I Passed up the Root Beer Float

....for Family Night treat on Monday

...as visions of dressing room mirrors flashed through my head.

(I DO realize the real word in the poem is "danced," but that word has a joyful, upbeat connotation to me -- and that would be a very inaccurate way to describe my experience!)

With my Triathlon only three weeks away, I decided it was time (overdue, in fact) to get me some Triathlon clothes. Are they even called, "clothes?" Should I be using a more official name? Like "Gear?" "Outfit?" "Triathlon wear?" My novice-ness is really showing through, huh?!? Anyway, I needed a "get up" that I could wear for all three events without changing, so I could run-bike-swim without stopping [at tremendous speed] because wearing a swim suit underneath shorts and a T-shirt to run and bike in is NOT my idea of comfort and fun! Wedgie, anyone? How about a good dose of "rubbing rash?" Got sweat? [in a swim suit.] And let's throw in the bouncin' bosom, as well! :)

So, I forced took my [supportive] chauffeur husband with me on the quest. As we're wandering around the first store, an employee asks if we need help. My husband asks where the Triathlon clothing is, so the employee takes us there....to the Men's. Matt had to inform him that we were there for ME and we needed the womens' department!

NOW, WHY DID THAT EMPLOYEE ASSUME THAT I WOULD NOT BE DOING A TRIATHLON??!!??

I know the answer.

Look at Matt: Tall, strong, lean machine. Look at Me: Not exactly the picture of a Triathlete.

BUT, I CAN DO HARD THINGS!

Nevertheless, not a real positive start to our shopping experience. Thoughts of "Maybe I shouldn't try to do this" entered my mind.

The first thing that employee shows to me is the "Tri Suit."

What? Is he just trying to make a mockery of me, now?

Oh, NO, NO, NO. I will not go there! No Thanks. NO WAY. NO HOW!

That reminds me of Summer Olympics track too much! Jackie Joyner-Kersee can pull it off -- but let's be honest, NOBODY wants to see me in that.

I wanted to stick with the two-pieced ones, thank you very much. Shorts (8" vs. 4") AND a [full-coverage] top with ample support just seem to provide better security for me.

Problem #2: Since Triathletes are mostly little, skinny, tiny, itty-bitty, lacking in fat, toned, void of flab, slender, small, slim little buggers -- so are the clothes that stores put on their racks to sell to them. Size XXS, XS, and S were available in plenty. Most sizes above that were in short supply! :( At a different store, one employee even referred me to the men's rack as well since "the tops run small."

"What am I doing?" thoughts popped in my mind.

When we went up to make the purchase, the cashier wanted to enter our "profile" into the computer. The employee started asking Matt for HIS name and contact information - to which my husband, again, had to direct their attention to me.

Hello!! Yoo Hoo! Is it too much to even consider? Muscle man over there is NOT the one doing the Triathlon, it's Pillsbury Dough-girl, here!

Should the fact that two different "fitness expert-ish" employees didn't have any confidence in me, be giving me a "plex?" Little do they know that sometimes I make Matt bike or run with me - and I'm continually turning around, looking back to find him since he's unable to keep up. (At least that's his story - I personally think it's his way of getting out of having to talk to me the whole time!)

Anyway, I'm not quite sure which was the bigger shocker.....
The way those tri shorts made my legs look like sausages oozing out of them or the $70 ticket price they carried (on each piece!)

Ouch to both!

****

I did swim the furthest/longest I've ever swam today -- 30 laps! And I did it in approximately double the time that everyone else there did it. woo hoo! ;)

Desperate Measures

Recently, my husband was texted by a friend.
It read:
Received an email from you last night that would lead me to believe you have a virus on one of your computers.

I'm not sure how that all works, but apparently a virus can get a hold of one's email contacts and send something on it's own - to ALL of them. (?) As I write that, it still makes no sense to me, but it takes a computer whiz to understand and recognize these things. (??)

Yep, that's what it takes because the next day, this problem was confirmed when my husband got a reply from the computer whiz next door.
He wrote:
"Maybe your computer has a virus?"
It was in this reply, Matt was able to see just exactly WHAT email the virus had sent out to all our contacts.

Guess what it was?

It was an advertisement of sorts [invitation] for VIAGRA and other related pills.

Then Matt's inbox started to fill with replies from others on our contact list who had received this same "virus email."

They read:
"Looks interesting!"

"What is this for?"

"I will investigate these prices. Right now I spend around $___ for _____ and myself. This may help a lot."

"I'm thinking you probably didn't intend to send this email."

"Where does that link go?"

"What the....? Just say no to drugs."

When I heard of this, I was horrified. I asked Matt just WHO was on his contact list who may have received this email.

He informed me that just about the entire world was!

Well, not quite.

But, just about our entire local church congregation is! (amongst others)

My husband has had the calling of the president of our church men's organization for the last 3 yrs., 8 months (but I'm not counting), so he frequently corresponds with them by email.

My mind started to think of all the different possible recipients of this email.

There was Brother and Sister Perfect. And Brother Conservative. And Sister Serious. And we can't forget Brother Private-about-Personal-Matters. And, of course, Sister Straight-Laced was on that list.

And, with my [bad] luck, the Leaders of our Ward were also included.

{Gasp!}

{Double Gasp!}

"What are THEY going to THINK?" I half-wailed, half-choked out.

"They'll think it's time to get a new president, I suppose." he informed me.

"THIS just might be what it takes to get released." we joked.

One's length of church service is somewhat of a mystery, but it's common to be in the same calling for 2 - 3 years. And he's exceeded that, so maybe his release will look like a natural, traditional circumstance, which means he has simply served his time and it is somebody else's turn, instead of being related to the VIAGRA scandal! i.e. "kicked out"

{Whew!}

Except our whole church got the email - and already knows!

{Woops.}

SBL

Today is July 15th.

You know what that means?

Summer is half-way over!

Which is impossible because it just barely started!

It just can't be.

I demand a re-count!

But the calendar doesn't lie. I'm wrong, it's right.

(Matt, are you reading this? You're getting a KICK out of that admission, aren't you? :D)

And with Summer being half over, it causes me to ask the question: "How's the SBL going?"

What's an "SBL" you ask?

Because my younger son made the "We haven't even done anything this Summer" comment again recently, I paniced. REALLY? Have we seriously done nothing? I just had to evaluate our "progress" so I pulled out the handy, dandy list. I don't know, maybe I'm wrong [again], (Matt? another kick?) but I was of the understanding that CHECK MARKS meant that something had been completed/accomplished!! And this list has check marks all right.

I guess "We haven't even done anything this Summer" actually means "There hasn't been a constant 3-ring Circus going on around here put on by my personal Recreational Therapist [Mom], therefore, nothing counts!"

But, OH, I think we have had THAT! Having 5 kids in the home full-time again on a daily basis has felt pretty 3-Ring Circus-ish to ME!

I told him he also needs to realize that when he committed to All-Star Baseball, that he also chose to have baseball take up a lot of his Summer!

I am still well aware that we have 50% of Summer left, and 61% of our SBL remains! BUT, 6 of those items are scheduled and guaranteed to happen (barring any natural disasters and/or uncontrollable Murphy's-Law-that-rules-my-life-situations) before the end of this month...and some have been half-way done (like 2 out of the 4 new ice cream places) so they have not earned a bone fide check mark, yet!

As you may recall, we fly by the seat of our pants sometimes, so we've veered off the SBL and done totally different things, too. But, already we're ahead of last year, when we only crossed 8 things off "the list!" (You'll notice my list is much shorter than 2009, and I'll admit, when I made the list (NOT on the 1st Day of Summer), we'd already done some things, but I wrote them down anyway - just so I could check them off! I do that. I'm going for success this time.) :)

*******

What's on your SBL?

My Laundry Responsibilities just Reduced by One Person!

Did you know that if *someone* leaves a red pen in the pocket of their shorts and then sends them through the wash, it "writes" all over all the other clothes that are in that same load of laundry?

I didn't know until it actually happened in my own laundry room this week! Yep, that's exactly what happens. We've got lines of red pen, varying in length, drawn on the family's wardrobe - and of course, it DIDN'T happen to be a red load of wash I was doing at the time - it was light colors, including some striped shirts with white stripes!

Despite my multiple instructions to empty out pockets before sending anything to the wash, this same *someone* has also been know to leave gum, chap stick, papers, money, and various other things in pockets in the past. Now, the money I don't mind (it just takes some drying out) because I have a "finders, keepers" policy when it comes to my laundry duties. But, none of these above mentioned items have wreaked such havoc on the rest of the clothes as this "red pen episode!"

And you know what? It was so bad, that it would take me HOURS to try to recover the clothes in that load. So, you know what I did? I assigned *someone* to "SHOUT it OUT" duty - to spray and scrub every last red pen line on the affected clothes. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. But, I didn't stop there...Oh, no I didn't. You see, it'd become apparent to me that my instructions of proper pre-wash rules were falling upon deaf ears and I suspected these "failure to empty" episodes would reoccur, so I set myself free of that *someone's* laundry. I announced that *someone* was now solely in charge of doing ALL their own laundry - as in, from this day forward. I will provide a "laundry lesson" and then they are on their own. It's their responsibility. They can (or not) wash their own clothes - and ruin them if they so carelessly chose - and then use their own money to buy new clothes to replace the ruined ones.

The ball's now in their court. (I gotta use language *someone* understands!)

After all, it was the summer after my 8th Grade year when I got my official "laundry lesson" and became responsible for doing my entire family's laundry while my mom went on an extended "vacation" - that was 7 people with my mom gone! And I fared just fine. In fact, I was very capable in keeping up with the task. So, no child labor comments will be necessary! :)

As a side note, during this same above mentioned time period, I also got put in charge of doing all the shopping and cooking for the family in my mom's absence. (And tending my siblings all day, every day, but come on, it was my summer vacation and I had friends to see and places to go with them! And besides, I had an older brother & sister who were home - and WHY didn't they have to do anything? I justified.) Because that kind of stuff falls on the middle child, that's why! ;) So, I probably didn't fulfill that responsibility as completely as I could've, but the rest I did. I very much enjoyed taking the weekly money my mom had left for groceries and taking some liberties when I shopped! Oh, yes, to this day I specifically remember buying white bread and whole milk and [frozen] fried chicken at the store - because those were things we hadn't had before! We had wheat bread and skim milk and homemade casseroles at my house. Us kids were giddy about this! And we looked forward to those few extras I threw in each week she was gone that summer. (And it was our little secret!)

So, back to the latest development in me gaining some laundry freedom. It looks like implementing this new policy of *someone* else doing their own laundry happened not a moment too soon!!

Things I've Heard on the Job: #4

Here's some more "On the Phones at JetBlue" snippets:

* During the process of booking a flight for a customer....
Me: "Name, please..."
Customer: no response. silence. nothing.
Thinking he didn't hear me or our phones had cut out...
Me: (more clearly & louder) "What is the name of the customer traveling, please?"
Customer: (pause) "Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out my brother's last name."


* Customer: "Can you look up my reservation for me?"
Me: "Sure. May I have your confirmation number, please?"
Customer: "I don't have it. My name is John Smith."
Me: "I can look it up by your credit card number used to book the reservation instead. May I have that, please?"
Customer: "I don't know it."
Me: "Once you have this information, you're welcome to call us back and we'd be happy to assist you."
Customer: "Just pull up my reservation with my name!" (swearing and/or name calling may or may not have happened following their command.)
Me: "For your safety and privacy we're unable to release any of the information on your itinerary without the confirmation number or the credit card number."
Customer: "OK, just a minute....My confirmation number is ABCDEF."

Wow! Amazing how what was once lost, was now found - so quickly, too!
(That must've been one comfy couch - just too much so to get one's butt off of!)


* In the process of booking a flight for a party of 2, a married couple, I came to the seat assignment step....
Me: "It doesn't look like there are two seats right next to each other available, but we have..."
Customer: "Oh, that doesn't matter.....That might be a good thing.....No sweat off my brow.....I've done it before - it was THE BEST flight I ever had!"


* Customer: "What flights do you have to Florida?"
Me: "We fly to Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale, Jacksonville, West Palm Beach, Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Tampa."
Customer: "Oooooh, Ft. Lauderdale sounds nice."
Me: "Yes, it does."
Customer: "I just gotta get outta here. Permanently. Relocate, ya know. Do you think that'd be a good place to live?"
Me: (nonchalantly) "Sure."
Customer: "I've lived in New York too long. It's a horrible city. I don't wish it on anyone! I was dating this guy and he left me. I had this boss and he fired me. I have NO reason to stay here. It's just a living Hell. All the people go to church and dress nice, then they walk out cursing, beating people up, and everything! They're all a bunch of phonies, nobody's real....!
Me: "Oh, dear..."
Customer: "Yep, it's time, I should go to Florida. That's what I'm going to do. Hey, thanks, doll, you've been a real help with my decision."

REALLY? Just 6 words, such "profound" words at that, made a life-changing decision for her? Maybe I should try that more often in my REAL life! ;)




* At the end of a call....
Male customer: "You're a married girl, right?"
Me: "Correct."
Male customer: (sigh) "I figured....you sound very beautiful and very nice!"
Me: "Thank you."
Male customer: "All the good ones are taken. Your husband's a lucky man!"
(How's THAT for an ego boost to this [speedily] approaching mid-life gal? Actually, not much, because I know he's probably old, bald, short, dirty, nerdy, and farts!) :)