10 signs that you have an overactive/child size bladder

I live a good life.  A blessed life.  A life filled with awesome things like Netflix and ice cream.  But I also live the life of a small bladdered woman.  What's it like to have a small bladder?  Well, today I went to the bathroom five times in a a five-hour work shift.  All because I drank 3/4 of a water bottle.

 It's not like this is a rare thing; if I'm somewhat hydrated, chances are I have to pee.  And if not, I'll probably have to in 5 minutes.  This is no laughing matter and trips to the bathroom are a big part of my life, so I thought I'd make a list of 10 signs you have an overactive/child size bladder.  Just in case you're not sure.

10 signs you have an overactive/child size bladder

1.  You can't sleep-in past 8 am because you have to pee.
2.  Your most recurring dream is one that involves you searching for a freaking toilet that either isn't broken, in a unisex bathroom without stalls, or out in the public for everyone to witness.
3.  You don't drink fluids on road trips or plane rides.
4.  You sit in the isle seat on planes so you have easier access to those scary small contraptions that suck away your waste instead of flushing it.
5.  Ordering a large drink is more of a punishment than an upgrade.
6.  You are highly experienced and skilled at urinating in a squating position.
7.  You can pee anywhere and have marked your territory on many a location.
8.  The last 30 minutes of a movie in a movie theater is super painful because you've been holding it for over an hour.
9.  You know the location of the restrooms in all the buildings you frequent often.
10.  You write blog posts about your bladder.

I hope this was educational and informative.  For those of you that are blessed with larger bladders, I hope you could get a glimpse of what I have to deal with on a hourly basis.  And for those that can empathize with me--I hope your life will be filled with clean public bathrooms, and a plethora of toilet paper (if you're a girl).

Tinder

The first time I heard about Tinder was when I was a missionary. My little sister was explaining it to me through an email and I almost fell out of my chair it sounded so ridiculous.  And worldly.  And shallow.  And sketch.  And gross.  But keep in mind, I was also a missionary, so I considered things like hugging someone of the opposite sex inappropriate.  It's all about perceptions, right?

If you don't know about Tinder, it's kind of like a dating site that's free, pretty popular, and a lot more questionable.  You write a short bio, add a few photos of yourself and then you start judging people with the swipe of a finger.  If you like what you see, you swipe right.  If you're not interested, left.  If you both are interested in the other, you're matched and you can start chatting. It's kind of like a chat room, but more romantic.  I have heard of relationships and even marriages stemming from Tinder, but you never want to admit that you met that special someone through Tinder because it doesn't have the best reputation.  The fact that you get matched up with single people miles away just based off of photos is pretty superficial, and most often leads to superficial relationships.  A.K.A. hooking up.  Also, I'm talking about the use of Tinder in Utah (the land of the Mormons) so hooking up means making out.  Just to clarify.

So as you can imagine, my squeaky clean missionary self might have choked on the idea of Tinder and all it stands for, but we all know that once we get home from our missions we turn into our regular carnal selves again.  Jokes.  (And sadly slightly true.)  Anyway, it was just a matter of time before I made a Tinder account of my own.  Remember when I made a Match.com profile for that one class?  Well, I actually made a Tinder account first, but dropped it when I realized it didn't fit the assignment as well.  I moved on to better things.  But when my match.com profile was shut down because I was apparently too much AWESOME for the online dating world I remembered that I had made a Tinder account and hadn't done anything with it.  I mean, I had already downloaded the app, I might as well give it a try...right??

But don't judge!! I wasn't going to actually use it!  It was more like a joke!  I had made it for a class assignment!!

We all have our Tinder excuses.  But like all excuses, they don't really mean anything.  For example:  I excuse myself from donating blood because I'm too petite, but actually meet the weight requirements easily.  Here's another: I don't shave my legs more than once a month because I'm a hairless Asian, but mostly I'm just lazy.  Like I said, excuses.  I had made an account, added a few somewhat photogenic pictures of myself, and started swiping.  And swiping.  And swiping.  I swiped at work.  I swiped at the gym (the one time I went this week). I swiped while doing homework.  I swiped while eating cereal. (I probably swiped while eating other things, but mostly I just eat cereal.)  Something was so addicting about glancing at a photo for .2 seconds and judging if they were good enough for me.  I'd probably swipe right once for every fifteen guys. See?  I'm not desperate!  See how I turned down all those guys?  See how I have enough self respect and confidence to think I'm more attractive than the majority of them?  It's kind of like the really sick and shallow game I play when I sit in a room of 30 people or less and judge whether or not I'm the most attractive person.  I must have a skewed sense of judgment, because I usually come to the conclusion that I am the most aesthetically blessed in the room.  Anyway, if nothing screams poor/unsubstantial source of confidence like those two examples, I don't know what does.

But I wasn't just judging looks.  Oh no, I was judging people's character.  Their virtue.  Their very being.  All from a few pictures and a few sentences in their bio.  I mean, "a picture says a thousand words and you have TWO of them!"  Chances are I messed up that quote, but I'm too lazy to check.  But really.  I judged these guys hardcore.  It's like there was a contest for who was the most macho man of all masculine men in a 30 mile radius, and they were all on Tinder.  Seriously, I have never seen so many shirtless pics.  So many pictures of boys doing manly stuff like snowboarding/skiing, or fishing, or camping/backpacking somewhere epic, or hunting because GUNS!  Is this what guys think girls want?  Do they think they have to present themselves like this in order to get the equally desperate ladies on Tinder?  And I don't mean to only bash the guys, but since they're all I see, that's all I have to work with.  Although I'm sure the ladies have equally embarrassing and revealing pictures posted as well.

Shirtless pic, AND he's fishing.  Two birds, one stone.
Also, please note his poetic tagline.

But I deter.

And then the mirror selfies.  Oh my lanta, the selfies.  Don't you know that you ALWAYS look dumb in a mirror selfie?  First of all, you're not staring at the camera lens, you're staring at your phone's screen.  Second, your phone is blocking half your face.  Third, you had to have taken at least five other selfies just to get that perfect angle of your abs.  And fourth, do you really think your bathroom is the best setting for a picture?  I can't even tell you how good I felt about myself when I rejected these guys.  They might have washboard abs and pecs bigger than my own fully developed breasts (fairly certain they're done "growing"), but that's not all I look for in a man on Tinder. No sir, I care about things beyond appearance. I care about their character.  I care about what's in their heart.  I care about what kind of husband he could become.  Wait, you don't think about marriage before you even go on a first date?  Yeah, me neither...

But then things started to get serious. My roommate, Rachel, started conversations with some of my matches.  I know I wasn't doing this Tinder thing seriously, but it was pretty embarrassing when Rachel started a conversation with "Heyyy."  I knew I'd probably never meet the guy, but I turn red just thinking that someone put my face and "heyyy" together.  But regardless of how stupid I thought Tinder was, I was still swiping and every time I got a match with someone attractive it gave me a little ego boost.  I had no plans of actually meeting these guys, but it still made me feel good about myself.  In a super meaningless and warped way.

But then guys really did start asking if I wanted to hang out and even though I was taking this whole Tinder thing more seriously than I had originally planned, I was not going to "hang out" with anyone.  So I deleted it.

And gollyyyyy, did I feel good about myself after that.  I gained more confidence and respect for myself than when a really hot guy swiped right on my photo.  I had gone into this whole Tinder thing as a joke, and never really did get serious about it--but I still cared.  And that annoyed me.  So yeah.  I don't have a Tinder anymore, but I don't care if you have one.  I'll admit, it's fun.  But for now, I'm just going to continue living my very single life.  Because I actually kind of hate dating anyway.

Thoughts while I worked on a take-home exam.

Just a little background information: Last night (a Saturday night, mind you) I was spending way more time on a take-home essay/exam than I wanted and these were some thoughts I had (and obviously recorded on my phone).  Funny how I was able to find memes that had to do with my very thoughts.  Looks like I'm not alone.

• Take-home exams always sound better than a regular exam--until you have to do them.
• Why do they make the due date on a weekend at midnight?  My procrastination and social life are not getting along at the moment.
  
• The goal was to finish this exam at 9pm, but it's due at midnight, so I guess I always knew what time I'd actually finish.
  
• It's hard to write papers while fasting.   Now I have to find all my distractions through the internet.
  
• Maybe writing my paper on my bed lying down wasn't a good idea.
  
• I wonder what it's like to live a life without procrastinating...probably boring.
  
• Taking an exam is like dying by bullet in the head.  Take home exams are like getting your finger nails ripped from your hands and then slowly starving to death in the Sahara Desert.  

  

  I guess Spongebob just really relates to this post.

• I really shouldn't have taken that two hour nap.

  

  Hey, the meme swore, not me.

• Did I really just write this sentence? "Once I saw both ways, the structure and idea that what I see is really what exists, was broken, I was able to understand the truth."  I need to stop.

In case you were wondering, I wrote two essays.  The first was pretty good and the second was pretty bad.  I finished at 11pm.  

And no, I'm not writing this blog post to avoid my homework due tomorrow...

Find me on Match.com ;)

Hey guys, how are you?  I'm good.  I have been gettin' back in the grind, going to school, working, studying, and exercising.  Ok, so lately exercise means going to the gym, lifting for 10-15 minutes and then going on the elliptical for about 10 minutes then giving up and going home because I can't lift without getting sore and I hate ellipticals with a burning passion.  The bad kind of passion. 

But that is not the point of this post.  As you can tell from my rigorous exercise schedule, I have hardly any spare time and when I do have free time I don't spend it blogging.  (Usually it's spent eating cereal, taking naps, or other things important things that escape me at the moment.)  So I am just going to post a homework assignment that I did for my Media in the Classroom class.  We were supposed to use some form of social media and make a statement of some sort about it. 

So I made a Matched.com profile.

And oh, was it fun.  Way too much fun.  I would just attach the link, but after a few days they shut my profile down.  I think they realized I wasn't a real person.  And not only was making my profile fun, but reading other people's profiles was even better.  Oh my goodness.  So freaking funny.  I can't even...gahh words.  So funny.  But before you read this, I just want you to know that as ridiculous as my profile is, I got lots of likes and interested men lookin at my page.  I'm THAT irresistible.

Also, the format of this page is dumb and the pictures are small, so click on them and then you can look at them without having to squint.   Also also.  I know this may be asking a lot, but every detail counts.  Read everything because I probably put thought into everything.  Also, just so you can understand notdesperate92 better, just know that she lives in Utah, is a BYU student, and is filling almost any horrible husband-hungry stereotype I could think of.  That is all.

So.  Would you date me?

Words of Wisdom from my grandparents

I don't know if you've noticed, but I haven't written a proper blog post in quite some time.  This is not because I suddenly stopped seeking attention through the Internet, but because I have been in Japan serving as a missionary for the past year and a half. I've been home for about a month and I've been meaning to write a post about how awesome and life changing my mission was, but it overwhelmed me too much.  Which is why I haven't done anything about it.  

So instead of writing an enlightening and spiritually uplifting post, I decided to copy and paste from a list I kept of the funny things that my dad's parents said when they visited over Christmas break. Enjoy.

•Grandpa Oda: (pointing to a door) "Where does this lead to?" 

Dad: "It's a cupboard."

•Me: "do you have a tissue?" 

Grandma: "Yeah I got some!" (Pulls out a gallon bag full of tissues)

•Grandpa: "Everything I'm wearing is from Costco."

•Grandma Oda: "See those tombstones over there? They say "I told you I was sick."

•Grandma: "I'll go buy the prune juice.  It's a special kind; it's the strongest one." 

Dad:"you can use my Metamucil if you want." 

Grandma: "It doesn't work fast enough."

•Me: "You got some white chocolate on your lip." 

Grandma: "Are you sure it's not snot?"

•Grandma: "That's why Sam (grandpa Oda) said he liked me compared to other Japanese girls; I had boobs."  

•Grandma: "I don't know why, but every time Sam falls, I laugh."

•(grandpa reading the obituary in the paper) "All these dead people look young. It must be the humidity."

•Grandma: "I always wondered why people get so ornery when they get old, but I guess that makes us glad when they die.  If they were sweet till the end that'd be so sad."

•Us: "Do you mind if we go to the mall?"

Grandma: "Yeah that's fine. Sam likes to sit and look at all the girls."

•Grandpa: "Debbie, we don't need dinner tonight." 

Grandma: "Yeah Sam ate all the samples at Costco." 

Grandpa: "Only the ones that looked good..."

•(Christmas Eve, eating Jerusalem dinner.) Grandpa: "is that pancake?" Us: "It's naan; Indian bread."

Grandpa:"what's that brown stuff?" 

Us: "Dates." 

Grandma: "are those beans?" 

Us: "No, they're olives." 

Grandpa: "This bread stuff (naan) is good.  It's like tortillas." 

•Us: "We don't get ready in the morning for Christmas, so don't worry about it." Grandma: "Well, I gotta draw my eyebrows." 

Grandpa: "Yeah, and put in her teeth."

•Us: "merry Christmas Grandpa!  And happy birthday!" 

Grandma: "Oh yeah, it's your birthday..."

Grandpa: "It's my birthday?  Not tomorrow?  It's Christmas?  It's the 25th?"  

•Grandpa: "what's that word for when you write on your phone?" 

Us: "Texting."

•Grandma: "When I win the lottery I'm gonna get a face lift."

•Grandpa: "I've never had a drink in my life...hardly."

•(Grandma talking about Grandpa): "don't believe anything he says.  Especially about my driving."

•Grandpa pointing to our tennis machine: "Is this a car wash?" 

Me: "No it's for tennis." 

Grandpa: "Oh, a pressure washer?"

•Grandma giving a prayer: "...please bless grandma and grandpa that they can try to be productive and busy...in the name of Jesus Christ, amen."  Grandpa: "Gee, that was so long, I almost fell asleep."

Grandma: "Yeah I know--I didn't know how to end it."

•Grandma: "Well young kids don't like talking to us old people. We talk about doctors and pain and pills; they talk about dates and boys." 

Grandpa: "I talk about old ladies. 

Grandma: "Yeah, he dreams about those old ladies at Costco giving him samples."

•(talking about the kingdoms of glory) Grandpa: "well I'm going to the celestial kingdom anyway..."

Me: "Grandma, I'm probably going to put stuff about you on the Internet..."

Grandma: "I don't care."

Hilarious, right?  Needless to say, my Christmas break was filled with good old fashioned entertainment via my grandparents.

And here are some pictures I took of my grandparents. The majority being of them eating or sleeping.

Update from Oda Shimai (she's 9 months in, 9 months to go!)

Hello family and friends!

The sun is out and shining and it's really warm.  I like the weather here.  It's really nice.

As a follow up to my birthday, it was nice.  Obviously I'm a missionary, so the day was like any other day, but I did go out to eat for dinner and ate some meat and an awesome strawberry parfait.  Birthday cards have also been trickling in through our mail, but another sister currently has four of my cards because the mission home is sending MY cards to her because our last names are similar.  I'd really like those letters soon, but it's probably not that sister's priority like it is for me.  Patience.  Oh, and the elders gave me one of those head massage things that looks like a big whisk.  Best birthday present ever.  Sometimes I just leave it on my head.  And then take pictures.  I swear I'm not as fat as I look in the picture I attached.  That's what happens when you wear a flannel with a skirt...did I mention that sometimes I really don't like dressing up as a missionary?  Also, the fact that I'm sitting at my desk in that picture is amazing. I'm not very good at studying at desks either.  

I've mentioned this before, but there are quite a few old people in the Fukuroi Branch.  But even though there are a lot of old people, they come in all sorts of shapes and personalities.  One in particular is Totsuka Shimai.  I don't know how old she is, but her daughter is probably around 50 and unmarried, so she lives with her.  Anyway, last week we met with them to teach them about how to bring up our religion in everyday conversation.  (We're also teaching from Everyday Missionaries or whatever it's called, but we haven't actually read it.  Yamashita Kaicho just made thirteen different lessons we can teach from it and then members choose what they want to learn.)  Anyway, we had them role play a situation where they could talk about the Word of Wisdom.  The daughter was the cashier and Totsuka Shimai The Older (that's what we call her) was playing the part of herself.  This is how it went down:

Totsuka Shimai as Cashier: "Oh, you bought a lot of herbal tea.  Why?"

Totsuka Shimai The Older: "Because I like it."

Then Hodson Shimai said that was good, but the point of the mogi (role play) was to tie in the church or the Word of Wisdom.  And then she asked if they could try again.

Cashier: "Why did you buy herbal tea instead of green tea?"  (fyi no one would ask that, but it was a role play after all.)

Totsuka Shimai The Older:  "Because I like it." 

Yeah.  Maybe the saying "you can't teach old dogs new tricks" is kind of true.  She's funny.  She also told us multiple times at church yesterday that we looked like we gained weight.  She might need some help with missionary work, but she's got honesty down!

This past week has been great.  And filled with miracles.  Not huge miracles, but lots of small ones that any missionary would be happy to receive.  First of all, we got a referral last week from a Filipina who recently got baptized, and she wanted us to teach her sister.  We've taught Erica three times and it's going really well.  Last week while Hodson Shimai was on kokans (companion exchanges) with another sister she talked to a girl on the train and got her number.  I then sent her a text and invited her to the game night we put on that week.  And she actually came and brought her sister!  Then we asked if we could meet with them again and they were all for it.  So we met and had dinner with them on Friday night.  But that was after having first dinner with members, and then biking 21km in 40 minutes back to Fukuroi to meet them in time for second dinner.  Sometimes missionaries eat like hobbits.  Then the next day we were housing and met a Brazilian family that said they wanted to hear our message and gave us their number.  A new student at Eikaiwa turned into an investigator and has a lot of potential, and a lady that we met on the road and exchanged numbers with finally called us back and set up a lesson with her an her friend for later this week.  There's a good story for all these situations, but I don't have time to tell them all.  Some are super spiritual and some are mostly just entertaining.  I wish I could just dump my memories into this email and you could watch them.  Actually that totally exists.  In Harry Potter.  

I am continually learning a lot by serving in a different area and with a different companion.  And I actually get to work with a lot of different sisters and areas because we go on kokans so much.  It's really fun.  Right now we have three Filipina investigators, three Japanese, and one Brazilian investigator (and dropped a handful of Filipinos).  Obviously we're working on finding more, but it's really interesting to be teaching people of all different nationalities.  It's absolutely ridiculous how different it is to talk to a Filipino or Brazilian at their doorstep than a Nihonjin.  Actually, Nihonjin just don't talk to us.  But even though I'm serving in Japan and I'm teaching so many different types of people, it's the same message.  We teach very differently to meet their needs and previous knowledge, but it's still the same message about the same gospel.  Heavenly Father wants us to be happy and He wants us to become like Him.  He gave us our bodies and families to progress in this life and hopefully return to live with Him.  This life may be like a test; it may have it's trials and burdens, but through Jesus Christ and His gospel, we can overcome these things.  And we really can be happy in this life.  I'm happy and I hope you are happy!  Kiki (our new Brazilian investigator) said that when she prays she doesn't really ask for things, she mostly just thanks the Lord for all her blessings.  And she's not the first investigator I've heard say that.  I'm so grateful that I can teach people, but that they can teach me as well.

Love you all!!

Oda Shimai

I'm leaving on a jet… train (Week 33)

I hope the title just got that song stuck in your head.  You're welcome.

But yes, I am transferring to Fukuroi in Shizuoka prefecture.  Which probably means nothing to you, but it really means that I'm transferring from the most northern zone to the farthest south I can get.  Which also means it will be warmer!!  I'm pretty excited about that.  Also, my companion is super old and is on transfer 10!!  Out of like 50 shimai, there like 5 that are above transfer 8.  I never thought I'd get a companion more than two transfers ahead of me.  And, we're opening our area. Apparently there are only like 20 members in our branch, so I'm fairly certain they've never had sister missionaries before. Which also means they'll be really excited for us to come ;)  I'm excited, but I'm also pretty nervous.  My new companion is pretty different from me, but I think I'll be fine with that.  Opening is really the scary part because we both don't know anything about the area or the branch, and we'll start off with zero investigators.  But I'm ready for the challenge!  

And even though I will be leaving Kanazawa's dismal weather, I'm really going to miss it.  I had to say goodbye to everyone at church yesterday and I didn't like it one bit.  Sometimes we get really jealous of state side missionaries because they can go visit their mission so much easier than we can.  Who knows if I'll ever see these people I've grown to love so much again.  I haven't had a break down yet, but I've teared up multiple times a day since transfer calls.  I never realized how hard it is for missionaries to transfer, but it totally is!  You put your whole heart and soul into your area, and then you just have to leave.  My heart.  It hurts.

So now that I got all my transfer blues out of the way, I can talk about 姉妹大会!  That means Sisters Conference.  I just thought I'd throw in some kanji to let you know I can actually read some things.  Anyway it was so awesome to meet together with all the other shimai and finally get to talk to everyone.  I've said it before, but I'm kind of banished up here in Kanazawa, and I haven't been able to see many of the other shimai in the mission.  And we NEED to talk to each other.  If you didn't know, missionaries' form of entertainment is eating, and talking about other missionaries and areas.  So yeah, I got to do a lot of talking and it was awesome.  We also learned how to give hand massages to our companion to relieve stress.  Yeah, that's what we do at Sisters Conference. 

Ha, but we also had training and learned a lot of good stuff.  I really did learn a lot, but mostly what I learned was not from the training, but from what I observed.  First, I'm gonna have to preface this with an explanation of how freaking hard Japanese is.  The more I learn, the more I realize how little I know, and how ridiculously complex this language is.  It's super hard.  And no missionary leaves Japan speaking like a native, or even close to that.  I could go on and on, but all you need to know is that it's a really difficult language, spoken and written.  So as a missionary, I am extremely aware of this.  And sometimes I get mad/envious of the missionaries in South America where they actually learn to speak the language well, and actually get baptisms.  I was just overwhelmed with how hard those two things are in Japan.  

But while I was at the conference, I watched a shimai (that's only one transfer ahead of me) translate to her Japanese bean.  It might sound pathetic that I was so impressed that she was translating in Japanese, but that's kind of really hard.  I was talking to Kawai Shimai about it afterward, and she said that she was actually translating the English into super super simple Japanese, but she did it confidently.  That's when I started to do a lot of reflecting.  Yes, Japanese is really hard, and yes, I'll probably never speak like a native, or understand everything I hear from a native, but that's ok.  My purpose is to bring others to Christ, and I don't have to be a master of the language to do so.  I just have to study hard, prepare hard, and then when the time comes to speak, I should do so confidently.  The Spirit can work with my weak Japanese, but it can't work with me if I'm apologetic and focused on how bad my Japanese is.  Since my time in the MTC my favorite scripture has been Ether 12:27:  

And if men come unto me I will show unto them their weakness. I  give unto men weakness that they may be humble; and my grace is sufficient for all men that humble themselves before me; for if they humble themselves before me, and have faith in me, then will I make weak things become strong unto them.  

I've read this verse countless times.  I've shared it countless times, but I didn't really grasp the full meaning of humility.  I thought my weakness was Japanese, and I thought I was humble because I was very aware of how bad it was.  But that's not humility.  I was talking about this scripture with Kawai Shimai during companionship study and she said that being humble is actually being confident in the right person, and that person is God.  My weakness wasn't Japanese, my weakness was the fact that I didn't have enough confidence or faith in my Heavenly Father.  Since then I've tried my best to speak confidently.  And I've been surprised to find that I can speak much more smoothly and comfortably because I'm not focusing on how hard it is to formulate sentences or ideas in Japanese.  It's been a great lesson for me, and I'm very grateful I had that little experience at Sisters Conference to finally realize that.

I do believe that I can speak Japanese and I do believe that we can have baptisms in Japan.  I know that Heavenly Father loves all His children, and that's why we're serving in a non-Christian country.  They might not know Christ right now, but everyone was Christian before this life.  We lived with God and Jesus Christ and we all wanted to come to this earth to gain bodies and return to live with Heavenly Father.  I'm so grateful that I was born into a family that knows of this plan.  I don't know why I was so lucky to have this knowledge my whole life, but I think the people of Japan deserve to know just as much as anyone else.  

 Pictures:  It snowed a lot this week, so we took a lot of snow pictures.  I also attached a picture with Yamaguchi Shimai, our dendo coach.  I think she's 30, but she totally looks like she could be another missionary.  Love that woman!  She is also really good at singing, so we sang "How Great Thou Art" a capella in Sacrament Meeting.  Yamaguchi Shimai sang the tenor part an octave higher and it sounded so awesome.  Music really does bring the Spirit and I think everyone felt it there. 

Love you all!

Oda Shimai