Category: Humor/Light Hearted

The All Too Common Condition

On By DGThomaIn Family, Food, Humor/Light Hearted, WritingLeave a comment

…Of having no patience.   Grocery store checkouts are crazy places to be at the best of times.  Our local supermarket HEB (The first initials of Howard E. Butt) is always packed with people.  Ducking in for a quick minute is a complete contradiction.

HEBEven knowing that, I still think I can just run in and pick up something quickly.  Yesterday I attempted to run into HEB and grab something light for dinner.  It was 3:45 PM in the afternoon.  How bad could it be?

My husband was with me and we decided on a salad with some fruit and sautéed shrimp tossed on top.  Splitting up to grab the ingredients, we tackled the grocery list. Mathematically it shouldn’t be possible to spend one hour grabbing 16 items, but that is exactly what happened.

One hour later we were making our way to the checkout.  Of course I was guilty of leaving my cell phone in the cart and heading off to pick up some tea.  In my defense, my husband was supposed to wait for me at the cheese counter and he wandered off to enjoy some of the food samples.  We spent a good 15 minutes trying to find each other.  I absolutely refused to have him paged over the intercom!

Finally back together and ready to head to the checkout, we counted our items.  16.  All the express lines were for 15 or less.  Of course!  Yes, my nickname is Girl Scout at work, but I just couldn’t bring myself to get in the 15 item line and I didn’t see anything I was willing to leave behind.  So, we moved to the shortest regular line we could find.

We were standing behind a gentleman who didn’t have a cart; just something in his hands and only one person checking out in front of him.  Things were looking pretty good.  Suddenly this woman darts in with an overflowing basket and pushes in front of us.  The man looks up and smiles and says, “Man, I really hate to do this to you.  This is my wife”.  And she just smiles and says “Yeah, I’m a little slow”.

Shock took over and I couldn’t even respond.  It is amazing how quickly your anger can flair when you are already frazzled.  I left my husband and the cart and went in search of a different line.  I found one with only two carts and it seemed reasonable.  I motioned my husband down to get in line.  The elderly customer at the head of the line, checking out was almost done and the cart in front of us was full but at least not overflowing.

Even though, the lady had been almost finished when got in line, it was taking a while and I joked to my husband, she is probably writing a check.  Sure enough, that is exactly what she was doing. The checkout lady was holding the check up and reading it as if she had never seen one before.  “Unbelievable!” I was thinking, still fuming a little from the first lady who cut in front of us.

Finally finished, the elderly lady gathered her purse and was being helped to her car by one of the young store clerks.  The couple in front of us had their purchases on the counter and the clerk was starting to ring them up.  The lady spoke up and said, “I need to pay for these school supplies separately.”

What?  Now I’m normally pretty patient but I can’t believe what I’m hearing as she starts sorting the items into two stacks.  At least she didn’t pay by check.

When we finally got up to the checkout, it moved pretty fast. We did only have 16 items after all.

I Don’t Like Spiders and Snakes!

On By DGThomaIn Family, Humor/Light Hearted, WritingLeave a comment

TarantulaAlthough I moved from my hometown years ago, I still own my family home.  My hometown is a small North Texas town of about 3000 people.  We usually return home for Christmas and an occasional visit throughout the year.  Each time we arrive, the house needs a thorough cleaning to remove the accumulation of dust.  The house is a small farm style house which was built in the 1950’s.  It sits atop a hill on the edge of town on about a ½ acre of land.

When we arrived last week, I began the tedious routine of dusting, cleaning floors, airing out the rooms and changing linens.   A few hours into the tasks, I tugged a plastic storage tub from the hall closet and promptly screamed.  A tarantula sat on the floor of the closet and I’m sure it was as startled as I was.  I think I probably gave the poor thing a heart attack.  As my husband came running from the the other room I began shouting, “Sorry, sorry, I’m okay. “  I’m sure from the scream he expected to find an axe murderer.

As my heart finally slowed to minor thumping the tarantula was captured and safely released outdoors.   Needless to say my cleaning was done for the evening!

And then there was the small matter of the snake crawling up the front steps, but that’s a story for another day.

Goats, Cars and Rain…

On By DGThomaIn Animal Stories, Family, Friends, Humor/Light Hearted, Travel, WritingLeave a comment

Rain CloudsWorking full time, exercising and maintaining friendships keeps us really busy.  It seems in my family, we are on the road constantly, definitely many more hours than we would like.  Our commute puts us in the car over two hours a day, five days a week.  Weekends aren’t much better, as we are always on the road headed somewhere.

We’ve seen some pretty unusual sights, but recently even I was surprised.  We were driving in a slight drizzle and I was enjoying the sound of the rain tapping on the windshield, when my husband glanced over and said, “He has a goat.”

“Huh?” I asked, thinking I must have misunderstood what he said.  “There’s a goat in that Jeep.”  He repeated.  Now I was interested!”  Looking around I caught a glimpse of white in the back of the Jeep as we passed by.

Glancing back, my husband added, “He’s eating a hamburger.”  Now I had to ask, “Which one?”  Grinning, he said, “The driver.”  Hey, it was a fair question.

Who would think that driving down a busy interstate, even in Texas you would see livestock riding in the back of a vehicle?  With all the traffic, I just wasn’t able to get a good picture, but believe me, I was tempted to wave the Jeep to the side of the road, and ask for the story.

Instead I had to be content with finally catching a glimpse of the goat as the driver moved into the far left lane and passed us.  The rest of the trip was spent inventing scenarios, explaining how a goat ended up in the back of a Jeep, driving down the interstate, traveling across Texas.  A lovely rainy afternoon spent spinning tales of goats, cars and rain.