Monday, March 19, 2007

Mall Hounds


*a little something light to tide us over...
but don't you worry. There will always be a funeral to write about in a day or two... the clan, it is a dwindling...


You know things are getting desparate when your spirits soar at the hand scraggled note: "Bag Sale", only to plummet when you recognize that the lady in charge is planning on grocery bags and what you really had your heart set on was the generous precident set by last week's willing volunteer who recklessly handed out
garbage bags!

It was no small task, shoving that fur coat into a safeway bag and then having to still put out a whole dollar for the bag full.

My heavy conscience lightened somewhat when a pair of perfectly good and sensible winter boots shared their wrapping with these kick ass blue leather boots.

Yes, the girls did their mother proud.
Jane suckered me into letting her take three more inanimate pets home (the house is old, and I reasoned that forty-one-thousand stuffies pressed up against her bedroom wall had to act as some sort of insulation...)

Sam got shin pads for soccer and a new pink wand..... to go with his tutu, of course.

Micah got in his head that he's only allowed one thing at the thrift shop. He never seems to fully tune in that his sister pushes a rusty stroller around as her makeshift shopping cart and stuffs it full of bears and cats and dogs and skunks and never bothers to count a thing.... ever. Her mother, being compulsive by nature, avoids fully locking eyes on that stroller. Denial enables her to concentrate more fully on her own need to acquire every button manufactured since Cain and Abel. Playing "let's pretend that life is fair, so if Jane can get every toy that looks lonely, I should be kind and tell you to please go find yourself seven more pounds of plastic crap" would obviously not be in everyone's best interest at this time.

If I taught the kids that life is fair, I'd be setting them up for some pretty hard falls up the road a ways. And like I said, we've already got some old favourites in the gonna-need-me-some-therapy department.

Yup, We'll be eating soft potatoes from the "five bucks for fifty pounds of potatoes straight off the farm, but stored against a warm cow... since last summer" gunney sack again this week.

Mama gone spent all the eatin' money at the junk shop again.

Now if only that self-righteous, tight-fisted, bag-handlin' volunteer had handed out the large bags, I'd now have a little grocery money left, AND I'd have the appropriate bags for our upcoming garbage pick-up day.

Some people.

9 comments:

mmichele said...

life is more than groceries...

lettuce said...

ah Joyce, you're a woman after my own heart.

Judy said...

The dress and fur coat...

I am speechless.

SO beautiful!

Anonymous said...

Just stopping in to say how much I enjoy the way you write about everyday events...the bittersweet and joyful...I must agree with Michelle...there is more to life than groceries...as I have made those same choices between bags o books and Sunday night dinner ;)

it's a gong show... said...

How much for the blue leather boots?? I absolutely LOVE them!

Anonymous said...

Sounds like you all had fun. I'm glad.

Anonymous said...

I am about to ditch my nursing ambitions for a volunteer position at MCC. Really I have always wanted to do that...now I have admitted it openly. So there!
I am happy to see you making some schposs...
Joanne

Anonymous said...

you are one funny chick Joyce...thanks for making me laugh...Lindalew
p.s don"t give up on the grocery shopping altogether....pays my wages : )

andrea said...

I wish you were *my* mom.