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Shoes and Poo

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WARNING: May contain explicit material related to bodily functions.

I’m going to share something very personal here. If the above warning did not already scare you, I’m giving you one last chance to step away from the blog if you are unable to process real and raw information.

You’re still here? Okay, here goes….

Every time I step into Target, I get the urge to poop. I don’t know if it’s the smell of popcorn and coffee, the over stimulating environment, or the myriad of items to look at, but as I wander through it all, I lose focus and want to head for straight for the bathroom. Unfortunately, they stick their restrooms right at the entrance, which would require circling back through stuff and annoying people with screaming kids, only to feel like security is following me as I bring my cart past the registers as if I’m planning to bolt out without paying. And, even if I make it there, I’ll worry the whole time that one of the employees with take my abandoned cart and it’s items, leaving me to go through the store once again.

You are probably thinking, “does she actually poop in public bathrooms?” the answer is “yes, I do.”. I think my whole public poop-phobia was conquered when I was pregnant with my son. If I had to go, there was no waiting. Since then, I’ve gone in countless public restrooms with no concern at all. Target is not the only place that triggers this urge. Ross, TJ Maxx, Barnes & Noble, and now DSW, are also instant laxatives. I guess if I had an issue with ‘regularity’, I might shop more.

My latest encounter happened while shopping at DSW (Designer Shoe Warehouse) with my husband and son. Our original intent was to find my husband some shoes. As we start strolling the aisles, I immediate get the ‘urge’ and shift my shoe scanning to bathroom locating. Thankfully, the restroom was near, because I knew this could not wait. This was a different feeling, the feeling of stomach flu, not just poo.

As I opened the door to the restroom, I heard another woman in a stall. I’m not entirely sure, but I think she, too, falls victim to the overstimulating shopping environment bowel trigger syndrome. Thankful the handicapped stall was available, I entered quickly and did my business. Yes, for sure, I caught the stomach bug and silently apologized to the woman in the adjacent stall. The next thing that happened was both unexpected, and more troublesome than my tummy troubles. While retrieving toilet paper from the roll. A 150 ply stack of TP emerged from the dispenser and exploded, like powder, all over me. It was like I’d eaten a giant powdered sugar donut and none of it reached my mouth. It was EVERYWHERE. I started frantically brushing off my jeans, which now looked acid wash. I picked tiny pieces out of my underwear, off my shirt, and even my face. I started sweating in my panic and wondered if I’d make it out of there dragging the rest of the roll behind me.

Finally, I felt I was cleaned up enough to emerge from the bathroom and find my family. When I approached my husband, he said, “what’s all over your pants?”. Clearly, I was unsuccessful with my toilet paper explosion clean up efforts. I really didn’t care anymore because I still had the flu, and I just wanted to get home and lay on the couch. I grabbed some shoes, along with my son and husband, we paid and left. It was a couple of days later that I realized I had picked out shoes I would never wear (they’ve been returned) and that my son somehow came home with $120 (we paid $80, BUT STILL) Penguin high tops. Clearly, I was distracted.

The moral of the story? HA! There’s no message here. This is just part of my life. And, I just bet, I’m not the only one who has this kind of ‘stimulating’ experience when they shop.

From Squares to Blogging; How Apple’s Seed Helped Me Grow

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I don’t watch the news, and only find out tidbits of what goes on outside my ‘bubble’ through my Yahoo homepage, and posts on Facebook. Without technology, it’s likely I’d have no clue that anything went on in the world. Like today, when I opened up my browser, and saw that Steve Jobs, Apple co-founder, died today at the age of 56.

In 1983, I was in 8th grade. I remember taking a required computer class where I was exposed, for the first time, to the Apple Computer. It was a medium sized box, with a black screen, flashing rectangular cursor, and green bit map numbers and letters. In class, we were taught how to write a program (code I guess) that would tell the computer to draw lines. The test was to write a program telling the computer to draw a square. I remember being one of the first people to complete the task and thinking, what else do you have for me?

Through most of high school we didn’t use computers, except for keyboarding class. As a Junior, and high school newspaper staff member, we used computers at the old Bellevue ‘Journal American’ to type and print out copy. Then, we ran it through the wax machine and hand pasted layouts that were printed into the ‘Knightlife’. The (olden days) memories of long evenings at the ‘JA’ are a good reminder of how much technology has made the publishing world a lot easier. The following year, when I was the Feature Editor of the paper, our school purchased a few of the Apple II E computers for the journalism department. It was so cool to learn and use Pagemaker to layout our stories and pictures for press.

After high school, if you can believe it, I made it through college without a personal computer. We had access to computers solely for typing papers, which I did a lot of, and had to use the required word processing program issued by the college on a 5.5″ floppy disk. In my last two years of college, in the Interior Design program, we learned a DOS based CAD (Computer Aided Design) program. My early years of learning ‘code’ helped me a lot not only in that class, but in my several years of CAD that followed.

Between high school and somewhere in my thirties, I don’t remember using any Apple products. But at some point, they started showing up at our house. First, my husband was issued a MacBook Pro from work. I mean, from MICROSOFT. He needed to make sure the interface he was designing worked on the Mac. Soon after, our son ‘inherited’ the MacBook, which catapulted his YouTube and general movie making career. Then, when the iPod Touch came out, Santa brought one for our son, followed by one for my husband’s birthday. My son is now on his 2nd MacBook, and, 2 years later, still uses his iPod Touch every single day.

All the while, I have used PCs in the form of desktop and laptop computers. I got an android phone, and occasionally played on the iPod. Until, the release of the iPad. My curiosity stirred for over a year, until I decided it was the perfect tool for writing, something I’ve dreamed of doing for a long time. So, I bought the iPad 2 for my birthday, which, incidentally, is when I really DID start writing. I take it with me everywhere and use it for email, Facebook, looking up recipes, taking notes, helping my son with math and spelling, and, of course, blogging. My true passion in life is to inspire others and make a difference in the world through my writing, and now I have the tool I need to live that out.

Thank you Steve Jobs for your incredible foresight, passion, and innovation that changed the world. Apple, I believe, was the leader in the user friendly computer world, and, I just bet, anyone reading this could write their own story of how this man’s work affected their life.

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Resisting The Urge To Buy

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What’s the one thing in your life you just can’t resist? Maybe a particular food, drink, or candy? A tv show, or even a person? There are some things we are drawn to in an intense way. Like a magnet even. The taste of a food might spark a favorite memory, or a tv show might bring you to another place where you can forget your crazy life for awhile. Mostly, these things are harmless, but what if the urge is uncontrollable to the point that it takes over rational thought? To the extreme that it affects your future in a negative way.

With my extreme personality, you better believe if I want something, I’m annoyingly persistent about getting it. However, I posses a strong inner voice that will pester me when I am clearly making a bad choice. The dialog between stubborn me and my inner voice might go something like this: Me, “OMG I NEED THAT!” Inner Voice, “No you don’t, the one you have is perfectly fine. It might be old and somewhat ghetto, but it still works. Count your blessings. There are lots of people who would love to have your ghetto item. Besides, what kind of message are you sending if you just spend your money willy nilly? You will appear irresponsible. Why don’t you put that money in savings or….”. I think you get the point. Trouble is, the inner voice rarely wins, and then transforms into remorse.

(Side note to those who know me personally: As annoying as I can be to my friends when it comes to convincing them of something, I’m even more annoying to myself.)

Recently, both my husband and I got the urge to buy a new car. Both our cars are 10 or more years old. One has a gianormous dent, and taped up sunroof. The other smells like, for a better word, ass, and is so compact our 11 year old can barely fit in the back seat anymore. We all groan every time we get into either car, and often wonder if parts might just drop off while driving down the road. The trouble is, for the most part, both cars, with over 145,000 miles each, still run perfectly well. Both our trusted mechanics rave about how great they run.

Regardless, we felt it was time to upgrade at least one of them. With our inner voices yelling as loud as they could against our desire, we moved full force into reasoning. My favorite: Let’s sell the compact diesel that gets 45 plus mpg cause it’s worth more.

Let’s move on and get to the point. How we manage our money directly represents our priorities in life. While this appears to be a harsh statement, don’t react until you fully understand where I’m coming from. There is a direct correlation between managing your money based on basic principles and living a life with financial peace of mind. If you are more focused on living in the moment and disregarding your future, then you likely have stress related to financial worries. You may even fight about money with your spouse, or wonder if you’ll be able to pay your utility bills.

The principles my husband and I live by are based on several years of negative life experience, followed by classes we took, then taught, about telling your money where to go, rather than wondering where it went. The methods in these classes were based on instructions from the Bible, and although you may not be a follower of God, these principles work. I won’t go into much detail, but basically: Give, plan, save, invest, and don’t go in to debt.

How does this work? Give the first 10% of your income. To your church, to a charity, to your school, or someone in need. Make a plan for where the remainder of your income will go BEFORE you spend it. Focus on your basic needs first: food, shelter, clothing, and transportation. If you DO have debt, pay those bills after you’ve taken care of your basic needs. If you are debt free, invest your money for the future and have an emergency fund of 3 to 6 months of your basic need expenses. Keep in mind, there are more specific and chronological steps to this, but they aren’t appropriate for a blog post.

The point? My husband and I spent almost 2 years focusing on eliminating our consumer debt. This included car loans, credit cards, and home equity line of credit. In about 18 months time, we paid off over $26,000 in debt and have never looked back. Because we are debt free (except our mortgage), we are able to give, save, and spend without worry. We decide every month where our money is going to go, and adjust when necessary. We pay cash for everything, and can even impulse buy when we know we have the money available.

Did we buy a new to us car? No. Were we close to doing it? Yes. Why did we choose not to? Simply, we were presented with enough road blocks that we finally snapped out of it. Instead we spent some of our savings on fixing our old ghetto Rover and drove it over 3000 miles through California worry free. And we are thrilled with our decision to remain debt free.

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