long after starting my job at the church, some women found me one Sunday morning and dragged me over to the table where they were registering women for the annual church women's retreat.  Looking at the list of women signed up, I saw some mothers of the teenagers I worked with, some empty nesters, and a few grandmas.  No one in their twenties was signed up.  I figured I'd have no one to hang out with.  I had zero interest in attending.

I said I was too busy to go.  They said I could take a weekend off.

I said I couldn't afford it (which was true, but really just an excuse to get out of going).  They paid my way.

I was stuck.

I packed my backpack and my sleeping bag, telling myself to just endure it.  How bad could it be?  Boring probably, but not awful.

I ended up having an AMAZING weekend.  So much so that I looked forward to the church women's retreat every fall for the ten years I worked at the church.

We laughed so hard.  We played games and they didn't mind that I was insanely competitive.  We sang songs, told stories, ate junk food, and although a few women snored loudly enough to rattle the bunk beds, we had the best time together.

But looking back on those ten weekend retreats over ten years, the thing that strikes me the most is how thankful I am for those women and their influence on my life.  Those are the women who made me realize how much I need other women, and not just women my age, but women who have already been through all the things I have yet to experience.

I learned so much from those women -- to thank God in the good times and to cling to God in the hard times.  I heard stories that made me wonder how they'd found the strength to make it through tragedies.  I saw how much they depended on each other for support, and sometimes just for sanity.  I saw seventy-year-old women giggle like seven year olds.

I learned that I have so much to learn.

And so, as we try to find a new church, my standards are high.  Yes, we want a church with great preaching and great music and lots of opportunities to serve . . . but I'm also looking for women like my old church friends, who are willing to mentor and guide me through all the things to come.

And I'm at an age where I can reach out to twenty-four-years olds and assure them they won't be eating Tuna Helper alone every night for the rest of their lives.

I want a community.

It's a tall order.

Kevin and I talked a bit after church this weekend about expectations and settling.  It's impossible to find the perfect church, I know, and if we did find it, we wouldn't qualify for membership.  But at what point do you stop "shopping" and just pick one?  If the preaching is good but the music isn't, do you call it good, settle in, and integrate yourself in that community?  How long do you try to build those relationships before giving up and starting the church hunt over again?  I'd love to hear from others who've had to look for a new place to worship.

And to those beautiful women of Ascension -- you know who you are! -- thank you.  Sincerely.  Tears were streaming down my face as I wrote about those women's retreats.  You've influenced me more than you know and I can never thank you enough.  I love you.  Keep dragging new young women into your circle and doing the same for them!

My Kids Will Be Amazing (at least in my head)

My friend Elyse wrote an interesting blog this week at The Jacobson Journey on how her expectations for having kids often turned out to be different from the reality of having kids.

I thought . . . well . . . I don't really have a lot of expectations for my future children . . . I mean, for a long time, I wasn't even sure I'd have kids.  And when I met Kevin, he told me early on that having low expectations would mean I'd be less likely to be disappointed with him (such a romantic!), so the same would probably be true for having kids.

But in church this morning, I realized that maybe I subconsciously have BIG expectations for those phantom children.  Here's the situation.  For the children's sermon, the leader held up a jar of money and asked the kids what they'd like to buy with it.

The kids shouted out typical things like, "Toys!" and "Cars!"

Then she asked, "What do you think God would like you to buy with money?"

There were a lot of blank stares and furrowed brows as kids tried to decipher the right answer.  With a little prompting, she helped them figure out that maybe God would be happy if we bought food for people who were hungry.

That got a little guy thinking, and he raised his hand and said, "Blankets for people who have to sleep outside."  Good answer.

MY kid, I thought smugly, would raise his hand and say, "Mosquito nets to help prevent malaria in third world countries!"

What?  Expecting too much?

Poor Cherry Cherry :(

Cherry Cherry has been violated.

I am sickened.  Angry.  Disgusted.  Distraught.  A plethora of negative verbs!

(Cherry Cherry is my car, by the way.  She's the sweet little 2007 Toyota Corolla that carried me across the country with nary a flat tire or engine hiccup.  She's my girl.  So the fact that something bad has happened to her makes me feel awful.)

I first sensed trouble on Sunday.  When we packed up to leave the cabin, I saw shredded kleenex on the back seat floor.  That's where I keep the tissue box . . . and something small had definitely been clawing at it.

When Kevin came out, I gave him a big hug.

"If we die a fiery death on the way home, I want you to know that I love you," I said.  He pulled back and gave me a strange look.

"It appears a small creature has been inside my car," I explained, "and if, by chance, it's still in there and runs up my leg while I'm driving, there's a good chance I'll run off the road and into a billboard post or a bridge underpass or something."

"Did we leave a door open?" he asked.

"Well, I didn't," I replied, leaving the insinuation hanging between us.  He just rolled his eyes.

More than once, growing up on the farm, I heard the story about Grandma Sump putting on her overalls, going out to do chores, and making it halfway across the yard before feeling something crawling up the inside of her pants leg.  Living in the country with no one around has its perks, like when you suddenly rip your pants off outside the privacy of your own home.  We were taught at a young age to shake out our boots, pants, etc., before putting them on, just in case.  I wasn't sure trying to rip my pants off while driving could end well.

We made it home uneventfully, though, and I didn't think anything of it 'til I was out running errands the next day.  I came out of B.A. Burritos (my first visit -- definitely not as good as Chipotle, Qdoba, or Pancheros -- quite disappointing, actually, but that's another blog on another day) and saw something flutter across the passenger side floor.  At first I thought maybe a piece of gray paper was being blown by the wind, but leaning in for a closer look, I saw four legs and a tail.

Ughuhuhuhuh.

I kept calm.  I walked over to the passenger door, opened it up, and tried using a newspaper to shoo the little mouse out the door and back into nature.  Instead, the little bugger scurried up behind the dashboard.

Dang it!  Where was my killer instinct?!  I should have rolled up the paper and swatted the thing to death when I had the chance!

Now I wasn't so calm.  There was a mouse -- an alive, scampering mouse -- inside the car.  I had to drive the car to get anywhere other than the strip-mall parking lot, which I definitely couldn't just hang around in all day, waiting for the mouse to kindly take its leave.

I cringingly slid into Cherry Cherry and drove around the backside of the building to the grocery store parking lot, next stop on my list.  I envied the days when tight-rolled jeans were all the rage, because I was now seriously afraid that a mouse would crawl up my pant leg while I was driving, causing me to freak out, lose control of my car, and careen into one of the hundreds of other vehicles in this parking lot.

I parked without incident, jumped out of my car, and did what any girl would do.  I called my dad.

"Dad!  It's Tiffany!"  I said when he answered.  Long silence.

"What?"

"It's Tiffany!" I shouted.  I understand why he was confused.  He rarely uses his cell phone, and the only people who call him on it are people he works with out at the farm.  I skipped the small talk and cut to the chase.

"Dad, I need help!  There's a mouse in my car!"  He chuckled.

"Have you seen it?"

"Yeah, I saw it!  I tried to shoo it out but it ran up behind the dashboard."

"Oh, no."

"And it shredded a bunch of Kleenex in the back," I continued.

"Sounds like it's building a nest.  Probably a mama about to have babies."

My heebie-jeebie factor skyrocketed.  A whole family of mice taking up residence in my beloved Cherry Cherry??

"What do I do?  If I put out rat poison, won't it die somewhere in my car and stink the whole thing up?"

"Well," my dad calmly said, "I think you'll want to use glue traps so you can throw them out once you catch them."

My dad's a freakin' genius!

Without further ado, I went inside to get my groceries and my mouse traps.  Unfortunately, they didn't have mousetraps in the grocery store.  Also unfortunately, it had started raining pretty hard while I was buying food, and because I'd pretty much catapulted myself out of my car once I parked it, I wandered around the lot for a while trying to find my poor mouse-infested Cherry Cherry, getting soaked but also rather dreading getting inside once I found it.

There's a K-Mart right across the street from the grocery store, but the two minutes it took to get there seemed like forever, wondering when the mouse was going to crawl up my pant leg.  If it weren't pouring rain, I probably would have walked over to save myself the freak out. 

The store had a fine selection of mouse traps, including two- and four-packs of glue traps.  I went for the four, just in case there was an entire mouse colony settling in for the winter.  You never know.

Taken at a stoplight . . . 

I ran through the rain back out to the car and ripped open the box.  I put two on the passenger-side floor, where I'd seen the pesky invader, and one under each seat.  Then, in preparation for what would be the longest fifteen-minute ride home of my life, I pulled my pant legs up over my knees.  The thought of careening off the bridge and into the Mississippi River after a mouse crawled up my pants seemed like a very real possibility.  I wasn't taking any chances.

I made it home without trauma and sent Kevin to check the traps when he got home from work a few hours later.

"If there's something trapped but it's still alive, kill it.  That's the humane thing to do,"  I said.  I was a lot more sensitive to the feelings of the mouse when I was nowhere near it.

Pretty soon there was a tap on the window.  I could see Kevin holding something up in the semi-darkness, but I didn't look.  I was cooking dinner, and I have a very sensitive gag reflex.

"Two!" he announced.  Shiver.  Gross.

This morning?  Another freaking mouse in another glue trap.  And Kevin had already gone to work, so I had to get rid of it myself. 

Next time we're taking his car to the cabin.

Hello, I'm Tiffany and I'm a Talker . . .

I'm kind of a social person.

Not a shocker, you say?

Yeah, I know . . . but a few things happened this week that made me realize how isolated I felt this summer.

First, I had to go to the doctor's office.  I didn't actually see a doctor, just played twenty questions with the nurse.  As new patients, Kevin took his turn a few weeks back and I went in this week.  Between answering her bazillion questions about everything from any history of seizures, blood clots, etc., to family health history as far back as my grandparents, I was talking the poor woman's ear off.

Even more evidence that I'm a fan of gabbing?  She had a college student shadowing her for the day.  You can take the youth director out of the church, but . . . well, let's just say I engaged in caring conversation with this young person.  I asked about her nursing program, what she's liked about rotations so far, and twenty other things that I'm sure drove the nurse trying to put together a file for me absolutely insane.  Somewhere in the middle of my story about how I wanted to be a brain surgeon when I was in sixth grade, but then almost fainted during the movie about the human heart, seeing all that blood . . . well, I realized that there were probably other patients waiting to be seen and I should maybe shut up and stick to the matter at hand.

Yep.  It was like I'd been living in a cabin in the woods for three months.

We also had couch surfers this week, which I LOVE.  If you've got a spare couch or a guest room and you love to meet people, I highly recommend signing up at couchsurfing.org.  I used the site to find places to sleep as I made my way across America, and now that I'm settled with a spare bed, I'm loving that I finally get to pay it forward.  The couple we hosted Thursday night were a cute pair of sixty-somethings from New Mexico.  They retired this spring and are meandering from Minneapolis (where her brother lives) to Muscatine (where an old college friend lives) on a tandem bike.  How cool is that?  I made dinner, we heard about their adventures, and then we wandered down by the river for a while.  As they pedaled away the next morning, I realized these were people I never would have met had it not been for this crazy people-connecting website.  I love it!

But probably the biggest, most exciting thing of last week -- I went back to school.  I've got a long-term sub job lined up for a woman going on maternity leave any day now.  I shadowed her for two days last week, and it was so refreshing . . . to be in the classroom again, to have conversations over lunch in the teachers' lounge, and, frankly, just to get out of our apartment.

I guess overall it really hit me last week how lonely and isolated I'd felt this summer.  Poor Kevin has had to endure my needy side who couldn't wait for someone to talk to at the end of every day.

It's hard to make friends as grown ups, don't you think?  I read a book recently that said most adults feel that way.  If you don't keep your college friends close, you pretty much have to wait 'til you have kids so you can elbow your way into a Mommy-and-Me group and make some new ones.  We're not there yet, so that won't work for me.

And here's the thing that worries me: Kevin's leaving for Asia in a couple of weeks.  He's going to be recruiting in several countries and gone for six weeks.  SIX WEEKS.  If I went a bit batty with only him for company this summer, what am I going to be like when left completely alone in this town where I know hardly anyone?

So here's the advice I need, friends: how do I pull on my big girl panties and make some new local buddies?  What has worked for you?  It seems so awkward at this age.  I'd love to know how you've stepped out, taken a chance, or just fallen into a friendship if you were lucky.  Give me tips or at least give me hope!

Maybe I should bring cupcakes to the teachers' lounge.  That might be a start.  ;)