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Can we talk about public bathrooms here? Because honestly….I don’t think people nowadays give public bathrooms the respect they deserve. Obviously, I’m a girl and I’ve only ever been in the girl’s bathroom. (Well, there have been a drunken moment or two when the men’s bathroom was closer and available but we don’t have to talk about that.) I have a few pet peeves and a few suggestions to make the public bathroom experience a more pleasant one. 

Let’s get the pet peeves out of the way first: 

1. What’s with the cheese roll holders that do not allow you more than one sheet of toilet paper at a time. I’m sorry but I’m a big girl and I need that thing to spin like the Wheel of Fortune! One little sheet at a time means I will be in there for the length of a Bible!

2. What’s with leaving your human signature behind (literally) when you leave the stall. Is it really too much to turn around and check for cleanliness before you leave? I could see how embarrassing it can be caught cleaning the stall but I would honestly have more respect for you.

3. The public bathroom is no place for your intimate phone conversations. I realize how convenient it is with mobile phones to bring them with us EVERYWHERE. However, starting a conversation while in a public bathroom can garnish an unwelcome conversation from the person in the stall next to you who think you’re talking to them. And for the love of all that is holy, please DO NOT talk dirty to your other half while in a public bathroom!!! I really do not want to hear your intimate plans for the weekend, evening, etc……

4. Rinsing your hands under water without using soap does NOT equal hand washing!! If you get nothing else out of this post, please hear me on this one!!!!! Only soap will clean your hands!!! And for women, please use a bit of common sense here with regards to where your hands have just been and USE SOAP!!! I cannot say it enough!!! Otherwise, I reserve the right to squirt hand sanitizer on you every time I see you!

5. Stop using public bathrooms as your own personal makeup/fashion center. There is NOTHING I hate worse than having to wipe away some strangers’ hair before I can wash my hands. Do your hair and makeup at home!!!! Otherwise, embrace your own natural, messy beauty and MOVE ON!!!! This also covers perfuming. Honestly? I took a shower. If you still feel you need enhancements to your smell, or if you just smell naturally, put that on at home! I’m sick of walking out of bathrooms with a noseful of your perfume.

6. Likewise to air sprays. It’s a public bathroom, people. It ain’t always going to smell pretty. Spraying a pretty smell over a bad only makes a pretty bad smell!

Now, some suggestions:

1. We’ve come a long way with technology. We have toilets that flush themselves (often without you being ready), G-force hand dryers, water that turns on by itself, etc. Is it too much to ask for floor to ceiling stalls? I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a public bathroom only to have someone’s child look under the wall or peek through the little slit in the door. Privacy, people! Otherwise, I’ll start charging for what I’m showing!

2. Before using any public bathroom, people should be forced to watch a short video on public bathroom usage. It can be available in a few languages. Perhaps it can be a code of sorts by which you must watch this video or the bathroom door will not open. WE’VE GOT TO GET THE WORD OUT, PEOPLE!

3. Bathrooms should be made a such material so as to disable hand-held electronics. Again, stop talking on your cell phone in the bathroom. Get in, get out and let someone else get in.

Bottom line is public bathrooms are meant for one thing and one thing only. Be kind. Be respectful. And most of all, be quick!

Here is her letter to me written on February 24, 1982.

Dear Vikki: 

This is a letter from me to you just to say “I love you”. I love you for all the years of joy and happiness and love you have brought to Daddy, me and the rest of the family. 

Just when we least expect it, you do something to surprise us. Like the many times I come home and find that you have not only cleaned the house but prepared dinner and then serve it to me on a tray. It shows your kindness and love to me. The way you care about our problems and worries and cares. 

Your beautiful, smiling face and your contagious giggle make us all happy. 

You have grown up so fast and soon will be starting high school What a lucky school it is too; to be getting a girl who will have enthusiasm for school projects and will be definite asset. I am sure they will be as proud of you as we have always been. 

Honey, there is so much I feel in my heart and I sit here and don’t know  how to put it into words and especially on paper. What I am trying to say is that you are a thoughtful, considerate young lady. You care about others and try to help others in any little way you can. That is also being very grown up in many ways. 

You are about to enter into some of the happiest days of your life. I want to wish you success, joy and all the love a mother’s heart can hold. 

As I started this letter, I will close it. I love you, honey. 

Mom. 

I think this is a wonderful thing for any parent to do. I have these letters and have had them for 30 years now. In the last 30 years, I have grown up, married, had babies, lost one baby, got divorced and have had to hold my own children together through some very painful times in their young lives. People say I’m a good mom.

What else could I be? My own mother is so very excellent!

Scout came to me 10 years ago as a 2-year-old puppy with lots of enthusiasm, spark and loyalty. Within only a few days, he was a member of our family and we were instantly in love. He has endured so much with us including a 20 hour drive in the car as my girls and I moved from Texas to Illinois. He sat in the car atop all our luggage, ran the neighborhood almost getting hit by a car and protected my mom and our new home with the fierceness only a dog can have. 

He was a little dog with big dog mentality. 

His illness came quickly. Most likely, he’d been suffering for longer than we thought but he never showed it until his body could take no more. We made our decision quickly and he kissed us all good-bye in his own little way. He is missed so much and I hope wherever he is, he’s having fun, frolicking like he used to and running amok. 

So tonight, I lift my glass to Scout, the Wonder Dog (Sans His Invisible Plane and Flowing Cape). Not only were you the light of our lives and our joy these last ten years, you were our most faithful companion, our most loyal protector and our best friend. 

Here’s to my puppy. Rest in peace, Scout. 

Fat Mob

Scratch what I said earlier! I need five of me!!!!!

Reblogged from Break Room Stories:

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I read this several years ago. It’s a humorous article written by Bruce Carlson and published in The Funny Times in November, 1995. Try not to laugh too hard.

Hearken unto my voice, all of you, and learn from my misfortune. For I have dallied too long over “Good Morning America” and now I pay the price. Yea, verily, it is rush hour. 

And though I falleth upon my steering wheel and weep most piteously, I goeth not forward upon the highway. And lo! There is wailing and gnashing of teeth, for clients do await me at the office, and my boss does curse my name most horribly. 

And woe unto us all who do travel in the valley of the shadow of road construction. For verily, I am stopped near The Machine That Makes Pounding Noises For No Reason, and soon the pain in my head is as a spike through my temple. 

I look around myself, and seeth also the doom of others. For there are many children who frolic in the back seats, and who do cry out with much noise as an angry multitude; “I am hungry,” “He’s sitting on my side!” “She is touching me!” and “Are we there yet? For pee we must, and mightily!”

Soon it comes to pass that I do howl and the hair of my flesh stands up. For my coffee has fallen into my lap, and there are many foul curses, and lo! I am most grievous sore. For unto me loins there is a great desolation. 

And after having suffered these trials and tribulations, I arrive at my company’s parking lot; but there are those who parketh crookedly, and do taketh up two spaces with one car, for fear others will smite their doors. And there are those vehicles of an unnaturally large aspect that are puffed up and bear a multitude of bumper stickers. These cars are an abomination and a pestilence in my eyes, for they causeth me to park far from all mankind, out in the blasted wilderness. 

I must walk many leagues, with my briefcase heavy upon me, and the lessons of this day burned into my soul and other parts with letters of fire. 

What at least I reach my office, I fall upon my brother’s neck and weep with jpy. For I know that at the end of the day, I shall not wander about as a sheep who has not a shepherd. My car will not be lost in the wilderness and hidden unto me, because by the time I am freed from my great travails, evening rush hour will be long over, and mine will be the only car left in the parking lot. 

Amen.

I remember when I was in eight grade and about to make my Confirmation. Our parents were encouraged to write letters of reflection to their kids. I still have mine and today, I would like to post what my dad wrote to me.

Written on February 24, 1982, my dad writes:

My Dear Vikki, 

It has been suggested that parents write a letter to their son or daughter on the occasion of their Confirmation. 

Perhaps, it is a good idea, since many parents times, it seems rather awkward for parents to “talk” to their children, especially if their parents are bashful (as I?) or the children are shy (as you?). In any case, I have certain thoughts I want to share with you. 

Objectively, I think you are a wholesome and complete person. 

Personally, I think you are one of the five loveliest children any parent  can hope to have. 

By wholesome and complete, I mean that you have all the wonderful physical attributes of a young growing lady, those characteristics which are pleasing to the eye, together with all t he intellectual attributes that make you capable of reaching beyond what is just pleasing to the eye, towards new ideas, new concepts; things which cannot be seen, but things that are real because you feel them, because you “see” them with your mind’s “eye”; things such as God. 

The beautiful combination makes you a complete person, a child, yes, also a complete person. 

What is happening now is that through your physical and intellectual activities (I include religious with intellectual), you are “polishing”, refining, or developing all t hose attributes to a higher degree thus commanding ever more admiration, more respect, and more “pleased to know you”. 

I sure am pleased to know you! I am pleased to know that you are able to mingle ABBA with “Tosca“, that you are interested in roller-skating as well as the life-sciences, and the Italian language (please allow a father some pride!). 

I am pleased to know that you like small children and old adults, and that you like to help around the house. I am pleased that you admire, as I do, all the natural things that God has made, and the machinery and structures that persons can build, the sounds they are able to integrate as music, the paintings and the sculptures. I am pleased that you want to spent some time with me, to talk to me. 

Above all, I am pleased that you love me. 

I love you, too! 

Your father. 

The paper this is written on is faded now. Much has transpired. I was a young girl of 14 at that time. I read this now, 30 years later and the mom of my own 14-year-old as well as a 15-year-old. I am a different woman than I dreamed of being but no less proud of myself, who I am, where I come from, who my parents are and where they come from. I am a woman of pride and much of that comes from my father!

I love my dad so much!!!! And I am pleased to be his daughter!

I remember having issues with friends in high school. I took my early teenage struggles to a close friend of my aunt’s who told me, “Well, you do like to talk about yourself far too much and you make everything about you so they don’t want to be your friend.” I took it as constructive criticism and went to work correcting my ways. 

Years later, as an early 20′s something, I ran into another issue with friends who accused me of all sorts of things wrong with me. Again, hurt as I was, I used the information given to better myself. 

Now, somehow throughout my whole life, I’ve always thought myself to be ugly and fat, even when I was skinny I felt fat. And I grew up with the thought-process that my life would be so much better if I could just lose weight. 

Then I got married. And my emotionally abusive husband spent ten years telling me all I can do to be a better wife. Being a loving wife, I took that information and did the very best I could to reshape, remold and remake myself into the woman he wanted. I even subjected myself to suggestions from him on how I can be better, both in bed and out, based on his experiences with other women. 

This lead to endless meetings with various people in the Christian world – some had wisdom; some didn’t. Nevertheless, it all pointed to one fact: There was something always wrong with me and never with the people around me. It was all me. This is a rule-of-thumb I lived with during my marriage, also. 

Divorce hits the self-esteem in funny ways. To me, it affirmed all my negative beliefs about myself. It confirmed I was ugly. It confirmed my life would fall apart by getting fat. It confirmed how undesirable I was and how little investment even Christian people wanted to put into me. 

So I picked myself back up from the dust of all this and became…..myself. Not the prettiest but not the ugliest. Not obese but not skinny. Not really anything but wanting to be everything. 

Over the last seven years, my self-esteem has continued to take hit after hit due to various people giving me “constructive criticism”. Yet one common theme threads through my life: Not once did any of these people ever come to me and tell me they were also hopelessly flawed and working on themselves. Not once, did any of them take accountability for who THEY are while telling me who I should be. Not once did I ever tell them who I think they should be. Not once. 

Perhaps, this is why I’m so severely protective over others trying to do the same to my children. People try to take issue with Shelby’s hair being different colors. But you know what? That’s WHO she is! And thankfully, she’s not apologizing to anyone for it. Emilie is a mini-me so I’m working on her being her own person and not having to apologize for that either. 

There really are reasons why I don’t search for friendship outside of my family. And it’s a shame because I’m a great girl!!