J.P.

After a week of on-call I feel like I can stop idling my life and am back in “drive” again. It is amazing what a full night’s sleep can do. I woke up this morning, for the early shift no less, feeling great; I feel centered, I feel rested and I feel like my brain has taken a big dump.

Yesterday I met up with our friend Greg for lunch in Danbury, Conn. It had been entirely too long since I’d seen him so I headed out to the Danbury Fair Mall to finish up the holiday shopping and meet up with him for lunch. We had mini-burgers – he had turkey and I had veggie. It seems like whenever we go to Ruby Tuesday together we have the mini-burgers. It was very good to see him. I took the scenic route home opting to come through the Catskills. I stopped for gas and a quick snack in Liberty. In a very rare occurrence I found myself disoriented and heading the wrong way on one of the back roads as I tried to get back to Route 17. I had to use the GPS in my iPhone to find my way back. I must be getting old.

While I was waiting in line at one of the stores yesterday a woman in front of me smacked another woman that decided she was too good to “form one line here” at the checkout stand. I thought it was rude of the woman to cut the line but I thought it was quite rude for the woman to smack her as well. Nobody was in the right on that one. I tweeted that I thought someone needed a good hit of myrrh. I thought that was humorous.

“I’m going shopping.”

The IM message was simple enough. Since I am working the later shift this week, Earl and Jamie would be out grocery shopping when I got home from work. We would cook supper when they got home and we’d be stocked up on food for the week.

I busied myself about the house when I got home; I put the cars away for the impending snowstorm and I installed the markers along the driveway so I knew where the driveway was suppose to be when I had to find it after the bout with snow. I finished up outside and came in; I was folding laundry when I glanced out the window.

In came the Durango. It was trailed by a 55 gallon drum of kitty litter which was lashed to the car by the hitch originally designed to drag a camper across the state. Miles of rolled up paper towels hung out one window and crates of canned vegetables hung out another. There was a soon-to-be illuminated santa perched atop the vehicle. It was doing it’s best imitation of Imogene Coca in a rainstorm in Phoenix, Arizona.

My god he’d gone to BJ’s.

BJ’s Wholesale Club is much like Costco or Sam’s Club. While we don’t have the two latter chains in this area, we do have one BJ’s where lettuce is bought by the acre and pop is purchased by the vat.

As I propped open the door and worriedly looked for another vehicle, perhaps a rented U-Haul, loaded with other items, Earl came bounding in carrying three cases of various DelMonte vegetables stacked atop a gallon container of M&Ms.

“I spent $500!”

Sweet Jesus. We’d have to add a room onto the house to store all the stuff that needed to be hauled in from the Durango. We needed a new room, stat.

As I tried to keep the cat from being buried and a pathway cleared to the bathroom, stack after stack of “deals too good to be true” were brought into our kitchen that already has cracked tiles on the floor. I thought for sure the rest of the tiles would give way, though I secretly smiled because then all the stuff would make it to the basement on it’s own.

We have canned vegetables, a wide assortment of meats, pounds of pistachios, hectares of pop-tarts and barrels of barbecue sauce.

I officially decree that we are now ready for that big snowstorm.