Please, watch your step!

You know about the curse of paying something off? Sure you do. You make the last payment on that car. It gets struck by lighting and burns to a crisp the next day. But it is your crispy car. All yours! Or you make that last payment on your mortgage. To celebrate you do the traditional tossing the mortgage into the fireplace. Your fireplace. And then your fireplace burns down your house. But is it your pile of rubble!

So no I didn’t make my last car payment or buy a house. No, something a little more important and closer to me. I just paid off all my student loans. So cross your fingers and watch your step. Hopefully my brain will not explode and leave grey matter all over the place. But if it does, I am counting on all of you. Please, please pick up my brain if you see it on the side of the road. Pull off the lint or twig that is on it and return it to my body. Thank you.

Interactive Shopping

In my home I have a very large refrigerator and 27 cabinet doors. Yes, 27. It is like playing memory every day that I get up. Where are the bowls? Where is the cereal? Where are those rotting potatoes I can smell that I bought 3 months ago and forgot about? Yes, the kitchen is a blast. And interestingly enough cabinet doors shutting are the only thing I hear from my neighbors who I share a wall with. Hmmm….I try so very hard to shut my cabinets softly because I know the neighbors will hear. Never mind the neighboring 1 year old finds opening and closing doors as a game. Where does my need to shut cupboard doors softly come from? I guess the memory of my mother running into the kitchen in the middle of the day with her pjs on screaming “STOP SLAMMING THE CUPBOARD DOORS!” might have something to do with it. Which led to having all the cupboard doors open all the time in our kitchen at home. Lov’a mom. But now that I am taller this only leads to concussions. So now I have to buy lots of food because I let it all rot behind the closed doors.

So to the grocery store I go. Now food shopping seems like a safe and normal thing to do. I mean people do it every day. But there was the box incident at Publix…hmmm. Forget about that already? Ask Ms. Peach about it; she’ll fill you in.

I finally think I figured out where some of the food items are in the store. You see they like to put them in groups of meals. For example, velveta cheese is by the pasta because you use both of them to make Mac and Cheese. Nice, but what if I want to make grilled cheese? No the bread and cheese are not together. As you can imagine this can become rather confusing fast. But I’ll live…maybe.

They are nice and put all the produce in the same area. Well most of it. So you ever notice how they water the green stuff? I mean regardless if it needs it or not. Like the celery. Shouldn’t someone tell them that it is already in a plastic bag and doesn’t need watering? Ever been picking out your veggies and all of a sudden joined a wet tee shirt contest? I WIN!! As I jump up in down holding my head of broccoli trophy. Ok, apparently this was not what Kroger was looking for. Let’s take a step back. So I was standing there picking out my veggies when all of a sudden the lights start to flash. And then there was banging. I step back startled, while I looked oddly at the row that has just started to go ballistic. Then it starts to rain. OOO I get it, it was thunder and lighting warning me to step back and not get wet. Cleaver.

Ok, so I got my heart palpitation for the day from the thunder storm but my shirt is still dry. I can live with that. I move on to the milk. I got to get my gallon or I get cranky. And no one likes a cranky Erin. I grab my milk and turn…oooo…Cheetos. Yeah like I said, no idea the organization schema they have going on. As I am picking out my perfect bag of only partially smashed chips I hear MAAAAOOOOAAAA. What the…? I turn and look around. What was that? I see nothing and then I hear it again? Finally after about 10 times of the noise and me standing in the middle for the row looking around confused as everyone else walks around me, I spot it. It was a little speaker on the top of the milk fridge. The milk is mooing at me. Apparently they were going for the “fresh milk” thing. But the canned cow sounded like a cow that was 3 weeks due at the rendering plant. It was awful. I can make a better cow sound. I didn’t even realize it was supposed to be a cow until after I spotted the speaker. It made me want to put the milk back. Who wants milk from a geriatric half gutted dying cow?

Seriously, the thunderstorm was cleaver. The dying cow was creepy. Do people miss the milk? I mean it is in a big cooler and there are rows of it. It is the one thing I can sniff out pretty easily. I was so disturbed that the mooed at me, I left the store. Not sure I got everything. I really was not looking forward to hearing the sound of a squealing pig drowning in a vat of boiling water as I picked out my pork chop. Nor did I want to smell rotting infected dead animal as I walked by the kibble. This interactive shopping was just too much for me. Just put the food in a logical order. Leave the animal mutilation noises in the slaughter house where they belong, please.

O OO OOO!!! Do you think I could break into the store and change the dead cow sound to maybe a rat squeak? Do you think milk sales would go down? Hmmm….more milk for me.

Spooky

Ok now I want to talk about Halloween. Now I know I am a little slow, however it seems to me I should be able to talk about a holiday after it happens for a length of time equivalent to how long stores were selling merchandise before the holiday. I think that makes me good until May 2011? Someone check my math. So without further ado, here is your read.

Trick-OR-Treat!! Hehe, no, I didn't go trick-or-treating; I'm too old. And no I didn't hand out candy. I'm more of the type to go buy the candy and then conveniently forget to turn on my porch light. Yeah, yeah I know I'm a horrible person. Get over it.

But really the Halloween for me was going to a haunted house. Scratch that, THE haunted house. I went to Norcross's Netherworld Haunted House. For those of you who don't know that is number one ranked scariest haunted house in all of the US. I figured if any haunted
house was going to get me this one was it.

I went with Steph and Adam. It started with us driving. Then me missing the turn and then missing the parking lot driveway and having to back out into heavy traffic as the parking guy stood in the way in the middle of the dark. It was great. Then we walked in the dark on the side of the road while cars whizzed by. Yeah Georgia doesn't believe in sidewalks. Finally we got there and I got to go to my first horror house…um I mean….Porta-Potty. But those dark horrors are too graphic for internet posting.

Ok so we wait in line and finally get to go into the 'extra' haunted house. The ghoul at the door tells us that we can't have our cell phones on; starts off scary enough. We walk through with monsters jumping out at us. Not very scary but some people were screaming. I get bored enough that I let the two little teenage boys behind me take the lead just in time to hear "Get on your knees and crawl through." Um…we'll let that one go too.

So I get on my hands and knees and the scariest thing happened; Steph kept feeling up my butt. Thanks Steph! Nothing like having your cousin feel you up to have a night of terror. But then she moved to my ankles and Adam saw the sign to stand up. We did and found ourselves behind a monster.

"Excuse me mister monster, but we got behind you."

"O yes you need to turn left instead of right."

"O, thanks, Happy Halloween."

"No problem. Have a good night."

Pleasant monster. We got out and got in line for the big attraction. About a 30-45 minute wait. They were selling Fear energy drinks. Which saddened me. I mean did I need an energy drink to stay awake in the big haunted house? Was I going to get so bored that I would just fall into a narcoleptic slumber? Come on.

Well maybe I should have gotten one because I didn't scream or get startled once. Even when some random monster screamed right in my left ear I didn't jump. O and there was the one monster that just kept coming closer and closer until he touched me on my side. I was like "um…back off." I felt bad. Should I have faked it? Well the only thing that was scary to me was the amount of carbon dioxide that was in the house.

Ok so long story I know. But no death, no scariness, o hold on. We left and went back to the cars. As I went to open my door I saw there was no window in the driver side. I yelled for Steph and Adam. The door was unlocked. I freaked out. I looked my phone, my purse, my GPS, DJ, Chris, everything…everything all there. I turned on the car and rolled up the window. Freaky. So we stood in the dark parking lot talking about how I knew I locked my door and how they saw me do it. And as I held my keys up in my palm not touching any buttons the
car lights flashed and locked…will that happen again? We'll see…