Mash Game: Predict Your Future at eSPIN-the-Bottle

		I will marry Jeff.
		After a wild honeymoon, We will settle down in Oregon in our fabulous Apartment.
		We will have 7 kid(s) together.
		Our family will zoom around in a Blue Land Rover.
		I will spend my days as a Nurse, and live happily ever after.

Cookies

I love sweets. I love cookies, cake, candy, and especially cup cakes (white with white frosting, YUM!) Well my all time favorite cookie is meringue. They are crunchy but light. They melt in your mouth and are so smooth and wonderful. There was a grocery store in my hometown that always had them while I was growing up and my mom would get them for me. Well that store went out of business and finding these cookies since then has been no easy task. There have been a few occasions that my mom or I have been able to find them but the stores don't usually carry them for very long. I haven't had a meringue cookie in years. Well a few weeks ago I was really wanting one and I got to thinking that maybe stores here in NJ carry them. Well when I was at the grocery store a few days later I had forgotten about looking for the cookies and was just trying to hurry and grab the things on my list. I was passing the bakery in the store and what do I see out of the corner of my eye, buckets and buckets of my favorite cookies! I get closer and notice all of them are broken. I don't care little pieces taste as good as big pieces. Then I get even closer and all the tubs of cookies have a heavy layer of dust on them. My spirits are sinking. These have obviously not been touched in quite awhile. I'm standing there trying to justify the pieces and dust. Well maybe the store just did some remodeling and they got dusty and this shelf hasn't been cleaned off. Then I catch the sell by date on the package. Yeah it was January 22, 2007!!! Not even 2008 but 07!! They had been sitting there for a year and a half! I was devastated. I finally find my wonderful cookies and they are expired, dusty and broken. Who would do such a horrible thing. I kept thinking I was in a bad dream that was just teasing me because I have been wanting these cookies. The sad thing is even with the dust, the expiration date and them being in crumbles I still stood there holding the package forever trying to decide if it still might be worth buying them! Sad, I know. I put them back and sadly walked away but now I really have been having dreams about the cookies! How mean! So now I am on the lookout for non-expired, non-dusty, whole cookies. Wish me luck on my hunt and if you know of any stores that sell them I would gladly pay shipping to have you send them to me.

Lost

One of the biggest differences between NJ and good old Idaho is the traffic. It is insane to drive anywhere. It's not impossible and not as bad as I imagined but it's still insane. I don't think anyone planned where they were going to put roads. It was just a oh here's a open spot, throw it there type of idea. It is the biggest mess getting around. Even Ms. Garmin (that's what we call our nice little helper GPS lady) gets lost here. If you miss an exit there isn't an easy way to fix it. You usually have to wait for a exit or two get off then drive around until you get to an on ramp and get back on and hope you get off on the right one again. It's also bad because the highway splits and then merges back together and if you don't take the right split you can't get off on the exit you need so you are just out of luck.
So after we first got here Jeff's phone broke. Well he can't work without a phone so our second day here I put the kids in the van, plugged in Verizon into the GPS and headed off to the closest one. Since his phone didn't work he took mine so he would have one to use that day. Well I get to the first Verizon on the list and it is in the scariest neighborhood. There is no way I am getting my kids out of the car. Well upon further investigation it wasn't even a store it was one of their corporate shipping offices. So I have my GPS direct me to the next one. No Verizon store at the address Ms. Garmin gives me. Either it had moved or it was never there I don't know. Third on the list, another corporate office. Keep in mind that none of these are even remotely close together or in the same direction so I was driving all over the place. I was getting frustrated so the kids and I stopped at McDonalds for lunch and a break from our treasure hunt. We had been in the car for almost two hours. So we get back in the car and continue our search. Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth on the list were not stores either. Isaac needed a potty break so we stopped at a CVS. Nobody spoke English to even remotely try to help us with finding a Verizon store. The radio kept teasing me with Verizon adds because it's huge back here. Verizon does not only cell phones but TV and all the pay phones are Verizon. So why couldn't I find a store! The only Verizon on my GPS list that said Authorized Dealer was in NYC. I was so frustrated and just wanted to get the phone fixed that I said what the heck, why not. I started following the directions and then we hit traffic and my estimated time of arrival was 2 hours later! That's when the tears started. It was 4:30 and we had been in the car all day long and all I needed was to get my husbands phone fixed. I decided to just head home and borrow a phone and get directions to one in NJ. So I push return home onto the GPS we get off the highway and are going to get on another one that will take us back home. I was so mad and frustrated and with traffic and not being able to find one stupid Verizon store it really had me emotional. So I get in the left lane (which takes forever because everyone here is out for themselves) to get on the onramp to head home and what do I see right off the street on the right hand side. A VERIZON STORE!!!! It took me another 10 minutes to get back over to the right hand lane and then another 5 minutes after that to quit crying and compose myself enough to go into the store. I have never been so relieved to walk into a business in my life. Of course nobody in the store spoke very good English because I happened to find the Chinese Verizon Store. (All the signs and pamphlets and everything were in Chinese) but I didn't care. It took them forever to troubleshoot his phone and I didn't care because I was just so happy we had found Verizon at all. They weren't able to fix his phone so we had to buy a new one. His old one was so broke that they couldn't get any of his contacts or photos or anything off of it. I have never been so thankful that I listened and didn't try driving into the city that day. I have gained an appreciation for my cell phone and learned never to depend on my GPS getting me to where I need to go. Since that day I have seen a million Verizon stores that are fairly close to our house. Figures. Well not a million but at least three and that day I only needed one of them. I respect all the people that live here and go through the traffic and driving each and every day. I can't even imagine.
Have you ever been lost? How long were you lost and how did you end up finding your way?

Sunday Shopping

Growing up in Idaho there was not a lot of opportunity to do a lot of activities on Sunday. Most places are closed or have shorter hours for the day. Even in the small communities however there were still places open. Target, Walmart and the mall are open on Sunday as well as most of the restaurant chains. The smaller locally owned businesses were closed but other than that you could eat anywhere you wanted. With that said it was on a very rare occasion that we did much shopping or eating out on Sunday. The shopping was only done for emergencies like medicine. I can count the number of times I've eaten out on a Sunday in Idaho on one hand. It's not because we couldn't but because we were choosing not to. I didn't plan on changing those practices when we made the move to NJ a month ago but circumstances have changed our plans a bit.
Sunday is Jeff's only day off which means Sunday is the only day I have a car to get groceries or anything else like that. I know what the recommendations will be. Go before he leaves or when he gets home. Those are GREAT ideas! but a no go. You see he leaves at 9 am. That means I would have to have my two kids and I out the door by 6:30 to get to a grocery store by 7 and that would give us an hour to an hour and a half to get the shopping done and be back home for Jeff to leave. While that does sound like a great time I'm not sure it's physically possible. I'm pretty sure myself or my children would not survive the trip. Since he doesn't get home until midnight that's not an option either. Plus I stay up until he gets home so waking up to be out by 6:30 would be impossible for me.
So the first Sunday we were here we decided to run to Target to grab a few things that we didn't bring and we needed. We pull into the parking lot and it is completely empty. Wow, Target is closed on Sunday. I made some comment about did we move to Provo and I just thought we were in NJ. (HA!) So we go look for a few more places, closed, closed, closed. Even the malls here are closed on Sunday. No shorter hours they just do not open. I never thought we would have a harder time here than in the west trying to find a place open on Sunday. I decided to Google why the stores are closed on Sunday here and this is what I found.

Many stores in the United States have reduced hours of operation on Sundays (most often 11 a.m. or noon to 5 or 6 p.m.), although the recent trend has led to expansion. A few local municipalities still prohibit Sunday shopping, and many others prohibit it until a certain time (most often noon or 1 p.m.), especially in regard to selling alcohol.

One of the last major areas to completely prohibit Sunday shopping is Bergen County, New Jersey.^[21] This area contains one of the largest and most popular commercial shopping cores of the New York metropolitan area (for example, one of three local Ikea stores is found here, the store is the only one in the United States to be closed on Sunday). Ironically, the area is not considered to be particularly religious compared to the U.S. population at large; and it also has significant Jewish and Muslim populations whose observant members would not be celebrating the Sabbath on Sunday. But attempts to repeal the law have failed as many locals either like to keep the law on the books as a protest against the growing trend of increased Sunday shopping activity in American society or fear the potential increase of Sunday traffic on major local roads such as Rt. 4 or Rt. 17. Some local Orthodox Jews who are off both days of the weekend have complained about the law because it limits their ability to get shopping done on the weekend without having to travel to a neighboring county as religious beliefs prohibit shopping on Friday night or on Saturday before sunset, which in the summer can be right before most department stores and malls close.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunday_shopping

So there you go. We have moved to the only place in the United States that requires every store be closed on Sunday. Any thought of shopping on Sunday has been taken care of for me unless we decide to drive somewhere else. Our Sunday drives are quite entertaining to say the least. Any thoughts from my readers on stores being closed on Sunday and it making it harder or easier to get things done. And if you were me living in a completely different world for the summer would you take advantage of your husbands day off and see the sites or would you go to church and have a family day at home? I am torn with both. I will NEVER be here for this time frame again. There are so many things to see and do and so many things I want my children to experience while we are here. Unfortunately that means those experiences are on Sunday. But at the same time we are together as a family and learning about our great country so it's not all bad right.