One of the biggest things I have noticed here in the burbs is how everything must be germ free. I have already discussed the mutant germ repelling shopping cart handles, but it does not stop there. There are sanitizing wipes at entrances of grocery stores and exits of bathrooms, and Purell has become like crack inhabiting every purse and glove box in Northern Virginia.
Usually I would not be quite as bothered by this severe level of anal, but now it has effected me personally. What I want to know is, why do all of you germ freaks out there believe it is okay for someone else to receive your germs in order for you not to receive someone else's?
It has happened multiple times now that I have gone into a bathroom and blindly sat down only to realize that I am in fact sitting in someone else's urine. I've watched you women, you hoverers, leave the bathroom. You use the paper towel to turn off the water and open the door, only to turn and toss the paper towel into the bathroom not caring wether it lands in the trashcan or not. So now you have touched nothing. However, you have left your pee on the toilet, your dirty paper towel on the floor and half the time you leave the water running. I've used cleaner port-o-potties on the third day of a bluegrass festival than most bathrooms I've seen around here.
I want to know who these people are that believe the world is right when they do not recieve a single germ but leave the next unsuspecting soul with a nice little wet present that they then have to walk around with on the back of there legs.
All I have to say is SIT DOWN. We are women, that's what we do. Please stop making me sit in your pee.
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Friday, April 17, 2009
Next Time I'll Order In
One of the first questions I have came to me on a recent trip to the grocery land called Wegmans. For starters, I had a hard time adjusting to the store when I first moved here. It is like the Epcot of grocery stores, I can travel to a land of all cheese and then walk over to the world of organic everything (including clothes). And if all my traveling works up an appetite, I can choose anything from Indian food to pizza and head upstairs to eat it and watch everyone else shop. What I especially adore is the random sushi stands or sample ladies blaring Bob Marley. I just know that when he was writing those songs he was thinking of middle aged suburbanites shopping in the organic aisle, talking on their cell phones, wearing hiking attire from REI.
But that is not my question. My question comes from the new carts that I recently found there. What I want to know is, how do I attain the power over people to make them believe that whatever it is I show them, must be better than the perfectly good product they had before. The cart I pushed around last Tuesday made all the progress I had made toward walking into Wegmans without a panic attack disappear.
I will start with the anatomy of the cart. These people have taken the idea of the big basket to push groceries around in and cut it in half. Now, I am to push a cart with a small half-basket on top and a four foot long basket on bottom. Both baskets being too shallow to stack even a loaf of bread on top a carton of eggs. I am fairly short, coming in at 5'3", and so to maneuver something that long causes some difficulty. At one point, I got pinned in the produce section after my boyfriend made a sharp turn. I was looking around panicked for a safe route out, but everywhere I turned there were more long carts and kids running and women pretending not to notice me even though I was summoning my boyfriend in our secret phrase of "ca caw" to let him know I was stuck. Eventually he heard me and came back to help. Needless to say I was on pushing probation from then on.
The next problem I have I touched on briefly already, it is the fact that nothing can be stacked in the carts anymore. Have people gone so completely germ and disease nuts now that their food cannot even touch while still in the packaging? That really is a silly question and can be answered simply by looking at the handle of the cart. Yes, the new handles are actually special handles that repel bacteria. Whoever invented this one is laughing in his money somewhere. Apparently the sanitary wipes provided at the entrance aren't enough to ward off all the dirt and grime that resides inside a Wegmans and bacteria repelling handles are needed. Whenever I first read this, I was slightly apprehensive about holding the handle. To just look at it, it seems like a normal plastic handle. That is why it scares me. I do not know if something in the handle melts the bacteria away or if there are some type of radio active waves that zap the bacteria in the air. Either way, I wanted to break out a pair of gloves to protect myself from it, but I didn't want to embarrass my boyfriend so I faced my fears and took hold.
When it was finally time for check out, I was left alone to check out with the mutant cart while my boyfriend went to the bathroom. The first problem I had was the fact that the new carts are now wider, leaving only millimeters to spare on either side. Once I got the cart into the aisle, I realized that I could only reach the three items on the top shelf of the cart. I then had to back the cart out of the aisle and back it in to reach the items on the bottom shelf, all the while the 17 year old with perfectly messed hair was staring unapprovingly at me and the woman in a hurry to go somewhere (Everyone out here is always in a hurry yet there's never anything going on. Someday I strive to find out where they're all going.) was huffing up a storm. My problem again with backing the cart in, was the shear length of it. I could not reach over and grab the top shelf without catching my ankles, which was sure to end in me on the floor, so I had to bend over and grab the bottom shelf and waddle myself, butt in the air, backwards into the aisle. Once I was finally able to unload the cart, I had to then waddle the cart even further out the back end of the aisle so I could get behind it to swipe my card.
My boyfriend walked out of the bathroom to find me sweating and shaking. The woman who was behind me shook her head at my sorry excuse for a Wegmans shopper on her way out.
If these carts are to make my life easier, maybe grocery shopping is not for me after all.
But that is not my question. My question comes from the new carts that I recently found there. What I want to know is, how do I attain the power over people to make them believe that whatever it is I show them, must be better than the perfectly good product they had before. The cart I pushed around last Tuesday made all the progress I had made toward walking into Wegmans without a panic attack disappear.
I will start with the anatomy of the cart. These people have taken the idea of the big basket to push groceries around in and cut it in half. Now, I am to push a cart with a small half-basket on top and a four foot long basket on bottom. Both baskets being too shallow to stack even a loaf of bread on top a carton of eggs. I am fairly short, coming in at 5'3", and so to maneuver something that long causes some difficulty. At one point, I got pinned in the produce section after my boyfriend made a sharp turn. I was looking around panicked for a safe route out, but everywhere I turned there were more long carts and kids running and women pretending not to notice me even though I was summoning my boyfriend in our secret phrase of "ca caw" to let him know I was stuck. Eventually he heard me and came back to help. Needless to say I was on pushing probation from then on.
The next problem I have I touched on briefly already, it is the fact that nothing can be stacked in the carts anymore. Have people gone so completely germ and disease nuts now that their food cannot even touch while still in the packaging? That really is a silly question and can be answered simply by looking at the handle of the cart. Yes, the new handles are actually special handles that repel bacteria. Whoever invented this one is laughing in his money somewhere. Apparently the sanitary wipes provided at the entrance aren't enough to ward off all the dirt and grime that resides inside a Wegmans and bacteria repelling handles are needed. Whenever I first read this, I was slightly apprehensive about holding the handle. To just look at it, it seems like a normal plastic handle. That is why it scares me. I do not know if something in the handle melts the bacteria away or if there are some type of radio active waves that zap the bacteria in the air. Either way, I wanted to break out a pair of gloves to protect myself from it, but I didn't want to embarrass my boyfriend so I faced my fears and took hold.
When it was finally time for check out, I was left alone to check out with the mutant cart while my boyfriend went to the bathroom. The first problem I had was the fact that the new carts are now wider, leaving only millimeters to spare on either side. Once I got the cart into the aisle, I realized that I could only reach the three items on the top shelf of the cart. I then had to back the cart out of the aisle and back it in to reach the items on the bottom shelf, all the while the 17 year old with perfectly messed hair was staring unapprovingly at me and the woman in a hurry to go somewhere (Everyone out here is always in a hurry yet there's never anything going on. Someday I strive to find out where they're all going.) was huffing up a storm. My problem again with backing the cart in, was the shear length of it. I could not reach over and grab the top shelf without catching my ankles, which was sure to end in me on the floor, so I had to bend over and grab the bottom shelf and waddle myself, butt in the air, backwards into the aisle. Once I was finally able to unload the cart, I had to then waddle the cart even further out the back end of the aisle so I could get behind it to swipe my card.
My boyfriend walked out of the bathroom to find me sweating and shaking. The woman who was behind me shook her head at my sorry excuse for a Wegmans shopper on her way out.
If these carts are to make my life easier, maybe grocery shopping is not for me after all.
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Current Pitstop Northern Virginia
I am finding out that I did not fully understand what I was signing up for when I agreed to move to the suburbs of northern Virginia from my 1/6th of a trailer in West Virginia to be with my boyfriend while he finished college.
I was working as a whitewater raft guide in West Virginia when I met my now boyfriend, we'll call him Ted. It was March, and I was training and he was coming down for play trips before the season started. We hit it off right away and grew closer over the summer, surviving my sister's wedding and two deaths together, my grandfather and his. When he asked me to come live with him after the season, I agreed and assumed things could only get better after sharing a twin bed for 8 months in a trailer that had been split into 6 rooms of which we shared one. There were many times that there was so much clutter and so little space that there was absolutely no way for us to not touch each other. Needless to say, we had some tense times.
Then I moved here. I have lived in a variety of places including Yellowstone National Park, Death Valley, CA, Billings, MT, and Nashville, TN, but none of these places prepared me for this, the suburbs. I have seen things here that I could not imagine there was ever a need or want for, but day after day I learn of something new. There are also so many fears of things going wrong, almost to a point of wanting something to go wrong so that it can be fixed. I listen to Ted's sister who is in high school talk of all her friends who are in counseling and rehab because of drinking problems. Drinking problems? Anywhere else, it is called being a teenager. Your parents discipline you and you live and learn from it. No need for counseling.
I am finding out that I do not fit in well here in the suburbs, but I am learning a lot and trying. I recently whitened my teeth and even received a facial last week. However, during that facial I did get lectured by a complete stranger for being a college graduate and waiting tables. I let that one go, I am sure she had my best interest in mind.
So we will call this a learning tool for me as to why I see some of the things I see here.
I was working as a whitewater raft guide in West Virginia when I met my now boyfriend, we'll call him Ted. It was March, and I was training and he was coming down for play trips before the season started. We hit it off right away and grew closer over the summer, surviving my sister's wedding and two deaths together, my grandfather and his. When he asked me to come live with him after the season, I agreed and assumed things could only get better after sharing a twin bed for 8 months in a trailer that had been split into 6 rooms of which we shared one. There were many times that there was so much clutter and so little space that there was absolutely no way for us to not touch each other. Needless to say, we had some tense times.
Then I moved here. I have lived in a variety of places including Yellowstone National Park, Death Valley, CA, Billings, MT, and Nashville, TN, but none of these places prepared me for this, the suburbs. I have seen things here that I could not imagine there was ever a need or want for, but day after day I learn of something new. There are also so many fears of things going wrong, almost to a point of wanting something to go wrong so that it can be fixed. I listen to Ted's sister who is in high school talk of all her friends who are in counseling and rehab because of drinking problems. Drinking problems? Anywhere else, it is called being a teenager. Your parents discipline you and you live and learn from it. No need for counseling.
I am finding out that I do not fit in well here in the suburbs, but I am learning a lot and trying. I recently whitened my teeth and even received a facial last week. However, during that facial I did get lectured by a complete stranger for being a college graduate and waiting tables. I let that one go, I am sure she had my best interest in mind.
So we will call this a learning tool for me as to why I see some of the things I see here.
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