Five Things I Learned from Watching "Gilmore Girls"

I caught on to the "Gilmore Girls" trend about ten year after everybody else. With a Christmas Netflix subscription and my move to a house with glacial internet speed looming imminent, I had three months to get through seven long seasons. (It's been done before: my college roommate and I watched 30 hour-long episodes of "Once Upon a Time" in a week.) At first it seemed, like all Hallmark Channel dramas, cheesy and predictable. And I hated Alexis Bledel's voice: you're not five, honey - you don't need to talk like you are.

Then one season turned into two. Then three. And pretty soon I found myself looking for ways to cancel evening plans so I could curl up in my bed with a cup of Lorelai-approved coffee and find out "what happens next." I slowly fell in love with Luke (mostly because I'm marrying a man exactly like Luke), hated Taylor Doose with every fiber of my being, and prayed that Lorelai and Rory would make up after yet another fight that pushed one of them toward her detestable parents.

I'm a season and a half away from finishing it. And I'm tempted to repeat my performance at the end of "Friends": to not watch the last episode so it continues to live on in my mind.

A reboot of the beloved series is in the words, and I'm still debating whether or not to get hooked on it. ("Downton Abbey" is over, I need something else to binge.) But as I near the end of the original, I wanted to share some of the things I've taken away from my time in Stars Hollow.

1. Everybody loves a small-town story. The title characters are only part of this story: the mother and daughter exploits wouldn't be nearly as charming if not for the colorful cast of supporting characters. And somehow, every time I hunkered in for another episode, I felt like I was coming home, to people that I had grown up with in a town where I would always be welcome. There's something alluring about the idea of a place where everybody knows your name and where your gossip is common knowledge only minutes after it happens. While the archetypal character concepts flood anything about small-town life - the eccentric handyman, the badass woman who breaks the mold by doing a man's job, the grouchy but lovable uber-conservation, the straight-laced asshole who everybody hates but can't do without - the eccentricities of the Stars Hollow residents are just quirky enough to be refreshing and unique. And I want to move there.
2. Everybody craves a good old-fashioned love story. I was never that interested in Rory's love life - I didn't like any of the guys she dated. But oh my word, Lorelai and Luke's story? Arguably the best: they've known each other forever and everybody knows they're supposed to be together, but there's that agonizing tension of, "Will they? Won't they?"
   
   And you heave a sigh of relief when they finally do get together. It just makes sense! Even through Lorelai's experimentation with Christopher (who I never liked) and Max Medina, and Luke's marriage and the discovery of his long-lost child, they ended up together - just as it should be.
3. Time - and food - heals all. I have only seen one other person eat like the Gilmores, and he's a dairy farmer who works hard all day and earns his right to eat his body weight in peanut-butter-and-jelly-and-potato-chip sandwiches. Lord Almighty, the food that these women consume. And the mere fact that everyone from Dean to Luke to Babbette knows them by how much they eat. The consumption of food is cathartic, and no matter what travesty befalls them, they know that a night of pizza, Red Vines, Chinese food from Al's Pancake World, and classic movies will make it all better. And I've been with these girls through horrible boyfriends, omitted truths, moving out, parent troubles. And they always come back together. Because friendship - which I think more defines them than mother-and-daughter - is stronger than the little piddly fights that life throws their way.
4. The "game plan" isn't always the best plan. I watched this series in a post-college panic: after graduating with an English education degree, I decided that I wasn't quite right for the classroom and quit a full-time job at a grocery store to be a writer who cleans houses on the side. And I found comfort in Lorelai's got-pregnant-at-sixteen-ran-away-from-home-started-working-as-a-cleaning-lady-at-an-inn-and-eventually-opened-up-the-inn-of-her-dreams story. As the daughter of a wealthy insurance man and a Daughter of the American Revolution debutante, she had everything going for her. And rather than seeing her less-than-ideal situation as the death of a promising future, she got her butt in gear, worked hard, and made a life that made her happy - happier than she would have been in the center of her parents' social circle.
5. Family is the worst. And also the best. I cringed whenever the Gilmores slunk up to that front door for Friday night dinners. I pitied Lane in her one-sided arguments with Mrs. Kim. I hated the dynamic between Luke and his brother-in-law TJ. (I actually just hated TJ - where the hell did he come from?) Who drives you nuts like your family does? The mothers who know what's best for you but have a hell of a way of showing that this is simply how they love, the children who respond with rebellion and hateful words - it's the single most relate-able aspect of the whole show. And yet...you watch what these families do to each other, for each other. Mrs. Kim wants so deeply for Lane to be safe that she erects these strict codes that must be obeyed. But when Lane finally gets through to her that this life is nothing like the life she wants, her mother encourages her to go after what she wants - she will not quit being a drummer, because she is supposed to be a drummer. Emily and Richard are so concerned with their daughter and granddaughter being comfortable that they come across overbearing and offensive in their haste to be involved. And Lorelai herself wants her daughter's future to look nothing like her own: she pushes her toward Yale and the right boys so that she doesn't have to struggle like her mother did. Though they may not have the best way of showing it, these characters are fiercely devoted to their kin; and they will do whatever it takes to make sure they are taken care of.

Wales

Well, we've been waiting for a year, but we are now officially in the home stretch: we have less than forty days until the wedding. I was on the couch with Joey last night, watching TV and sharing a box of these pretentious truffle things my neighbor gave us that she promised would "blow us sideways" (he said she's a terrible person for giving them to us, the box was nearly empty by the time I left), and I couldn't help but think, "This will be our norm in a month...and I could really get used to this." I get excited all over again when I think that I get to be the wife of this incredible man; I will get to wake up next to him every day, to roll over and say, "Good morning, my husband." I still smile like an idiot every time I drive twenty minutes to see him instead of going months between visits and waiting at the airport for his flight that might get in now or might not be here for another four hours.

This whole thing just tickles the hell out of me.

When we started this wedding planning venture, I received a couple books to help the process be as painless as possible. And I promptly put them on a shelf in my room and let the process be painful because I like the most difficult scenario possible. But after arguments and compromise and thrown-out ideas and "oh my God, just pick something because I'm tired of talking about this," we've come out on the other side, a month away and basically done. We're sitting on "go," and hopefully that blessed day will be upon us with little stress and much, much enjoyment.

Dear friends, no amount of books or advice from brides who came before can really prepare you for the planning of your own wedding. Just as each couple is unique, each wedding comes with its own set of challenges. You watch "Say Yes to the Dress" and see the girls with perfectly-curled hair and the sample dresses that hug their bodies like they were specifically tailored to them and think, "Surely they didn't have these struggles." (Maybe because they can afford to drop $8,000 on a dress that they will wear once. Surely people who spend a lot of money don't have struggles, right?)

^Sarcasm.

Here are a handful of things that I learned during the planning of my own wedding. And like I said, this doesn't apply to everyone: you have an idea of how you want your wedding, and your idea doesn't look exactly like mine. But these are some blanket statements that I have discovered in the past almost-fourteen months of planning. (And this is mostly geared toward brides, as much of the wedding industry is these days. Sorry, guys.)

1) You are not marrying yourself. Remember that dude who asked you the question and put a ring on it? Yeah, he's part of your day too. I know he doesn't care about some of the things I have cared about, but Joe does have opinions. He has to wear the outfit that I have in mind, he has to eat the food at the reception, he has to say whether or not he wants a first dance. (Which, thank God he didn't - neither of us was blessed with grace.) There were some points when I had to ask him, "Do you really care, or are you just having an opinion to have an opinion?" But when your guy speaks up about something he'd like to have or not, listen to him. The bride may be the focus (which really irritates me), but there's another half to this blessed event.


2) It's OK not to care. I knew when my mom was asking me what socks I wanted the guys to wear that I was in way over my head. I genuinely did not care about what plates we had at the reception. I couldn't care less whether the guests throw birdseed or rice or sprinkles or green beans as we leave. (I did not know you're not supposed to throw rice anymore: good luck it may be, but birds eat it and it puffs up in their stomachs when they drink water. If you love the environment, you'll stick to something more bird-friendly.) The best decision I made was putting my mom in charge and learning to say, "I really don't care." Just because someone asks your opinion doesn't mean you have to have one. It's actually frustrating for everyone when you say "yes" just to say "yes" but don't really mean it. Establish early that honesty is more important than an argument about socks.

3) BE HONEST. Refer to the latter half of that last paragraph. Dear Lord, this is more important. If you don't want that, say it. If that's really important to you, say it. This is your day, no matter who's helping you plan it: ultimately your say is most important.

4) This day is not all about you. I learned this in a fairly hard way pretty early in the planning process. Neither Joey nor I really wanted a wedding in the first place: we were so focused on who we would marry that neither of us gave much thought to how we'd get married, and we would have been totally fine with eloping and having a party with all of our friends and family. (I think we've said about once a week, "Are you ready to elope yet?") In hindsight I'm glad we didn't: he moved here and we've spent more time together in the last ten months than we have in two years of knowing each other. We bought a house, we put it together, we both made job decisions - it was best for us to have a long engagement. But you must remember that this day is bigger than the two of you. This is the joining of two families with the union of one from each; this is the chance for your friends and family to celebrate a new future in the making. This is the chance for your parents to celebrate the ultimate sign of adulthood of their child. As much as the media makes about the bride, this is not just your day. Remembering how many other people are involved will steer you away from acting like a spoiled brat who must get her way in every aspect of the wedding. (This took me about six months to learn, I'll shamefully admit.)

5) You do not have to have your dress ready six months early. This was actually a surprise to me that I learned from the seamstress who altered my dress. The magazines tell you to have your dress finished months in advance, but they're not accounting for weight changes, growths, limbs that go missing. I'm still in possession of the four limbs I had before, but I'm about two sizes down than I was when I bought my dress last April. I called the seamstress in November and explained my alteration needs, and she told me to call back in February, when I'd be at about the same size as I would on my wedding day. I was shocked! But I'm glad I waited: my weight has even shifted since November, and now, a month out, my dress fits like a glove and is more likely to be perfect on the wedding day. The moral of this story: while you need to do some things in advance (like book your venues: do that immediately), you don't always have to follow the timeline that Wedding Wire suggests.

6) Bigger is not better. But less is not always more. Establish at the very beginning of your process what kind of wedding you want. I was a very practical bride and knew that our money was better suited toward what comes before and after the wedding - you know, student loans, mortgage payments, having enough propane in our tank to get us through the winter. I bought my dress on Amazon.com for $100 and have DIYed as much as possible. But maybe you want a big expensive wedding. Maybe you want a little cheap wedding. Either is perfectly fine. But just remember: a big wedding costs a lot of money, and a cheap wedding runs the risk of looking tacky. Get a clear picture in your head early of your wedding "vision." And stick to it.

7) DIY is not always the way to go. I am not a creative person. I have cute ideas on my Pinterest, but I am not good at making them happen. Another "best decision" I made was saying, "Is it really more cost-effective to make it myself, or would it be easier to pay someone else to do it who's better at this than I am?" We did a lot ourselves: Joey and I spent four days tying birdseed in tulle and ribbon, and my mother-in-law-to-be has done an amazing job with the flowers. But we have saved ourselves a huge headache by renting and ordering.

8) Take your time. I understand that you want to hurry up and be married. But the last thing you need to be is stressed. We started immediately after I got engaged, took a four-month break in the middle when shit went down with my parents, and hit the ground running again in January. Now we have a full month to sit back and tackle any last-minute hiccups that come up. Planning is done, preparation is complete, and we're sitting back just waiting for the week before 16 April. At first it was a pain: I am not a planner, and when my mom pressed me to make decisions the week after we got engaged, I struggled seeing the reasoning behind it: "We have a year!" But I'm so glad we did so much so early. If you can give yourself at least six months to plan, do that. If you can be patient enough to wait a year, do that instead. You and your stomach will thank you: nobody wants an ulcer on their wedding day.

9) Enjoy. A friend of mine recently got engaged and was asking me where I started with planning. While of course we got right on reserving locations and asking people to participate, I told her, "Enjoy being engaged." You're about to start on the most exciting adventure of your life with the partner of your dreams: enjoy that. Drink champagne. Grin like an idiot when you look at your ring. Kiss your S.O. often. Lie in bed at night and be happy with the journey on which you're about to embark. Take a little moment and be excited before you get stressed and wonder why you're doing this in the first place.

This, of course, is not the to-do list for wedding planning; they are merely things that I've learned in the last year. But remember that you're preparing for the rest of your life, to be kicked off by this single day. This is a celebration of that "forever." By making the planning process as painless as possible, you're more likely to see your wedding day as a celebration of your future, rather than a culmination of the past few stressful months.

Because nobody likes a grumpy bride.

Curds

I took a huge leap the other day.

I told you all about my game plan: to quit my job at Kroger for a cleaning job at Cedarville, with better hours, better pay, and more time in the afternoons for me to write. It sounded good, and I was excited to get started.

Until I actually got started. And I realized that it wasn't what I thought it would be.

I know there are growing pains with any jobs: I remember walking onto the back dock at Kroger on my third day nearly in tears because I really didn't want to do be in that place. It might not sound like it but there is a lot to learn with a custodial job, and after my first day I felt a little overwhelmed. But with lists from the girl that I was training with and helpful people left and right, I felt like I could handle it when I was turned loose to work by myself on the third day. And the work was never too hard: I always felt like I could do it. I was allowed to work at my own pace and listen to music and be left alone to get my responsibilities done. Nobody checked up on me, nobody babysat me, nobody nitpicked over something I had done. After four years of micromanagement and bullshit at Kroger, it was a welcome change.

And then I realized just how early 3.15am comes these days. I realized how long a forty-minute drive to and from really was. I realized that my old truck was burning a quarter-tank of gas every day, and that $70 a week in gas adds up after a while. I realized that, while the work was handle-able, it was constant for eight hours a day; and by the time I had driven up to the college, worked for eight hours a day, and driven forty minutes home, all I wanted to do was shower and crash on the couch.

And there's another thing that I didn't bargain for. They put me in the theatre where I spent so much of my time as a student. I remember my sister parading down the hallways with a binder and a coffee cup, ready to start another show and stage-manage somebody. I walked past the posters of shows I had been part of: "Hello Dolly," "Pride and Prejudice," "The 39 Steps" that no show to come will ever top. I saw the faces of the people I had grown up with. I was in and out of the dressing rooms where I crammed with thirty girls, each hula-hooped in crinoline and doused in hairspray.

I am nostalgic, dear friends. And I hid in the dressing room two days in a row and bawled: nothing felt the same, when I so expected it to feel like coming home.

So on Friday night, after a pretty impressive meltdown to Joey, I decided to send out some feelers: I loved the cleaning part of the job, and I messaged about twenty people asking if they needed someone to come clean their houses regularly. The responses were immediate, and I spent all the next day fielding messages and filling my agenda book. I didn't have quite enough regular customers to make a consistent income, so I said, "I'll wait until I get a few more answers before I do anything."

On Sunday morning I was laying in bed, thinking about this potential next step. And I swear to you, as clear as day, I heard something inside me say, "Quit your job."

There was no way I could commit to the people I had heard from until I was no longer attached to Cedarville. And so, on Sunday morning, with only my part-time job at the orthodontist's office and a handful of houses to clean, I called my boss at Cedarville and said I wouldn't be coming in on Monday.

I woke up on Monday morning unemployed. I woke up on this Monday morning still unemployed. I signed up for uncertainty week to week what hours I'll be working; I have no idea how much (or how little) money I will make. I have never, as a viable adult, not had a traditional, clock-in-clock-out job.

I have never been more certain that this is what I'm supposed to do.

Guys, I'm supposed to be a writer. After forcing myself into a teaching degree and hunting for receptionist jobs that I'm not even sure I'd be right for and running around like a maniac as I waited for some kind of answer, that has always been the underlying answer. And it's not traditional: it goes against everything that I am to say, "I'm a writer and I clean houses on the side." I'm looking at an average of fifteen to twenty hours of work every week, where my soon-to-be husband pulls forty or fifty; and I think, "I'm not pulling my weight, I'm living my dream while he's busting his ass." (He says I shouldn't think like that, but it's my biggest fear that I'm not helping us financially as much as I should.)

But this is bigger than following a dream. Guys, this is a leap of faith. It sounds really cheesy to say it, and I'm sorry if it sounds cheesy to hear it. But while I don't subscribe to the "I'll sit back and wait for God to bless me" mindset, I do believe that I'm doing what God has called me to do, and the money will take care of itself. I lay in my bed on Sunday night and say, "God, I've sent out the emails, I've sent out the texts. I trust that You will provide me work that pays. And in the mornings, I will write - because that is the talent You've blessed me with and that is the calling that I have." During my meltdown to Joey, I bawled, "I don't know what I'm supposed to do." And that amazing man I get to marry held me tight and said, "You're supposed to write. So that's what you'll do." And I believe that, if I do the work and show myself willing, that God will provide work. He will bless my work. And we will be fine.

I'm still trying to get myself to believe it: I still panic a little as I've come to Monday morning and I have two days of work lined up for this week. I constantly have in mind the dollar amount in mind I need to make every week for us to "get by." But I believe that my God is faithful. I believe that He will bless us because of my leap. I believe that we will be blessed beyond our belief because I'm doing what He has called me to do. I believe that my God is my source, not my paycheck.

And I believe I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to do.

Immortalized

Today I walked out of the job that I've held down for four years. Five, in May. After saying "I'm looking for a new job" for the past year since I graduated from college, I finally revised my resume, sent out my applications, had the interview, and put in my two weeks' notice.

I tried, OK? I tried to find something that would be "worthy" of me. I have a degree, for God's sake. I spent four (and a half) long years studying and writing and cramming and presenting so I could be the proud owner of a piece of paper with "B.A." scrawled across the top and give that dopey grin from the commencement stage to let my parents know, "See? This will dig me from the depths of student loans! This is the answer to all my questions of purpose and fulfillment!"

And then I got into the real world and realized it, like nothing else, is that simple. The jobs I thought I'd somewhat enjoy thought I "wasn't quite right for the position," and the ones I really wanted required fifteen more years experience than one recent college grad could possibly provide.

So I became desperate. I changed my way of thinking. Instead of asking "what would be worthy," I thought, "What would I enjoy?"

Novel concept, I know.

In the next week or so I will start as part of the custodial team at Cedarville University, like I did during my senior year there. As one of my dear friends so tenderly put it, I'll be a janitor.

If you're quick to wrinkle your nose, let me stop you right there. Do you realize what it's like to be a new adult these days? Particularly a new adult who is knee-deep in planning (and helping pay for) a wedding, up to her eyeballs in student loan debt, a recent homebuyer, and the proud owner of a clunky pickup that likes to fall apart every few months (preferably right before road trips)? Nutshell: it's expensive. And while my other half makes a decent living, I need to make more than minimum wage to pull my weight. Oh, and need I mention insurance: it's a fine-able offense these days to be caught uninsured these days. While it would certainly be ideal to hold out until a good-paying job that requires my degree comes along, I don't have the luxury to wait for that. In short, I'll take what I can get.



For those of you who don't know, I graduated in 2014 with an English education license. I, my friend, am fully qualified to teach English/Language Arts anywhere from seventh grade to twelfth grade. So naturally it's easy for you to sit back and say, "Well, hell, why aren't you doing that then?" And for those of you who haven't kept up with my story for the past year or so, I'll cut you some slack. But let me also fill you in:

To be a teacher means so much more than standing in front of a classroom full of bright young things ready to sop up the knowledge you come to bestow. Sure, you get summers off. But your work months are grueling for shit pay, and unless you have years of experience under your belt and recycle the same material every year (which you really shouldn't do, you should be constantly tweaking your material), you can kiss a social life goodbye. While I was doing my student teaching, I would teach for eight hours a day, then come home and work for another four to five hours every night developing lesson plans, writing tests, reading the material I got to teach my kiddos (luckily for me I actually enjoy Beowulf - I got to teach it four times a day for three months straight), and grading papers. (I once assigned essays to all seven of my class periods to be turned in during the same week. That was the nearest I've ever come to suicide.) Oh, and I was working sixteen hours every weekend. I think I went three months without a day off.

Long story short: this workload requires nothing less than 110% dedication, or you run the risk of hating your job, negatively influencing the precious flowers you get to instruct, and/or dying with your head in an oven. And life is far too short (and simultaneously much too long) to waste your time doing something you hate.

Dear friends, I've learned much in the last year-and-a-half. And the greatest of these lessons (aside from "don't put powdered sugar and candles on a birthday cake") is to find what you enjoy and do the heck out of it. Do not let money be a factor. My sister is living on the bare minimum in a city far away working theatre jobs left and right for shit to no money, and she loves it. I met a lady on Wednesday who's been a seamstress for decades, and while she has to work a day job on the side, she continues to alter dresses in her 114-year-old house because that's what she's passionate about. Do what you need to in order to survive, but for the love of God, do something you enjoy. And I, dear friends, love to clean for people. I love the idea of doing the same thing every day at my own pace and seeing the product of my labor when I'm done: what once was filthy is now sparkling. After five years at a job where nothing is predictable and playing the politics game is just as important as slapping on the fake smile for customers, I know enough to say I don't play like that.

And there's something deeper. Deeper and much, much more important.

I chose this job because of the pay, but also because of the early hours: I start at 5am, which means I have to be up by 3.30 to be there on time, but I'm free to go at 2 in the afternoon. While my weekends won't line up with my fiance's anymore, I'll be home in the afternoons to be with him. And this also gives me time to write. Because of all the things I imagined I could be, the thing I keep coming back to - the thing that I was born to do - is be a writer. I'm working on a book right now, and the nature of the gig combined with the time off gives me the opportunity to leave my job at work and make my passion a discipline every single day, while also giving me the stability of an income at a job that I enjoy.

It'll be a different lifestyle: I'm so used to driving two minutes down the road to the grocery store and working unpredictable shifts with people who are miserable and management that seems unreasonable. But I'm ready. It's time for a change. It's been time for a change for a long time. It's time for me to do what makes me happy. It's finally time for me to do what's best for me. And that, my friends, is so, so important.

Elephant

I just mailed our wedding invitations.

Now it feels real.

A year ago tomorrow Joey asked me to marry him, and I thought that next year would drag by. We knew we wanted a long engagement, and looking back I'm glad we did so we could take our time with the planning. (Stressed B is not a happy B.) And in some respects, this year did drag. Yet here we are, a little over two months from the wedding that has consumed our last 365 days (except for that super fun four months in the middle of it when everybody was falling apart - which, while the reason was awful, was admittedly a nice break), with only a handful of details to work out.  And while it's been stressful and at times not very fun at all, our special day will be a beautiful culmination of careful planning and detailed orchestration, an elegant kickoff to the journey that will carry us for the rest of our lives, the coming together of a couple of kids who don't believe in fate but know that they're meant to be together.

Someone asked me at the shower on Saturday if I was getting cold feet yet. I guess this is normal: the bride or groom suddenly has second thoughts and the blissful union runs risk of being scrapped. But while we've kicked ourselves at least once a week for not eloping months ago, I have to admit I have yet to have that "Father of the Bride" moment when I get offended about something and demand that all the gifts be sent back tout suite.

Trust me, I know what uncertainty feels like. I'm well acquainted with that quiet nag in my gut of "oh my God, I can't do this." I'm pretty good at deciding between irrational fears and that God-given wariness that this might not be the right decision. And while I've felt those feelings in nearly every single area of my life in the past eighteen months (well, five years, really), I have never once had those doubts about my marriage to my gentle giant. Of all the things that I worry about, of this I am most certain. Naturally I worry that I won't be a good wife and that thirty years down the road it'll all come crashing down revealing the illusion that it's always been, but those are merely the imprints of someone else's reality that I lay on top of our story and call our truth.

I have this feeling in my gut that we will work. We are one of those old-fashioned stories of two people who fell in love and will fight to stay together for the sake of a promise, an active commitment to something larger than our petty arguments and trivial anxieties.

I don't imagine that agreement will make it easier. But I'm a firm believer that anything worth having is made so much sweeter by hard work. I am ready. I'm ready for this next phase as the one we've been in for the last year will reach fruition in just sixty-five days. I'm ready to enter a God-honoring union with the man whom my soul loves.

I don't think I've been more ready for anything.

Christmas in Retail

This is the first year I've been at my job from the start of the holiday season (which began about two hours after Halloween ended) to the end. I worked on and off at a grocery store all through college, with the intention of getting a job worthy of my degree upon graduation. But graduation came and went last December, and here I am a year later, still stuck at a job for which I'm way too smart and viciously overqualified, ready on a daily basis to do battle with hateful customers as they vow one by one never to return to the store our manager seems determined to run into the ground.

And it's worse at Christmas. Dear God, it's terrible at Christmas.

See, that schmaltz about "good will toward men" is checked at the door when you work in retail. Of course, there are the rare gems: the German ladies admittedly a little disgruntled that you don't have the white chocolate she's looking for but realizes that it's that time of year when everybody wants white chocolate and it's not your fault you're out; the little old men who still say "Merry Christmas" from their motorized scooters even though it's not politically correct anymore; those saints who stand outside and ring the Salvation Army bells and say "hello" to you even though you've walked past them six times on your way in and out from the smoke hut; the ladies looking for turkey basters because their husband needs one for getting oil out of a machine at work and they're cool with the cheap-o kind because all the good ones have been snatched up by last-minute Thanksgiving shoppers and the shitty kind is the only kind we get in on a regular basis during the holiday season. They're not bad. Some are even downright pleasant.

And then there are the horror stories. We've all heard them. Some of you may have actually been them. In which case, shame on you. We're doing the best we can.

We cannot, for instance, order something for you that we normally don't stock, just because you bought it in Georgia and can't find it here. We cannot produce the kind of Keurig K-Cup you're looking for out of thin air just because someone "always manages to find them in the back" for you when you demand the brand-name kind and nothing else. We cannot scrounge through a tractor trailer full of boxes haphazardly thrown in because oh my God, it's freezing out here and I don't have enough feeling in my fingers to stack each box neatly on top of another for the single nutcracker you need. And dear Lord, if I have one more middle-aged man trying to sweet-talk me into letting him look through the eighteen four-foot-tall boxes of Hot Wheels backstock on a shelf ten feet in the air just so he can find the one collectible car he must have, I swear I'll take a shit on somebody's windshield.

You learn to pick and choose who you ask "can I help you find something". There's just that look that all difficult customers have. Normally it's a scrunched-up face as they stalk back and forth in front of the same four-foot section of shelving. Maybe venting to a total stranger about how "this store doesn't carry anything I want anymore." I know I shouldn't, but these are the people I normally direct to Walmart. After all, they probably don't have a manager who's an asshole and doesn't like to spend money on certain things (on, say, turning the damn heat on) because it comes out of his end-of-the-year bonus. I'm sure you'll find whatever you need there.

The absolute worst - and I mean, the absolute worst - department to work in during Christmastime is...well, every department. Nobody's exempt. If it's not a shortage of baking supplies that have the customers' panties in a bind, it's a lack of the Christmas lights that "I must have or my whole Christmas will be ruined and I'll personally blame you, lowly shelf-stocker who has no control over what is whipped every week and what isn't." Or it's this type of "Frozen" doll that "my child will literally die without." And don't even get me started on the assholes who scream in the back room (or, even better, march through the doors that say "employees only" and start looking themselves), "DO YOU NOT HAVE ANY MORE MILK?!??!?"

Perhaps you should not have come at 8.30 on a Saturday night - notoriously the busiest grocery-shopping day of the week - to buy that one product that nearly every household thrives on. I fail to see how this is my fault.

If I didn't value my meager paycheck, I would have told so many customers by not that no one is forcing them to shop at our store: if they're dissatisfied with the products we do or do not carry, go the hell somewhere else.

But I'm not allowed to say that. I get paid minimum wage to stand there smiling like an idiot and take abuse from inflexible assholes who think it's my personal responsibility to have their favorite product on hand at all times.

"I just stock the shelves, ma'am. Write to our manager. Though he just got transferred to another store and doesn't really give a shit either, so you might be better off to just keep griping about it while you continue to shop here."

At this time of year I am truly grateful to have a job. I look around and see so many other people who don't, and it's especially evident at Christmastime. But my time at this job has run its course, and while my job hunting has been put on hold as planning a wedding, buying a house, the recent bombshell with my parents, car troubles, working two jobs, and now the Christmas season have taken most of my attention, come the first of the year I'll start hunting again. But for now, I stock the shelves, build the displays, and handle the customers in whom the Christmas season brings out the worst.

A plea, dear friends: don't be "that customer." Retail workers are people too. We're doing the best we can in the busiest season of the year.

Merry Christmas, dear friends. 

The Tallest Man on Earth

A letter to the tallest man on earth:

You talk about living hell like we don't know what that is. You say you're stressed, you think it's hopeless, your heart is in pain.

How quaint, to suggest that you're suffering through any of this.

Living hell is when you hold your mom up while she bawls over a broken heart. Living hell is having the life ripped out from under you and the one who did it is standing there with it dangling from his hands, talking like you're the one to blame. Living hell is when the man who you thought could do no wrong, the one with all the answers, the tallest man on earth who taught you everything about money and God and cars and beer and work and travel and people and life is a liar and a fraud and a manipulative greedy spiteful son of a bitch.

Living hell is having to scrounge up an answer for your mother when she asks you at 1:30 in the morning why we weren't good enough for him.

I've asked myself the same question so many times.

You always pop up - never announced, never fanfare-ed, just 'pops up.' Like nothing has happened. Because to him nothing has happened. Everything's the same: we talk about the same things in the same clothes we wore before to the same jobs in the same places and we come home again to the same house with the same people and the same song-and-dance about love and devotion that doesn't mean jack fucking shit. Nothing's changed. Except it's like that iPhone 7 commercial: every goddamn thing has changed. In the house that was a home we have to calculate what we say like we interpret what we hear because what we don't immediate anticipate to be lies will be turned into an untruth to ease the pain of the man who started it all. Nothing simply said, nothing simply heard. Complications. What did you say? 'Semantics.'

You say we're having meatloaf, I get my spoon in preparation for chili.

You told me that a wise man said she's not my problem. My role is not to hold her together by the fraying seams, it's not my responsibility to pick up her pieces. Unluckily for you I read what that wise man really said, and it sounds a lot more like, 'it's between mom and dad and God.' He said nothing about being there for the one who's falling apart and so far that person hasn't been you. You seem incapable of change - the one who told me to constantly reevaluate myself to ensure constant growth. And so for now my relationship with you remains at the stalemate you've seen for the past month. I hope it's what you're ready for.

Then again I don't really give a fuck what you're ready for. We certainly weren't ready for the bombshell you got to launch from a comfortable million miles away.

You've been in Florida for a few days and it's been so nice knowing you won't 'pop in'. I'm actually dreading Thanksgiving this year and the thought that we might have to sit around a table together and pretend that everything's fine when we'd all rather being doing something - or in your case, someone - else. How will we handle Christmas because I don't know about the rest of them but I won't have gotten you anything. Maybe the empty cigarette packs that she's smokes over you. One for every time she's asked me why she wasn't enough for you.

Do not come home for Thanksgiving - this isn't a home anymore. You can pull that whole 'I'm here because my name is on the mortgage' card. Maybe the one about 'a man's home is his castle' again, that was a gem. No one in your kingdom wants to see you. And if you're the honorable 'king' you think you are, you'll honor your subjects' wishes.

I doubt you will, though. You'll do what you want. You always do. Why should this time be any different?

I hope you're getting the rest you were seeking in Florida. You certainly must be exhausted from your half-baked piss-poor attempts to make progress. Don't forget your sunscreen.