Dumb Things I Thought When I Was Younger

I was chuckling to myself this morning as I thought about things I used to do when I was younger. And I don't mean like, 10.. I mean I stopped doing these things only a few years ago.

When I was younger, I thought that when I was retail shopping and someone asked me at the checkout, "Is anyone helping you today?," that it meant "Is anyone helping you pay for your items today?" And I wondered why the hell they asked this. I mean, did women come in shopping and have someone "help them" with the price? Did some shadowed stranger just step up and slap down a credit card and pay for all the girls' stuff? Would they just say "Oh yeah, charge it to so and so"? I mean, what the hell was I thinking? Because of this, I always assumed the sales people thought I had some sugar daddy when in reality I never did. And because of this, I probably scammed at least tens of dollars in commissions from sales people. Because in reality, I WAS being helped. By the people who told me their names and opened the dressing rooms for me. Oops.

Another stupid thing I used to do was once my hair was cut, and they handed me the mirror - I never knew it was so look at the back of my hair. They would hand me the mirror and I would hold it in my hand and smile and nod and cringe a bit like, what is this all about? I just thought it was so I could look at my face in a DIFFERENT mirror. And you know, not look at the back of my hair. I was literally like 25 when I realized this wasn't the case. Oops. At least this one, unlike the above, didn't cost anyone any money.

Me too

Lately I've been having a lot of "me too, me too" moments. I tend to think of it as jealousy, but it's not really like that, not 100% I think. It's more of an "I wish I could have that too". And it's about one thing in particular, and it's hard to talk about. There's this marketing term called "Captive audience" or "engaged audience" or something, and basically it means it's a lot easier to sell people a car if they're in the MARKET for a new car. If they're not looking, they won't notice your advertising. But if there ARE looking, they're a lot more likely to pay attention to you. I feel like that's happening in my life now, these "me too" moments that I see everywhere.

And I wonder... is it really any different than it ever was, or am I an engaged audience now and I see this everywhere? It's like I can't escape it. Real life, work life, facebook. And then I'm like, I'd be a bitch to notice this and not say anything - and it's not like I'm not happy for these people but I feel all liar-y being like GREAT! GOOD FOR YOU! When in reality I don't really care about (most) of their situations. I just care about mine.

Me too.

Last Thursday, Josh and I took the GTI and drove a couple hours to LUSK, WYOMING! Home of a Best Western, another hotel, and... I think that's about maybe it. We almost hit a deer driving in too, which was weird. I also did that screamy gasp / grab the handle / shift uncomfortably in my seat thing because I thought we were going to crash before we even got to Fort Collins, which got Josh mad. By the time we finished our dinner though we'd apologized... I said I don't really make a conscious decision to DO it, it just happens. Total your car and see how easy going YOU are when someone else is driving. Anyway.

After staying the night in Lusk, we headed out to South Dakota in some back roads through the Black Hills. We saw a herd of buffalo, and drove past Crazy Horse and Mount Rushmore.

Then we hit Rapid City, and as I was taking a look at all the attractions one stood our in particular: Dinosaur Park. I freaked out because I have pictures there from when I was about 3, sitting on these giant cement dinos with my cousins. Needless to say I made Josh veer off the main drag, and we get a bit outside of town... you know how when you're driving up to a major attraction you can see it, or the town starts looking a bit like "hey, Disneyland / Water Park / Tourist attraction is just ahead?" No, there was nothing. The road started veering up a hill, and going past these teeny little houses that looked super old, and I was about to give up but then Josh saw a dino head towering above the hill and I literally screamed. So, we jump out of the car and it's literally 100 degrees, and I start screaming DINOS! like I'm a 4 year old instead of a 28 year old on vacation, and I charge up these steps like, YEAH YEAH YEAH!!! And Josh took a ton of pictures of me on the same dinosaurs from 25 years before, and my heart was happy.




After that we ate at Taco Johns and made the lone drive to Sioux Falls, where I proceeded to drink too much margarita at the family reunion and almost pass out on the lawn. Instead I passed out in my room and woke up at 9:30, hung over and disoriented. So I had some dinner and went back to bed. Sunday we went to Lake Madison and water skied, and I wish I was still there doing that now because of how fun it is. The lake was full of green algae but not the sick foamy kind that makes me want to throw up thinking about it touching me. We had to leave pretty early though, so I was sad as it's been 10 years since I was there and will probably be 10 before I am back, though I really hope it's not that long. Monday was really low key, and then Tuesday.... was the bane of my existence driving 11 hours back to Colorado.

So the whole time I was complaining like, why can't they make a more direct highway from here to South Dakota? Why does this take so effing long? I started making plans to get a small plane, and a small pilot's license, and fly there. But that's not realistic either really, so I guess the only options continue to be to fly, or drive 11 hours past the Kearney Arch in Nebraska.
But anyway at least I got dino pictures, and buffalo pictures, and pictures of us at the lake because.. that's all that really matters to me. Make fun of me all you want but, South Dakota was a great vacation.