Blogger Notes

I got back to my apartment from being at home for two and a half weeks and immediately had to go to Walmart because I had nothing in my refrigerator but moldy cheese, rotten eggs, and an inch or so of Pepsi in a two-liter bottle that has been there since October.

The cheese was obviously the most appetizing thing but, alas, it belonged to my roommate.

I thought going to Walmart midday on a Monday would be blissful. Like an early Sunday morning while church was still in session, sparing me from having to play bumper cars with my shopping cart and witness a variety of parents yelling at their kids for, well, yelling.

Much to my chagrin, there were people in Walmart. Lots of people, in fact. Just not the usual crowd I'm used to dealing with.

I'm convinced a senior center had some sort of field trip to the store and, based on what these folks were buying, and the quantity in which they were buying it, I easily concluded that these little excursions aren't at all frequent.

I saw one lady in a motorized cart shove as many skeins of yarn into her basket as it could possibly handle. No two skeins seemed to match, either. It looked like she just wiped out the yarn shelf in the craft section. Maybe she wanted to be sure she could tell which yarn belonged to which kitty. Maybe she just has a lot of really small knitting projects that require only one skein. Maybe she's planning on making one really, REALLY big project that's all funky and eclectic. I'm not judging.

One couple bought EIGHT packages of Charmin. EIGHT packages. I imagined them bemoaning the nursing home's scratchy excuse for toilet paper.

I got in line after pacing up and down the check-out side of the store three times deciding which register would be fastest when I realized it was futile. I knew I'd be stuck behind an elderly lady or gentleman, but wanted to at least pick a comparatively quick-moving one. No luck.

The lady ahead of me was adorable in an old-person way. She was very sweet and gentle and so... precise, I suppose you could say, with things. She had her list and bought only what was on it and had a coupon, of course, for everything under the sun. But they were clipped so perfectly.

She also had no teeth, smiled with her gums, and was wearing very plaid pajama pants with ugg boots under a long, puffy coat that was more like a sleeping bag with sleeves... which, I realized after giggling in my head, isn't all that different than what I see the sorority girls wear around campus most days.

The yarn lady snuck up behind me in her silent shopping scooter. I jumped when I saw her white poodle hair poking out from behind the mountain of yarn. I wanted to ask what all that yarn could POSSIBLY be for, but didn't because the lady ahead of me was heading home to hopefully find her teeth and it was my turn to pay.