It must have been the mid-90s. Early high school for me. Ottumwa had been a Target-only town for years.  Then Wal-Mart arrived in ‘88, and everything there was 3 cents cheaper — a paramount virtue in southeast Iowa.

Everything there was also ridiculously hard to find. Other customers would pick merchandise up and then just leave it somewhere else when they decided they didn’t want it. And the layout was strange to me. Why were all the lawn ornaments way up front? Where were the art supplies? Directory signs hung from the ceiling above each department, but I never could see them. The shelves were stacked too high.

After wandering in the shadows for years, I decided to view the lay of the land. I don’t remember what I was shopping for, but, as usual, I could not find it.

So I started to climb the shelves. From the top, I’d finally be able to see the signs and find my way.

It didn’t occur to me to worry about getting caught.

The stocker lady saw me and stormed over, yelling at me to get the hell down. When I tried to explain why I was climbing, she wouldn’t hear a word of it.

Instead, she kicked me out of Wal-Mart.

“You can come back when you don’t climb things!” she said.

I couldn’t believe it. I was a good kid. Nobody kicked me out of stores! I never even got detention. And here was this mulleted grouch lady, talking like I was some kind of degenerate.

After that, I tried to avoid Wal-Mart. I never really felt good there anyway.

Until last night.

I was running an errand in the neighborhood, so I stopped into Wal-Mart with a singular goal: At long last, I would reach the top shelf and see the whole store.

Mission accomplished.

Untitled from Erin Alberty on Vimeo.

A product of sound instruction.

Check back later today for New Thing #12.

Previous columns

• Fun with the Donner Party
• The happy utility of balloon-crotch pants
• Your college decal does not impress me
• Something about John Muir and shaking one’s ass in an empire-waist dress
• How I became a lounge singer
• Don’t break your stupid head
• The slopes of Christmas madness
• Education by wipeout
• Electric Santa takes over a ghost town
• The antidote to stinky fruit lotion
• Alien boobies and a castle in the sky
• The world’s assiest sweet potatoes
• When dog owners are as bad as kid owners
• Living the game of Pitfall
  
• A dead baby’s spirit dwells here
  
• Bjorn is my imaginary friend
  
• The lowdown on getting high
  
• New England is our bitch
  
• How to pee in the woods
• Of severed heads
• The crazy-stupid line
  
• Sitting in water during a lightning storm
• My tragic Perseid poop out of 2009
  
• Doodie stops here
  
• Vrr-RROOOOMMMM, pussayhs!
  
• Retching for a view

That’s partly because I don’t feel hot and sticky very often. In the Midwest, sweating was my cue to drink. We don’t sweat much here in Utah. Also, water makes my stomach urpy. I might choke down two glasses per day if I don’t feel super thirsty.

I need to be more deliberate about staying hydrated.

So yesterday, for the first time ever, I drank an entire gallon of water in a single day. I’m going to commit to drinking at least 3 quarts a day.

That’s all I have to say about the matter, as peeing now takes up most of the time I might have spent blogging.

Suck.

But they got an auspicious maiden voyage yesterday: Salt Lake City Urban Iditarod 2010!

Urban Iditarods occur in several cities around the time of the real Iditarod. Teams of up to 8 runners dress up in costumes and decorate shopping carts to their chosen themes. There is a race route with five legs, each one ending at a different bar. The course is a few miles long, but teams usually start falling apart at the first taco stand.

This was my third Iditarod. I still haven’t finished an entire race with my cart.

Yesterday my friends and I dressed up as garbage and ran with a cart decorated as a Dumpster.

Our other friends dressed up as garbage men and decorated their cart as a Wasted Management truck.

Our competitors included:

Team Elvis

Team Snuggie

Team Miss Conception

Team Pirates

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints

Team ’80s Barnyard Animals?

Team Golden Girls

Team Love Boat

Team Shower

Team Camelot

and the Church of Bad Habits

Team Trashed performed well even though my orthotic supports took up so much of my tennies that I could barely lace them up, and our driver fell on his face about 10 yards into the race. Apart from that (and one tragic pants-pooping that did not involve anyone I know), a good time was had by all.

Yeah.

Anyone who has met me knows that ain’t gonna happen.

I talk more than any 10 people I know. When no people are around, I talk to my pets. When they’re not around, I talk to myself.

There was no way to approach this New Thing with any hope of perfection. A couple of words were going to slip out.

I realized that at 12:36 a.m., when my first word slipped out.

Rather than throw the idea away, I promised myself a penalty. For every word I uttered Friday, I would have to donate a dollar to the Society of Professional Journalists’ legal fund. What better way to punish speech than to protect the First Amendment?

I was up to $35 by noon.

Things actually started out well. Said Guy really picked up the reigns for our breakfast conversation. I should let that happen more often. Then he left for work, calling up an “I love you.” I chased him down the stairs, frantically waving “I love you” in sign language.

“Are you giving me the Sign of the Beast?”

An hour later, everything fell apart. I couldn’t get my car out of the snow in time to make a chiropractor’s appointment, so I had to call and push it back. That cost me $29 in words. More than my copay.

But I did get through the appointment in silence. I also successfully ran voiceless errands to the dry cleaner and to my office. I carried around a little notebook with an explanation on the front page. At night, Said Guy took me to a play that was basically about how boring  people become when they are professional writers. It was probably good that I couldn’t talk after that play.

Apart from the one phone conversation, here were my mistakes:

• “Goodnight, Rosie.” (Rosie is the dog)
• “Dammit, Atticus.” (Atticus is the cat)
• “Rosie!”
• “Hello, big boy.” (To Atticus)
• “Dammit, Atticus.”
• “Are you going–”
• “Dammit, Atticus.”
• “Dammit, Atticus.”
• “Atticus!”
• “I’m not sleeping on this bullshit pillow anymore.”**

In all, $57 for freedom of expression.

*Technically there were 6 months or so when I could not speak. So this will be the first time I’ve tried to go a day without speaking when I could choose to speak.

**This I blurted out at 11:50 p.m. after I’d gone to sleep. I woke up and thought it was after midnight.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like The Sopranos, Weeds, Big Love, Deadwood, The Office. Hell, I’m not above watching a Friends rerun.

But when a TV show is as hyped as Mad Men, all I can think is, “It’s not The Wire.”

Not until last night did I see my first episode.

I made an Old Fashioned to celebrate. That’s how hyped Mad Men is: I know the main character’s drink before I know what he looks like.

Sorry, no fruit.

Well, now that I’ve seen him, I gotta say: I’ll be watching more Mad Men.

You probably already know it’s about sleazeball advertising in the 60s. As such, I’m guessing it will join the teduim of obligatorily “risque” not-TV television, in which most of the edge comes from some shadowy culture and characters who don’t really develop from episode to episode but just stay amoral or whatever to the point that it’s mostly schtick.

At least the dialogue is good.

I’ve only seen one episode, so I really can’t tell yet whether the show is ever going to stretch my first impressions.

But I’ll keep watching, for sure. The cocktails are just so pretty.

For Valentine’s Day, Said Guy gave me a Miniature Morning Dawn Redwood Forest he bought at Trifecta, an awesome gift and flower shop in SLC. No kidding, coworkers actually hung around my desk to admire the flower arrangements he’s sent to me from Trifecta, and the response, rather than “Awww!” was “WOW.” I’m sooo not picky about flowers (in an attempt to be cool, I bought a bunch of carnations at a junior high dance and ate them), and even I could tell that their flowers were awesome. If you want to seem like a discerning dude, buy your flowers and presents here (and tell Lindsay and Pam that Erin said hi).

Anyway, the bonzai kit came from their gift shop, and it’s made by Potting Shed Creations, of Troy, Idaho. According to the description, the Morning Dawn Redwood was only known as a fossil until a Chinese botanist rediscovered it in the 1940s.

I’m so excited for it to grow up! I’ve got more than 40 plants (I know, I know), but no bonsais and nothing that was previously thought to be extinct.

Yay for green sprouts and Chinese botanists!

The more Brahms I hear, the more convinced I am that he was a Smurf. I keep giving him chances to make me shake my butt, and instead he always brings this tooty-fruity gnome flower festival shit. A few weeks ago, Said Guy took me to see a violin concerto with the Utah Symphony, and the only interesting part was when the violin (a centuries-old Stradivarius “generously on loan” from some foundation, according to the program) broke during the fast part at the end. The soloist snatched the concertmaster’s violin out from under his chin so she could finish the show and we all could finally move on to some kick-ass Shostakovich.

But there is one sweet Brahms intermezzo I’ve always wanted to learn on piano. I started yesterday.

Here is the first line I’ve ever learned of any piece of music by Brahms.

Sorry so tinny. It sounds a lot less bangy and more sensitive in real life. And I’m still trying to work out the pedaling into the second full measure, and how do I accommodate the crescendo and decrescendo in measures 3 & 4 while still making the whole line sound like one unified phrase, and I nearly forgot how much I liked thinking through a new piece of music!

Will update when I’ve got the whole thing down. It might take awhile.

********************

The New Things

I’ve called 911 three times. Always for the fire department. Most recently was when the house next door was burning down in 2007.

Before that was in 2006, when the vice mayor of Saginaw ordered her handyman to blow up her Mercedes in the backyard so she could collect the insurance. My window overlooked the scene. The ground shook when the gas tank caught fire. There was a great ball of fire, like in the movies.

My first 911 call was in high school, when I tried to make grilled cheese sandwiches. I didn’t butter the bread on my first try, so it charred to the pan. I tried again with butter, but the bread still stuck to the black patches. I wondered, was this a job for canola oil? I filled the pan about an inch deep and tossed in the sandwich.

It turned black in seconds and somehow activated the grease to a rolling boil that splashed onto the stove.

OK. I’d tried everything. Time to give up and rinse the pan.

With cold water.

POW!

Hot oil splattered onto my arms and continued blasting the sink area as I fled the kitchen and grabbed the phone.

“911 Emergency Dispatch. What is your emergency?”

It is here I must admit that the blackened cheese sandwich was not the first thing I’d ever deep-fried. There was doughnut day in 7th grade home-ec, but I ended up in the nurse’s office almost immediately for burn treatment and missed the no-cold-water discussion. Which probably never happened anyway, as this was the home-ec class where kids set fire to the centerpieces during the end-of-term Tea Party.

Anyway.

It was with apprehension that I approached the samosas I had so femininely pieced together this weekend. But I rolled up my sleeves, poured that half-gallon of oil into the wok, and voila!

For the first time, I deep-fried my own food without a single call to the fire department.

My home will forever smell like a Little League concession stand, and the wok is now encrusted with a rim of booger-looking cement. But the samosas tasted like … samosas!

This will be my last post on food for awhile. I still need to be able to wear clothes.