Shopping Sales at Costco

I dropped off my good friend, Kelly, at the hospital for a procedure and knowing I had a few hours to kill, what do I do with my time? Go to Costco. Seems innocent enough, but it's the Fife's business Costco who happens to be having a 3-day sale. I must say looking at the brochure flyer, there were some pretty awesome discounts available. So I take a friend and we go.




Kelly wanted a new microwave and it is the least I could do, right? Especially since she is incapacitated and can't make it. Well...as I drive up to the postage size parking lot, an anomaly in Costco's business plan, I realize I may have made a mistake. Turning into the parking lot was a game of vehicle twister and they just spun red-right-hand marker. I could see people's tempers had already evaporated, so I quickly switched to aggression mode. It's a little known button on the steering column that can be engaged in such a situation. It now becomes a game of patience and speed..patience to find a parking spot and swift dexterity to get there first.




With some cunning maneuvers we finally parked and weaved through the parking lot to the front doors. Since I knew that the microwave was going to be a big purchase, I grabbed a cart from the employee shoving them in. Conveniently they were place just inside, so we pulled one off the shelve and started the salmon swim upstream through the masses of eager shoppers.



I don't think I've ever seen as many people shopping at Costco in my life, even on those kiosk-snack Saturdays they use to promote products. Now keep in mind the Costco in Fife is just for business products, which will differ from the "general" version of Costco most of us are used to. They don't have the cute jackets, clothes, jewelry, toys and other fun items we consumers like to get. This is just things that would relate to restaurants, offices and other business owners/people. So I was flabbergasted at the amount of people who turned out for the deals being offered.



I actually saw someone push a cart full of motor oil...about 20 cases and just as many mega-sized packages of toilet paper. Seemed an odd combination, but what the hey, you get what you need.

I stood in line for the next 1/2 hour jockeying back in forth to make room for passerbyers that circled the product around the waiting lines. Sweat is dripping off me because of all the additional bodies that are crammed into the mega-small staging area for check out. While pursuing my fellow insane shoppers, it did cross my mind "What the hell am I doing here!" a few thousand times while I waited. But I was committed and more importantly I was trapped.

I finally reached the god-like conveyor belt where I got to put MY stuff.....(bells and angels are singing). I am deliciously estactic because I am soooo close to leaving. As I gatherer my microwave and hustle out, I realize that I still have to get out of the parking lot. Crap.

Old High School Hottie

So I run across this really nice guy I knew in High School. You know the one...the guy that was really cute, that played in football and was voted one of the cutest guys in the school. Yep, that would be the one. And of course, I had a crush on him. Not the my-world-will-end-if-you-don't-love-me crush, but the damn-he's-hot crush. So he recognizes me...which I don't know if that is compliment or not, and asks how I am doing. A nice, benign question. Sure.... I then regress into that tongue-tied adolescent with no self-confidence, which is pretty lame. But then it couples with (I shit you not) a menopausal sweating episode, but the cherry on the cake, I can't seem to form a coherent word. OH SHIT!

And there standing next to him is his lovely wife (as in she's really pretty and freaking tall) with their lovely children. God, help me! This is why I don't go to class reunions. It's like going to your Mother's house, no matter how old you are or how long you have lived on your own, Mom is mom and you are her kid.

To make matters worse, they are really nice. So I start to feel guilty for my lustful thoughts and my sweating gets worse. I end up grabbing a handful of napkins to mop my forehead and the drips that are sliding down my face as I try to maintain a conversation that doesn't make me look psychotic. As I am waving my hands madly to punctuate my conversation, I hit their toddler's stroller. I so thought I hit their daughter. What the hell is wrong with me? I look down expecting to see her crying and all it is was the handles on the stroller. Whoosh, I am so relieved. So what do I do you ask? I pat the stroller, a nice loving couple of pats. What a freak I am. I back away so I don't hit anything else in my convulsions and I hit the wall, WTF, I have no place to go.

Finally someone unintentionally saves me by diverting their attention and I scrambled out of my corner, mumbling my "nice-see-you-nice-to-meet-you" as I rush by. All that is running through my mind was how far away I can get in the least amount of time. Humiliation is better left with the fewest number of witnesses as you can get.

Damn, damn, double damn

This hill I live on is a very muddy hill...it rains here a lot. Of course those could be my tears, but really, do I cry that much? I scramble up, trying my hardest to gain purchase on the shrubs and bushes. Sometimes when the ground drys out, I can pull myself from bush to bush and I can see the top of this mound. But then the rain comes. Sluicing me in a muddy river down the rocky and scrubbed slope. My hands reach out desperately for something to grab, to hold onto. But they are gone, pull out during my other falls down the hill. I fall on my back in the wet, sticky goo that gathers at the bottom and look up. I can see the top, although it looks so much higher from my lowly position. I know I can make it, I know I will make it. For now, I will just sit here a moment and gather my breath. Tomorrow, I will climb again.

the New Year

Last year:

* Father-in-law has cancer - that sucks!

* Ayla and Harlee turned 2 - yes..they can walk...dammit, now they run. Shopping anywhere now is taken to a whole new level of hell!

* Willow turned 5 - started kindergarten...all day...all blessed day! Then falls asleep when she gets home.

* Quinn is 13 - she is a whole lot of beautiful, followed by a mouth and attitude that generally pisses me off.

* Zane is 6 - now I wish I had more boys, other than destroying things, he is a dream.

* Dave turned 40 - with a lot more gray and still the same stories...it doesn't look much different than the thirties.

* I turned 39 - Jack Benny has nothing on me...and if you don't know who that is...oh well, go back and check your My Space.

* Someone hit Dave, again - Nope, wasn't me. He was struck from behind in his truck, sitting waiting to turn the corner to our house...geez whiz, he had to do it in front of the house. How convenient is that.

* Took a walk on the wild side - had a party at Odyssey 1, playground for rabid children. WOW! What the hell was I thinking...oh yes, I remember, it's Sunday...how busy can it be?

* Girl Scout Cookie season came and went - a whirlwind of hurry up...sell, sell, sell...guess what coming on Jan. 9????

* Tax season gave us enough to float on top of the water, but then the raft blew a leak and we went back to bobbing in the sea of poverty.

* My parents parked in Tacoma, which gave us a "babysitter" for the kids...all the kids. I got to sleep...for a couple of days. But like all good things, the twins came back early. I think they broke their grandparents.

* Ayla had surgery - that was truly hard. It was a minor surgery, but it freaked me out never-the-less because she was anesthetized...then she went and fell on the site and it ballooned up with blood to the size of her fist...ugh!

* Snow, snow, snow...we now have no place to go. The first white Christmas that I remember in my lifetime. We got about 2 feet, maybe more.

* Snot, cold, vomiting galore...pick a month, pick a season, it tends to blur. It's always a good day when anyone isn't sick!

What to expect for this year:

* Zane will be 7, he gets cuter every year.

* Willow will be 6...beautiful, but ohh, what a teenager she will be.

* Quinn will be 14, oh shit, she will be driving in 1.5 years...can someone write me a prescription for Valium?

* Ayla & Harlee will be 3, if they make it past 2.

* Dave will be 41...he..he..he...he..ha...

* I will be 40...really??? What the hell, I guess those line on my forehead really do mean something.

* I have a max of animals I will take in...5 cats and 1 dog. Okay, maybe a fish.

* I get to be a real programmer...wow, like an adult and everything. Maybe I'll even get paid or something.

* My last year doing cookies for the service unit, but now 2 girls selling cookies...

* The best part is that I am looking forward to spending it with those I love!

Torturing your kids

The week before Christmas is the best time to torture your kids. How you ask...oh you probably already know...don't you do it too? Put beautifully wrapped boxes under your merrily, twinkling tree and then tell them...Don't touch. This is fun! So the mischievous cherubs poke, prod, shake, rattle, stroke, guess until they are shimmying around in frustration. Ooohh it's a parent's smorgasbord of delight. I can't imagine another situation where you can legally torture your children and they make it a national holiday. Then we get to blame all our gleeful manipulation on a fictitious fat man...where do they think these things up?