Two Weeks Notice

Yesterday at work I gave my two weeks notice!!!!!!!! Can you tell I'm excited? Something Mark and I have both been really happy about in moving to Canada was the fact that we could both quit our jobs. We both haven't really enjoyed them too much/hated them. I've been working at Vons Pavilions down the street. I started out just bagging groceries and then they quickly moved me into some checking because they realized quickly what a smarty pants I am and should utilize my sweet skills. Then they wanted to (cough) "promote" me (if I should even call it that) to doing price changes some nights and the GM department (which means put candy/mints/gums from bins onto check stands). 

The photo above is of what I usually come to find on my price change shifts. The main shift I basically had every week was going into work on Tuesday night (which I will be doing tonight) at 10 pm and then stay until 6:30 am just changing price tags due to expiring sales or new sales or whatever. I usually do some whatever hundreds or thousands of tags that need to be changed. I don't really know. I haven't counted because that would take too long. During this shift the store is mostly closed so I don't have to deal with customers needing help, I get to be out of uniform and wearing jeans, and I can listen to music on my ipod. 

Doing shifts through the middle of the night and then switching to do some day shifts has basically been killing me slowly. I would come home at 6:30 in the morning, get ready for bed, and then Mark would get up to get ready to go to work. I would sleep for however long my body wanted, wake up with a headache usually, and sometimes have a sense of alert with such thoughts as: what time is it? what day is it? I'm late for something!

Then I'd have to switch my body's time clock to try to get back to whatever normal shifts I was scheduled and be getting used to that when my Tuesday night would swing around again and my schedule would be off once more. 

I will say that working at Pavilions has given me more stories to tell my family when I come home because there are a lot more crazies in Monrovia than there were in Provo, UT. There's one guy named Daniel who wears girls and boys clothes. He likes to sing a LOT and very loudly. Usually he sings every kind of genre of music in one sitting. He also likes to talk in a voice sounding like he's possessed by something and then tells people it's the devil, which has quickly gotten him kicked out of the store. He even gets his own paper in the store window saying he's prohibited from entering the store. The last time I saw him he was getting arrested in front of the store.

Someone else who regularly gets a prohibited paper in the store window is a little Asian lady who steals. I don't know her name. That's how I've always referred to her and my co-workers know exactly who I'm talking about when I say it. I think she may have schizophrenia because she's really not in her right mind. One day she was trying to shoplift and one of my co-workers was trying to stop her and it looked like some hitting might ensue. My co-worker knew she could become violent so she was backing away saying, "don't touch me" and the little Asian lady was yelling, "NO, YOU DON'T TOUCH ME!" back at her. One of my supervisors was in a check stand and while checking started yelling at the lady, "Drop it! Get out of my store!" in which the little Asian lady yelled back at the top of her lungs while pointing with her hand, "NOOO! YOU GET OUT OF MY STORE!!!" I tried my hardest not to laugh after this happened. 

Last week I was hanging some tags on the chip aisle in the morning and someone walked behind me and I looked to see who it was. It was little Asian lady who steals. I watched her. She grabbed a couple bags of beef jerky. I watched where she went in the store. As she stood in front of the lotion on aisle 12 she opened her backpack and put the jerky in. I went looking for the store manager and told him what I saw. She walked out the door so he called the police. When the officer got there he had me tell him what happened, said they had her at the bus stop on Primrose, and they needed me to identify her (even though we all know who she is). So we went out to his cop car. He told me I could get in the passenger side, but then realized it had stuff on the seat, so I could get in the back seat. I've never been in the back of a police car nor do I ever want to be again. They have plastic seats and you slide around easily. I did try to get some pics though without the officer noticing.

So we drove over to the bus stop where she was sitting and I said it was the same lady and he let the officer parked by her know it was her and watched him hand cuff her without any problems and then took me back to work. My manager said she didn't just take the jerky. She had $28 worth of stuff in her bag. Some other things I saw that she took were a bottle of lotion, a white mug, and an orange. Hmmm...okay.

Well, my manager, Jim, already loved me before for being such a great worker, but by catching the lady shoplifting it just gave him one more thing to thank me and praise me for. 

Thank you for the good times Daniel and little Asian lady who steals.

Canadian Consulate, eh?

Yesterday my mom was kind enough to take me to downtown LA (which isn't so fun when you have to deal with traffic) and we went to the Canadian consulate. As I have written before, my husband and I will be moving up to Canada soon. He's a citizen so going through the border is no problem, but we thought that if an American citizen rolls up with a car full of stuff saying "hey, I'm coming to live in your country now...eh?" they might not let me through. 

We've had issues before with getting through that dang border (pretty much all on Mark's end...America is so prejudice against Canadians!). So we thought we wouldn't chance any problems for me getting through. Mark called the border people and the girl there said the best bet would be for me to get a visitors visa. So we go about doing all this work for it. I had to deal with the very lovely Walmart passport photo taker man who, even though he said he knew how to do it, I still had to go back because the dimensions weren't right. They wanted everywhere I had worked in the last 10 years. They wanted all my siblings names, birth dates, addresses, marital status'. I have nine full/half/step siblings and I don't even talk to some of my siblings (or they don't talk to me...we're dysfunctional). They wanted a lot of other info that I can't quite remember right now. Then we have to go to Staples and make copies of everything, stop at the bank down by the consulate to get a money order for the fee, pay the parking people $10, and finally go to the consulate. 

My number's called. I go up to the window. The lady behind the counter is surprised and says, "Are you American?" and I tell her "yes" and go through my explanation of why I'm applying for this visa and once living up there will apply for permanent residency. Then she tells me "American citizens don't need a visa to go into Canada. They can stay for up to six months, no questions asked. Then if you stay longer you file a visa extension if the residency hasn't gone through yet." She handed me a paper that said this exact thing (which I will be taking to the border along with all my visa info I put together so they can't say "you actually need a visa" to which I will say "I tried, you idiots, and the lady at the consulate told me I didn't, gave me this paper that says so, and here's my packet I tried to give to her!!!")

Then she told me all we'd have to deal with at the border is custom stuff and gave me that website as well. So any Americans reading this, just know that if you want to go up and visit Canada for six months all you need is your passport.

Luckily I got some good pics for Instagram:

love the Los Angeles skyline

110 Pasadena freeway -- it's pretty

Church Time

In my ward I'm a primary teacher, so I don't get to have a Sunday School lesson or go to Relief Society. Although there are some great things to be learned in Primary and not to mention singing time, there are some Sundays when I'd really like to go hear some of those other lessons for adults. So Sacrament Meeting is my time where I try to get my substance at church. Today we had a speaker from the Stake high council and he asked Margaret Finlay from Duarte Ward to come speak with him. She actually spoke in our ward a month or so ago, but she's a great speaker and always has some great thoughts. 

She was speaking about trying to filter things in your life so that your life can be cleaner (relating it to taking care of a pool). There are a lot of things that you can easily point out that are good or bad, that can help or hinder you. But she wanted to point out that there are some things that can be kind of a grey area like gossip. Some people might justify it by saying that they're "being informative" or they're "just talking about a person, but it's not anything bad". Sister Finlay said something she used to say to her kids was, "If you can't say something in front of someone, you shouldn't say it behind their back." 

I really liked that she said that and that she talked about this issue because I think everyone needs reminders that talking about others can be hurtful and in some cases ruins people's reputations. 

I guess the best thing to do is try to think of kind things to think and say about others and think the best of them and of situations. I know this can be difficult at times, but that's why it's important to go to church each week and look for the substance, even if it's just one little thing out of one little talk or lesson. Every little bit helps, right? Right!

Changing and Moving

I feel like my blog is a work in progress. I can be kind of a perfectionist, so I know I'll be changing and tweaking things as I go along. Like the name of my blog. I already decided to change it to Mrs. Mark. 

I was visiting with my good friends from high school, Eliza, Katie, and Jennifer, last night. Just before Katie and I left we were talking about Mark and I moving up to Canada, where Mark's from, and it made them think of the book Mrs. Mike. It's, in short, based on a true story of a girl from the U.S. (like me) who marries a Canadian mountie (like Mark minus the mountie part) and she moves up to the rough, Canadian wild (except that we'd be going to Calgary, AB, which is actually a pretty big city). They thought it sounded like what I was about to embark on and thought I should name my blog Mrs. Mark and I thought it sounded good too, so I changed it.

Mark and I currently live at my mom and step-dad's house, where I grew up, in Southern CA. We've been trying to work and save money so we can start having kids, but because of the U.S. economy being the way it is, this task has turned out to be a bit difficult. 

We started thinking of other options and thought of Canada because most of Mark's family is still in Calgary, where he grew up. I didn't like the idea at first, but the more we talked, analyzed, and prayed about it, the more the idea grew on me. Their economy is better right now. Mark has an old job he can go back to. He has more connections to possibly get an even better job. We were also going to try to do some house flipping, something he and his step-dad had done before. Plus, if I get residency, we can have babies for free!

So, that's going to be my new adventure! I never thought I'd live outside the country. I guess marrying a Canadian made that more of a possibility. I'm excited, nervous, and a little worried about figuring out a new place to live - where everything is and the things that are exclusive to Canada. I guess I need to get used to colorful money and saying "eh" (which I'm totally going to start doing) and figuring out what I'm going to do without Target (no Targets in Canada? What the?) and get frustrated that the U.S. decided to be different from the entire world and not do the metric system (maybe there's an app for metric conversion?). We're not sure when exactly we're moving up there, but we're thinking in the next month or so...when the weather's still nice up there so we can ease into the bitter iciness with everyone else.

Here's a little vid that I love and laugh at so, so much. Every single time I watch, I laugh. I love quoting it.

"I can't go back! It's so cold!" In some Canadian language or something...

Have a Laugh

So, I just put up a post and then decided I needed to check pinterest, which of course takes me to a blog - What She Wore 365. As I'm scrolling down looking at recent posts on her blog I come across this video she posted. It's really funny. Really. really. Esp at around 2:00 min mark. Watch. Laugh. Your welcome.

What's in a Name?

So, the name of my blog. It's not just me saying "Hey, why not start a blog?" It actually comes from a movie that came out recently: We Bought a Zoo. Oh, and here's a picture, in case you never heard of it. 

I love movies. And luckily I married a man who also loves movies. We go to Blockbuster Express quite a bit. We used to be able to find promo codes online to get movies for free, but then they stopped working at some point. Booo!

Anyway, so if you haven't seen the movie -- you should. It's a really awesome story. Touches the heart strings. The little girl is adorable. Matt Damon is one of my favorite actors. Plus, it's based on a true story, which is pretty cool.

In the movie Matt Damon's character, Benjamin Mee, obviously buys a zoo with different reasoning behind it. But when asked by Scarlett Johansson's character why he bought a zoo, he says "Why not?"

Spoiler alert! Now I'm going to tell you his explanation of "why not?" which comes at the end of the movie. So, if you haven't seen it yet and don't want to know the ending then just skip the next paragraph, okay?

Okay, so at the end he takes his son and daughter to this cafe and starts telling them the story of how he met their mother (who had recently passed away). He says he was walking by and saw her through the window sitting at the table. He said she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen and he just had to talk to her. So, he gathered his courage and went in. When he came in to talk to her he said, "Why would an amazing woman like you even talk to someone like me?" and she responded with,

"Why not?"

There are the magic words! I love the meaning behind them. It's like by saying them you're taking in chances and possibilities and an open mind to what can be. That's how I'd like to live my life. It's something that I'm hoping this blog can help me do. Live it out and then report to the blog. Even if the blog is my motivation. Do something I might not normally do, but because I have the blog, I'll try it so I can put it on the blog. I don't think it's bad if that's my motivation because it's still getting me out there to do things, live my life, take chances, be open to possibilities.

Now I'm probably not going to go out and buy a zoo, but I might try to do new things like learning to sew so I can try all the tutorials I've pinned. Or try new and different recipes. Or go do something different outside of my normal, daily routine. But I'm sure I'll also be posting some things about my normal, daily routine as well.

So there you have it! That's where the name comes from.

Oh Hi!

Well, here I am. Officially in the blogging world. For a long time I was against this. I thought it would take up too much of my time. I already wrote in a journal. Plus, I had some reservations about putting things out there...on the internet...the world wide web.

I think the seed was planted because I had joined pinterest and pins would lead back to a tutorial on a blog and there were a few that I really ended up liking and kept going back to.

Then my husband, Mark, and I finally upgraded to having smart phones because we realized we could get them and pay less with Virgin Mobile than with the carrier we had without smart phones...so welcome to the family Androids! Then soon after getting our phones, Instagram became available for Androids, so I signed up.

I've been loving Instagram so far. I almost felt like I had this mini blog; a place where I could be creative or express myself, but in a small way.

So a blog kept going through my mind. I had been encouraged a couple times before to start a blog by one of my old high school friends, Eliza. She's had her blog forever...or since the early 2000's.

I also emailed my best friend, Whitney, to see what she thought. She knows me better than most people and always knows the right thing to tell me. She thought it was a great idea for me to start one. She said it could be a healthy outlet for me; something I would take ownership of. It could be a great way for me to express myself, be creative, put up things that inspire me, and just document any significant things that happen.

Lately I have been looking for something to do that is worthwhile and rewarding. I have no idea if this will or won't work for me in that way. I don't know if this will be helpful or inspiring to anyone else, kind of like the blogs I started following were to me. We'll see how this, so called, blog thing works out.