I’m not sure that I’m actually the fire-making prodigy I’d like to think I am. I’ve set the smoke detector off twice in the past week and I’m still not sure why the house got so smoky.
The good part is that the smoke detector is tied into our security system so rather than having to get up on a chair and unhook the smoke detector and yank the batteries out to turn it off, I can just input the code into the security box (whatever the fuck it’s called) and turn it off that way.
The bad part is that I didn’t know that the first time the smoke detector went off, so I got up on a chair, unhooked the smoke detector, yanked the batteries out to turn it off, and still had to turn off the alarm on the security system.
I didn’t make a fire yesterday because it was in the 60s. Last night it was supposed to get down into the 40s, but it’s in the mid-50s right now, so I don’t think today will be a fire day either.
It rained like hell last night and a third of the back forty is under a few inches of water. The chickens aren’t complaining, though – they’re walking around drinking out of the puddles and splashing through puddles and kicking at the ground to get at the bugs the rain brought out.
Winter in the south. Ugh.
The good part is that it’s practically over; come February it’ll start warming up again while y’all in the colder parts of the country are still all bundled up.
The bad part is that I’m still so far from the ocean.
I think we oughta move to Florida, personally.
Except that moving all those animals would be the motherfucking death of me.
(Besides, I kinda like it here. Except when it gets cold. Of course, “cold” is subjective. I don’t know how on earth I ever made it through the cold-ass Maine winters, I’m such a delicate flower.)
I’m beside myself with excitement.
Wait.
Let me try that again.
I AM BESIDE MYSELF WITH EXCITEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As of this morning, I never ever ever have to shop at the local grocery store chain – let’s call it Porkkly Dorkkly – ever ever again. They’re opening a Publix in Nearville, and I’ve been eyeballing it eagerly these past few months, afraid that it would just never ever open, but the day has come! My beloved Publix has come to a location only five minutes from me, and I will shop there all the days of my life.
Yesterday morning I actually had to venture into town to go to Porkkly Dorkkly because Fred was completely out of cottage cheese, which he eats every morning as part of his lunch, and I couldn’t put it off ’til this morning.
It’s like the universe wanted to make sure I knew how very much I was going to love shopping at Publix and how very grateful I should be that I wouldn’t have to shop at Porkkly Dorkkly again. I went through the store quickly, picked up cottage cheese, oatmeal, and two loaves of bread. And then I went to the one lane that was open. There was only one woman in the process of being checked out, she didn’t have many items, so I figured I’d be out of there pretty quickly.
Not so much.
First, she had to write a check, and did you know that you can’t start writing at check at ALL until you know what the total is? Nope, you certainly can’t write in the payee’s name or the date or sign the check. You must know exactly what the total is, and THEN the check-writing process can begin.
Also, you must not have your license out and ready to be presented. Instead, once the check is written you must have to dig around in your purse for your license, to be held out to the cashier, who must punch the number into the cash register, AND SO ON.
But I’ve had to suffer through that sort of thing before, no big deal, even though I wanted OUT of there, so I amused myself by reading the front of the magazines.
So, items rung up, check slowly written out, license presented to cashier, all that accomplished – which must mean it’s my turn, right?
NOT SO FAST, SPARKY.
Instead, a conversation about weather radios commenced, and did you know that they sell weather radios at Porkkly Dorkkly? Indeed they do. They keep them behind the customer service desk, and so when customers decide they want a weather radio and it’s too early in the morning for someone to be at Customer Service permanently, someone must be paged because it appears that the cashier cannot leave her cash register to walk the fifteen feet to the weather radios, grab one, and bring it back.
So someone was paged, and she showed up and grabbed the weather radio and walked it over to the cash register, and the radio-fetcher went off to finish unloading the delivery truck or whatever she’d been doing, and guess what?
The customer wanted TWO radios. Didn’t she mention that? HA HA HA I’m so scattered this morning! LOL! ROFL! Time to page the radio-fetcher again!
Radio-fetcher looked less than pleased to be called again, and she stomped behind the customer service desk and stomped over to the cash register and plunked down the weather radio and asked “Anything else?”, and the customer and the cashier allowed that they thought that’d about do it.
And the second radio was rung up and the total was given, and the laborious check-writing process was underway and I could just about taste my freedom.
But wait! WAIT!
Did you know that these weather radios take batteries? They take batteries, and they don’t COME with batteries, that is such a gyp, I know. But the batteries are right there – see that sign three aisles away – and you might want to grab some batteries for your radios, they’d certainly be no good without batteries, right?
LOL! ROFL!
Guess what? Cashier can’t see anywhere on the box where it says what kind of batteries the radios take! So customer is three aisles away yelling “What kind do I need? How many?” and cashier is yelling “Hold on…!”
Time to page radio-fetcher! Radio-fetcher is pleased to be called away from what she was doing yet again, let me tell you. Radio-fetcher growls that the radios take three triple-A batteries each. Cashier yells this information to customer. Customer takes a LONG FUCKING TIME to decide that the big pack of batteries is the financially responsible choice. Customer wanders back to cash register.
The check-writing process begins yet again.
Customer and cashier chat it up. LOL! ROFL! O happy day, when I get to spend fifteen minutes waiting to buy two loaves of bread, cottage cheese, and oatmeal in the store that I am loathing more as every minute passes.
Customer finally finishes paying and wanders off. I answer the cashier’s “Good morning, how are you?” with NOT my usual perky “Great! How are you?”, but rather with a tight-lipped smile.
I don’t need to write a check, buy a weather radio, or wander around looking at batteries, so my checking-out process takes about a minute and a half.
On my way out the door, I silently wish Porkkly Dorkkly a nice life. You know, for the two days it takes for area residents to realize that Publix KICKS ASS and Porkkly Dorkkly quietly folds and goes out of business.
I’m going to Publix later today, and I don’t even need anything. I just want to bask in the glorious glow that is Publix and be happy in the knowledge that I will never have to visit Porkkly Dorkkly again.
(Which is not to say that I won’t if they have some good sales – just that I don’t HAVE to if I don’t want to.)
And when I am dancing through the aisles of Publix, I will probably stop and hug every Publix employee who greets me. I might even kiss ’em square on the lips.
“I just wanted to walk across that lady’s desk and give her a head-butt, but that mean old gray cat with the stumpy tail growled and growled at me and I was SKEERED!”
More pictures over at Love & Hisses.
Miz Poo keeps an eye on the squirrels.
Previously
2007: It’s a pisser that the things that are the least fun – cleaning, laundry – are a neverending cycle.
2006: No entry.
2005: No entry.
2004: I want to marry you, Consumer Reports.
2003: The Bean’s nickname for today is “Stanley Rotten.”
2002: Xmas meme.
2001: And then Miz Poo SMACKS him again.
2000: No entry.
1999: I’m just saying.
Your narrative of the check-out is too funny! (I hate all grocery stores and so I use Peapod. I LURVE the Peapod.)
Sigh. There is nothing, NOTHING I TELL YOU, like an orange kitty.
Robyn, I know you’re happy to have a Publix so close, and who can blame you? Just TRY, for goodness’ sake, not to slip the employees some tongue when ya kiss ’em. Unless they’ve shopped the Porkkly Dorkkly, they won’t understand. 😀
This story cracked me up. It’s the kind of situation that can cause the second person in line to suffer an anyerism. Some people just think they are the only person in the universe. If someone held up the line that long here in Jersey they might GET IT in the parking lot-LOL. I think people in the south like to take thier sweet ass time and it would drive a transplanted yankee insane. Not that there aren’t wierdos here too. A couple of times I’ve OCD customers ahead of me block the entire belt for their three items. When I asked an old lady in Walmart to please move up so I could place my things on the belt-asked nicely mind you-she went beserk yelling about how rude I was. Just part of the Walmart experience. Mine is located five minutes from a retitrement village. Oh So MUCH FUN! Hope Publix will be better. LOve those names too. When my inlaws lived in Oklahoma and we visited we died laughing over the aforementioned Piggly Wiggly,Git and GO and Catfish King.
I’m so jealous, I love Publix too and we don’t have them up here.
That was funny. I hope you enjoy Publix–it is always a nice place to shop–I just find them a little pricey. Except for their sales. But I can tell you–I have always had a pleasant experience there. So maybe it is worth paying a little extra.
Not that anyone cares, but I eat cottage cheese for breakfast, not lunch.
Up here in CT we have a place called Price Chopper that is pure heaven. I have to travel to get there though but I have to travel everywhere cuz I live in the boonies. I wonder if other readers like Price Chopper.
Oh! That makes all the difference in the world, Fred. Are you a large curd man, or a small curd man? Not that size matters… 🙂
@Kelly: There’s a really neat Price Chopper in the Adirondacks that we go to when we’re up there. I don’t know how our local PC is but we have a Hannafords that’s pretty good. Still: Peapod!!
A lesser person would have laid down the bread, oatmeal and cottage cheese and stomped out in passive-agressive disgust.
The store I go to (when I don’t go to Wal-Mart) directs people with less than 10 items to the customer service counter.
We don’t have Publix here either 🙁 I think they are only in the SE.
Porkkly Dorkkly, heh! Oh the check writing thing is one of my biggest pet-peaves! Why oh why must people pay with a check???? I just don’t get it, get a check card, use a credit card, anything, just stop writing checks for every freakin’ purchase you make! I can honestly say I have never written a check in a store for anything, and I never will.
Are you a large curd man, or a small curd man?
Breakstone’s large curd, all the way. Size does matter.
I visit my parents in Florida just to go to Publix I love it so much! Here in Connecticut we have Big Y,StopnShop,A&P and so on nothing can compare with Publix I say bring them to the East Coast!
Oh dear GAWD! I am 100% certain that when the battery thing was discovered, I would have been demanding that she ring up my order in between…that was just too effin ridiculous. And yeah, I am a “laid back” So Cal gal, but that pushes ME over the edge of the ability to keep my mouth shut! Get back in line dumbass!!
I miss Publix with my whole heart. They used to pack my groceries in my trunk, and even delivered them once when my car was in the shop (this was before grocery stores got into delivery). They were awesome.
When I worked at a bookstore, I often wanted to call out to the customers in line “I will want money from you when you get up here, so go ahead and start writing the check or find your wallet!” Of course, I couldn’t, but BOY did I want to. Which is my way of saying it’s JUST as annoying for the person at the cash register as it is for those who are waiting…..
Crack me up! I work at Porkly Dorkly! In Wisconsin, though – and we don’t sell weather radios. It’s funny, because in our area everyone loves us more than the competitor, Pick n’ Save. Why do they choose such ridiculous names for grocery stores?
I’m not a cashier anymore, but believe me, they hate check writing customers just as much as the next customer does.
I have never been in a Publix. Hopefully it is on the same scale as our Wegmans. They have everything.
Question for Friday – what is your favorite fitness magazine? I am looking for a xmas present for my sister.
Thanks!
Amy
About moving to Florida. I understand you saying it would be the death of you.
As a matter of fact I will be moving 7 cats and a Golden Retrever from Michigan to Missouri at the end of December. I can tell you I am not looking forward to the 10-11 hr drive. I am sure there will be much yowling, puking, pissing and shitting along the way. All this in the dead of Michigan winter.
Can you tell I am THRILLED!!!
“Breakstone’s large curd, all the way. Size does matter”
I suppose you’re right…in a whey!
Robyn I am laughing so hard I am crying over your grocery store story!!!!
OH NO! I am horrified on your behalf. God, you held it together so much better than I would have in the face of their rudeness. She made you stand there through two extra transactions!?! And I don’t know who to be more mad at, the cashier or the customer. That’s not funny to me, at all. I’d’ve shanked a bitch. But that’s cuz I’m from Texas, and while I don’t mind someone taking their time (hello, yankees, I live in NJ now, quit breathing down my neck in line dammit) that there is fuckin’ line jumping. TWICE! Nuh-uh. No, I don’t think I’ve been able to stand for it. And then I would have felt bad about losing my temper all day. I’m so glad that didn’t happen to me.
What’s wrong with Porkkly Dorkkly? I mean, I know your last visit was painful but it can’t always be bad like that, can it? Or is it that Publix is just wonderful in comparison? I haven’t been to a Porkkly Dorkkly in decades and I’ve never been to a Publix, so I was just wondering.
P.S. Are you going to snark on the OC Housewives?
I agree with Christina N, above – “While you’re waiting for radio-fetcher/battery-decision-maker to get back, let’s go ahead and ring my purchase up instead of wasting everyone’s time. It’s only a few items, so even if Other Customer does come back before we’re done, she won’t have to wait too long.” Not a question, a statement.
I keep reading Porkkly Dorkkly with three Ks in each… the aftereffect, I suppose, of having lived in a small Georgia town where that was the only grocery store in town, and where the three Ks would have been appropriate.
That ho shops at Safeway in Edmonton Alberta too. In the express lane, with a cheque and yapping with her friend and rearranging the items in and out of her little old lady cart.
Bitch please.
Oh shit that is funny and infuriating all at the same time.
I swear I heard the angels sing the first time I walked through the doors of my new Super Target. I adore that place. We have Trader joes, Marsh (locally owned and very nice thank you)and Kroger as our big grocery stores. I need Hannafords apparently. And what is Peapod?
Do you imagine having a kitty like this one? http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1093194/Frankie-feline-exposed-cat-burglar-stealing-toys-neighbours-homes.html
I resided 15 years in Tampa. I found Publix to be more pricey than other grocery stores. Wegmans is the bomb. When in Buffalo visiting younger sis, I always go to Wegmans. Their produce section is like visiting an amusement park! It’s an experience.