It all started on one cool, crisp Friday evening, when a certain friend that we shall call Jennifer dropped a certain blogger that we shall call Janet off at Janet’s house after seeing High School Musical 3. Janet went in and stayed up until three in the morning, knowing fully well that she had a big day in the morning. Well, Janet did not know that she had miscalculated how big the next day would be.
As it was the last Saturday morning of the month, Janet only got to sleep until 7 AM. Why? Well, on those Saturdays, Janet’s family picks up Angel Food and brings it home. Janet’s responsibility is to keep an eye on the dogs and make sure no one tries to kill anyone else. Janet takes this responsibility very seriously.
Janet’s parents did not get back until it was almost 10:00, so they were running a bit behind. Much to Janet’s dismay, Jennifer had called to tell her that another friend named Anthony would come to the Books a Million on North Parkway at 11 to meet them so they could hang out before Stake Conference. This meant Janet only had a short while to finish readying herself and taking care of her beloved family, including her four dogs. Janet rushed, probably being mean to her family, but she apologized and all was forgiven. She did succeed in getting ready.
She made sure to tell her family that she loved them, as she always did, before she left. Then, she sat on the front porch and waited for Jennifer. It was 8 minutes after Jennifer was supposed to arrive when Janet went outside, but Janet did not read too much into this, as in this story, most are LDS. (Though we are not referring to this as “Mormon Standard Time”.) Well, a few minutes later, Janet doesn’t quite recall this detail with complete accuracy, so we’re not going to give an exact time here. (Janet’s phone is laying in front of her, but because of things associated with later parts of the story, Janet does not feel like picking the phone up to check her call/text log.) Where were we? Oh, yes, Janet got a text message from Jennifer telling her that she (Jennifer) would be late to pick Janet up. It got to be 11:30 and Janet remembered she didn’t get enough money to make sure that she could eat during the day, and she knew this was going to be a long day. Well, she went in and surprised her parents with the fact that she was still there. They helped her find money, and then she and her mother went outside to wait for Jennifer. When she arrived, shortly thereafter, Janet got in the car and was whisked away to the fair kingdom of Books a Million, a somewhat overpriced retail store.
At Books a Million, Jennifer and Janet goofed off. They looked at various funny, yet clean books. They looked at toys and joked about the previous night’s movie selection being displayed at Books a Million as dolls. They waited and waited for Anthony to arrive. Anthony finally called, after the fair maidens were tired and decided to sit down. He had arrived. They came outside to see Anthony in the car with Amy, Cynthia, and Jordan. All exchanged pleasantries and decided to head to the oft-quaint town of Scottsboro for magical land called Unclaimed Baggage. Now, Unclaimed Baggage is an interesting store, or so the girls had heard. It sells anything that the heart desires, so long as the heart desires stuff that people have lost over the years. Jennifer and Janet discussed how weird it would be to own someone else’s stuff.
It took about thirty minutes to get to Scottsboro, and the two carriages (okay, so they were cars, but let’s pretend for a second they were carriages since this is a fairy tale after all) hurried past many a thing on the way home, including, but not limited to a simulated fire. This may not seem relevant now, but we’re going to get to the interesting part soon.
The fair LDS group decided to stop at Subway to eat sandwiches, where they had fun by talking about books and donating platelets. (Appetizing, no?) Well, the fair group felt that they should be on their way to Unclaimed Baggage now. They were all whisked away by their carriages to the store, though whisking is a bit difficult in such a large metropolis as Scottsboro, especially going through downtown!
They found the store, where there were many a unique bargains. Our young maiden Janet found a nice book on Europe and the best spots to visit there. She bought this book for a little over three dollars. Because they were in the store so long, Janet’s foe, the evil Fibromyalgia kicked in and Janet was stricken with intense pain and tiredness. Janet longed for her comfortable bed for to lay in. Instead she settled for what she assured her fair LDS friends was a bottle of completely sealed Tylenol.
The group left shortly there after, even though it was now about 4:00, to go back to Huntsville. They were planning on eating and changing before the Stake Conference. They drove along, taking notice of many of the splendors of life. For example, a nice, charming, and quaint little eatery known as the Taco Bell was adorned with a lovely sign that read: Closed Due to Fire. Again, this may not seem like a big deal, but it will become evident as one reads on that this was a key to figuring out what was locked in the future of the fair group.
The group drove along in their well-groomed carriages. They began to go faster, which was tugging on the heartstrings of the little carriage carrying our fair Janet and Jennifer. A noise started rumbling. Janet assured Jennifer that she could get Jennifer to the stake center if Jennifer would slow down and let her car “catch its breath”. Suddenly, with great force, the car choked and slowed to a stop. It began to smoke. The girls began to get out of the car, figuring they could come back soon, once their friends had turned around to help them. They called Anthony to let them know what had happened.
All of a sudden, they heard this horrible news. The car that they were, how shall we say it, lolly-gagging near was on fire. Oh, what a wretched beast! They began to get away from the car, but not fast enough for the passers-by, who would shout things like, “Get away! Quick.” The girls hurried away, but stopping to take pictures every few feet because they were trying to “capture the moment”.
They hurried across the scary fairy tale road known as Highway 72 East, which is a major thoroughfare through the North Alabama countryside. Many a fair maiden and kind gentleman have been known to go down such a road. So many that it was surprising how it was so easy for Janet and Jennifer to cross the divided highway.
Somehow in all this nonsense, they began to say things like, 911, which Janet called. Janet heard from the fair mirror at 911 that help was on the way. Huzzah! When it was decided that the girls should call their parents, they wasted no time in letting them know what had happened. One starting with, “We were only going 70 when…”, while the other said, “Hi, mom. Her car just blew up, but we’re okay.” While fair Janet was on the phone with her family, tears began to stream out of her eyes. This, my fair readers, was the beginnings of a panic attack brought on by stress, Janet’s hearing her mother’s voice, and two of Janet’s biggest fears: cars and fires.
Janet was able to control the tears, though she wasn’t afraid to let her friends know she cried them. Not for attention, though. Just to make light of the fact that she had just lived through two of her worst fears, a bad thing happening to a car and a fire.
Plans were made for the fair maidens to go back to Huntsville with the others. They decided that since the maidens’ dress clothes were smoky, the group would go in their jeans and shirts. This made the maidens joyous, as they would not stick out like the proverbial sore thumb. (Ah, has there been a consensus on if sore thumbs do indeed stick out? This may need to be explored.)
The young maidens and their friends from the YSA sat in the back, garnering weird looks from people who came in and noticed they were in their jeans. When someone else came in early in jeans, Janet said to Jennifer that she was pretty sure he didn’t have the excuse that his ride had just caught fire. After the Conference, word spread like a proverbial wildfire to other members of the church about what had happened.
When it was time to leave, the girls headed with their friends to the car to go to eat. Dinner was to be at the impressively charming Cracker Barrel where some could eat breakfast and others would have dinner.
After having a lovely feast, the fair maidens and their friends, which had grown from a group of four to a group of about thirty three, was ready to either go home or go to the X Maze, a corn maze. Of course some were not enthusiastic about going to a “haunted” corn maze. Others, like our dear maiden Janet, were still going through the process of recovering from panic, so they wanted to go home. Still, our fair maiden stuck it out and “took one for the team”.
Of course, by taking one for the team, Janet means she literally took one for the team. She fell quite a few times during the maze, which took about two and a half hours to get through the line for, and then another hour to get through.
So now, our dear maiden Janet is at home nursing a sprained ankle, and missing her ward’s session of Conference this morning. After she and her family take their lovely dogs for a walk, she intends on either taking something to knock her out so that she can finally get some sleep, as she has been up since 7 am yesterday, and, as was previously stated, she only got about three hours of sleep. She is very tired, but, if you know this fair maiden well, she you must know that she has insomnia.
Yeah, I know it sounds ridiculous to go to a dance when you know all you’ll be doing is propping your foot up. I think it’d be fun, though.