Thursday, July 10, 2008

my favorite time of days.

i have maybe three favorite times a day. the first time that's my favorite is seeing the sunset. i don't really see it, but it lets me know that the night is almost over, and that i can go home in a couple of hours. today the sunset turned the sky reddish pink. it doesn't normally do that. it usually is just the blue purple pink and gold, but today it was just the reddish pink.
my second favorite part of the day is when i walk home. some nights when i walk home i see the lightning in the sky. it lights up the world with awesome lightning strikes and so on. then i remember that i'm standing next to a metal building and should probably start walking home. other nights, like tonight, the sky is lit up with the stars. while it's not the same as living in the country it is a close second. when i walk home i find the different constillations and look at how bright they are. it reminds me of things that i like, and it keeps me going when i can't feel anything anymore. it reminds me of what a real vacation is, and how i need one of those. i'll get that vacation when i go back to school. i know that school is school and sometimes it sucks, but it's better than how i live now.
my third favorite thing of the day is probably logging onto facebook and writing on my blog so early in the morning. i hope that you guys are excited when you see that i've posted on my blog, and i enjoy the messages that friends send me on facebook.
it's kind of sad that i only have three favorite things per day. i know that they aren't much, but they matter to me. as of now, i can't really think or feel anymore, so i think it's time for bed. good night!

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

maybe it's time for me to get a better duty!

yeah, i just got home from work. it was a long night, and i think that it was full of many discoveries that inspire me to be like nacho and to find a different job.
these discoveries are related based on the fact that it deals with the same issue. while at work i have three shadows. i have my regular shadow, that's normal, i expect it to be there.
shadow #1: this shadow is 200+ pounds, and not all muscle. whenever i have to work with codename "mountain man" i get to hear him talk about ridiculous things. he invited me to go motorcycle riding with him this weekend. i graciously declined that opportunity. whenever i have to work with him i hope that i'm upwind, because there is a stench that comes from him. it's not a smell, it's a stench. everybody at work has a smell because of the gross gloves that we have to wear, but there is something more to mountain man. in general i find him to be a nice guy except that his whole life revolves around banging the next chick and riding his motorcycle.
shadow #2: this shadow may not be 200+ pounds but he is a real handful. codename "D-man" is 19 and has issues. i was working with glue today, and i got some strands of glue caught on my pants. i was in the process of pulling them off when he asked if he could help. yeah. . . about that. . .i'm thinking it's a no go. nice kid, but he does believe in God, and he doesn't believe in God. that issue will have to be saved for another night.
i just woke up my grandpa, i got to go to bed or something like it. i love you all and peace out.

Thursday, July 3, 2008

the truth about the summertime this year around

so i think that the first thing that i'll cover in this blog is probably the floods. i don't think that they were as bad as the media would like you to think. while it was bad enough that i had to drive 45 minutes to get to a town that is only 15 minutes away, i think that it could have been a lot worse. it still was pretty bad. one of the main roads into albion had so much water flowing over it that the water tore the road away in parts. it wasn't just an inch or two. i was going to ride my bike through it but when the water was half way up the bike and i was only a third of the way through i decided to turn around. it was three to five feet deep across that road. suck! the affect that it has on the economy could be huge. corn production has gone down because most farmers didn't have time to plant before the floods, and those that did had there seeds washed away in some parts. i think to find out how much damage the floods caused will have to wait until we see the yields in the fall.
so the second thing of bad news. i found out today that production is so slow at the factory that if we don't get any new orders in there will be layoffs. they will start with the temps, so a lot of the day crew will go home. then they're goingt to start with the night shift part timers. it goes in order of whosever been there the shortest amount of time. oh yeah, that would be ME! that really sucks. if i can't detassel this year i need this job. i need it to last until around the first week of august. it's only going to be the second week of july and they are talking about layoffs. that's what you would call bad luck.
so for one of the last truths about summer in this post i turn to family. i have to admit that when i first came home i thought that things were going well in my family. they all seemed happy and there for each other and so on. one night i was getting ready for bed, and my mother and father were too so i was talking to them, and i found an old folder of mine. it wasn't full of my stuff though, it had been emptied and turned into a journal of sorts by my mother. i started reading it and i realized right away that i shouldn't, so i set it down and let it slide. it was a few days later that i went back to it, because i had to know what it was about. i had my assumptions, but i wanted to know if i was right or wrong. i was partially right, but my timing was off.
my mother still hasn't forgiven my dad completely for what happened last summer. i was reading the journal entry, and she was talking about leaving and not ever coming back. i remember when she left before, and it wasn't a happy time. this note was written in february. i felt every stab of sadness as she wrote about leaving and never looking or coming back. she wouldn't just be leaving my dad, she would be leaving my family.
it was sunday morning, and i decided there was no time like the present to confront my mother about the journal. i asked her how things were going. she started to cry, and said that she was concerned for me, she didn't want me to make the same mistake in choosing a complacent husband. the fact that she thinks part of it was a mistake was a stab yet again. i then asked if they had gotten better than last summer. she was silent for a time, and i could see that they hadn't. she then said that they hadn't gotten worse.
i don't think that anyone else in my family knows. my brothers are to busy fighting with each other at times to notice anything else, and my sisters don't live here. although at times i wish i could be elsewhere, i know that i need to be here. i can't just leave them and hope for the best, i will leave them in august, but for now, they need me. i'm not sure how, or why, but i need to be here.
to end on a happier note, i just got home, and in the fridge there was koolaid. it's very tasty, and my favorite drawer is still loaded with candy. peace out childrens!

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

my new favorite drawer!

so i have to admit that the last couple of weeks have been pretty rocky. i knew what i was in for when i came home. i was home for the grand total of 40 hours and then i decided it was time to leave. that's when i headed for wichita to see my sister and her baby boy. it was the first time that i had ever seen the baby, and it was the first time that i had seen my sister in a year. while it was great to see them, my anxiety over finding a job had reached a breaking point. i knew that i had to come back to iowa to get a job.
there are two jobs here that i hate, but i know that i have to do them. i just have to have a goal in mind. i do these jobs because i have to pay for school, and because school and friends are important to me, and to accomplish school and to see my friends i have to work these two crappy jobs.
so i've been working in the factory for one month and one week. it's been kind of stressful because tom, the manager is really cranky sometimes, and it's always so hard to tell if he's in a good mood or not. i usually just shut up and do the work, but with him breathing down my neck i feel that i can never do the work fast enough to make him happy. so to make him happy i talk about three things: music(more specifically 80's music), politics, and morals. yeah, that's about all that i can do to help tom. when we talk about morals mostly he complains about us complaining about life. so now i'm pretty sure that i could blackmail anyone at the factory, only i decide just to listen.
my other job hasn't started yet, and due to the floods of this year, i don't really know when it will. i work in the cornfields, and i'm personally hoping that it starts the last two week in july. yesterday was the last day that farmers could plant their crops and not have a total loss. they really should be able to plant, but insurance companies are being the real idiots here. they could probably plant all this week, but the insurance companies say no, so it's thanks to them that we're gonna be short this year. like i said i haven't started yet, but i have been in an intense game of phone tag with my boss. we've both called each other twice, but neither of us has talked to the other. Yay! great fun! hopefully i can talk chad up a couple more dollars. that would be nice.
so i'm sure that you are wondering about the title of this blog and it's coming right now. my grandpa is visiting right now, and we hid all these treats in a drawer in the kitchen. i didn't think that he would actually make it out here because he could probably die at any time. he has prostate cancer, and the treatments stopped working. he used to have to go to chemo every week, but when it stopped working, we took him off. one of the last things that he wanted to do was to come out here and see my family. i've never been so happy so see him. it really means a lot to me that he want to come. anyways . . . the drawer. i happened to stumble upon this drawer early today. when i say today i mean yesterday around noon. i wish that you could have seen my face as i looked into this drawer. it's full of little chocolate bars and reeses peanut butter cups. i was pleasantly pleased to see this, and made two chocolate bars part of my breakfast. today was a hard day at work, and when i came home i opened up that drawer, and saw that it was full of chocolate still, i was happy yet again. point one for the home front. SWANK!
yeah, i'm really mixed up on my days. my days start around 11 am and go to 5 am. i sleep from 5 to 11, and i take a nap around 2. so when you read this, think of my time and maybe it will be less confusing. if not oh well, better luck next time. peace out kids! it's 4:30 am!

Saturday, June 21, 2008

creepy guy for real this time

so when i firs got home i spent two weeks in wichita with my sister and her son and her husband. it was a great time and i really enjoyed it. a week after i had been home, i went to graduation at the high school, and then i went to mission prep class because 20 year old girls are allowed to go. usually it's just the guys, but this time the laurels were invited, and so i went, and i was one of the oldest people there. the laurels were people that i was a youth leader to at camp and i remember them at camp and youth conference, and it's just hard to imagine them as the laurels. i guess that i'll take what i can get now days. so anyway, there was this guy there who i had never seen before, but i guess he was an rm who went on his mission to ogden utah. i didn't even know his name, and i didn't talk to him at all while i was there.
i got home that night and i was hanging out with my family. i got a phone call and it was from this guy. i don't even know how he found out who i was. it was very odd in my opinion. he asked me if i would like to go out on a date. i said that i needed time to figure out my schedule, because i was looking for work at the time, and so he said that he would call back that wednesday around five. i knew when i hung up from the call that i would have to leave my house before wednesday at five so that i wouldn't have to talk to him.
so wednesday rolled around and it's around 3:50 and i'm getting ready to take my little brother into town, and then i get a phone call. it's him. i still don't know his name, i don't know where he is from, and it's really scary. so we talked. i told him that i wasn't going to date him because i didn't know him. so he decided that it was get to know you time. he knew that i was a byu student and so he told me about his mission. what he told me was that he met a girl on his mission out there, and after he got home he went back out there and got engaged to her. they were engaged for a week maybe, and then she called it off, and two weeks later she was engaged to someone else. i don't know why he shared that with me but oh well. it was then that my mom shouted loud that it was time to go, so i left.
i went on my mini mission, and i was in story city. as i was going there the thought came to my mind how funny it would be if he were there. i laughed to myself and kept going. yeah, i saw him at the open house on saturday. suck! the sisters were there though and they protected me and elizabeth from him.
after church on sunday they told us the real story. the girl that he had "met out in utah" was actually a missionary out here. she served here and was attention deprived and so he gave her the attention that she wanted. his family encouraged him in his endeavors, which is wrong. his father even gave him a blessing saying that he would marry this girl. she was a missionary, which is so wrong. when she went home he waited for a few months then went out there. she agreed to the engagement, but then she came around to her senses. i then told them about the mission prep class incident. i was laughing kind of hard about all of it because he didn't talk to me at all while i was there. at first i kind of felt bad, but now i'm okay with it.
so that is the story of the creepy stalker man. i'm pretty shocked myself. here i was thinking that i was going to go on a boy fast but i found myself bombarded with all the weirdos out there. don't worry caleb, i survived this stalker, i'm sure that i can survive all the others that will probably come.
well, i gotta teach tomorrow, so peace out, and i miss you guys. i love you all and miss our parties. i've seen five movies since i've been home: prince caspian, indiana jones, kung fu panda, the incredible hulk, and get smart. they were all pretty good. get smart was like watching the screenplay for michael scott's movie, only it wasn't catherine zeta jones, it was anne hathaway. it's a good one. you should check it out.

Friday, June 20, 2008

the mini mission of awesome and the creepy stalker guy!

so i was reading the post from last night, and i realized that i spelled allisons wrong. i guess my mind was worn out. so here goes for tonight. yeah, i posted last night at 3:45 a.m. that was great fun.
the mini mission was pretty cool. i showed up on friday and i went to story city. it's an hour away from where i live. the sister missionaries were pretty cool. i met with them and elizabeth about half way through friday. it was kind of boring because it was there planning day, but that was okay because i was really tired. so elizabeth and i talked. it was the first time that we've seen each other since we left byu. we caught up on all the business of non college iowa life and so forth. things look like they are going well for her.
so that first night there the coolest experience of the day was being able to hold a baby racoon. this family rescued a baby racoon from the floods and are raising it. she's pretty awesome and her name is velvet. i got to hold her for a while and then she started to climb all over. so she ended up sitting on my back and sucking on my thumbs and fingers for some of the night. it was cool. that's where those pictures on facebook come from.
saturday was a pretty busy day. i really enjoyed it though. there was a parade in story city and we handed out flyers before the parade. the church was having an open house for 72 hour kits and family history. i managed to hand out a few flyers and that made me pretty happy. after the parade it was the open house. i played piano for that. it was the first time that i've played piano since i came home from utah. i thought it was pretty fun. it was around this time that my bandaid fell off and my chunky knuckle was exposed, so jackson got me a new one. i then started annoying her by showing her my knuckle and shouting out chunky knuckle. it was pretty swank.
we went tracting that night for around 20 minutes. during that time one sister and i placed a book of mormon. it was pretty cool. she seemed really interested. then the sister gave me the option of knocking on a door, and i decided to give it a try. it went very well. i talked with this lady about joseph smith, and gave her a finding faith in christ card. she was really interested, but because of the parade, she had family in town and was hanging with them. she and her family have been out to utah a lot and enjoy the salt lake area. so she took down our information and gave us hers and then we decided we should leave because there were tornadoes out and about.
two other really exciting parts of the day were when the sister took us to the antique carousel. i rode on the carousel, even with my skirt on. it was swankin'. the sister's also took us to this awesome place we call slide mountain. there were three huge slides there and we played on them for a while and then we moved to the playground right next to it.
all in all, it was a pretty good mini mission. on sunday when we went to church, the leaders came into the classrooms during the third hour to announce that the main roads into town were closed, and that we would have to find a different way home. when we got out of church they had closed off most of the downtown area and were starting to close residential areas. they had taken the motor out of the carousel, and the football field and everything was pretty much under water. i used to come to story city to practice for marching band competitions, and to see the football field under water was odd. it wasn't an inch of water, it was probably aroun four to ten feet of water. it was high. but no worries, i'll write about the flooding probably tomorrow, and i think that i'll have to write about creepy stalker guy another time. my mom is sick and i have to teach her class on sunday. i gotta look at the lesson.
see yah later.

chunky knuckles the og(original) and volume 2: the reckoning!

so about two weeks ago i started to work the night shift at the factory across from where i live. i had just gotten off work, and the next day i was going to go on a mini mission. i was ready to go to bed so i was rushing everything. i went into the bathroom and started turning on the lights so that i could take a shower. underneath one of the light switches is a box full of a myriad of different things. i flipped on the switch and as i did, i felt i huge pain on the knuckle of my ring finger, right hand. i look down and blood is pouring from my finger. i looked for what could have done that and in the box was a razor. i looked at the razor, and i could see the chunk of skin that was supposed to be connected to my hand. suck! it was so gross i had to wake up my mother and show her what happened. EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW! so it didn't stop bleeding until two days later. i took my bandaid off during the mini mission and showed jackson the chunky knuckle of doom. i couldn't stop shouting out chunky knuckles. it was really funny. i will have to write about the mini mission tomorrow.
so tonight for the reckoning. i was at work and i was running this thing called the turret, which cuts different designs into metal. i was working and i chopped open my knuckle on my right hand pinky. blood gushed from it, but i didn't have a bandaid, and i couldn't go and find one. so i just wiped it on these really gross gloves that i have to wear. it was one of the sickest experiences of the night. i think that i got hepititus from it. (just kidding, i don't think i did, but these gloves are disgusting).
and now for the !. also while i was working tonight, i was lifting sheets of metal. it looks like i met wolverine from xmen and he decided to cut up my left arm/hand. yeah. today was long i guess is the good word for it.
i'll write more tomorrow. but for now, peace out kids! shout out to the chatfields and the flanagans and the allisions!!