vituperation

“Goddamnit,” I said as I dug through the bags of groceries.

Robyn looked up from the bag she was unpacking.

“What?” she asked.

“Hang on.”

I went out through the garage to my car and checked it. Nope, not there. I returned to the kitchen.

“I bought a half-dozen doughnuts for tonight,” I said in a petulant voice. “And I think they’re still at the store. Things were all screwed up this morning.”

Used to be, I’d set aside Fridays for eating things like doughnuts, and eat crappy food all day long. Now that Smallville’s taking most of our time, I generally eat junk food at (and after) dinner on Saturday and Sunday nights. Splitting like this means I actually eat less of it than I did when I was doing it on Fridays, which my body probably thanks me for doing. This particular Saturday, we planned to have nitrate-filled hot dogs for dinner, with Doritos as a side, and for snacking the rest of the evening I’d picked up the six doughnuts.

My trip to Publix had been one great clusterfuck, taking a full half hour for a list with about 20 things on it. Normally, I can be in and out of the store — with much longer lists — in fifteen or twenty minutes. I have the grocery shopping down to an art. What threw me off this time was the extra dinner stuff, which wasn’t on the list. I didn’t think about it until I was finished shopping, and had to got all around the store getting the additional items.

By the time I got to the checkout, my arch enemy was in line in front of me. She’s there every Saturday morning, you see, along with a small group of other regulars. Her sole goal in life seems to be to idly stroll down the center of every aisle, stopping in the middle and generally being wherever I need to be. We’ve almost collided on more than one occasion, because I tend to move quickly through the store and she likes to suddenly start going the wrong way down the rows.

Sadly, though I consider her (jokingly) the enemy and spend plenty of times on Saturday mornings cursing her existence, she probably wouldn’t know me from Adam.

Not only was she in front of me this time (a first), the scale was broken and her eleventy billion produce items had to be taken to the customer service desk to be weighed. One. At. A. Time. Of course I realize it wasn’t her fault, but it did add to my time in the store.

I bagged my own groceries because there was no bagger present, and raced home in a bad mood because I wanted to get out to Smallville especially early this day because it was finally time to burn the big burn pile and I wanted plenty of time to do it.

And now my doughnuts were missing.

“Well, you don’t need to cry about it,” Robyn said. “You can just get more doughnuts.”

“I’m not going to cry,” I said, feeling like I was going to cry. “I wanted to get out there early today, and it’s like everything’s conspiring against me. Don’t they know I have things to burn?”

I went out and checked in the car again while Robyn finished putting away the groceries. The doughnuts had not magically reappeared in the interim. Back inside, I got a surprise.

“Why’d you get this kind of shampoo?” Robyn asked, holding up a bottle of Aveeno something or other.

“I didn’t.”

A realization dawned.

“I’ll bet this belonged to the woman in front of me,” I said. “She bagged her own stuff, too. I bet she forgot it. I’ll take it back to the store when we—”

Robyn twisted the top off the shampoo bottle and peeled back the foil cover to sniff delicately at the contents.

“Bessie! What’re you doing?”

“Smelling it.”

“But you opened it!”

“Yeah?”

“I can’t take it back, now. YOU STOLE THE SHAMPOO!”

“It’s not stealing, it’s like a gift.”

My wife, the thief.

In the car, I swore to Robyn I could almost smell the doughnuts, and we discussed the phantom odor as I drove back to the store.

“It’s like I pulled the smell out with me,” I said. “And into the car.”

I dreaded going back into Publix once we got there. Dreaded having to go in and explain that my doughnuts never made it home. If you’ve never been fat, you may not understand the dread. Deep down inside, even when you’re not fat, you still feel like the fat person, so asking people if they’ve seen your doughnuts is just, um, uncomfortable.

I know. I need a life.

The Publix people hadn’t seen my doughnuts, which I expected to find right by where I’d bagged my groceries. The cashier remembered them, but didn’t see them after I left. Thinking about the bottle of shampoo Robyn had stolen been gifted, I suggested that maybe the person behind me had gotten the doughnuts. They agreed, and told me to go get six more.

As I walked along the car to the back hatch, carrying my box of doughnuts and feeling like the big fat guy who had to have his sugar fix, I happened to glance down through the window into the box of Smallville trash sitting in the back seat. And saw my box of doughnuts perched happily on the top, where they’d slid during the drive home.

I’d stolen a box of doughnuts from Publix.

We had a good laugh about it, and about the situation I’ll create this Saturday when I try to pay for the box of stolen doughnuts. It’s always funny the responses you get when you try to be honest about something.

“Did you go in and say ‘I NEED MA DONUTS!” to them?” Robyn asked in her Fat Bastard voice. “GIVE ME MA DONUTS!”

“Nah,” I said with a smile. “I just told ‘em they were for my pregnant wife.”

Now, some pictures.

The burn pile burned REAL good, once I got it going.

I raftered the shed while the fire burned.

I like to stand in the front room where I can see a bunch of colors at once.
I’m not sure why this particular spot appeals to me so much.

Lots of sawdust out front, because…

…the floor guy has started doing his thing.

He started yesterday.

The downstairs looks AWESOME right now.

We can’t wait to see what it looks like when he’s finished.

So far, he’s just done the first cut with the big sander.

He still needs to do the edges and the final sanding, before it’s stain time.

Hard to believe the floors are almost 75 years old, isn’t it?