I think I would have made a great lion. First, there’s the mane (mine would be the nicest, of course). Secondly, they stalk their prey with great intention and patience. When I’m at the grocery store, I usually feel like I’m on the hunt. I’ve already narrowed my sights on a few items beforehand by skimming the sales papers and organizing my coupons. It’s at the grocery store that I go in for the kill. Call me crazy, but it feels a little primal. You might think you’re looking at a hairstylist pushing around a cart, but you’re actually witnessing a huntress stalking her prey. Never mind that my prey is a carton of yogurt.
One of my favorite thrills in life (lame, I know) is seeing how much money I saved on a grocery trip. While it’s nice to see that I’ve saved $37.00, it’s another kind of thrill to see that my total savings value came to a certain percentage, say 62%. I’ll bet this is the exact same feeling I got when my kindergarten teacher would give me a gold star sticker. *sigh* And this might explain why I have the instinct to tape the receipts that I’m most proud all over the kitchen and on the fridge. I’m not crazy enough to start scrapbooking these receipts; just crazy enough to display them for about a week. Go ahead and feel sorry for him, but Brian’s caught on. The man has seen me save thousands of dollars by just planning ahead, clipping some coupons and comparing the deals.
And speaking of Brian, on Monday I finally paid heed to some advice that he’s always giving me. “Relax,” he’ll beg me. “Puh-leeeeeease just relax on your day off.” Are you the sort of person who actually relaxes on your day off? I really have trouble with that. There is a list a mile long of errands to run and people to see on my Sunday/Monday weekends.
Well, this Monday I gave it a try. And I have a witness. A friend stopped by to borrow my mini trampoline at 11:00am (…perhaps one day I’ll blog about the benefits of a mini trampoline…); and she found me still in my green, polka dotted bath robe. You know, taking it easy wasn’t all that bad. Perhaps Brian’s on to something. The only hitch in relaxing was that the fridge is bare and I hadn’t spent one minute remedying that before Brian got home. In an attempt to have more face time, we decided to head to the store together and tackle the list.
That makes two lions stalking their prey! (This is ever so much more successful.)
We were probably in there about an hour. He’d spot a box of cereal on sale; I’d dig around for the appropriate coupon. “This one’s for .75 cents. And they’ll double that to $1.50. So the cereal will just be, like, $1.00,” I’d say. (Our church runs a food pantry. Being savvy in the grocery store helps us to contribute without blowing our own budget.) Then we found the clearance shelves in the back of the store. (That’s kinda like yard saling at a grocery store.) It was here that we were able to stock up on 36 packets of instant oatmeal for less that you’d pay for 12! I could just see that percentage at the bottom of the receipt getting higher and higher! How exciting! …25% …37% …51% If you’d have slapped me in a nightie and put on some Kenny G, you probably could have called this foreplay.
Having finished, we checked out. Our cashier was friendly enough, just the right amount of chatty. I had my eye on the computer while the goods were being rung up. Yep, everything was priced as expected. Then coupon, coupon, coupon… Then receipt. Receipt is printing, printing, printing…
“Oh shoot,” she says. “We’re out of paper.”
Can I just say that the receipt we went home with goes from my fingers to my elbow? Okay? It’s all on there: the number of grocery items, the fact that the cashier’s name was Wendy, the date and time of the transaction… everything. Everything, that is, EXCEPT the total savings value. Even the line “Your Savings” printed right before the darn thing got cut off! Some cruel twist of fate. It felt like standing in line for two hours to ride a roller coaster just to have it get shut down.
Blow out the candles, Brian.
AGHHH! This would kill me!
CRAP!! this IS killing me! couldn’t you have asked the cashier to reprint it in it’s entirety?