The Ginger & the Blueberries

Not long ago, perhaps five years, I picked up a small blueberry seedling while doing the weekly grocery shopping. This is not an uncommon thing for me to do. Some people's impulse buys are candy bars, shiny trinkets, or a pair of shoes. Mine are plants, and the cheaper and more impractical the better. A packet of watermelon seeds for only sixty-seven cents? Perfect. I'll take one of those and one of the carrot seeds, too. Do they grow in the kind of sandy soil surrounding my house? Who cares, but it might be fun if they do.

Another good example of this impulse can be found in the gangly remains of wildflowers outside my office window that appear to be nothing more than overgrown, un-plucked weeds. The bag of wildflower seeds found its way into the earth around the same time as the blueberry bush and, due largely to the scorching mid-day sunshine of North Carolina, amounted to nothing more than a smattering of reedy green stalks with yellow blooms. They're nothing to look at, but they make me smile every time I peel my eyes away from the computer screen to gaze outside.

Recently -- after considerable time, effort and expense invested in revamping both the front and side flower beds -- we experienced rousing success with five or six hostas in the front bed. They were purchased from a proper landscaping company and planted in a semi-circle around our best crepe myrtle. The hostas flourished, quickly doubling and then doubling again in size, inspiring us to buy seven more to complete a border across the front of the bed. One week later, our leafy hostas were reduced to lifeless stalks by local rabbits and deer. I've learned two things since then. Miracle-Gro doesn't really work miracles and Repel All gives your plants that extra bit of seasoning critters love.

The blueberry bush has benefited from having been planted out of reach from the larger garden invaders in our fenced-in backyard, in the only spot that isn't laid bare to the unrelenting sunlight of summer. And, since spring in North Carolina has transformed over the last twenty years into a rainy season of tropical proportions, the bush receives plenty of nourishment from good old Mother Nature during that important time when buds appear, develop into delicate bell-shaped blooms, and eventually turn into berries, disappointing the bees and littering the ground with white confetti. That's when you can start counting the harvest you might reap if birds and bugs are kept at bay.

Ever since the plant went in the ground, our ginger-haired son (aka, the German) has obsessively anticipated its annual production. Why? I don't know, because he doesn't eat blueberries, or any color berries for that matter. The only way he might voluntarily choose to eat a blueberry is if you dehydrated it, ground it into a powder and reconstituted it as a chip packed in a canister with other identical chips. Blueberry Pringles. Bringles. Even then, loaded with additives, preservatives and blue dye number eighty-seven, it might still be too healthy for his tastes. Regardless, he watches as the berries develop each year and reports back on their progress.

"There are going to be a lot of berries this year," he'll say in his trademark monotone way. "They're going to be really big, too."

That first year, our little blueberry seedling yielded three edible berries. The next year, maybe twenty. Production has since expanded exponentially. This summer, we can expect to pluck close to one thousand blueberries by the time the harvest is complete, and that doesn't include several hundred from a second blueberry bush we planted this spring. I'm almost tempted to see if any other parts of the backyard are fertile ground for these little fruits.

Our pending blueberry bonanza aside, and even though the side flower bed is doing well, our thumbs remain only middlingly green-ish. Basil, oregano, rosemary and thyme thrive in the same section of yard as the berries, while our tomato-less tomato stalks defy the basic impulses of self-propagation by refusing to yield anything close to fruit. I doubt this concerns the German, though, since tomatoes are just giant red blueberries that he wouldn't eat anyway.


© 2018 Mark Feggeler

Checking Me Out

I have a love-hate relationship with the self checkout section at the local supermarket.

It frequently enables me to avoid long lines, which I appreciate. When others wheel up to human cashiers with four-hundred-and-seventy-nine dollars worth of groceries shoved into their shopping carts and I have only three apples, two bags of Oreos and a tube of Preparation H, it is a wonderful thing to drift toward the self checkout machines. A few minutes scanning, jam the credit card into the chip reader, and off I go on my merry way with boodle in hand.

Utilizing self checkout also makes me feel smart.

I realize supermarket cashiers don't have to earn a degree from some institute of higher learning to run the cash registers, but many of them become so proficient they don't even need to refer to cheat sheets to know the code for my Envy apples is 4167. That's a skill I value which is why, at times when I do have enough items to warrant waiting for a human cashier, I spend less effort searching for the shortest line and more searching for the seasoned veterans. Mary on aisle 9 with her head down, a grunted "hello" and the weathered appearance of a middle-aged chain smoker will get you through that line a hell of a lot quicker than aisle 7's Jimmy, who just called for a manager because he's wasted five minutes trying to figure out how to charge by the pound for milk.

When using the self checkout stations, I strive to be like Mary. I approach with the sticker pulled off the apple and stuck to the back of my hand for easy reference. I inspect the Oreos the moment they come off the shelf so I know where the barcode is and I know how to hold them when running them over the scanner because I've watched the people ahead of me struggle like amateurs until they got it right. The same goes for the Preparation H. In. Scanned. Paid. Done, all so quickly accomplished I could represent the U.S. in self checkout Olympics.

Every now and then, you do come across troublesome machines.

Some have bad scanners. No matter what you do -- invert the package, flatten out the bar code, hold the bar code close up or far away, slam the can down hard enough to cause a crack in the Earth's mantle -- it won't make a difference. The register will still give you the "wrong answer" buzzer sound and ask you to try again.

Sometimes you get a screamer, usually on a very quiet morning. You walk up and punch in produce code 4167 for Envy apples and suddenly the skies open up and it sounds like God himself is telling you and the rest of the hearing world what to do with your fruit.

"WEIGH YOUR ENVY APPLES!"

There's no option at this point other than plugging your ears and forging ahead with the rest of your purchases.

"MOVE YOUR ENVY APPLES TO THE BAGGING AREA!"

"PREPARATION H IS NOW 2-FOR-1! DO YOU WISH TO PURCHASE A SECOND FAMILY-SIZE TUBE OF PREPARATION H?!"

Other times your machine has a faulty scale in the bagging area. You've weighed your Envy apples correctly, entered the number of bags of Oreos you're intending to purchase and confirmed that, no, you really don't need a gallon of hemmherhoid cream, only to find every time you attempt to bag your items the machine argues with you.

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED ITEM!"

"But I scanned the apples."

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED ITEM!"

"They're Oreos. The screen says Oreos, two packs, and that's what I put in the bag!"

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED PREPARATION H!"

"I scanned the *!#@! Preparation H!"

"PLEASE REMOVE THE UNSCANNED BUTT CREAM!"

"Shut Up!!!"

The final insult -- perhaps not quite as humiliating as publicly arguing with a hearing-impaired computer about my alleged quasi-medical issues -- comes when the machine begins questioning my age. It thinks, in its programmed mechanized way, that it's being nice to me when it asks if I qualify for the senior discount. What it doesn't realize is that I'm on the other side telling it to go do something with itself in ways that aren't even remotely possible.



2016 Mark Feggeler

Sham Shopping Shenanigans

We don't buy things like new bed linens in a simple, straightforward manner.

To begin with, we have a tendency to wait until the condition of any item needing to be replaced is so critical as to suggest the only reason we haven't replaced it is because we suffer from a diagnosable attachment disorder. Such was the condition of the bed linens in Our Daughter's room. The bedskirt was irreparably torn in several places and a corner of the fitted sheet had slowly been unravelling for years. It didn't help they were made of the kind of material that clings to your skin like plastic wrap, sticks to your hair with a death grip, and stores enough static electricity to cause a power surge.

If you've purchased bed linens at any point in your life you must be aware it's significantly more complicated than a quick jaunt to the store to buy a spread. A properly dressed mattress involves the layering of patterns and colors to accentuate the decor of the bedroom. You'll need accent pillows, throw pillows, blankets, throw blankets, duvets, quilts and coverlets. And don't forget the sheets (to include the flat sheet, fitted sheet, pillow cases and shams, just in case shams don't come with your comforter set, or if you have an unsatiable desire to load your bed with pillows stuffed in decorative covers intended never to be used for resting your head on, ever).

Step one in buying new bed linens is to photograph the most colorful object in the room with your smartphone. This object -- in our case a painting inherited from my in-laws that hangs above Our Daughter's bed -- gives you the option of moving in a variety of color directions while limiting you to select hues, values and intensities. For the women in our family, the photograph serves as a color guide. For me it is a tool applied only every fifth time I randomly ask the question: "How about this one?"

Once you've scoured the store and located a few decent comforter sets that come complete with bedskirt and shams, and that are on sale for under $100, or were marked clearance (but not if the store doesn't accept returns on clearance items), you can now begin the hunt for twenty more decent comforter sets at all the other stores to expand your options. In our vicinity there are several places to go for reasonably-priced beddings -- Bed Bath & Beyond, Tuesday Morning, Ross's, Kohl's, Steinmart, Walmart, Belk and TJ Maxx, just to name a few. Only when it appears to strangers you might illegally be selling stolen comforter sets from the back of your minivan are you ready to shop for sheets.

Shopping for sheets is a very similar process, except you you might find yourself carrying comforter sets into the store like a directionally challenged shoplifter in order to match colors. Also, I ask "How about this one?" much less frequently because even I know color basics, like how boysenberry purple is NOT a match for Tuscan Sun yellow. Before too long, you're home putting freshly washed new sheets on the bed and arranging shams ever so carefully behind accented throw pillows.

The final step comes the following day when you revisit all the stores to return all the shams, sheets and comforters that didn't pass muster. Of course, I could always just park the minivan in the mall parking lot and hawk my wares:

"Pssst... Hey, buddy! C'mere. You lookin' to score a sham?"




© 2016 Mark Feggeler

Old Man Shoes, Part II

I wanted to buy standard white sneakers, the kind I've worn most of my life. I wanted simple, unadorned white sneakers that support my arches and allow my feet to serve their intended purpose without necessarily calling undue attention to them.

They are, after all, just feet. I do not need my feet to make a statement about me. I need them to walk, to pedal the RPM bike at the gym, and occasionally to run from point A to point B without tripping over themselves and sending me into a face-plant on a hard surface.

Shoes should assist the feet in meeting this fairly limited set of responsibilities. I require only comfort and function from my shoes, whether they be for business, or sport, or casual use. My concern over shoes has never relied heavily on the opinions of others. Be sure, I would not wear sneakers with a three-piece suite, or clown shoes to a funeral, but I do not typically spend an exorbitant amount of time pondering my choice of footwear when making the purchase. The only questions that cross my mind at the shoe store are:

1. Do they fit?

2. Are they comfortable?

3. Are they reasonably priced?

4. Are they suitable for their intended purpose?

For some inexplicable reason, the last time I purchased sneakers I caved to the unreasonable whim of peer pressure. The peers in question were My Lovely Wife and Our Daughter. The two have been critical in the past for  mybuying sneakers that are, in their words, "old man shoes." Old man shoes are an insult to their stylistic sensibilities. My old man shoes are a source of embarrassment, based solely on their proximity to them whenever and wherever I am wearing them. The kind of shoe not objectionable to them is gray sneakers with touches of neon green and partially made of some mesh-like material, so that is what I purchased.

The gray and neon green mesh-like sneakers fit (check one), are comfortable (check two), and were reasonably priced (check three). In most ways they are suitable for their intended purpose, except for the inescapable and unavoidable fact my feet sound as though I am walking with whoopee cushions strapped to them.

With every step I take, a barely audible (but audible all the same) pooting gust of air escapes around my ankle. No matter how I place my foot upon the ground as I move, the sound is there, mocking me for not sticking to my guns and buying my old man shoes. Wherever I go, if those gray and green mesh-like sneakers are on my feet, I sound like Fozzy Bear testing out his new fart shoes. All that's missing is a spinning bow tie and me holding my hands out and shouting "Wocka, Wocka!"

I suspect it won't be long before I am once again wearing proper old man shoes. They might not be sexy, or stylish, or contemporary, but I'd rather have people thinking I have old man shoes instead of old man incontinence issues.


© 2012 Mark Feggeler

Thanks a Lot, Victoria...

Years ago, I was searching for something special to give My Lovely Wife for Christmas. It was a stage in our relationship when I hadn't yet learned not to waste time buying her clothes.

Word to the wise, if you're considering buying your wife clothes you should hand her instead the money you would have spent and a set of car keys. She's going to bring it back to the store no matter how hard you tried to match her size and style, and you'd better hope she gets a full refund instead of store credit so she can pocket the cash and get herself something from a store she actually likes.

Anyway, several years of togetherness had emboldened me enough to venture into Victoria's Secret to scout for a present. Why Victoria's Secret? Because Frederick's of Hollywood scared the crap out of me. Everything on display at Frederick's of Hollywood looked like Tim Curry's spare wardrobe from Rocky Horror Picture Show. There might be a few corners of Victoria's Secret that, even now, I shy away from to avoid feeling like the resident middle-age perve, but at least Victoria's Secret doesn't stock every shelf with fur-lined, crotchless, black lace panties. If that's your thing, God bless you, they just seem rather impractical to me.

So, there I was, wandering aimlessly among racks of ladies' delicates and bras, lingerie and lacy undergarments, when a sign announcing five pairs of panties for just twenty-five dollars presented itself.

I normally fret over buying underwear even for myself, so don't ask me why the notion of purchasing panties for my wife suddenly struck me as a stroke of genius. It's the kind of thing that could end in tears, reproach, and recriminations, being a meaningless Christmas gift similar in sentimental value to an ironing board or a skillet.

"Here, I thought you needed new drawers. Don't worry, they were on sale."

See what I mean? The only way to make it potentially more creepy and less heartfelt would have been if I had bought used panties from Goodwill and wrapped them with a free sample pouch of detergent.

And what if I bought the wrong size?! That's a whole nother can of worms to be opening on Christmas morning. Nothing says "I love you" like giving your wife a present that suggests you thought she was a whole lot bigger than she really is, or implies you think she needs to lose weight.

On Christmas morning when she unwrapped the pretty pink box, My Lovely Wife gave me the pitying, unenthusiastic look I should have expected. But her opinion of the gift quickly changed once she tried them on. Somehow, by the grace of some Christmas miracle that must have missed its intended target and veered off into Victoria's Secret during my visit to the mall, I managed to bring home the exact right size and style. Each Christmas since then, a box in pink wrappings has appeared under the tree.

Until now.

Because the geniuses at Victoria's Secret decided to alter the shape and fabric of one of their best selling undergarments, that perfectly proportioned panty now exists only in name, a fact we discovered last year only after the box was opened.

And so ends an annual tradition. Thanks a lot, Victoria's Secret. Where am I supposed to buy my panties now?



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Off the Rack

The size of a problem sometimes can be measured in inches. In my case, however, the measurement itself poses a new problem.

Being neither tall nor short, thin nor fat, lands one in a confundatory middle ground that clothiers must assume can be served with approximates and guesstimates. The exceptionally-sized people of the world might find it frustrating never to be able to purchase clothes off the rack, but what they don't appreciate is the Law of Acceptability those of us who can have had to accept.

Do these jeans look good on me? Well, they poof out around your ass and make your legs appear bowed. But they fit around the waist and hang well at your heel. They're acceptable.

I have managed to reign in my weight recently, so I don't need a thirty-six inch waist. However, I certainly haven't shed enough pounds to warrant needing a thirty-four inch waist. What I need at times like these is for some retailer to order and stock pants that measure thirty-five inches in the waist. Yet, for some reason, the only jeans I regularly find in a thirty-five inch waist are buttonflies. It bewilders me that they even make buttonflies anymore. I had a pair of buttonfly jeans back in high school and I nearly peed myself five times just trying to get the damn things off in time.

And don't get me started on shirts and suit jackets.

When I buy a suit, it's a silly exercise for the tailor to even wrap the tape measure around my chest. I need a forty-three regular. Okay? Got that? A forty-three regular. Now, go into any men's clothing store and try to find me a forty-three regular. Regardless of the store, there are always only five crammed between the forty-twos and forty-fours, and they look like they've been hanging there since 1944.

Shirts are easier to find, but we go right back to the Law of Acceptability.

How does this shirt look? Well, it's baggy around your belly and you're tucking three extra feet of shirt into your pants. But it fits you well across the chest and the collar is roomy enough that your head doesn't look like it's going to pop off. It's acceptable.

A large shirt is just small enough to restrict breathing, pinch my armpits, and untuck if I so much as think of moving. An extra-large shirt, which is what I end up buying, can sometimes make me look like a kid who raided his Daddy's closet for a game of dress-up.

Maybe someday, before I die, someone somewhere will realize that people come in all shapes and sizes, including those in between the ones they already think we are.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Sports Dummy

Okay. Don't tell anyone, but I'm not exactly what you might call a sports fanatic.

I know. Shocking, isn't it?

All my life, the appeal of organized sports has pretty much eluded me. One of my "manly" genes must never have kicked in when I was an adolescent, leaving me more likely to shop at the mall than hang out at the municipal basketball courts.

Even the few sports that have endeared themselves to me have been left by the wayside. Baseball, for instance. During my teen years, few things were as important as rushing home from school to watch the Mets on channel 9. A really great day meant I could catch the end of the first game of a double-header, followed by the entire second game. These days I'm lucky to make it to one Durham Bulls game each summer.

The thing is, I "get" baseball. It makes sense to me. From the pitcher-batter duel to the sudden burst of activity in the field when a ball is struck into play, I understand the purpose of both the individual performances and the collaborative efforts of the offensive and defensive units. When two equally-matched teams meet on the field, it can be a wonderous thing to experience.

I just don't feel the same way about basketball, hockey, NASCAR, or even football.

When I was in college at SUNY Plattsburgh in upstate New York, our university had one of the best hockey teams in its division. I think it cost all of $6 for students to attend the games back then. You know how many I went to? None. You know why? Because I couldn't possibly, not even if you paid me to try, care less about hockey. When the NY Islanders won the Stanley Cup season after season, I lived only a short bike ride from their arena. I might have high-fived an enthusiastic friend or two at school, but it meant nothing to me.

Football games can be infectious, thanks to the repetitive scattering of bodies in every direction and the potential for dramatic plays, but that's about it for me. I know more about the sport than, say, my mother, but significantly less about it than the average 10-year-old boy.

Sports like basketball, hockey and soccer share the same problem, for my tastes. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth... After about five minutes, I'm done. Sure, if I had a deeper understanding of the nuances I might appreciate them more, but I'm just not interested.

At least racecar drivers keep things moving in the same direction. Although, while that might ameliorate my indignation at the zero net distance I associate with the back-and-forth sports, I still don't understand the excitement of someone driving hundreds of miles in a tight circle. Go to the mall and try walking just hundreds of yards in a tight circle and you'll be talking to security before you reach lap 50.

So, there you have it. I have confessed to being less testosterone-driven than the average man.

You can hold out hope for me, if you want to, but you should know something. This July, when we pack up the kids and drive to Durham for our annual Bulls game, I'll probably be just as excited about shopping at Streets at Southpoint mall before the game as I will be about attending the game itself.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

That Christmas Smell

"Can we go to Bath & Body Works tonight?"

Our Darling Daughter, despite maturing into perhaps the most responsible and sweet-natured teenager I've ever met, still hasn't grasped the idea that her Mother and I cannot simply drop everything at a moment's notice to run errands for her.

We ask her why it has to be tonight.

"I have a coupon that expires in two days, and I'm tired of smelling like Christmas."

The temptation to lecture about the benefits of pre-planning is strong. Until, of course, I remember who I am. Pre-planning is not my forte. My poor Mother was driven to the brink of madness by my repeated lack of preparedness, as My Lovely Wife is today.

What strikes us most from her statement, however, is the "I'm tired of smelling like Christmas" bit.

I've been married long enough -- and have been the father of a girl long enough -- to instinctively understand what she's talking about, but my brain still goes into that mental lock at the sound of words I never expected to be strung together. Although, it really is just one of many strange sentences our household has dished out.

Just this weekend, My Love Wife and I were watching television. Apparently, she did not immediately understand something someone said. I explained it to her and her comment back to me was: "That can't be what they said, but I guess it could be what they said."

One of my all-time favorites came a few years ago when we were all packed up in our van and heading out for the day. We traveled along a side street near our house and over a spot where the remains of a rabbit soiled the road. The German, in a sincerely melancholy voice, said: "Bye dead bunny."

It's difficult to imagine roadkill being the source of such a fond memory, yet it is.

In this instance, no longer wishing to smell like Christmas meant Our Daughter was still using the holiday-scented body washes and lotions her brothers bought her for Christmas. Four months later, sprigs of holly and hints of fig no longer made the cut. Maybe I did let the boys go a little overboard when I took them shopping for her presents.

"Dad! This one smells like a pine tree!" The Italian excitedly shoved an open bottle of lotion under my nose. The chemical aroma reminded me of the time I accidentally sniffed a bottle of ammonia thinking it was dish detergent.

Then up comes the German with a scented candle. "I think she would like this one," he said. "It smells like candy canes." In the end, I was proud of the restraint I mistakenly believed I had imposed by allowing them each to buy her only two of the more muted holiday scents.

I suppose we need to head back to the store to check out the latest seasonal flavors. Maybe the Easter aromas are on sale. I wonder if they have a body wash called "Dead Bunny?"



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Prescription Lies

Now that the airlines have figured out how not to be a bunch of big fat liars when it comes to arrival and departure times, we need to get other industries to follow suit.

Oh, sure, we could target Amtrak, or doctors, or dentists, or appliance service companies. They all have tremendous room for improvement.

You seriously want me to believe you can't pin down to within a two-hour window what time of day you'll be dropping by to tell me you don't have the right parts in the van to fix our washing machine? I've really got to wait around in the hopes you'll show up sometime between 8:00am and 4:00pm? That isn't an appointment, it's an entire workday! You might as well schedule yourself to stop by sometime between April and June.

As frustrating as it may be to wait two hours past your appointment time for a doctor who would happily charge you $50 if you arrived at his office ten minutes late, the most important first target of the timeliness initiative must be the Walmart pharmacy.

Last night, I arrived at Walmart well before 6:00pm and handed over three simple prescriptions to the young lady working the Drop Off counter. While at the store, I planned to pick up some grape juice -- apparently our kids are trying to turn their insides purple by drinking thirty-seven gallons of grape juice each week -- so I asked the young lady how long it would take for them to prepare my prescriptions. Her answer: thirty minutes.

I peeked over at the six people busily at work behind the pharmacy counter. I glanced around me at the two people waiting for their prescriptions. I decided the young lady's time estimate was reasonable and sauntered over to the grocery aisles.

Twenty-five minutes later I returned to find a changed landscape.

Instead of six employees filling prescriptions, there were now only two. Where one coughing elderly man had sat alone on a metal bench waiting for his name to be called, three such men now sat. They hacked and wheezed in unison, creating a 30-foot no fly zone for anyone interested in avoiding the mystery grab-bag of contagion they were spreading. Three women hovered with their shopping carts around the pharmacy registers. They all shot dirty looks my way as I approached one of the registers to ask about my prescriptions.

"The pharmacist has yours finished but he's still working on your wife's," the cashier told me.

The pharmacist. You mean the guy in the white lab coat who, the entire time I've been shopping, has been standing there with an empty canister in one hand, a bunch of capsules in the other, and staring blankly at the computer monitor like he's never seen one before? That pharmacist? Well, how much longer does he think it will take?

"About twenty more minutes," she says.

Okay. I can handle another twenty minutes. The store is big, there's plenty to keep me distracted while I wait for twenty more minutes of my life to pass me by. Only it took a lot longer than twenty minutes. At the end of twenty minutes I was told it would be another ten minutes, then another ten, and then only five which actually lasted fifteen.

To make a long story short, at 7:30pm I left the store with my prescriptions. What started as a quick trip to the store turned into a two-hour adventure in waiting at Walmart.

I realize I could have left at any point but once you've invested enough time you have to see it through. Like watching a bad movie, you know it's only going to get worse the more you watch but you're more than halfway through and might as well stick it out to the end.

Next time, no matter what is prescribed, I'm just going to pick up a bottle of Flintstone chewable vitamins and pretend they are whatever medicine my doctor ordered.



© 2011 Mark Feggeler

Shopping For Dummies

My Lovely Wife and I have been married -- to each other -- for nearly 16 years.

In almost all that time, we have perpetuated a weekly ritual of grocery shopping to keep our cupboards stocked and our fridge full. That's close to 5,800 trips to the grocery store. You might think, with all that practice, we would have perfected the process by now. After all, our staples haven't changed much and our tastes in food seem to remain constant through the years.

So why do we spend the better part of each and every Friday struggling to come up with a complete shopping list? Are we suffering some weekly recurring form of dementia? Should it really come as a surprise to us that we need to buy milk and bread?

Every Friday brings the same conversation:

"Do we need toilet paper?" she asks.

"I don't know," I say.

"Do we need orange juice?" I ask.

"I don't know," she answers.

"Do you have cereal on the list?" she asks.

"No, I don't," I say. "That's a good one."

What the hell is wrong with us? We act like someone invented breakfast since the last time we went shopping and now, like monkeys throwing rocks at the moon, we have to figure it out.

And why do I have to ask if we need orange juice? I'm the only one who drinks it! No one else in our house could possibly be more knowledgeable about how much orange juice remains in the container, yet I don't know if we need more and I expect my Lovely Wife to tell me what I should already know!

It's like we go through our week using up all of our purchased goods and sundries, and then on Friday morning -- right before we sit down to make out our list -- we take "stupid" pills. We might have just finished a five pound jar of peanut butter five minutes earlier, yet we're still going to go back and forth for ten minutes trying to figure out if we need more.

And not only do we completely forget certain essentials -- like, say, food for instance -- we overpurchase other items that have no bearing on our lives in any way, shape or form. "Honey?! Why do we have seven boxes of Snausages?" Sure, we don't have any milk for breakfast or meat for dinner, but you can be darn certain the twelve-pound poodle has enough treats to last halfway through our next dog.

That's why I am going to approach this in a way that is logical and practical -- two words not often attributed to me.

I am going to sit one night at the computer and develop a master list of items we typically need, or at least should be checking to see if we need, each week. Then we can print it out each Friday and not have to rack our brains trying to remember all of the things we use every day.

Call it "shopping for dummies."



© 2010 Mark Feggeler

Wall of Absorbancy

There are things men are incapable of accomplishing.

I don't intend to get into a comparison of gender strengths, although my Lovely Wife and I both bring to our relationship certain characteristics that help each of us balance the other.

For instance, I am often laid back to the point of being catatonic, while she is sometimes hyped up like a poodle on crack. We've been together long enough that I have learned to be more responsive and she has learned to relax.

Another example is money management. Early in our relationship, my Lovely Wife assumed it should fall to the man of the house to pay the bills and manage the checkbook. I accepted the challenge, not wanting to dissapoint, but failed miserably. I learned two important lessons from that experience: (1) acknowledge your weaknesses and ask for help when you need it, and (2) the county water authority will happily cut you off on Friday afternoon, leaving you without functioning plumbing until Monday morning when their administrative offices reopen.

My Lovely Wife excels at managing money, so I leave the job to the professional. Now, ask her to decorate a cake or bake brownies and you might have something to worry about.

In all honesty, my favorite cake of all time was made by my Lovely Wife and children about five years ago to celebrate my return from a business trip. They used a mold of Mickey Mouse's face and tried valiantly to ice it according to the directions. Upon my return I was greeted with a handmade "welcome home" poster and a diseased-looking visage of a beloved Disney character. I affectionately refer to this cake as "Mickey Mumps."

One of the things that has generally fallen to me over the years, in part because I enjoy it and also because my Lovely Wife used to work on Saturdays, is the weekly grocery shopping. When the kids were little it was customary to see me heading through the aisles of the local Walmart pushing a double stroller with one hand and pulling a shopping cart with the other. In more recent years, shopping has become much simpler as I can escape on Saturday mornings without the kids in tow.

I try to group items on the shopping list based on where they are positioned in the store to avoid backtracking. I start with the non-food items and then work my way through the grocery aisles from back to front, ending with freezer items (so they don't melt in the cart while I'm shopping), produce (so I don't sprinkle grapes through the store like some healthy Hansel), and breads (so loaves don't get crushed into flatbreads by giant cans of pineapple juice).

On rare occasions, an item makes the list with which I might not be familiar. A few years ago, my Lovely Wife had scribbled the word "pads" on the list. Give me credit for being smart enough to understand what she meant.

I knew what she needed. Unfortunately I don't spend much time rifling through her section of the bathroom cabinetry trying to discern exactly what brand, size and style she prefers, so I asked for clarification. On the back of the list I copied down all the pertinent information and felt I had the knowledge necessary to make the correct purchase.

But when I got to the store, passed the pharmacy, turned right down the toothpaste aisle, and finally made it to the back wall where they hide the pads, I was greeted by a never-ending wall of absorbancy. Even though I knew the exact name, word for word, of the product I needed -- and even though I knew what color packaging to seek out -- I could not find it. I traveled up and down the aisle several times, examining packages, comparing the descriptive words to those scribbled on the back of my shopping list. I learned more in that one outing about feminine hygiene than I ever dreamt possible to know, all the while trying to guess which product would best serve if I couldn't spot the real thing.

Let's see...

Always Ultra Thin Wings Overnight Scented? Sounds like someone in China came up with that string of barely related descriptives.

Stayfree Overnight Maximum Protection? That could be a complimentary night's lodging in a locked-down prison.

Carefree Original Long Medium? Well, that doesn't even make any sense! Were they drunk when they came up with that one?!

By the time I realized I would not be going home with the correct item, I had unnerved at least a half-dozen women by loitering in their hygiene section and chuckling merrily to myself with every pack of pads I handled. I'm not particularly concerned, and I was not at all embarrassed about what I was shopping for, I'm just glad I picked something and moved along before security showed up.


© 2010 Mark Feggeler