So I was at Target this weekend...

...because Cj and I had time to kill between dinner (Wingers) and our movie (The Way Way Back).

We had already finished doing what we always do at Target, which is decide to buy everything in the store, and we were making one last stop in the dressing rooms to make sure we definitely wanted to buy everything in the store. (We did.)

There I was, trying on a cat-print dress in the stall next to a mother and her 8 yr. old daughter, who I knew was named Stella due to the  3,000 times I heard her mother say it.

Stella: "Pants, Pants, Pants. Why do I have to try on so many pants????" (She would have appreciated those pants if she had been through the pantspocalypse that I just experienced.)

Mom: "Because you have to wear pants. Everyone has to wear pants."

Stella: (I hear her begin to play the drums on the wall) "I could wear dresses."

Mom: "Stella, stop hitting on the wall. You can't wear dresses. You show everyone your underwear when you wear dresses. Put these pants on."

Stella: (Begins drumming on the ground) "But those are normal pants. I only like sparkly pants."

Mom: "Stop hitting the ground Stella. We're not buying sparkly pants. We're buying normal pants."

Stella: (Begins kicking the door) "Can I get a sparkly dress?"

Mom: "STELLA, STOP KICKING THE DOOR. WHY CAN'T YOU JUST ACT NORMAL??"

And then Stella began to whimper.

And then Stella began to cry.

And then Stella yelled from the depths of her sparkly, little soul:

"I'M TRYYYYIIINNNGGG TO ACT NORMAL. IT'S HAAAAARRRDDDD." 

And all I could think was: I hear ya Stella. I really, freaking hear ya.

The Pants Story

There has been a lot of pants stuff going on in the last few years. 

First, there was the whole pants-at-church thing:

Then there was the time the one-and-only Lohan forgot to wear pants. (Props to her for representing us pale-skinned women.)

And we can never forget the classic VeggieTales song "Pants" that includes such hilarious lines as "They're pants if you're short and shorts if you're tall" or "It's a verb for a dog and a noun for a kid."




(Admit it: You loved VeggieTales.)

However, no pants story is so great as 

THE TALE OF THE URBAN OUTFITTERS FIASCO PANTS. 

Day #1: It was 2 a.m. and I (being the insomniac I am) was online, checking on a pair of pants that I had been looking at alllllll summer. They were the perfect pair of high-waisted, black skinnies and, to my surprise, they had gone on sale that day. HOORAY. I clicked the button to place my order. The screen froze. And then 1 minute later a screen came up that said the pants had been shipped. 

Weird. I didn't click the submit button. But great, I skipped a few steps. 

Katie, Katie, Katie. By "skipped a few steps" I think you meant "added hours of endless torture and frustration." 

Day #2: I check the confirmation e-mail only to realize that when the website "skipped a few steps" it sent the pants to my pre-set address which was MY OLD ADDRESS!!!!!

I e-mailed Urban but to no avail. "Your pants have already been shipped," they said. "Try dunking your head repeatedly in a large tub of water until you are too dizzy to realize you will never receive your favorite pair of pants you never had."

Day #3: Realizing that I don't have a single family member in Provo at the moment to try and track the pants down, I call on my favorite friends Spencer and Michelle to help me out.

Day #4-#26: Spencer goes to our old apartment. They are not home. He goes again. They are not home. He finally contacts them and tells them to contact him when the pants come. He goes back. They are not home. My sister gets back to Provo and goes to check. They are not home. (Do these people actually even LIVE there?) The pants come in the mail. For unknown reasons the people take them upstairs to where they thought my brother and sister are living. They are not living there. I call the landlord. They have the package. They look for it. They lost the package. I cry. I call Urban. They say they can't do anything for me. I cry some more.

Day #27: I get a phone call from the old landlord. His wife has found the pants!!

"Great," I say, "I will send my sister over to get them today."

"Oh." he says, "My wife just told me that she just took them to the post office and sent them back because she didn't want to deal with them." (What?)

I swear to never wear pants, or call people or like my life ever again. But then...

Day #30: ...Urban e-mails me and says that my pants have been re-shipped to my house. It's a pants miracle!

I honestly don't think this should have been as dramatic as it was. But the sheer frustration of having to track down an expensive pair of pants (that I got for half-price) every day for over a month was too much. I hated that I had to rely on multiple people to go out of their way for me, including the people in my old apartment who turned out to be super nice and just as concerned about my pants as I was. I think everyone realized what a serious issue pants are. I'm really proud of our generation for noting that.

Day #36: My pants FINALLY came in the mail. They are great and I kind of resent them for everything they put me through but we are working through our issues.

I think the real moral of the story is this: Online shopping at 2 a.m. is always a bad idea. But it might lead you to a really funny VeggieTales song.

(Shout-out to Spencer and my sister Rachel for caring enough to repeatedly and awkwardly knock on someone's door for me. That is true friendship right there.)

I'm a changed woman.

For the first time in my life I can feel myself changing significantly character-wise and it is really freaking me out.

Up until about a year ago I could fairly easily define myself by three main characteristics:

#1. I was generally happy, bubbly and social.
#2. I hated change with a burning passion.
#3. I thought I was going to die a thousand deaths when anyone was mad at me.

(Based on #2 and #3 maybe I should add #4: I was incredibly over-dramatic. But never fear, dear reader, that has not and never will change about me.)

FOR THE LIFE OF ME I can't seem to figure out what has happened, but I have recently found myself in nearly the opposite position as a year ago.

#1. Lately, I am possibly the least social person on this earth. I spend long days in a dark room grading papers and making lesson plans. I imagine I developed these habits in my last awful months of graduate school when I found myself essentially begging the universe for a zombie apocalypse so I could have some pals to commiserate with (the zombies, obviously.) The problem is, it has carried over to my St. George life and living in a non-apartment setting has only made it worse.

I knew things were bad when I posted this picture as my profile picture and received 56 "likes" in a matter of hours:

"This is it." I thought. "This is who you are now."

 "You are the girl who gets 56 likes on a picture that was previously saved as 'ugly face' on your desktop." 

But it is fine, really. I have accepted my fate. In fact, whenever I see children outside our front window I try and ruffle the curtains a little and let my shadow move past the opening. I'm hoping that soon the legend of "ugly face" will spread until it incites terror in the hearts of the local children and I will know that my transformation is complete. 

#2. I like change. That is all there really is to it. Where before I wanted to live in one place for my entire life with my 20 closest family and friends surrounding me at all times, eating tacos for every meal....I now want to live in a new place every month with thousands of new friends and family members, eating tacos for every meal. (Don't underestimate my love for some good guacamole.) 

I have become obsessed with any travel or job website and I spend hours searching for places to live and things to do. If I don't have 100 college degrees before I die then I will probably just delete this blog post so nobody remembers that this was my goal. But I will also be really disappointed in myself. Also I will be dead. 

#3. I don't care who hates me anymore. 

Let me explain. Cj and I recently started coaching a 7th grade volleyball team. You might wonder what this has to do with people being mad at me but then you would remember parents. PARENTS. 

I just catholic-crossed myself that I will never be the kind of insane-sports parent that keeps coaches up at night. The only thing is...it DOESN'T keep me up at night. It is really some kind of miracle. It used to be that if anyone in this world was mad at me, life-as-I-knew-it would literally cease to function. 

EXAMPLES: 

- I once fasted every Sunday for nearly six months because I heard that a girl on my soccer team was mad at me. 

-I once bought two dozen Pepsi's and left them on a friend's porch every night for a week because I thought he was mad at me. 

-I once drove from Provo to St. George and back in a day and a half because I thought the boy I had just broken up with was mad at me. (Of course he was mad at me. I just broke up with him. I want my $60 in gas money back, dumber version of Katie.) 

The thing is: Last week, when like five moms were ragging on me on the bench behind me for not playing their kid...nothing. I couldn't even remember what they had said by the time I left the gym. WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?? 

Ugly face, you've got some definite perks to being you. Now get off my porch, ya meddling kids. 

"D as in Dog"

I went today to get my DSU parking sticker. The booth is outside in the awful St. George heat. 

"What is your license plate number?" the lady asked. 
 
I told her the six-digit code ending in I-L-Y. 
 
"Y-L-Y?" she said?
 
"No," I said, "I as in...eyeball." (It was REALLY hot outside.) 
 
"So.......E?"
 
"No....I.....oh I get it....I as in....eyesore....oh wait.....ice cream...." 
 
She got it. 
 
Feeling like an idiot I walked back to my car in the blistering heat, looked down at my license plate and realized it ended in 1-L-Y instead of I-L-Y. I turned around and walked back. 
 
"Excuse me," I said, "When I said it ended in I-L-Y I meant 1-L-Y." 
 
"One?" she asked. 
 
"Yes," I said, "One as in...wonderful."
 
"Soooo.......W?"
 
Sigh. 
 
In other news, I hated today.