For a Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic

If you ask me, moping and complaining about things not having gone the way you wanted them to will not make your life any better. Not on your end, and definitely not on anyone else's, unless the people you complain to are the kind of people who like listening to it! Now don't get me wrong; I understand people (myself included) need to vent, and in most cases I don't necessarily mind listening to an occasional rant from one or more of my friends, but I'm certainly not one of those people who enjoy listening to all that on a constant basis!
Sure; we all have bad days, and some people have them more often than others. In fact, if I talked about the emotions I feel on a regular basis, or (constantly) complained about something not going my way, or made sure the entire world had to know about anything else in my life that isn't exactly appealing, people would eventually get tired of it and take me for a "drama queen", or "the person who always bitches and whines", correct? I'm not trying to criticize anyone, and I'm definitely not saying this shouldn't apply to me as well as everyone else...all I'm trying to say is, that more than 90% of the times you feel like your life can't possibly get any worse, someone else (even someone you don't know) is in a much more complicated or devastating situation than what you are currently dealing with. So the next time your life seems to be at a stand-still, look on the bright side. Think of all the people in your life who actually care about you. Think about all the good things you have going for you, even if you don't have very much. Everyone needs to bitch occasionally, but when you do, don't forget about the positive aspects of your life, and don't take them for granted! For all you know, tomorrow, something terrible could happen; something bad enough to make all of your previous bad days seem like paradise...

Small potatoes! (;

I don't really know why I titled this post "small potatoes!", because I like just about( any) potato, no matter the shape and/or size. It's weird, but they're delicious, so I don't care...!
When I say I like any kind of potato, I'm not playin. Of course I love my French fries, and chips--I'll eat just about any kind of chips, but that really doesn't matter right now-- Some time last week, we had stake and baked potatoes for dinner. And guess what? I didn't give a damn about the stake--or the salad. And don't get me wrong; I love salad, almost as much as I love potatoes, but (obviously), I love potatoes more!
After we were all done eating dinner, I discovered some left over potatoes (which actually were small). Hell yes!! So guess what my dinner was for the next 2 days? Potatoes! What else would it have been? But instead of eating my baked potato like any "normal" person would, I chopped it into (tiny) pieces, covered it with bacon bits, cheese, and...and...and Italian dressing! Sounds gross, doesn't it? But it wasn't. In fact, it was the exact opposite.
Aside from actually eating potatoes, I love throwing them at people. Yes, I love throwing potatoes. I'm weird, I know, but the thought of throwing potatoes just sounds...amusing! You know you agree!
And I'm not sure how many people have actually heard of this, but there is a cartoon called "small potatoes" (which may have been how I came up with the title of this post). And the small potatoes in this cartoon sing! Singing potatoes? Hell yeah!! Of course I watch that shit! Only if I'm around little kids, but I still watch it when I get the chance. Not only is the theme song for this cartoon amusing, but these damn potatoes sing. Singing potatoes--how cool is that.
I'd continue rambling about potatoes, but I'm running out of things to say--things that actually make sense. So--what foods are you obsessed with enough to write ridiculous blog posts about?

The Monday of Mondays!

So last week, Monday lasted 5 days. An entire 5 days! I'm not kidding. Most people hate Mondays, with a flaming passion, right? Well, every single day of last week felt like a damn Monday. Monday (the first day of last Monday) was my first day back at school from summer break. And as if that wasn't bad enough, I couldn't walk 5 steps without dropping shit, I swear I ran into just about every door, locker, and human being on campus, and the topper? I got lost twice! In the same building! Okay...the first day of that particular Monday turned out to be the least of my problems. I don't remember much of the second day of Monday (the one "normal" people call Tuesday), but Wednesday? Wednesday was a hot mess--and a half! I'm taking a dual credit US history class (for both college and high school credits, for those who don't know what that is), and half of it is an online course. Bleh! And as luck would have it, I couldn't log onto my damn bc account to take that part of the class! So on Wednesday (the third day of Monday), I talked to my history professor about this issue, and we spent 2 class periods (both of which I was marked absent for, dumb ass teachers) trying to solve the problem. Not to mention; I got lost...well..., more than once that day. Now Thursday (the fourth day of Monday) was slightly messier than the day before. I was given a physics worksheet thinggy to complete by the next day. After skimming through the worksheet, I figured it would be pretty easy, and it would've been, if I hadn't completely misunderstood the damn instructions! Yes, I did the entire assignment wrong! Completely wrong! And this damn teacher wouldn't give me credit, even when I reluctantly offered to re-do the entire worksheet. But that's not all. When I got home from school that day, my grandmother informed me that she had somehow found out about the issue I was having with the college, and instead of shutting up long enough for me to explain exactly what happened, she spent the rest of the day bitching at me for "deliberately neglecting my school work". --and yes, listening to all that bitching is a lot worse than it sounds. And finally? Friday! Friday! Most people would be extremely happy about Friday, and normally, I would be happy as well. Friday usually means the end of the school week, and football games are usually on a Friday. (we won our first game, btw!) but for me, this was not a typical Friday. For me, it was just the last day of Monday. First, of all, the laptop I usually use to do my school work died in the middle of math class, while I was in the middle of working on an in-class assignment. Really? Now I have to re-do the entire damn thing! Then, just when I was hoping nothing else would go wrong, I was in the cafeteria, looking for someone in particular, and someone decided to throw their water bottle at me. It may have been an accident, but that didn't aggravate me any less. I had to wear a wet shirt for the rest of that day. Yes, that was cold! And the best/most embarrassing part of this entire 5-day long Monday? Like usual, my grandmother picked my brother and I up from school at the end of the day. She was surprisingly nice to me, but maybe only because she tried to drive away before I was even in the van, and the door was still open! And of course, everyone happened to be watching! Great. I'm sure that's all gonna come back to me when I go back to school tomorrow. Oh well, at least I managed to stay alive that entire week (or as I like to say, that entire Monday), right? Now hopefully tomorrow will actually feel like a Tuesday--not another damn Monday! O.O

The folded Napkin: a Trucker's Story

I found this on someone's facebook profile:
The Folded Napkin…

A Truckers Story -


I try not to be biased, but I had my doubts about hiring Stevie. His
placement counsellor assured me that he would be a good, reliable
busboy.

But I had never had a mentally handicapped employee and wasn't sure I
wanted one. I wasn't sure how my customers would react to Stevie.

He was short, a little dumpy with the smooth facial features and
thick-tongued speech of Downs Syndrome. I wasn't worried about most of
my trucker customers because truckers don't generally care who buses
tables as long as the meatloaf platter is good and the pies are
homemade.

The four-wheeler drivers were the ones who concerned me; the mouthy
college kids traveling to school; the yuppie snobs who secretly polish
their silverware with their napkins for fear of catching some dreaded
"truck stop germ" the pairs of white-shirted business men on expense
accounts who think every truck stop waitress wants to be flirted with.
I knew those people would be uncomfortable around Stevie so I closely
watched him for the first few weeks.

I shouldn't have worried. After the first week, Stevie had my staff
wrapped around his stubby little finger, and within a month my truck
regulars had adopted him as their official truck stop mascot.

After that, I really didn't care what the rest of the customers
thought of him. He was like a 21-year-old kid in blue jeans and Nikes,
eager to laugh and eager to please, but fierce in his attention to his
duties. Every salt and pepper shaker was exactly in its place, not a
bread crumb or coffee spill was visible when Stevie got done with the
table. Our only problem was persuading him to wait to clean a table
until after the customers were finished. He would hover in the
background, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, scanning
the dining room until a table was empty. Then he would scurry to the
empty table and carefully bus dishes and glasses onto his cart and
meticulously wipe the table up with a practiced flourish of his rag.
If he thought a customer was watching, his brow would pucker with
added concentration. He took pride in doing his job exactly right, and
you had to love how hard he tried to please each and every person he
met.

Over time, we learned that he lived with his mother, a widow who was
disabled after repeated surgeries for cancer. They lived on their
Social Security benefits in public housing two miles from the truck
stop. Their social worker, who stopped to check on him every so often,
admitted they had fallen between the cracks. Money was tight, and what
I paid him was probably the difference between them being able to live
together and Stevie being sent to a group home. That's why the
restaurant was a gloomy place that morning last August, the first
morning in three years that Stevie missed work.

He was at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester getting a new valve or
something put in his heart. His social worker said that people with
Downs Syndrome often have heart problems at an early age so this
wasn't unexpected, and there was a good chance he would come through
the surgery in good shape and be back at work in a few months.

A ripple of excitement ran through the staff later that morning when
word came that he was out of surgery, in recovery, and doing fine.

Frannie, the head waitress, let out a war hoop and did a little dance
in the aisle when she heard the good news.

Marvin Ringers, one of our regular trucker customers, stared at the
sight of this 50-year-old grandmother of four doing a victory shimmy
beside his table.

Frannie blushed, smoothed her apron and shot Marvin a withering look.

He grinned. "OK, Frannie, what was that all about?" he asked.

"We just got word that Stevie is out of surgery and going to be okay."

"I was wondering where he was. I had a new joke to tell him. What was
the surgery about?"

Frannie quickly told Marvin and the other two drivers sitting at his
booth about Stevie's surgery, then sighed: " Yeah, I'm glad he is
going to be OK," she said. "But I don't know how he and his Mom are
going to handle all the bills. From what I hear, they're barely
getting by as it is." Marvin nodded thoughtfully, and Frannie hurried
off to wait on the rest of her tables. Since I hadn't had time to
round up a busboy to replace Stevie and really didn't want to replace
him, the girls were busing their own tables that day until we decided
what to do.

After the morning rush, Frannie walked into my office. She had a
couple of paper napkins in her hand and a funny look on her face.

"What's up?" I asked.

"I didn't get that table where Marvin and his friends were sitting
cleared off after they left, and Pete and Tony were sitting there when
I got back to clean it off," she said. "This was folded and tucked
under a coffee cup."

She handed the napkin to me, and three $20 bills fell onto my desk
when I opened it. On the outside, in big, bold letters, was printed
"Something For Stevie."

"Pete asked me what that was all about," she said, "so I told him
about Stevie and his Mom and everything, and Pete looked at Tony and
Tony looked at Pete, and they ended up giving me this." She handed me
another paper napkin that had "Something For Stevie" scrawled on its
outside. Two $50 bills were tucked within its folds. Frannie looked at
me with wet, shiny eyes, shook her head and said simply:
"truckers."

That was three months ago. Today is Thanksgiving, the first day
Stevie is supposed to be back to work.

His placement worker said he's been counting the days until the
doctor said he could work, and it didn't matter at all that it was a
holiday. He called 10 times in the past week, making sure we knew he
was coming, fearful that we had forgotten him or that his job was in
jeopardy. I arranged to have his mother bring him to work. I then met
them in the parking lot and invited them both to celebrate his day
back.

Stevie was thinner and paler, but couldn't stop grinning as he pushed
through the doors and headed for the back room where his apron and
busing cart were waiting.

"Hold up there, Stevie, not so fast," I said. I took him and his
mother by their arms. "Work can wait for a minute. To celebrate your
coming back, breakfast for you and your mother is on me!" I led them
toward a large corner booth at the rear of the room.

I could feel and hear the rest of the staff following behind as we
marched through the dining room. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw
booth after booth of grinning truckers empty and join the procession.
We stopped in front of the big table. Its surface was covered with
coffee cups, saucers and dinner plates, all sitting slightly crooked
on dozens of folded paper napkins. "First thing you have to do,
Stevie, is clean up this mess," I said. I tried to sound stern.

Stevie looked at me, and then at his mother, then pulled out one of
the napkins. It had "Something for Stevie" printed on the outside. As
he picked it up, two $10 bills fell onto the table.

Stevie stared at the money, then at all the napkins peeking from
beneath the tableware, each with his name printed or scrawled on it. I
turned to his mother. "There's more than $10,000 in cash and checks on
that table, all from truckers and trucking companies that heard about
your problems. "Happy Thanksgiving."

Well, it got real noisy about that time, with everybody hollering and
shouting, and there were a few tears, as well.

But you know what's funny? While everybody else was busy shaking
hands and hugging each other, Stevie, with a big smile on his face,
was busy clearing all the cups and dishes from the table..

Best worker I ever hired.

Things I Find Especially Annoying About Being Blind

First of all, just to be clear, I generally don't find being blind to be irritating, but there are a few drawbacks, mostly caused by my pears...

To start with, out of every blind person I know, none of them can say they haven't, at some point, used it to their advantage. Admittedly, I've even done that. But contrary to a lot of people's beliefs, I do (not) do that all the time. But it seems like every time I mostly (mostly) playfully brag about having gotten away with something most people wouldn't, some of my friends (one in particular especially) always respond with "it's just cuz your blind". Really now? Not everyone in the world takes that much pity on blind people. If an autistic person can get arrested for disruptive behavior, I'm pretty sure I could be penalized for pulling a gun on someone, or carrying a significant amount of marijuana.

Out of everything I might post here, it would be a damn shame if I failed to mention the blind jokes. You know, the "how do you know? You can't see her/him/it, etc.", or similar remarks? Yeah, they're annoying! Especially if they're not even funny, or said repeatedly. And, if you know me, and you know that I have some vision, what's the use in making such remarks anyway?

Now this one is probably more amusing than annoying, but a lot of people who haven't known me my entire life, especially ones I go to school with seem to find everything (everything) I say to be absolutely hilarious! Really? I'm glad you think so. Especially on my off days, when I just...don't feel like (actually trying) to make anyone laugh. On those kinds of days, I guess all I have to do is talk in order to amuse these uneducated sightees. :-p
And I don't doubt that you're wondering what the hell would be so amusing to an uneducated sightee about me talking, so ...you do the math. Of course, these people already were given the impression that I either can't talk, am mentally challenged, or both. So like I said, just me talking in the first place is just the most amusing thing on the planet--to them at least. O.O

Now, seriously. Why is it that it seems like every time I walk alone someplace, anyone who sees me does or says something to imply that I am lost, and sympathetically asks if I need help? Oh, right, again, they're not quite familiar with the fact that I am not, in fact, a "poor helpless blind girl". Okay, so just to clear the air a little, I know how to politely accept or turn down an offer when given one, and ask for help when I need it.

So, blindies, have you ever been asked an incredibly stupid question? Have people made assumptions about what you can or can't do? Of course you have! I can't believe I myself just asked a stupid question. Oh wait, I can. Admittedly, I am somewhat ---a dingbat? So expect a few stupid questions or remarks from me every now and then. Kay, any who, this should be an acceptable question. Have you ever answered someone's question (s) about you, whether they were stupid or legitimate, and said person still didn't understand your answer? And still took you for a "helpless blind person"? I can't tell you how many times that's happened to me! I could rant about that forever, but I'm getting a little tired of typing. So--with that, I'll write more drawbacks later--if I feel like it. In other words, probably never. So if you have anymore to add, or have a response to this somewhat dull post, feel free to comment!
Later losers! :-)