Unburnt Offerings...

On Tuesday, I did my normal Tuesday things: refill my gas tank (this is actually done about every 5th Tuesday or so) and visit our local Wal-Mart. The Wal-Mart visit is problematic at this time of year. The parking lot is filled with vehicles with license plates from states where cold is not as rare as it is here. And these vehicles carry people who appear to think that the mid-50's is plenty mild and should be celebrated by showing off  their bony knees (many with the scars of knee replacement surgery). It is neither a pretty, nor an encouraging, sight.

I, of course, was bundled up in my heaviest jacket and a sweatshirt and sporting what I like to call my "big boy pants." My new little car nimbly fitting into the seemingly excessively narrow parking slot, I wandered (without injury) to the entrance where I played "shopping cart roulette"... managing to find one of the 80% of carts which have at least one faulty wheel. How does that happen, I muse?

Why are so many carts defective? It is impossible to test a cart since the area where the carts are stored has what I can only describe as "uneven" flooring. I often grab a cart on the way in from the parking lot so I can see how it rolls on a nominally smooth surface. As those who hate ornery carts know, this is not a foolproof method but it does boost the odds of getting one that doesn't emit clunking noises or veer strongly one way or the other.

I chose "pot luck" on Tuesday and was rewarded with a "clunker", trundling up the aisles with that distinct "clunk-clunk-clunk" offending my auditory sense. I sought yesterday to find something; a few small items, one of which was septic treatment. Those of you who have never had the "pleasure" of septic tank ownership may not understand this but it is the equivalent of pouring new lime into the pit below the outhouse. As I trundled ("clunk-clunk-clunking" all the while), objects kept appearing in my cart: golf balls, cold medicine, orange juice, 24 pack of water (and what, pray tell, is wrong with what the city pushes through its pipes?), the large bag of Twizzlers, gelatin packages, nuke-able lunches, toilet paper (with aloe, mind you), and several other items I didn't know I needed or wanted.

I tell Faye not to allow me to go into a Wal-Mart with a credit card but she doesn't listen... she is, after all, a wife, and I am merely background noise in the house.


My, I do go on...