Friday, September 16, 2005

Two Pictures, Two Stories

First Picture:
First Story:

Mom has changed the outfit of the ceramic dog on her porch. But I don’t think it’s the right outfit. It’s not winter yet, is it? Wasn’t it just summer? Shouldn’t there be a fall ensemble? She claims that there is no fall ensemble and that this is the only outfit that makes any sense.

“Because the poor dog has been in a bathing suit for too many months. He’s probably cold by now.”

“But it seems very winter-y, isn’t there anything fall-y?”

“Believe me, I’ve looked.”

“This seems more like a December outfit.”

“He’s Santa then.”

“January?”

“He’s wearing his New Years outfit.”

“February is Cupid?”

“And in March we get into Easter stuff.”

“So I guess this is the only one for September.”

“I know. And he looks so hot.”

I don’t know what to make of the fact that my mother and I actually spent a good five minutes of our lives discussing how the ceramic dog on the porch should be dressed. It’s kinda sad. But not as sad as the fact that the ceramic dog has more outfits than I do.


Second Picture:
Second Story:
Okay, this picture is pretty blurry, but I was taking it in a grocery store, and have you ever tried to take a picture in a grocery store? They practically call Homeland Security on your ass. I don’t really understand why you can’t take pictures in a grocery store. But since I can’t take them, I’m always quite tempted to try. I’m crazy like that.

I give you this picture as proof of my bad Line Karma I mentioned a few weeks ago. I decided to go to the store tonight at 11 o’clock. (And by “decided” I mean “was forced to when I found myself locked out of my house and needing to kill some time until Roommate got home”. We’ll discuss my bad Key Karma some other time.) You’d think that a grocery store would be relatively quite at 11 pm. But you’d be very, very wrong.

Turns out everyone else in the neighborhood was locked out of their house as well. Because half the friggin population of my town was at the store this evening. And the other half was working in the store. Yeah. Cause the store has decided to do a bit of a remodel. In the middle of the night. Construction guys EVERYWHERE. Stocker people EVERYWHERE. Because along with the remodel they also decided to move EVERYTHING in the store to a new location.

What are these people trying to do to me? I mean really. I do not deal well with change. Why on earth do they need to change the location of my Mountain Dews? Whyyyyy??? Was there some recent study that found that Mountain Dews sell better in aisle 3 than in aisle 7? And, AND, someone decided that greeting cards should be in the same aisle as the auto supplies. Huh? They used to be in the aisle with the magazines and school supplies. Which made sense, all sorts of paper-related things, all in one easy to find aisle. But no. Tonight my greeting cards had been moved. And now they are across the aisle from car wax. Cause nothing makes me feel like buying a card quite like a bottle of motor oil.

So here I am trying to navigate this completely rearranged store, just trying to find my Mountain Dews and Bags of Salad and one little card. But it’s next to impossible to find anything, and even when I find it, it’s next to impossible to get my cart around the construction guys who are ripping up the floor in front of my caffeine. It was all kinda like a combination of Supermarket Sweep and Extreme Makeover Home Edition.

After 30 minutes of trying to push my cart over the many various power cords strewn throughout the store I finally made it up to the checkout stand. And found the before-mentioned line had formed. I got in the line and it immediately came to a grinding halt. Cause that’s what lines do when I get near them. I grabbed a copy of US Weekly and began to flip through the pages. (Bad Line Karma allows me to never have to purchase an US Weekly. I can always manage to finish the whole thing by the time I get up the front of the line. (Not like that’s saying much, US Weekly is not exactly known for its information-heavy publication))

After a while I looked up from pregnant Britney Spears to see that the cashier had actually stopped checking people out as was now just leaning against her register. Another cashier stood by another register, but said she couldn’t help anyone until someone found her some receipt tape. Then another cashier went and grabbed two boxes of cookies and started handing them out to the people who had risked death by electric screw driver to get their two items and now were being forced to stand in what was turning out to be more of a buffet than a checkout line.

I grabbed a couple cookies and continued to read about how the stars are “Just Like US”. Do you think Britney stands in the Quick Checkout Line for 30 minutes? Probably not. But by the looks of her some has definitely been feeding her some cookies.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe your mom could take the hat off the dog and save it for November? People wear sweaters in the fall but they save the hats for a little later on.

I take pictures everywhere I go. I keep waiting for someone to make me delete some but they never do.

And I have to say that I've never been offered cookies in a checkout line. I'm a little jealous. :)

Anonymous said...

Nice entry. Sad to say, that I can totally imagine you and your mom having a real conversation about a fake dog's wardrobe. I thought people that dressed their real dogs were a little weird...

Anonymous said...

Britney's career is so over. She'll probably be the one handing out cookies at the grocery store if that bum Federline doesn't get a decent job.

Anonymous said...

What a great way to end the week, not only a funny as hell entry, but visual aids to boot! Hilarious!

I had the opposite experience in the store last week - I needed to get a scene shot for a short I am shooting and we went to Albertson's & used the self checkout line. No one even bugged us, we were there for a good 15 minutes! What is with the homeland security at your grocery stores. I am so glad you weren't with us, because not only would you have caused line karma to happen but we probably would have gotten arrested for sure!

Also, I can't wait to see the ceramic dog dressed up like a pilgrim.