Toothpicky

My weekend adventure in selling goat cheese

Yes, I know it sounds weird that I spent my first weekend home from college selling goat cheese at a fair. It’s probably not the ideal way to spend a weekend, but I actually had a lot of fun. I was there with my cousins Cecylia, Cheyanne, and Christine, my brother Matt, my aunt Alice (the master behind the making of the goat cheese) and her assistant Jesse.

(So this will be a longer post than usually, so I’ll brief you about it a little. First I’ll be talking about my adventure in general and then I’ll be listing all of the different types of customers that we encountered. Both sections will have pictures so keep reading!)

A Day Selling Goat Cheese

The day started weird to begin with. When we got to the fair, there was a lot of boy scouts standing in the parking lot helping people park. They all had these big orange flags that they waved to show you where to go. There was this one guy who was really intent on showing me EXACTLY where to go. He was squatting and waving his arm so fast it was basically a blur. And he had this intense drill sergeant look on his face… it was slightly frightening.

Throughout the day, we had a steady flow of customers… except when Jesse would leave. We had 7 people. You would think that would be enough to allow one person to go on break at a time, and it usually was. But then Jesse would leave for a little while to grab lunch. It turned into chaos. We’d be sitting there dealing with the one customer we had and Jesse would be like “Well, it’s not very busy right now so I’m going to go grab lunch” and we’d all be like, “Yup that’s fine.” So he would get up to go, and all of the sudden, the ground would start to shake. There was a stampede coming. A stampede of hungry customers. As soon as Jesse left, we had about 30 people placing orders, and waving money at us, and asking really hard questions about the cheese. One question I got was something I had no idea how to answer. Lady, I don’t know what color the cheese would turn if you wanted to go scuba diving with it. Please make up your mind if you’re going to buy any or not because there are about 1,000 people behind you. After we were all frantically running around for 30 minutes, the crowd would die down and Jesse would return. No joke. And he’d say, “Oh good! Didn’t miss anything!” Yup. You definitely didn’t miss a thing.

At one point during the day this boy and his dad came up to try cheese. The boy was probably close to Cecylia’s age so naturally Cecylia’s mom was all about calling out how cute he was. Here’s how the conversation went…

Boy: (trying goat cheese) Mmmmm. This tastes like goat cheese!

Cecylia: That’s because it is goat cheese.

Boy: Oh, oopps haha!

Cecylia’s Mom: That’s okay! It’s easy to mess up around cute girls!

The boy’s face turned bright red and shortly after, he and his dad left without buying any cheese.

We dealt with many other customers throughout the day… all of which were characters, but I’ll get to that more later.

When Cecylia and I went on break for lunch, we were really thirsty, so we got these giant tubs of lemonade. And when I say “tubs”, I mean it. They were huge! And we got cheaper refills so it was awesome:)

We sat outside to eat and we started talking about the fair. The thing was… I had no idea where we were. It was like the middle of nowhere. In fact, just as Cecylia was saying, “Where ARE we?” we look over at the road and see this little old lady slowly walk by headed towards nothing in particular. And that about sums it up.

The Different Types of Toothpickers

Jesse and Christine worked at checkout dealing with money. Aunt Alice, Matt, and Cheyanne worked at filling orders and packaging them, and Cecylia and I worked with the customers and manned the free samples. Cecylia and I definitely had the most fun since we were dealing DIRECTLY with the customers. Let me tell you, we met some very big characters. It was a little frustrating at times. I never realized how many different varieties of cheese tasters there are. Like, there are A LOT of things you can do wrong when tasting cheese.

We had the sample station set up in a very simple way. Each type of cheese was in a different compartment and was labeled as to which flavor it was. Almost every cube of cheese also had a toothpick in it to make it easier for the customer and so we could follow the health standards. All the customer had to do was pick a toothpick that had the cheese they wanted on it, and eat it. Pretty easy. But somehow, the customers found a way to make it difficult. I’ve grouped the customers into different categories to explain it.

1) The eco-friendly customers- These customers will try to violate the health code rules by using the same toothpick more than once in hopes of saving toothpicks. Sorry, people. They aren’t our rules! You HAVE to use a different toothpick each time! Well, I’ll just flip it over. Nope. Well, I only touched one. Nope. Sorry.  I’ll just put my toothpick back. No. That’s disgusting. I’ll just use my hands. That’s worse.

2) The sneak attackers- These people think that we don’t want them to take a sample so they wait until someone comes up and lifts off the lid to take one. Then, they sneak their hand in really fast, grab a piece, and run away from the table. You knooowww… they are FREE samples…

3) The person who takes so many samples that they might as well just buy a whole block of cheese.

4) The minefield dodger- Every piece of cheese has a toothpick already in it except on small one in the middle of the minefield of pointy toothpicks. THAT’S the piece they go for. I literally had one lady complaining that she kept getting stabbed by all the toothpicks when she was trying to get the small piece of cheese in the middle. Well, that’s why we put all the toothpicks there. We wanted to stab you as you went for the toothpickless piece in the middle… duh!

5) The double stabber- They find an empty toothpick and stab a piece of cheese that already has a toothpick in it… I don’t understand why having two toothpicks on your cheese is better than just one, but if it makes you happy.

6) The dream customer- This customers does everything right without being told anything. This customer also does not exist.

7) The wrong cheese picker- This customer either has never had the cheese, or has had the cheese and knows they don’t like it. If they’ve never had the cheese, they tend to take the strongest most intensely flavored goat cheese sample… bad idea. It usually scars them forever and they’ll never try another piece for the rest of their life. If they have had it and know they don’t like it, then they tend to take the biggest sample piece on the plate. They end up throwing it away because… what do you know! They don’t like it!

8) The trasher- This customer leaves their used toothpick or knife on the table instead of in the clearly marked trashcans next to them.

9) The joker- “The Gouda cheese is good.” Haha! Never heard that one before…

10) The guy who just doesn’t get it....

I may seem to come off as harsh explaining the customers, but in reality, I had a lot of fun selling goat cheese and secretly laughing at the different customers. It was an experience that I am definitely going to remember for a while!

Expectations vs. Reality

I feel like there are many times in our life when we expect something, but then it turns out very different. I decided to dedicate this post to all of those times. These are a few of the things I can think of... and yes, I have experienced all of them. (Also, this is my first time using paintbrush so my drawings won't be that good)

1) Expectation: My drawings are awesome when I use "Paintbrush"

Reality: A third grader's art looks more like Picasso than mine

2) Expectation: After I lay in the sun, I will be soooo tan:)

Reality: Ghosts are tanner than me

3) Expectation: Math is pretty basic with numbers and the letter "x"

Reality: How is this still considered "math" because I don't see a single number....

4) Expectation: Squirrels are evil

Reality: Squirrels are still kinda evil....

5) Expectation: I can give myself a manicure

Reality: A two year old painted my nails

6) Expectation: I haven't been on facebook in forever. People must miss me

Reality: I guess not...

7) Expectation: My snowman is gonna be awesome!

Reality: Well, that was kinda a fail

8) Expectation: Yay McDonalds!

Reality: Ew.

9) Expectation: I can ski like they do in the olympics!

Reality: AHHHHHHHHHH!

10) Expectation: I'm a good singer....

Reality: .... in the shower

Well, that's really all I got! And again... sorry about my artistic ability.... and my singing skills for anyone who's experienced them:)

The Evolution of Easter

When I look back over the years, I realize Easter has changed for me. I don't remember the exact year these changes happened so I'll basically just group them into age groups.

Earliest I can remember... 
The earliest memory I have of Easter is going to Church Easter morning. It was chaotic. I remember that my parents were trying to get me and my brother out of the house (because we were at that age where Church was booooorrrring). My brother had fallen down part of the stairs and was screaming and I had tripped over the base of the stair banister and hurt my knee. The rest was a blur of chaos.


Young years... like kindergarten/1st grade time period.
When I was little, I had it in my mind that the Easter Bunny was this 6 foot tall white bunny with a giant red bow on his neck. Something like this... except with a bigger bow-tie.

I used to write him letters because for some reason I thought the Easter Bunny was like Santa, in that he wouldn't come if you had been "bad" that year. So naturally, in my letter, I would put my explanations as to why I was mean to my brother, and then I would write all the good things I had done in hopes of canceling out the bad things.

With the help of my mom, my letter would be something like this: "Dear Easter Bunny, Sorry I've been mean to my brother Matt. Sometimes he's just real annoying. I've been really nice to all my friends though. And I'm doing good in school. I love my parents and my dog. And Easter is my favorite (flat out lying at this point). I hope you like the sticker I picked for you! Love, Alison"

I thought that maybe the Easter Bunny would see that I had actually been pretty good and therefore he would still leave me candy. I would also leave the Easter Bunny sparkly stickers from my sparkly sticker collection because I always thought that he would put the stickers on his bow-tie that he wore. I found out pretty quickly that I was the only little kid who believed this, thus ending my belief in the Easter Bunny at an early age. Santa was still cool with me though.

The majority of my childhood after I stopped believing in the Easter Bunny
These next few years are all kind of grouped together. It was typical to open Easter baskets on Easter morning after Church and then go to my Aunt's for the Easter party and the Easter egg hunt. I have a huge complaint about Easter egg hunts though. I am one of the oldest in my family, cousins included, so I would always be last. Still to this day I am last because I have always been the oldest... and yes... I still do Easter egg hunts. I'll explain later. But the hunts were always pretty intense in my family. Like if you dropped your basket and some eggs fell out... OH WELL! We were like vultures. If the egg fell out of your basket, it was gone within milliseconds. But we always got sooooo much candy.

My current years
Now Easter is more of a social thing for my cousins and I. But for some reason the adults will not stop doing Easter egg hunts. We are all really old now, but we still have to go look for the eggs they've hidden. The few young kids that are left run around in the frantic search for the plastic eggs, but us older kids have more fun with it. We'll sneak up behind the young kids and take eggs out of their baskets until they notice. Then we run away cackling. (We give them back of course, but not until the little kid catches us:) hahahaha!)  This year was even more fun because we played some games after the hunt too! We had one game where people were all given eggs. All but one were hard boiled. For the game you had to crack the egg over your head and whoever got the raw egg... well, yeah. You get the point. My Dad was the lucky winner of that egg. We also had an egg throwing game where you had to through RAW eggs at a target. My egg's shell was hard as a rock. I swear. I ended up breaking the target twice before my egg broke. This game was a whole lot of fun, but a lot of people ended up covered in raw egg... I don't even know how that happened.

I've realized that the only thing that hasn't changed for me and Easter, is the fact that my brothers and I always get a new toothbrush in our Easter basket. Yep. A toothbrush.
"What did you get for Easter?" 
"A Barbie, Candy, a boombox, and 10 dollars! What did you get?" 
"Candy and a toothbrush."
But I guess now it's kind of a tradition.
And I guess I can use that toothbrush to make sure I don't end up at the Dentist with a thousand cavities... because we all know how much I hate the Dentist...

Happy Easter!!! (A day late)

We're All Just Really Bad Swimmers

So tonight at dinner I was talking to my friend Kelly about everything stressful going on in my life. Right now I'm at a bit of a low point. I have classes to sign up for and after talking to my advisor I still don't know what I am doing, I just signed up to train to run a marathon in 15 weeks after school starts again, I don't know how I am doing in some of my classes, summer plans are more chaotic than ever, and I have spent over 5 hours working on general class level homework in the past two days. I literally feel like I'm drowning in stuff (So thats where that phrase comes from!). Well, as I talked more and more to Kelly, I started to draw a parallel of swimming to God. So, here goes...

(Disclaimer: This is my personal metaphor/parallel even though I use the word "we". I'm not saying everyone experiences the same thing. If you do then thats great. But this is more of my own personal "struggle" with God.)

All of our lives we are learning to swim (live) in this big ocean (life). God is the one who put us in this ocean, but none of know how to swim. But God, being God, isn't just gonna let us drown. No, no, no. He's there. He is like one of those red lifeguard floats. And we are usually taught from birth/Christianity, to grab onto that float if we don't want to drown. So as little kids we grab it. We hold onto God because we are told to. I don't think we really know what that float really is at that age, but we hold onto it anyway. As we grow older, we start to kick and try to swim on our own. (This is like a parallel that we start to venture away from God since we don't really know him on a personal level.) Then there comes a time when we think we can do it! We can swim without that float! We can live without God. WRONG! At first you can do it. You think "This is easy!". But then you start to drown. It's scary. But the float is always there. It is never out of arm's reach. As you begin to drown, you realize that swimming without the float is impossible, so you grab back on and vow never to leave the float again.

That could be the end of the story, but it's not. Once you get back on that float, you are happy. You realize that the ocean is much better when you are floating. After awhile though, you get distracted. That's like what's happening to me now. Life starts to throw a lot of stuff at your face and it begins to stress you out. Waves begin to hit you in the face. Some people hold on to the float harder... those are the really good people. But others, like me, begin to think of the float as a hassle. They begin to forget that the float is what's keeping them from not drowning. They focus too much on the waves and begin to let go of the float again. You may be able to get through some of the waves on your own, but there's always that one wave. It hits you hard... right in the face. You begin to drown again. And the only thing thats going to save you is that float... thats always right there next to you wether you see it or not.

So you see my parallel? When life is going good, it's so easy to begin to push God aside. When life begins to get stressful, it's so easy to push God aside. When something goes bad, it's so easy to push God aside. But without him, we are going to drown. He's always there for us even if we start to lose sight of him. He's just waiting for us to reach out and grab him again. He put us in this ocean knowing that we don't know how to swim without a float. But he's there to help us stay above water, and once we learn to never let go of that float, we begin to thrive. We're all just really bad swimmers without God:)

My cousin, Christine:)

The Prettiest Picture

I don't know what inspired me to write this. It may have been my dream, or a commercial I was watching, or the girl I met yesterday at a volunteer clinic, or something my grandma told me over spring break, but I’ll get to that later. I know this sounds lame, but I was just thinking about life. It made me kind of sad too. I was thinking about how sometimes people don’t feel perfect and that makes me sad.

I feel like there are so many things in this world that can easily make you feel bad about yourself. For instance, doctors. I know they are supposed to help you and all, but I feel like sometimes they just do the opposite. My doctors have told me things like; “You have back problems”, “Your feet are flat and you’re going to need to fix that”, “You’re underweight”, “Your height to weight ratio is wrong”, “You have a pigmentation problem”, “Your teeth aren’t perfect”. Normally this doesn’t bother me, but when I think about it, it’s these types of things that make you feel bad about yourself. And these things mixed with T.V commercials about “If you don’t have the newest product you suck” kinda thing, and magazines with crazy thin and computer enhanced models. And this is just the external beauty stuff!

There are so many mental imperfections too. School seems like its all about competition and grades now. Grades and testing seem to say everything about you. We’re always looking to the future and planning ahead. If we look too far, we miss what is happening now, and if we worry too much about what’s happening now, then we miss the simple pleasures, and then life passes by in the blink of an eye.

We spend so much time trying to be perfect. Can’t we just be ourselves? Isn’t that good enough for the rest of the world? Shouldn’t that be good enough? I mean, if someone breaks your heart, do we cry because we couldn’t change ourselves to be what they wanted us to be, or do we move on because they just weren’t meant for you.

I guess I’m kind of ranting, but it makes me sad to think that this is happening. People don’t feel perfect because of society. I guess one of the only ways to help this is to build your confidence, and the confidence of others. So, to that girl I met the other day… you have a wonderful personality and I am really glad that I was able to meet you. Please, keep being your beautiful self!

When I visited my grandma, I went into her room and was looking at all of her pictures all over her walls. I told her, “Grandma, these are so pretty!” She looked at them and thought for a minute and then said, “They are pretty aren’t they? But do you want to see the prettiest picture?” I nodded. She held up a mirror to me and said, “That is the prettiest picture.”

So, to my grandma… thank you for making me realize that I am perfect just the way I am. And to everyone else… you really are the prettiest picture:)

Debutante Ball

So Over break I went to this ball, and every time I tell someone that, they ask me all about it. So I'm dedicating this post to explaining what it was and putting up pictures for the people who haven't seen them already on facebook.

To start the night, Cecylia (my cousin) got official pictures taken with her family. After that, we all went to dinner and took our own pictures:)

Left to Right: Me, Christine (front), Cecylia, Pat, and Cheyanne.

Apparently a few of them decided to make some funny faces.... Pat thought it was funny... I didn't really notice.

But then my Aunt Tina said something funny and we all just started laughing :D

After pictures and dinner, we went to the ball. To be honest, I don't even really know how to explain why they had the ball. All I know is that it's like that thing in the movie, "She's the Man"and my cousin was a Debutante like Amanda Bynes:) You can see all the other debutantes and the Kings of Mardi Gras in the background.

They announced her name and she walked down the aisle with her dad as they spoke about all the cool stuff she's done. Kinda like announcing a resume.

After that, all the Debutantes danced with their Dad and their escort. So cute:)

After all of that was done, the party really started. The parents stayed in the main room and had an auction and older songs (songs they liked). The kids were allowed into another room where there was a DJ and sparkling champagne and snacks. We danced the rest of the night!

This was "Dynamite" if you can't tell. "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes..."

It was a really great night and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to go:)