Wednesday Randoms <3

Happy Wednesday to you, my friends!

I was getting my things together to head for my volunteer shift at the cafe our church runs, when I got a text that they were all caught up and didn’t need my chopping and icing skills today. 

So I immediately sat down and wasted a good hour of my time. Then I got my devotions done and my day in order and here we are ready to launch this week’s randoms…in no particular order….

Random #1

I had to run into Dick’s Sporting Goods last Friday to pick up something I had ordered for Russ. It wasn’t behind the counter as promised so the sales associate said she would call back to the department and see if it was still back there. 

As she spoke into the phone, I heard her say she had an athlete at the counter who had called and asked for a hold earlier in the day. 

An athlete. 

When she hung up, I asked her if she had actually called me an athlete and she kind of blushed and said yes, would I prefer she call me something else? I said absolutely not as no one ever in the history of the world has referred to me as an athlete and I kind of liked it. 

The manager was bringing the item up about this time and he was laughing at the conversation. He said corporate was now making them refer to shoppers as “athletes”.

We commiserated at the powers that be in the corporate world who have decided that someone might be offended to be referred to as a customer and who in the world would take exception to that term anyway?

We laughed about having to call customers guests or friends or athletes instead of what they are. 

Oh well, if you see me out practicing my jump shot or working on my putting, you will understand that I am, after all, an athlete, thank you very much.

Random #2

Speaking of customers. 

Last Friday I was working and there were two women in the store shopping. One about my age or maybe a little older was ready to pay for her purchases first. At the end of her transaction the register said her receipt had been sent. The system we use is tied to the Square so if you have an email attached it does this. 

I always ask if that is okay and she said she would also like paper to put with her credit card statement. After she left the second lady, who was a bit younger than us, brought her items to the counter. 

As I was finishing her transaction she volunteered that she would not need a receipt like the previous lady and kind of rolled her eyes. I said our generation has a hard time just chucking receipts as we grew up in the age where we feared an audit from the IRS where we would be asked to provide proof of purchases made. 

Again there was a subtle eye roll and she asked me if I balance my check book.

Of course I do, every month, to the penny. 

Here she got a wee bit passionate and said I was just like her mother. Then she ventured to ask if also refuse to Venmo. 

Guilty. 

Guilty as charged. 

She shook her head and gathered her things and left. 

A couple of days later, my phone (probably having picked up all of that conversation) popped up with an Instagram post by a gal who does “Boomer moms”.

In this one, she posed with her reading glassed perched midway down her nose, looking at her phone and having a rant about why she won’t use Venmo and give all of her personal banking information to some app on her phone. 

Then the scene shifts and she is on a landline, peering over the same glasses and telling her husband to bring her wallet so she can give her credit card info to Facebook to unlock her account. 

It was hilarious and painfully true and our daughter and I both had a good laugh over it even though I probably still won’t ever Venmo. 

Random #3

I have a slight tendency towards The Princess and the Pea syndrome. 

This morning I had to dig out my sharpest scissors to remove a tag from the inside of a top I bought recently. 

The label itself was sewn with barbed wire and then some kind of intense glue was used around the corners to make it extra lethal. 

I had worn this one time before and spent the entire length of being inside of this torturous experience wishing I had trimmed it out before I left home. 

Today I had it on for about two seconds before removing and performing the labelectomy. There is still some stitching involved that I can’t quite figure out and I may have to do some more exploration with a microscope and tweezers. 

But for now, I can deal with it so I will keep calm and carry on. 

Random #4

On Monday evening, my good friend and owner of the beloved store where I work on Fridays, came over and gave me the gift of her organizational skills. 

I have been trying to get the room we call “Emmett’s room” or “my office,” depending on the occasion into some kind of order. In an effort to get going on several projects, I had started making stacks and piles on the floor and bed and it had become a Cat in the Hat mess. 

For reference…Cat in the Hat messes are so big and so tall, there is no way to fix them, there’s no way at all. 

Kim mentioned she had spent a day helping her own daughter organize her art supplies, holiday decor and kids’ crafts. I asked her when she was going to help ME and she was here the next day! 

We worked for a couple of hours and turned the whole mess around into something that is workable for me, pleasing to the eye and makes sense for finding things. I am not sharing a before pic with anyone who doesn’t know that the rest of our house looks fine and would fear I am a hoarder. 

But you can see from the after picture that she let me meet my need to have things visible and yet not in a state of chaos. And it isn’t all shoved in the closet which is my typical Rx. 

She even helped me rearrange things in the closet so that it looks 100% better too. 

It is a gift she has that she used to bless me and I am so thankful. In a matter of hours, the greatest weight was lifted off of me and I have been able to think more clearly than I have for months. 

I get by with a lot of help from the people God has given me to love and be loved by. I am so very grateful.

Random #5

Yesterday I was taking Caroline to a couple of stores and we were driving down a street we drive down many, many times. 

She asked me if I knew what she remembers every time she goes down that street. 

It’s the path to her dance class, the pool, the library, the Children’s Museum and the way we go to get to her dad’s office. There are some good friends who live a block off of the street as well so, no, I couldn’t guess what her core memory is. 

Well, she said. She remembers that day last summer that we rode our bikes from said friends’ house to the Uptown ice cream parlor five miles away and then back again. 

I remember it, too.

She pedaled double or triple the rotations of the rest of us as we rode our way along the trail. She was exhausted and her legs hurt but she refused to give up. The original plan was Papi would ride back and get the truck and pick us up at the ice cream parlor, but she had insisted on completing the circuit. 

Along the last few miles I reminded her we could stop, but she pressed on. 

It was a triumph of will and guts and I don’t know if she will remember it her whole life, but I know I will.