Failure. All. Week. Long.

Y'all. Last week. 🤦🏽‍♀️ Last week was a complete and utter fail. I told y'all I was gonna be honest, I TOLD YOU. Well, here I am being honest. I wish I could blame my fake period for my callous and impatient spirit this week but I'm pretty sure…wait let me check…yeah no, I can't. I just blamed my fake period for being poopy pants less than two weeks ago. This is the problem with having a fake period; you never know if it's ACTUALLY your fake period or if you're just a crazy person. My guess is it's more than likely the latter of the two. But never mind all that, it doesn't matter. Excuse or not, I failed this week. Not only did I avoid meeting anyone new, but I lost my patience with humans multiple times over ridiculous things.

It all started when I had to take my regularly scheduled bimonthly trip into THE BELLY OF THE DEVIL: Walmart. 🤢I SHOULD be able to just end my story right here. SURELY, you all have the same feelings as me about this store and just knowing that I had to go in there excuses any and all ugly encounters I faced, right? It's Walmart for crying out loud! I mean it's practically impossible to spend an hour grocery shopping in that hideous store with OUT getting irritated or impatient about SOME thing. Here's the thing though, I'm in that store at LEAST twice a month and lately I've been pretty stellar about keeping my cool with everyone and everything I see. I've actually impressed myself. I usually laugh it off or ignore it. But for some reason this week the frustrations were countless. It was almost like Satan was saying, "Oh ok, girl. You think you're gonna try love and accept everyone now? Ok, ok, ok. Let's see how you do hitting when I throw you multiple curve balls, ALL AT ONCE." He had it in for me, that's for sure. And I hate to admit it, but he won this time.

First it was the "back that thang up" lady. I was standing in an aisle pondering which of the items on the shelf across from me I needed when she walks right up to the spot I'm looking at and stands DIRECTLY in front of me. She was LEGIT less than a foot in front of me. Ok, that's odd but it's fine, I thought. She's just gonna grab something real quick I'm sure. Nope. She didn't. She just stood there staring at the same spot I was staring at standing so close in front of me I COULD SMELL HER PANTENE SHAMPOO. She even squatted down a teense to get a better look at the items on the bottom shelf, forcing her buns into my lap. HOW WAS THIS REALLY HAPPENING. It was so ridiculous it became amusing. I waited for a moment. Maybe a full minute which doesn't sound very long but in this awkward situation it felt like eternity. Do it. Ask your kid or spouse to just stand in front of you for a full minute in total silence.  It's weird, I promise. Maybe she's blind in one eye and didn't see me in her peripheral vision when she walked up. I was trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. I piped up, "Excuse me." Nothing. No recognition of the request. Not even a head turn. Okay, so she's blind in one eye AND deaf. I couldn't take it anymore. How was this even happening. I wanted so badly for SOMEONE to be on the same row as us and witness this craziness. I laughed a little to myself, walked around and in front of HER, grabbed my item, and went on my way. It was just the first incident of the day so I wasn't too flustered just yet. I was more humored at the interesting situation than anything.

But THEN I encountered the firemen. I strolled over to the cold meat and cheese section to grab some andouille sausage, parked my cart out of the way, and then turned around to grab my item on the cold shelves. As I start to head to the shelf, I see a few firemen headed my direction and I didn't want to get in their way so I paused to let them cross in front of me. The only problem was, they never crossed through. They stopped RIGHT in front of the section I was needing to get to and then just started telling stories to each other and laughing!! They weren't even looking at the meats and cheeses, they were facing ME. I just stood there waiting for them to notice I was needing the area they were blocking, but it never clicked with them. They continued on with their "hilarious" story as I stood there. It was so peculiar. After waiting a moment, I realized they weren't moving anytime soon so I just walked right up between them, excused myself, and grabbed the sausage I wanted. (stop with your dirty minds 😂). Even still, no acknowledgment of my presence was offered. They didn't even move over to let me squeeze between. I began to worry. My mind started to wonder. Am I invisible? Maybe this is a dream. Maybe I'm dead and I don't even know it. Am I getting punk'd? Where is Ashton Kutcher? I was mildly frustrated by this point but still not completely on edge, just weirded out.

AND THEN as I was finishing up my shopping and heading to the checkout I was walking on the right hand side of one of the aisles with my cart. There was a woman directly in front of me with her cart, also headed in the same direction when all of a sudden she just stops. I paused behind her instead of going around thinking maybe she dropped something or was only stopping for a moment to check her list. But since this day was clearly THE TWILIGHT ZONE, she didn't just pause for a moment. No. She did a FULL 180 turn so our carts were nose to nose (literally inches between us). I looked at her very confused. Maybe she wanted to tell me something. If she had forgotten something and was turning around to go back, why wouldn't she turn and get on the left side of the aisle? It made no sense. And what made even LESS sense was that she acted like I wasn't even THERE; she made ZERO eye contact. She turned her cart to MY right side (yeah the side that has no room because I'M ON THE RIGHT), and proceeded to squeeze on THAT side of me that had less than 5 inches of room. ALLLLL while there was an ENTIRELY EMPTY LEFT SIDE OF THE AISLE! I couldn't hold back anymore. This was TOO much weird happening WAY too close together. I basically had to lift my cart up and scoot over for her to fit through and as I'm awkwardly maneuvering to make room for her I say, "Oh ok. We're doing this. Cool, cool, cool." I stared at her as she passed by. My laser beam eyeballs probably burned a hole in her face from my evil glare. Yet still, she refused to make eye contact with me or even say excuse me. By this point I was officially perturbed. 😑

 Y'all. I wish so badly I could say this was the end of my Walmart experience. I sure felt as though I had endured enough, but in reality all of this was the buildup to the most AGGRAVATING checkout experience I have EVER had. Let me set the scene for you. There were only TWO lanes open. Each lane had about 6 people waiting with FULL grocery carts. I was second in line on one lane watching the checker take his time making ridiculous jokes with the customer in front of me. I could tell they were irritated. Everyone in that line was annoyed. Moms were hunched over their carts, sweating, angry, frustrated. Babies were screaming at the top of their lungs NONSTOP. Everyone was miserable. It was finally my turn to check out and this is where I lost it.

The checker boy, bless his heart, decided to ask me every question he could possibly think of AND insert his two cents about all of the food I was purchasing. This wouldn't have been AS bad if he didn't stop moving EVERY time he opened his mouth to speak. So basically I was there trying to have my groceries scanned for 47 hours. Meanwhile there was a line behind me that stretched further than I could even see. When he FINALLY finished cashing me out, he printed the receipt which ended up being about 3 feet long for some reason. I was thinking, What is this, CVS? But given the course of my entire Walmart experience that day, the abnormality of my lengthy receipt seemed to just go along with everything else. He commented on it's length and said I had a lot of rebates on it or something. I didn't care. I just wanted to leave. But instead of just handing me the dang receipt and letting me get the crap outta there, he holds one end of it and meticulously creases the middle of the entire receipt so it's fully erect (that’s for you, Kelly) and slowly tries to pass this now sword receipt to me. As soon as I reach for it, the receipt bends in half and before I can grab it, he jerks it away and yells, "NO!" so I can't touch it. He then repeats the entire creasing process AGAIN and slooooowllyyyy moves the sword receipt toward my face saying, "I want to hand it to you like this." Giving him ALL THE DEATH STARES, I ripped the receipt out of his hand, crumpled it up, shoved it into one of my bags of groceries, and then stormed OUT OF THAT HORRID PLACE.

Like I said, I was THE WORST that day. The rest of the week wasn't AS twilight zone, but my patience didn't increase and my frustrations just got worse. I almost threw all of my kids in the garbage, I wanted to rear end every single driver, and I stayed in my house all alone all day long. I isolated myself to avoid human interaction that might cause me to murder someone. Not cool, Jessica. Not cool. I spent the entire week doubting my ability to carry out this change in my life. I wanted to quit. I wanted to revert back to my safe place of seclusion. It's weeks like this when I need to repeat to myself the quote from this most recent conference. Elder Uchtdorf gave a phenomenal talk about this adventure called life that we're all on together. He urged us to set aside our comforts and securities and make real change in our lives toward being a disciple of Christ. He said, "If you hesitate in this adventure because you doubt your ability, remember that discipleship is not about doing things perfectly, it is about doing things intentionally. It is your choices that show what you truly are, far more than your abilities." I KNOW that I have REAL intent to make changes in myself. Although I may fail multiple times along the way, my intent never falters or fades. We are not perfect beings. Sharing about my failures and challenges on this path to change will hopefully allow my sincerity for this movement to shine through. Real change is REAL hard. You WILL fall down. But as long as you get back up, dust the dirt off, push your hair out of your face, and stand tall to try again, you're still on the path to change. You're still moving forward. You're still progressing. As my fortune cookie from Panda Express said, "Do not give up. The beginning is always the hardest."

Head on over to my instagram stories for a snippet of the checker interaction. You won't be sorry.