K as in....uh....uh....Kangaroo?

I'm not the biggest fan of talking on the phone.  Mostly because I am surprisingly bad at it.  This sounds stupid, but its true. When I talk on the phone I get tongue-tied and I fumble all over the place.  This isn't usually too bad during the course of a normal phone conversation where the other party is able to cut me off and direct the conversation far better than I am capable of, but all of the voicemail messages I leave are always awkwardly horrible.  Even as I am leaving the message I feel how stupid I am, but I am already too far in to turn back, so I just rush through the rest of the message I am leaving, quickly sign off and spend the next 15 minutes overanalyzing the awkward message I just left.

I also have this horribly high squeaky voice, which only gets higher and squeakier when I speak on the phone. Seriously, why do people even have phone voices? And why can't I control mine better?!!

Honestly, I never feel like a bigger idiot than when I am on the phone....except for possibly the one exception of when I'm on the phone at work, and unfortunately for me, a large part of my job requires me to answer phones.

Today at work a client  called and asked for some information. I ended up having to share a few email addresses with her and had to spell them out for her.Why is it so hard to come up with a words that start with the letter you are saying when you are spelling a word out for people? Is this just me? I've always struggle with it, I hmmm and haw for a good minute every time and sound like a complete moron as I scour my brain for a word, any word, that starts with that letter.

Today was even worse than usual because the client on the phone had an Australian accent and the first letter of the word was 'k,' so my brain brilliantly came up with, "K as in Kangaroo."  At which point I started mentally kicking myself hoping that she wouldn't be offended by the word that I had chosen (I realize it doesn't sound offensive, but still it wasn't the best choice to come to mind, and unfortunately it was the only word that came to mind).

More Things I Will Never Understand

1. The continued use of 2 sided dvd's. Such a pain! 

2. How few people find it disturbing that people are now in love with their phones. The Siri feature: CREEEEEPY!!!  perhaps its just the commericals that make it creepy, but the celebrities constantly talking to an operating system and asking their phone if it is raining, when they are looking out the window and SEEING rain is, oh, what's the word?...CREEPY!!  

3. Speed Dating. As much as I love small talk and being herded around by the sound of a bell, and being judged by my comments to random questions by random strangers in the space of three minutes, I would much rather be doing, well, anything else.  I think we're taking the wrong approach with locking up terrorists and waterboarding.  10 minutes of speed dating at an LDS singles ward will have those criminals whipped into perfect gentlemen, just so that they don't have to endure anymore of this real torture (come on ACLU, why aren't you fighting against this real torture. And yes, some people might argue that it was self-inflicted, but no, no it was not.  REalizeing that NO ONE likes speed dating, and yet, not realizing for themselves how pointless and annoying this acitivty is, the powers that be on the activities committee cleverly disguised the event by a fun, unique label, thus successfully hiding the ugly, twisted nature of the real activity)

4. Why the welfare system is still around. Ok, I realize that some people need an extra hand up, and I am all for giving it to them, and only them until they are back on their feet.  But I think its safe to say the the majority of the people on welfare should not be on it, but are too lazy and do not have a Jiminiy Cricket to tell them that their continued milking of the government is completely unethical and disgusting.

5. Insurance....  and Electoral Colleges. Believe it or not these two things are related: because they are both completely impossible to understand  No matter how often they are explained to me, in many different ways, I will NEVER EVER EVER EVER comprehend either of these.

The Commenter

There's one in every ward.  You know the person, the one who when they raise their hand in Sunday School or Relief Society the rest of the group collectively rolls their eyes and grits their teeth.  This is the person who constantly comments during lessons.  Not only do they comment frequently, but their comments are looong and take up half the lesson.  And more than half time their comments are so off the mark that you can't help but feel embarrassed for these people (even though they are so socially unaware that they would never be embarrassed for themselves).

I tend to err in the other direction when it comes to commenting by not commenting at all. This is due in part to extreme shyness, but also because I do not ever want to be the person who makes the awkward, or long, or frequent comments.

Tonight I discovered that the Resident Commenter in my ward signed up for the same Institute class as me.   And bonus...her long tangential comments aren't just reserved for Sunday!

Quack, Quack

I love ducks.  Now I know this is random, and for a self-proclaimed animal hater, it is extremely odd, but I love ducks.

I don’t know why I love ducks so much, but I’ve always liked ducks: My mother would take me to the park to feed ducks growing up, Daisy Duck was my nighttime protector and closest confident for more years than I’d care to admit.  I also grew up watching DuckTales and Darkwing Duck and Daffy Duck and Ernie with his ever present Rubber Duck (squeak, squeak). 

One of the perks of my new condo is that the area has a lot of waterfowl.  One morning I found a duck waddling around my parking lot.  I named him Roger.  He made my day.  I carefully backed my car up, making sure not to crush Roger and the rest of the day I was happy.

Recently I discovered the book ’10 Little Rubber Ducks’ by Eric Carle, which is not only based on actual events, but is an adorable story    At work, my coworker and I used to draw on post-it notes with hilighters, and we often drew ducks for each other…She even convinced her boyfriend, who owns a local pizza place to name a pizza after me: The Allison Duck (we had both been trying to get him to put duck on one of his pizza creations, he compromised with the name, but no duck, although I’m kind of glad now that I didn’t eat any of my cute friends.). 

Every time I see a duck my affinity for these fine feathered friends is reaffirmed.  I think one of the reasons why I love ducks so much is that they are always cute.  Seriously, has anyone seen an ugly duck (Amazingly I didn’t even catch that I almost quoted a Hans Christian Anderson title, yet even then the ugly duckling was in fact a baby swan)?  From ducklings to full sized ducks, ducks are super cute. No other animal that I can think of can boast cute young and old.

Things I Will Never Understand

1. How Planes Fly.
Sure, I get the principles of lift, thrust, drag and wieight.  Theoretically flight makes sense.  But I'm much more familiar with gravity--which is why it is hard for me to believe that mid-flight, the plane is NOT going to plummet to the Earth.

2. Pretty Woman
I do not understand how this is considered a romantic movie (Ok, the end scene where Richard Gere climbs the fire escape is pretty romantic, but I still cannot get over the whole prostitution thing...)

3.  Shoes that have the individual toes
I don't care how good they are for running, NO ONE should ever wear these monstrosities.

4.  Children with smartphones.
Really?! Your 3 year old needs an I-phone to Skype with you?

5. The name the Berenstain Bears chose for their third child.
You remember those moral-teaching bears from childhood: Mama, Papa, Brother and, Sister Bear?  Well, while browsing through some books at a store a while back I noticed that the Bear family had grown.  Papa and Mama Bear had a new bundle of joy, and named it....Honey.  Yes, Honey.  Now, typically I would have no objection to a bear being named Honey, but in this particular family where the two oldest kids are literally named, Brother and Sister, why isn't this new addition named Baby Bear?

If I Were a Zombie (My Social Encounters Would be a lot More Clear Cut)

As I have faithfully documented in this blog, I am a magnet for weirdos (as a result, I’m really hoping that this is due to the “opposites attract’ philosophy, which would mean that I am not one of these weirdos…I just unfortunately attract them). One such encounter occurred at a church activity (I know this is so odd! Its not like there are a ton of oddities in Singles Wards…not!). I struck up a conversation with a guy and in a strange course of events (for me at least, for him it was probably very normal) the conversation turned to zombies and the impending zombie apocalypse…I’m not adept at handling normal social encounters, so I am extremely out of my element when these odd situations arise (which they seem to do with a concerning amount of regularity, which makes me think that the ‘birds of a feather flock together’ is the true ruler of the law of attraction…).

Anywho...back to zombies, because after that somewhat disturbing turn in the conversation, I have been hearing more and more about zombies. I was afraid that it would be the next creepy tween (and middle aged women) fad like over the Twilight books….but I’ve actually started getting into some of the zombie material out there. I watched Dylan Dog which was pretty cool movie and I’ve read a few young adult novels about zombies and they are just.... cool. Plus there’s no effeminate sparkling vampire stalker or whiny, extremely dependent, um, heroine? Protagonist? ??? Let's go with Main Character.

A few people have told me that I haven’t really gotten into the zombie genre…but I really don’t need to see all the gore and blood associated with zombies. I like my watered down versions of zombies, because I can enjoy them AND still be able to sleep at night (win-win).

Truthfully, my turn to the dork side, at least with regards to zombies, began well before meeting this bearer of the bad news of the zombie apocalypse.  In fact my interest in zombies started around last Halloween when my sister introduced me to “the zombie song” by Stephanie Maeby…it’s just fun (Seriously. Look it up). 

Zombies are just fun---although I still probably won’t bring up them up in conversation the first time I talk with somebody… I’m weird but I’ve learned to hide my crazy.

Cooking

I have a confession to make: I don’t like cooking for other people. 

Its not the actual work involved that I don’t like (although clean-up is a beast); I like to cook and bake. I’ve always liked it.  One of my favorite things to do growing up was to help out my mom in the kitchen. (Admittedly its gotten less fun when I discovered that it is work and I have to do it to survive…).  

Baking for other people is stressful because there’s so much that can go wrong: burnt food, overcooking, undercooking, misreading the recipe, improvising when one runs out of ingredient, allergies---the list goes on and on.  On the occasions where I am guilted into making food for someone else, I tell them that everything that I make comes with a warning.  The sad thing is people think I’m joking….

I think that there’s an inherent trust laid upon me when I make something for other people. It’s a heavy burden because its not only a “don’t accidentally kill them” burden, but a “this had better be the most delicious thing that this person has EVER eaten” kind of responsibility….so yeah, with that much self-inflicted pressure, I don’t volunteer to cook very often.  I don’t admit to fully understand this feeling of “an inherent trust” laid upon me when I cook for others, because I don’t feel the same way when I eat food that other people have prepared.

Here’s the really insane thing about my cooking for other people phobia: I am no gourmet. Most everything I make comes from a mix….so really I’m shouldering Betty Crocker’s guilt should something go wrong.

I guess I should point out here that I have never killed anyone with my cooking.....although the  roommate who spat out my brownie almost got a beating….