Everyday i find myself doing a variety of things, working, taking care of children, then picking up after them, cooking dinner, not to mention life's fun surprises, a death, a birth, a broken bone, car accident, traffic ticket...etc. However, when i come across those "simple pleasures" i cant help but smile! I love mail, i think there is something so fun about getting a letter or package and not knowing whats inside or what the piece of paper holds until you open it! not to mention that it is solely for me and i can either choose to show or not show whoever i want, its like my own fun little mystery!
Anyways, i decided to go through my day today and keep in mind all the simple pleasures that i came across...so here they are!
when the right song comes on at the perfect moment
watching someone im walking with tripp :)
pull through parking spots or when i PERFECTLY parallel park
when i have a good idea and make it work
the smell of my flower shop
The look on Ella and Ace's face when they get something i am explaining
laughing so hard you get awesome abs
laying by the pool wearing sunglasses so you can see people but they cant see you're staring (kinda creepy i know)
holding hands (these next two didn't really happen today, but i was thinking about when it did so they can stay on the list.)
kisses on the forehead
the silly kid questions i get
letters or packages--not bills
finding the perfect peach
when things go exactly how i plan
when things go the exact opposite of how i planned BUT they still work out in the end
good book
taking a flower order in FRENCH! wahoo me
AND ITS NOT EVEN NOON!!
I am no longer going through the motions of life. i realize there is a lot more than just waking up, going to school, working, and sleeping...there is mail :)
Recently I have been playing with the idea of studying the bible, more so to learn what everything is about. My mindset has always been that in order for me to commit to that process and feel Gods power, or whatever, I have to act like God would want me to act...hence the What Would Jesus Do title :). To some extent this is in fact true, turn the other cheek,treat others how I want to be treated, eye for eye tooth, etc. However, something has sort of in a sense clicked. It's not merely taking actions and living how i would think God would want me to through my daily life, but thinking (whether its a possibility or not) that God has something planned. To clarify I see life's misfortunes, uncertainties, afflictions, sufferings, whatever, as God punishing me (bad i know). The easiest example that comes to mind is North Carolina. My family moved here for the church, no other real reason, yet to this day my family has not been happy, even content, with any church for the past 5 years. Normally I take this as a slap in the face from God, kinda like he is messing with my life, again bad I know. However, I'm realizing that my parents don't view it like this at all, they view it as God working a plan that is beyond anything they can comprehend...I'm honestly still struggling with how they could have such strong faith and trust but nonetheless they do. When i am feeling like pain or misfortune I get selfish and blame God for making me suffer rather than see it as a learning experience to make me a stronger person. So back to the "clicking"- I think it would be good for me to think that god does have something planned rather than just being bitter and angry with god. Something possible that seems impossible, ay! I think for anyone this may be hard to carry out on a daily basis. By that i mean thinking that God is constantly in control and constantly does have something up his, metaphorical, sleeve. :)
I came across a quote in this book I'm reading..."It is doubtful whether God can bless a man greatly until he has hurt him deeply." A.W. Tozer. In one sense I'm cynical thinking why hurt me at all just bless me. In another sense it makes total sense..oh sense :) i think especially for me I need to see and feel Gods power or plan before i can jump in...but I'm trying to have the attitude and mind set that if i need to suffer in order to see or believe bring it on...And to be honest with my self, and whoever else wastes their time reading this :), I don't exactly know why all of a sudden my view and attitude has changed from very pessimistic to very optimistic. In addition, knowing me its bound to change a trillion and one times, but for now I cant say i hate this optimistic view!
I think when I am feeling overwhelmed or confused or just uncertain, I have a three step reaction process.
resentment
isolation/pushing people away
I doubt everything I once believed was true
However! I believe that I am starting, at least trying, to realize that the most incredibly horrid place on the planet to be when I am doubting stuff-is alone. But you know what they say... better late then never :)
All in all I think I am coming to the recognition of a few things. A. I need not only to act how God would want me to act but also think and try to believe that he is doing what is best for me, whether or not it seems so. B. my life at the moment isn't going to get easier, and rather than being resentful, isolated, and doubtful, I need to suck it up buttercup and truck on through! and lastly C. I , and I would think others, avoid the truth when it is painful and hard, but nonetheless I cant avoid it any longer!
Quote of the Moment: "Scepticism is the beginning of Faith" Oscar Wilde
After working an 8 hour day alone at my flower shop I was inspired to write a fun blog about the idiotic and down right dumb customers i see on a weekly basis...
Every day for the past four and a half years I have asked myself, “Why am I still working here?” Granted in the past one year i haven't worked nearly as much, at least in the customer service aspect of the store but nonetheless i have been working for my parents shop for almost a full five years. Do you know what type of people order, receive, deliver, grow, or wholesale flowers? I do...
On any particular day I find myself wondering how it is possible for so many people to act with such ignorance, incompetence, and pathetic desperation at the same time they are also wanting to do a “good deed.” For instance, I remember a time when I tried to wire a floral order to an out-of-town florist for a frequent customer of ours. The order was for an arrangement of flowers for $40.00, with no special flowers identified. Within ten minutes I received a “reply” message that stated, “We are unable to fill this order.” I called for clarification and the filling florist shop owner explained, “We have no flowers.” Incredulously, I asked, “You are a flower shop, aren’t you?”
“Oh yes,” she sweetly replied.
“You’re a flower shop, but you have no flowers,” I asked with confusion.
“Yes, that’s right dear.”
Oh jeeze! Can someone explain to me how you can call yourself a “flower shop” but have no flowers? Are there auto parts stores that have no parts for cars? Or clothing stores that don’t sell clothes? I dont think so!...get some fricking flowers.
I love it when the phone rings and someone says, “Hello, I would like to send flowers. Do you deliver?
“Yes sir, we do.”
I spend three or four minutes gathering his billing information, what he wants a card message to read, what he wants to send, and then to whom he wishes to send the flowers.
“And her address, sir?”
“Oh, I don’t know where she lives.”
I mean, really!? What does he think, that I know where she lives, or that the delivery driver knows all the names and addresses of DurhamCounty residents?
In the years I have worked with my parents, I have received at least a dozen calls similar to this:
“I received a beautiful plant from your shop a week ago and it looks terrible today. The leaves are drooping and the flowers are falling off.”
“How often have you watered the plant?”
“Oh, was I supposed to water it?”
Dah!
In addition to the customer service aspect of the retail flower shop, there is the arranging, processing, and delivering of flowers. I never thought that by the time I was nineteen years old I would have lifted the dead heads of multiple corpses to drape flowers in hair or across the heart. Can you even imagine? At those moments, I think, “Elyse, you should be feeling very sad, or sympathetic at very least.” Instead, I am either grossed out by the whole scene, or wishing I could try pinching the dang body to see if it really was once alive and real. Like, I’ll never forget the time I walked into the funeral home to lay a casket spray atop a box only to notice the face of the same old man who had come to order flowers from me the week before! Impossible, he was just here in the shop. I just saw him. The family is just trying to get sympathy from the community. Or maybe he staged the whole thing himself so he can collect his own insurance money. Really, the floral business really makes you wonder about people.
Men come looking hung-over or high in to order flowers because “I fu**ed up real bad,” hoping that tonight they’ll be able to climb back in bed with their wife...I have even had a gentlemen ask if the arrangement is alive. I mean seriously!? Are you seriously asking me if I’m going to send a dead arrangement?And today…Oh, Boy. I stole the title for this non-fiction essayblog right from the mouth of my last customer, today. Can you imagine!
“How can I help you sir?”
“I WANT SOME CHEAP FLOWERS FOR MY WIFE.”
And all this is as if the daily work involved in the floral business is not hard enough. When Fed-Ex delivers twenty four-foot long boxes that I (or we) need to haul through the narrow two foot wide hallway to stack six feet high on our metal table at the back of the shop, it then takes me hours to “process” them. Translated in the most simple of ways, to “process” flowers means to freshly cut the stems ½ inch so they will drink water, and then to drop them into a bucket with fresh water. This does not account for the thousand scratches from rose thorns, the green stains on my hands, my ever broadening shoulders from lifting buckets with water and flowers to place on high shelves and the effects of the Fahrenheit 40 degree cooler the flowers are stored in
Of course, there has been a lot of value to the experiences in the shop. I know how to gracefully handle a rude customer while giving him/her the finger behind my back. I know how to nod my head at the customer who wants to send yellow roses because they mean “I love you,” even though it is red roses that really send that message. And I understand the teamwork required to run a successful business, even if half the employees my parents decide to hire are incompetent. I have learned a lot about working in retail, working as part of a family-owned business, how to balance jobs, schoolwork, and teenage life, and more about flowers than I will ever want to know...yet i still love sending and receiving them (as long as they are not roses). And in (somewhat) retrospect, I'm sure the moms, daughters, and girlfriends that are lucky enough to have a man who sends flowers, are pretty lucky.
I stole this picture from Google, but none of the ones I had was as pretty.
Quote of the moment...
"It is not about possession and limits. It is about giving everything until there's nothing left to give, and then searching and scraping until you find a little bit more." --Harvesting the Heart, Jodi Picoult
If you are ever stuck in an airport alone for 15 hours i would suggest you make some lists, of anything! This recently happened to me and i made an assortment of fun little list that i hope to check off some day...they are as follows.
Places I want to visit slash live before I die...
Australia
Egypt
Cambodia (live)
Romania (live)
Mexico--3rd world part
Italy (live)
St. Thomas/ St. Martin
Jerusalem
Paris (live)
Africa--again the poor parts
Hawaii
Bucket List... (Cliche i know but again i was at the airport for 15 hours...)
Bungee Jump off a bridge into water
sky dive
get married
fly first class
have at least 3 kids
go to ever continent
go to another Celine Dion concert
go to a john Mayer, Jason mraz, taylor swift, sara bareilles, sugarland, and kanye west concert
kiss a dolphin
buy a house
fly in a helicopter
have an all inclusive vacation
be a good teacher
ride on an elephant
adopt a child
swim with sharks
join the mile high club :)
camp in Africa
start and complete a wine cellar
see a tornado up close in person
trash a hotel room
go blueberry picking
go to a drive in movie
write a children's book
learn french...fluently
learn sign language...fluently
live in a 3rd world country
ride on a Farris wheel
be the first person on AND off the plane
spend an entire day just at a theme park on one roller coaster
love god
learn to play pachelbels canon on the violin and piano
scuba dive
see the northern lights in Alaska
be in NYC on new years
see at least one of the seven wonders of the world...preferably the pyramids
get my fortune told.
learn to make a cheesecake without it cracking down the middle
donate blood and eggs
have a garden
Reasons I hate to fly...
so stinking expensive
could crash
seats are always too straight for my back
nasty when people cough or sneeze...
flights are always delayed
the flight attendant never gives you the whole can of soda
so boring (hence this list by the way)
my ears always hurt the entire duration of the flight
ginormous people crammed into tiny seats
its loud, dark, and smelly
the sky mall magazine never changes it always has the same stupid pointless gifts no one needs but would be so cool to have---like the motor boat cup holder for the pool :)
hate peanuts but i hate it even more that there are only like 5 in the stinking tiny bag they give you.
either too cold or too hot
takes forever for people to get in their fricking seats!
creepy old men hitting on me
I'm scared to use the bathroom or sleep
First 10 things that come to my mind that I want
a vera bradley duffel bag
elijahs MP3 player
a college education
the perfect fathers day gift (i got this one already)
professionally framed pictures
a car...like one that isn't tore up!
original flavored chex mix
******a reading light!
every Jodi Picoult book ever written
season tickets to a sports event (baseball or basketball)
Top 5 questions that i want answers to at this very moment...
How can someone know me better than myself?
is there a God?
Where will I be in 5 years?
Will I be a good teacher?
Whats his favorite Disney movie?
Silly questions I want answers to before i marry...whoever.
What is your favorite Disney movie
least favorite food
will you get mad at me if i change the channel during your sports game on accident
how many kids
where do you want to get married
do you like the name Oliver
do you like pickles
what is your favorite color
do you like when girls wear perfume
would you rather me be all done up or bummy
favorite meal i could cook you, including drinks dessert and main dish
favorite song, movie, and music genre
will you sit through i musical with me
can you handle seeing a chick flick every now and then
what do you want to do that you would never actually do
can you kiss me
can you build things or i guess are you creative
what will our pet be and what will its name be...boy and girl
least favorite thing a girl does
favorite outfit...mine and yours.
Does it annoy you i cant spell and will ask you how to spell simple things
does it annoy you i spell out slash instead of putting the... "/" thingy?
So, once again, another pointless and waste of time post :)
So, i have spent the past week with the most adorable girl slash best friend slash partner in crime slash future maid of honor... and we are very silly together...or to some people "retarded"... and in honor of her i am going to make a list of fun quotes!...So it ended up being quotes from like everyone i hung out with.
Lauren: "You're like teen rebel except you're too old to act that way."
**
Elyse: "There is something about the summer air that makes me want to be scandalous."
**
Debbie (Laurens momma) "I love her floppy breast!"
**
Lauren: "I wonder if they would let two friends share a jail cell?
Elyse: "Oh my god that would be a blast, like a never ending sleepover!"
**
Ben(Laurens Brother): "NO SCAR NO!"
**
Ben:"Its like drug testing, except i don't lie to them...so in end it really saves them money, they should love me even more.
**
Lauren: "Dad, so listen to this story. We were walking out of the mall and Elyse was holding the door for this man who was carrying like patio chairs out, and then the sales person goes...um Hun you're holding an automatic door, but Elysedidn't hear her so she just stood there until i shouted Elyse its an automatic door!
Jeff: Were you born a blond?
Elyse: Apparently my dad says i have blond roots...
**
Lauren: "Mom, my car wont start...the battery is dead.
...15 min later after Debbie has arrived...
Lauren: "the radio works??"
Debbie: "Lauren is it in park!?!
Lauren: "oh shoot"
**
Elyse: "Holy Cow he is hot!"
Lauren: "he is taking off his shirt"
Elyse: "Wow, this is a thank you god moment."
**
Elyse: "1 bathing suit cover up, 4 tee shirts, 3 head bands, 1 pair of shoes, 2 pairs of panties....PRICELESS."
John: "jeremy, you want to know my favorite part about going to church?...the times we didn't go."
**
Elyse:"i would only make that kinda movie, if i was really depressed or in serious student debt."
**
Jeremy: "Don't say stuff like that"
**
Lauren: "i won't do it again..."
Elyse: "haven't you done it before?"
**
Elyse: "Is this like a goood i wanna marry your son someday shirt?
Lauren: "Yes, is this a good i want to be the maid of honor at your sons wedding someday shirt?"
**
Lauren: "Did that lady just flash me, or did i imagine that?"
Elyse: "I hope you didnt imagine it."
**
Elyse: "Well i havent really had a shot or a doctors appointment since i was like...8.
Lauren: "Elyse, you could have like...SWINE FLU!"
**
Elyse: "I dont like that they call the internet safari"
Lauren: I think its cool its like youre browsing through the safari."
**
Elyse: "How cool would it be if I married Jason Mraz?"
Becky: "it would make family holidays really awkward because we would be sitting at dinner and i would be eyeing your husband. Not to mention how insecure benjamin would be."
**
so this was at like...9am...
Elyse: I want to be her...
Lauren: You want beer?
**
Abbey: How was Marys Vineyard?
Elyse: Martha's Vineyard?...its really beachy
Abbey: Sis, what did you just call me.
**
Jeff: i wanna get your mother drunk Debbie: no, im crazy enough without it. Jeff: oh yea hun, you're real lose ** Lauren: That pilot is kinda cute/ Elyse: I was thinking the very same thing. Lauren: He can fly my plane Me: He can revvvvv my engine ** Lauren: I fell like were in that scene of final destination where were sitting watching the plane take off and its raining and then all of a sudden it blows up. Me: Lauren! Don't say stuff like that! ** ...So this was after we got lost and i went into the gas station to ask for directions, and Hottie McHottness followed me back to the car and honked our car down...its less sketchy than this seems. Hottie McHottness: Hey! I saw you in the gas station, im headed that way want to follow me? Lauren: Yes...he was effing hot.
Elyse: we should just keep following him forget going back to your house lauren. Chelsea: im going to get out and get his number...just incase he gets lost. ** My Mom: Where do the scanlons live now? Me: Marlown...some M name, whats the other "M" name? Mom: I have no idea Me: Woburn! Dad: Yep, thats the other "M" one
