My greatest fear, is that the African dining squirrel might have already dined. That would be terrible.

This is for Sarah:
This morning I get into my car, turn the key in the ignition and backed out of the driveway. I get onto the road and put my car into drive, I start heading out slowly on the street because even though I am late I don’t want my new neighbors to think I’m some reckless driver. As I come up on the yield sign I see a squirrel standing in the middle of the road. You know how it is, they stand on their hind legs and hold their front ones by their chest and then give you the blank stare as though they don’t know what you are doing. Here I come, a huge charcoal silver car, coming straight at the squirrel and he stares at me like he doesn’t know he’s inches from death. I slowed the car to a stop, he continues to stand there and in a fit of madness I begin to laugh, “Seriously?” I asked Traffic Control Squirrel. He’s lucky I have a problem with hitting animals. Finally he moves to the side of the road and watches as I pass on by. I'm suspicious that possibly another squirrel ran under the car while I was stopped and placed a tracking device, but what can you do? So there’s a squirrel story for Sarah, hope you enjoyed.
So in other news, I went to Wal-Mart the other day (Tuesday). In case you are wondering why Wal-Mart comes up a lot now we live extremely close to one now. So my roommate and I went together, when it came time to get in line I stood between two registers, not sure which one to go to because even though one would only take a few moments longer than the other one I felt the urge to pick the fastest. My roommate, Emily, walks by and steps in front of me into the line on my right – rude. So I think, “I’ll show her” and go to the other line, why do I have to be so competitive? So when I’m in line I tend to stare at magazine covers or look at all the chocolate that I want nothing to do with, but still stare at as though I’m contemplating which to buy. This is mostly so I don’t have any awkward moments with other customers or any premature contact with the cashier. Its how I find out important things like how Katherine Hegel lost 14 pounds (because she needed to?) and how Jessica Simpson has been betrayed by someone, can’t remember who at this point. So I’m doing my usual ‘minding my own business’ thing when the guy in front of me says, “Do you live around here?” I panicked, and the first thought that came to mind was, ‘don’t talk to strangers’ the next is, ‘do I lie?’ and finally 3 seconds after he asked I say, ‘Um, uh, yeah.” Smooth. So he asks me where there are good restaurants to eat at around there, I tell him my favorite place is O’Charley’s and try to give him directions, which I bomb completely. In the meantime he’s asked the cashier for two packs of cigarettes and she’s informed him he needs to go to a different register for that, so he’s holding his case of beer as I try to orient myself and tell him how to get to the restaurant. Emily comes over and I ask her how to get there and we both fail miserably. Finally we both decided to send him to Topeka’s, it’s just down the street (same one the Wal-Mart is on) so he thanks us and walks to the cigarette register and I call out, “good luck,” because he’s going to need it after getting confused by us. So I say we’re really bad at giving directions and Emily says we were so bad he switched registers. So she goes to look at books while I check out and I quickly grab my stuff and go to get her because part of me wants to walk out of the store and quickly so we don’t run into the guy again. Not that he was giving out the creepy vibe or anything and he was descent looking, but this is how socially retarded I am. So I finally get Emily to set down the book and we head out, well the guy ends up right behind us. We have to stop just outside the store because there are cars coming and no one pays attention to the pedestrian lines in the Wal-Mart parking lot. So this guy comes up to stand by us as we wait and he puts his arm (the one holding the case of beer) up to rest on the car stopper (you know, the thing that destroys a car before it can run into the building, should that ever happen) he asks us if we know where there are any good clubs and my first thought it, “Seriously dude? You want to ask us where something else is? I think we’ve proved that we don’t know.” So Emily says, “We don’t do clubs,” to which he said, “You don’t go out at night?” In a friendly way, not in the “weirdoes” way. Emily and I both said in complete unison, “not to clubs, no.” To which we both kind of laugh, because we are so not club girls. Then we begin to cross the road, I say ‘sorry’ and ‘good luck’ one more time for good measure and he says, “see ya,” which I can’t understand because I don’t ever expect to see this guy again in my life. Why say ‘see ya’ to someone you know you’ll never see again?
Anyway, Emily and I get back to the car and I begin to wonder if he was trying to pick us up, and then Emily says, “That’s why we’re still single.” It’s good to know I’m not the only one who is daft to all things dating. Not that I wanted the beer/cigarette man, even if I knew what he was doing at the time he was doing it I wouldn’t have responded well to it. He’s not the kind of guy I want.
Whatever, maybe one day someone normal and within my range of standards will try to do the same thing, and hopefully then I won’t be too dippy to notice. But who am I kidding?