I shop in bulk according to weekly and seasonal sales and try to stock up with enough to last until the next sale. I usually keep a price book and can usually tell you which store has the best price on an item. Add my frugal shopping practices and our family size together, and you get some odd looking grocery orders! It can be quite humorous.
When our children were little and many, I found a great deal on canned beans and cat food at one store. This was the deal of the year, and I wanted to be a good steward and stock up! My shopping carts had several large bags of cat food and several dozens cans of beans.
The cashier greeted Clint and I warmly. She had big eyes and a higher pitched voice with a very heavy southern accent. She was animated and friendly. She was talking nonstop in that "does she ever take a breath" kind of way.
All of a sudden, she started talking loudly about our order. "Man, ya'll must like beans. You sure do have a lot of beans. How many beans do ya'll have in your cart? This is a lot of beans! All of these beans for you?!!" I hate having attention drawn to me and wanted to crawl under the cart. Her questions were loud and rapid fire leaving me no time to answer.
To make it worse, she was ringing the cans
one.
at.
a.
time.
"Ya'll like beans THIS much? How often do ya'll eat these beans? How many beans do you buy? What do you make with all of these beans? Where you gonna put all of these beans?" ....and on and on. She was a question firing machine gun. It became unreal. People were listening in and looking at us and our order. I groaned inwardly. I could not wait for it to be over.
Then the hilarity of her speculation about our beans hit me. About the same time, Clint looked at me. I could tell he found her commentary about our order humorous too. The man likes to try to make me laugh in public, so I avoided eye contact with him after this point. I didn't want to her feelings to be hurt if I started laughing.
I tried to calm her excitement over our beans by explaining it was a really good sale, we have a larger than normal family size, and I try to take advantage of sales when I can, they would last us many months, but she didn't seem to hear me because she never stopped talking about those canned beans.
Then...
She spied the cat food.
Have.
Mercy.
We live on a farm where feline skills are needed and appreciated. We also take in unwanted cats (and other animals) and re-home them for our friends and family. I am not big on cats in the house, but I don't mind them in the yard at all. At the time of this grocery store visit, I had just re-homed a few cats for a military family and took in a couple of others from a friend. One of those gave birth to kittens. Life as a mother of many young ones plus homeschooling plus gardening and food preservation plus the livestock plus an internet business was very full, and the current number of cats wasn't a priority. We had less than a dozen at the time. On a farm where you need rodent control to protect livestock feed that is not many.
She was off to the races again with commentary on the cat food. "That's a lot of cat food! You must have a ton of cats! How do you keep so many cats?! Do you know all of their names? Are they all inside or outside? How many pounds of cat food is this? How long will this cat food feed your cats?"
Then she looked at me in the eye and said, "How many cats do you have?" She took a breath, so I answered honestly, "I don't know..." intending to explain, but she erupted in horror. She was so loud!
"Oh my gosh! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY CATS YOU HAVE?! YOU DON'T KNOW HOW MANY CATS YOU HAVE?!" She kept going, but I couldn't hear her. I looked up at Clint for help, and there
my traitor husband
was with his eyes twinkling
and his mouth smirking
in just that way that sets me off.
He had me and knew it. Worse, I knew it and had no control over it.
Worried I might hurt her feelings, I immediately tucked my head down and walked very rapidly right out of the store out of her sight and earshot before I burst out laughing hysterically.
I was still gulping for air when Clint came to the car with our groceries laughing with a pointed finger. "You left me!! You left me!!!! YOU abandoned me in that store!!" Then he said, "Hey Wendy, how many cats do you have?" We both doubled over!
Our very inquisitive cashier gave us a gift we are still enjoying. We look at each other every now and then and ask out of the blue,
"You don't know how many cats you have?!!"
At the time of this writing, we have six cats. ;-) Two live indoors at the request of my children.
