Yesterday morning I dropped Caroline off at this little half-day summer camp that she’s doing this week. Of course, half-day is really a misnomer considering that it starts at 9:00 and ends at 11:30.
Which is really more like a half-morning.
However, those two and a half hours are like precious gold to me right now, except I don’t really like gold. Unlike Caroline who announced yesterday that gold was her favorite color and whenever she saw it she was going to “HOWL AT THE MOON!!!”.
I have no idea what that means but she was very passionate about it.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that small little morsel of free time is invaluable especially because I have about a million different things I’m working on, none of which are more easily accomplished by the constant narration and interrogation of a four-year-old.
So, I dropped Caroline off and headed to the HEB. I certainly did not want to go to HEB during my small window of free time, but we were literally about out of everything (meaning Q-Tips and York Peppermint Patties) and the grocery store couldn’t wait unless I wanted to go in the afternoon when I knew it would be hot enough to make me long for a vacation on the sun.
I raced through HEB with the speed of a woman on a mission, pausing only long enough to mourn two great losses.
1. HEB has quit carrying Tyson’s Roasted Chicken Breasts and is offering no replacement item. Does this mean I’m going to actually have to prepare recipes using raw chicken? Because if it does, then I’m about to swear off poultry forever.
2. When I went to talk to my favorite manager, Dwayne, about the Tyson Chicken Breast Fiasco of ’08 because I knew he’d make the situation right, I found out he is no longer at our neighborhood HEB.
I don’t know how I’m going to break the news to Caroline that her prime source of Buddy Bucks and helium balloons is no longer there. It will be a dark day.
As I’m pushing my cart down the cosmetic aisle (after surveying my nail polish inventory in the midst of the cabinet makeover I realized I was sorely lacking) I heard a loud POP.
And when I say loud, I mean LOUD. I thought it was gunfire.
Gunfire from a disgruntled HEB shopper who just discovered that she was going to have to cook with raw poultry since some moron in the home office decided to quit carrying Tyson Roasted Chicken Breasts.
I didn’t hit the linoleum floor, but I glanced around to see if anything was awry. Not seeing anything, I moved on in to the checkout line and started unloading my groceries. All of a sudden I saw the source of the POP. A can of biscuits had exploded in my cart.
EXPLODED.
As it turns out, the great biscuit explosion was a little thing known in the literary world as FORESHADOWING.
Later on, after I’d picked Caroline up, we were driving along when I heard a loud POP. Of course my first thought was that I’d left a can of biscuits in my car, but then I realized that my car was shaking and veering off the road.
Probably not because of biscuits.
I pulled over on a side street and realized my front tire had experienced a complete blow out.
So I did what any self-sufficient, independent woman of the 2000’s would do.
I reached into my purse for my cell phone and called P to come rescue his damsels in distress.
Fortunately, we were close to where he’s working right now and he made it in record time even though my directions were along the lines of “You know where that building is that used to be next to the Starbucks and then they turned it into the Sushi Restaurant? Yeah. We’re not really by that. But if you go there and then head maybe a mile or five past that, then we’re either on the right or left side of the road but I can’t tell because I can’t remember my right from my left at the moment.”
I have a navigational gift.
He put the spare tire on my car while we discussed the fact that the Swedish people were nice enough to include one glove in the spare tire changer kit thing. One glove.
Like in case Michael Jackson had a flat.
With spare tire in place, Caroline and I went to Discount Tire to purchase a new front tire. And GOOD NEWS! It turns out all the other tires were on their last legs, or treads as the case may be, and we had to purchase FOUR NEW TIRES.
There is no way I’d rather spend that amount of money than on automotive repair.
It was a joy.
Yes, I know. Safety, schmafety. Precious cargo, blah, blah, blah.
But that money could have gone towards a lot of new shoes.
Or perhaps to mail order some Tyson Roasted Chicken Breasts.