There was a movie that came out a few years ago called "The Wedding Planner". Not only am I little embarrassed to say that I've seen this movie numerous times, but more so of the fact that I own it (I swear it's just to see the part where he almosts wrecks and blames it on the 'damn deer in the road'). This of course, is beside the point.
There was a scene where the main character was yelling at her father saying that she did not want an arranged marriage. Her father then preceeds to tell her that he and her mother had an arranged marriage and how at first they didn't want anything to do w/ one another but they began to respect one other and then that respect grew to like and like grew into love.
I have always said that I believe that I would be open to the idea of arranged marriages.
If I lived back in the day, not that I would know the difference, but I would be okay with Ivan and Carol scooping out my hubby. I love my parents and although we may not agree on certain types of music or food or even how the furniture should be arranged, they know me and who I am and I think that if a young man's family came along and wanted my hand in marriage in exchange for a hefty amount of corn or a prize goat, my parents would honor that with my best intentions in mind. Plus, it would be hella cool knowing who I was to end up with right from the beginning and to not have to date a whole bunch of village idiots to get to the right one.
I've shared this concept w/ several people and have gotten mixed reactions. Some get angry and say "no" right away because they want to be the ones to decide who they end up with and they would never trust their parents. Others, completely agree w/ me in the idea that it's just straight up tiring sometimes to date and what the heck? Bring on the neighbor girl/guy that you grew up in the tribe with.
Don't get me wrong, although my heart has been broken a time or two, I really do enjoy dating...especially when you find someone who's funny and smarter than you (in some areas) and even opens car doors and pays for stuff! : )
It's nice to experience and to get to know different people and to see what we want out of our relationships and love. We learn how to treat people and more importantly how we want to be treated. That's a lesson that no amount of corn can trade I suppose.

This is my first blog and I'm as giddy as a kid on Christmas. Granted, I do not possess Robin's writing ability, I can at least form complete sentences…and some of the time, they will in fact, make sense.
Every day when I sit myself at my desk, I flip the calender and it reveals a quite humorous quotation from a famous woman. Some days…actually most days, they are bashing men. Today's on the other hand, bashed everyone. It was spoken by the woman who will forever be remembered as the crotch grabbing, spitting singer of the Star Spangled Banner…Roseanne Barr. The quote was as follows: "I think I'm a pretty good judge of people, which is why I hate most of them".
This goes in perfect harmony with the woman whom Robin and I had the unfortunate pleasure of incountering yesterday at the Wild Oats. We managed to walk the 1/2 mile to the car in the blazing 105 degree temprature and begin our journey (it's more fun to sound dramatic). We were in a hurry because the market is way the hey hey on the other side of town and granted while we all are allowed an hour for lunch, folks in AR don't know how to drive so you never know if you're going to get stuck behind Speed Racer or Grandma Sue. Anywho. So we grabbed our Apple Cider vinger and preceeded to the ONE open check out lane. The lady in front of us was having issues with some crackers that she had purchased saying that they were too high in sodium to belong in a health foods store and, as she tossed the box to the cashier, added that they tasted like poo. (she really didn't use the word poo but its all good). She also had in her hand a bag of almonds and wanted to exchange the salty poo for them. The cashier weighed the almonds and advised the woman that she owed $5.40. Hearing this woman's reaction you would have thought the cashier demanded the life of her first born and then 20 bones…she freaked out questioning the cashier's intelligence and the validity of the scale. The cashier was some what taken aback by this and preceeded to tell the crazy almond lady that the crackers in fact had covered only a small part of what the almonds cost being that they were $10.99 a pound. Well of course crazy almond lady wanted to know how many pounds she had and all that good stuff and here are 5 people behind us rolling their eyes and begging the lady to just pay the dang 5 bucks and go on about ya business. Not to mention Robin and I both were ready to naw our arms off in hunger so please lady, for the love of everything good and holy, just suck it up and pay this poor cashier. Well, she finally did, mumbling the whole time under her breath about how she had bought almonds before and they weren't that much…yes ma'am you might have but either you a) didn't have as many as you did today or b) you were in a much better mood when you made your prior purchase and thought that a few bucks for some dang good almonds was quite alright with you.
Now, I'm not saying I'm perfect when it comes to the world of customer service. Having started out in the customer service world working at the Piggly Wiggly, I found out rather quickly that some folks just have bad days. And I could have taken the lower road earlier this same day that crazy almond lady took hers and strangled the cashier at the fun store w/ a thong when she told me that I could not return a perfectly unworn and unwrapped item and that I needed to accept store credit or exchange it. At first I recalled no mention of this policy on the receipt and wanted to explain this to her but decided to just suck it up, take my $35 store credit to be tucked neatly away for years to come.
My point of this story is this cheesy but true fact, it takes a hella lot more effort to be mean than it does to be nice. Yes, there are people who simply hate life and everyone in it, but for the most part, folks are nice and it makes us feel better when we are nice. Hating and all that, it just wears me out.