Banking Blunders

Today Alice and I find ourselves at Shaw’s Supermarket in Sharon. Sharon is a nice town about 15 minutes down the highway from Franklin and our humble homestead. There is a Shaw’s Supermarket about two tenths of a mile from our house is Franklin, but this Shaw’s has an Eastern bank. Yes, our closest bank branch is 15 minutes away in a grocery store. Yes, there are at least ten other banks with in a one-mile radius from our house. Yes, we should probably find a new bank. What can I say we are loyal bankers? We hate change? We prefer there lollipops? What difference does it make; our bank preference isn’t the point of this story. The point is that Alice and I are in Shaw’s to deposit a generous birthday check and the bank is closed. The bank opens at ten AM and my cell phone reads nine twenty. Alice and I have forty minutes to wait for the bank to open.

Alice and I start walking the aisles of the market. We have nothing to buy, but we have nothing better to do. Our first find is Campbell’s character soup for one dollar a can. Do you buy this stuff? Instead of regular noodles you pay more for Disney Princess, Sponge Bob, or Dora noodles? I hate the kinds of products! Generic chicken noodle soup is .55 cents a can, but my kids beg me to pay $1.55 a can for these unrecognizable mutant noodles? Usually I refuse. Today I can spend a dollar a can. I drop three Princess, Three Cars, and four Sponge Bob into the cart.

We stroll down a few more aisles. We see neon orange Halloween Oreos. Hello lover! Oreos complete me; I want them, even if the filling is the color of a bad spray tan. I stay strong and resist the temptation. Our next find is Pepperidge Farm Gold Fish crackers. I can’t resist these cute pies…uh fishies..for a dollar a bag. Gold fish are a necessity. I grab ten bags in assorted flavors.

We complete our bargain hunter’s walking tour of the entire store. I look at my cell phone the time is nine fifty –five. Now we all we have to do is check out and by the time we are done the bank will be opened. I look down at my full cart. Why do I have a full cart? What is all of this stuff? Do I need honestly 10 rolls of scotch tape? Does anyone in our house eat Matzo? I take a few minutes to purge my cart. Then I proceed to the checkout lane. I end up only spending thirty-nine-dollars. Thirty-nine dollars worth of stuff we really don’t need.

That’s okay I am going to deposit a couple of hundred dollars money in the bank. I drag the cart over to the bank and reach into my purse for the card. I quickly find the envelope empty. No card. No check. Alice and I go check in the car. No check. We drive the fifteen minutes home with our thirty-nine dollars worth of groceries. I get home and search the house top to bottom looking for the lost check. After three hours I find the card with the check still inside hidden in the bottom drawer of Alice’s dresser.

This is a typical day for me. I’ll go back to the bank tomorrow.

One More Fat Blog

The weirdest thing happened today. I moved my body up down and all around for the sole purpose of felling better. Yes, I actually exercised. Stop laughing. I worked out. I did. I sweat and everything. I am being serious. I know this is shocking news take a minute to process and then continue reading….

My friend talked me into joining Curves. She is one of us. She loves food, hates the gym. She has always been big and no diet plan has ever worked long term. Until now, home girl has lost 65 pounds and she looks amazing. She looks young and dear I say sexy. I would hate her if I didn’t love her already. How did she do it? She joined Curves. Now she works there too. She was there today cheering me on as I worked out for the first time in a long time. I have to admit it was kind of fun. Okay the whole experience was a lot of fun. Fun enough for me to honestly have hope. I lost all hope about twenty pounds ago.

I along with my new found hope, and my hundred extra pounds joined Curves today. I already completed my first workout and fell great. I am taking things one day at a time and one work out at a time. I am going to get healthy and loose this weight. I know that I have said this before. This time I am going to fight as if my life depends on it. If I don’t lose this weight and get my BMI down I am going to have a heart attack and die head first into a gallon of ice cream. Or worse I’ll weigh 800 pounds and be on national TV as Richard Simmons will be excavating me from my house. They’ll break down the wall because I can’t fit out of the door…These are real concerns. On the other hand I do love Richard and would love to meet him again.
No I am going to lose the weight!

All Fat People Look Alike

“Oh I’ve met you before.” Strangers say to me again and again. They always think that I am someone else or they tell me that I look exactly like someone else. That someone else may be young or old, blond or brunette, tall or short, but they always have one trait in common. They are always fat. Proving case and point that people don’t actually see me, they simply see a my fat. What is up with that? The funny thing is that the person making the comment doesn’t even know what they are doing. There they are insisting that I and this other fat woman who looks nothing like me are virtually twins. I always smile nod and back away slowly. Maybe I should have some fun with them and burst into tears and scream. “My lost twin? You have found her? Praise be to Jesus! Ever since she was placed in the witness protection program mom and I have been looking for her!” No that’s just too mean. People never mean to be insulting.

I wonder if these same people say simillar things when approaching Asians, Indians, or people of color? I hope not, because we would view that behavior as being racist. Yes? We have all learned that making generalizations like “All fat women are funny” (I am not funny because I am a fat woman I am funny so people will like me),” All fat women have cats” (I don’t have cats. Mostly because I am allergic to cats and having one in the house would eventually kill me), or my favorite “All fat women have low self esteem” (I don’t have low self esteem because I am fat. I have low self esteem because I am insecure). Continuing on with that thought making statements like “all (fill in group here) look alike” is bad. I don’t care if we all do in fact look alike to you. Maybe we all wear the same kind of clothing. In our defence only certain stores sell tents in our size? Maybe we all smell like warm chocolate chip cookies? Maybe we are all covered in cat hair? The reasons don’t matter. The bottom line is that we know that we are fat. We don’t need to be reminded.

The Return of I.P. Freely

Today we are all up dressed and headed out the door to go grocery shopping. Dylan is out the door, Alice is about to be out the door when I see a big wet stain in the back of her little pink skirt.

“Alice? What happened?” I say trying not to sound frustrated annoyed and disappointed. I mean the potty is down the hall. She walked right by it to get to the door. Now I have to drag Dylan back in, clean Alice, change her into new clothing all while chastising myself for not making her sit on the potty earlier.

“Momma I sorry.” Alice says and starts crying so much for hiding my emotions. I hug my little wet one and tell her that it’s okay.

“Momma is jus a accident.”

“I know honey, just an accident.” I clean her up and change her into little green shorts. We get into the car and head to the grocery store. The grocery store is packed today because there is no school. I usually avoid the market on busy days but I we are running low on food. I mean all of the fruits and vegetables died slow horrible deaths and we are down to our last hot dog.

The grocery store is a zoo, but what else is new. We manage to navigate the aisles with only minor incidents. Knocked a stack of foam coolers in the paper aisle, ran over a guy’s foot in the canned food aisle, bumped carts with an older lady in frozen foods, the kids threw major tantrums over free cookie samples after they filled their shirts with penny candy, you know just the regular day at the market for us.

We are in the home stretch I can see the checkout lines we are almost out of here. I just have to grab the kids some toothpaste. I step into the beauty aisle and the kids walk over to the book rack. I see that their regular toothpaste is $2.99. Why so much when the squeeze bottle is so small. Then I see bubble gum flavored toothpaste for .99 cents. I take a chance and grab the cheaper product. I look over at the kids and am about to call them back over when I see Alice has sprung a leak. She has a big wet stain on her little green short.

“ALICE! Honey we were done. We are going home right now. You couldn’t wait?”

“No momma” I grab her by the hand and we get in the checkout line. I am so confused. She was doing so well. I didn’t understand she had two accidents so close together and even one in the house. I just didn’t know why she was regressing.

When we got out to the car I pulled some tissue paper out of a birthday present from my friend and layered the paper on Alice’s seat. When we got home I made her change and sit on the potty. While she was sitting I made a find. Three, count them, three empty large juice boxes in the play room trash can. No wonder why she was springing leaks. Her little bladder was filled to capacity.

“Alice, did you drink three juice boxes this morning before we went shopping?” She nods “yes” and tears well up in her little blue eyes.

“Alice too much juicy makes you go too much potty.”

“I sorry momma. I no do again” I am hoping that she did learn a lesson. The poor thing sat in stayed in wet pants for almost 30 minutes between checking out at the store and the ride home. If that won’t keep her pants dry nothing will. But just in case I am locking the pantry closet.

The Gum Thief

Saturday afternoon Dylan got caught red handed stealing gum out of my purse. His punishment was that he lost the use of his new toy car for a day. He was very sad about not being able to play with his new joy, but he knew that he had done a bad thing. He understood. Or so I hoped.
This morning I was up in my bedroom getting dressed and Dylan came up to ask if he could have his car back. I told him yes and he ran back down stairs. About a minute later he ran back up and asked where his car was. I told him that the car was on top of the refrigerator. He ran back down stairs. About a minute later he ran up stars and told me that the car was not there. I thought about it and remembered that I was planning on putting the toy car on top of the refrigerator, but instead I never took it out of my purse. I told the boy that the car was in my purse. He ran down stairs.

A few minutes later I heard Dave yelling at Dylan. Oh crap! Is he is yelling at him because the boy went in my purse. I finished dressing and ran down stairs. Dylan is hiding in the playroom and Dave is sitting with a cup of coffee at the table. I see the toy car on the table and tension in his forehead.
“Dave why were you yelling at Dylan? He had my permission to take the car out of my purse.”

“While he was getting the car out of the purse he tried to steal more gum.” Dave’s wooly eye brows arch as he tells the bad news.

“Are you serious?”

“I’m afraid so.” He said. I am literally in shock. On second thought maybe the boy didn't realize that he did a bad thing. Maybe he was sad becasue he was busted. My sweet boy has not learned from his mistake at all. My golden boy is a sneaky gum thief. Now he is a repeat offender. I am so disappointed and yet some what amused at the same time. Did my little boy really just try to steal gum while retrieving his car that he lost because he stole gum? We have to end this demented crime spree before he turns to a life of badly planned crime. We have to save him from ending up on surveillance video robbing a convience store with his backpack over his head. You know the one with his name in bold black sharpie marker on it.  He'll end up on the annual dumbest robber gag real and we'll have to move. 

“DYLAN!”