Catastrophe at Aldi's

Have you been to Aldi's? It is fabulous. They have only 1 choice for most canned items, most things are store brands, and everything costs about 1/3 the price of other grocery stores. We go there about twice a month. Since it is so cheap, it attracts a lot of immigrants. This story, like so many others, begins with a child.

One fateful day, a 20 year old Somalian mother rushed into Aldi's with her 3 year old daughter. She was wearing a headscarf and I can only imagine that she was extremely conservative. I smiled to myself in the checkout line as I watched her usher her daughter, who looked like she was on an incredibly short timeline, into the bathroom. Kids are so darling. I say that from a distance. When I actually have to deal with all that stuff it drives me up the wall.

Then I turned to the conveyor belt to unload my cart. Suddenly there is a bunch of yelling coming from inside the bathroom and I look up just in time to see this woman run out of the bathroom with her daughter with, "I'm so sorry," on her breath, and then make a hasty retreat into the woman's bathroom. Oops....

My heart went out to this poor woman who had rushed into the restroom only to realize, too late, that she had chosen the wrong one. Especially since she was obviously extremely embarrassed about it. But the more I think about it, it is also very funny. Hopefully she wasn't traumatized for life.

Penzeys Spices

Kevin is the best husband in the world. I know, I know. You think your husband is the best, but that is simply impossible. You only think it is because you have never been married to Kevin. Let me indulge myself in a little brag session. Please try to contain your intense jealousy; it will eat you up from the inside out if you do not get a handle on it.

The moment I see Kevin when I return from a shopping trip, his face lights up and he asks if I will show him my new treasures. Then, with genuine interest, he discusses each item while I tell him what I like about it and why I chose it.

If Kevin comes shopping with me, which he loves to do, he will wait outside the dressing room with my purse. If I head towards the dressing room without handing my purse to him, he will ask if I would like him to hold it for me. Each time I come out, he will tell me how cute I am in the clothes. If, while he is waiting, someone asks about the purse he is holding, he grins and says that it matches his shoes.

The only time he got embarrassed was when he was shopping alone for lingerie and the price wasn't ringing up. He tried to say he didn't need to buy it, but the clerk insisted it was no problem and ran to check the price. She was gone a long time, leaving him with a pair of sexy women's underwear at the front of a long line of suspicious stares.

This weekend Kevin, the amazing husband extraordinaire, accompanied me to a Penzeys store. We first heard about Penzeys two weeks ago at the symphony. Kara told us that it was a fabulous spice store that sells really good spices in 1/2 cup jars for cheaper than at the grocery store. I had the urge to throw my 5 year old spices in the trash and start fresh with a whole new rack but, alas, my thrifty nature dictates that each used Ziploc bag be used two or three times, and therefore getting rid of a cabinet full of old spices is completely out of the question. Being a cheapskate is a heavy burden.

As I made my final selections, Kevin went through the store and gathered every edition of the complimentary magazine distributed by Penzeys. Then we spent the entire 45 minute ride home enduring sharp hunger pains as I leafed through the recipes [and Kevin glanced over while driving extremely safely], complete with delectable pictures. Each page we turned revealed something more appealing.

Here is a picture of our fabulous new spices in our nifty new spice rack.

And this is a picture of some of the displaced food items that were made refugees by the new spice rack. The middle shelf was 1/2 inch too short to fit a rack, so we took it out and stacked the racks, and are now seriously short on shelf space. Bye, bye old food. We don't know where you will go, but you are no longer welcome here.

New Height in Crazy Holiday Shopping

The best thing about Thanksgiving is shopping the next day. This year it has reached a completely outrageous level. There were many, many more shoppers out this morning than the past couple of years.

It started late for me this year. Kohls opened at 4 AM and I didn't get there until 4:05. People were already checking out when I pulled up, and I tried not to panic. The line went clear across the store by the time I was ready to leave, but it went quickly and I was at Walmart by 4:45.

When I pulled onto the street before Walmart, I was accosted with a line winding through the parking lot, through the spare parking lot, and around back to the building. It was outrageous!

It took until 5:07 to even get in the store and once inside you couldn't even move.

The fun thing about shopping today is that you jump out of bed, throw your hair in a ponytail, and head to the stores. There is no time to shower, and I am pretty sure that everyone else had this same philosophy. You could tell. Minnesota has a lot of immigrants from all over the world who eat a lot of fragrant spices. When the melting pot melts down in a hot store, it isn't pretty.

I held my breath, grabbed my stuff and headed for the check out lines. Where I stood until 6:23. It was at least 45 minutes. Kohls did a good job at controlling the checkout flow, where the line was long but it moved quickly. Walmart did not do a good job at all. In fact, they did a terrible job. Lines wound around the store, and it was the luck of the draw which line you went to. I switched lines three times before I realized that the middle lanes were the only ones moving.

Menards was about as crowded as Walmart, except all their stuff was junky. They must have used REALLY good photographers, because it all looked way better in the ad than it did in the store. What I really wanted was a Build-a-Bear for Katie, but the line was long and hadn't moved at all during the 5 minutes I stood there, so I put down my stuff and went home.

But then stopped at Walgreens on the way because they had little Web Kinz for $4. They were so cute that I ended up getting 6 of them.

I am keeping the hippo for myself.

You may wonder why I need to buy so many presents. Most of the presents are for secret Santa's. I signed up for a few for the Hmong immigrant family at church. They aren't actually at church, but the young women usually help one recent immigrant family with Christmas presents.

They leave with literally nothing just so they can get away. Also, Ed and I are getting the bulk of the gifts for our group's "Armful of Love" family, which is a family in Dakota county who needs help this year. They ask for things like winter coats and diapers. Steve and Todd call it the "Armpit of Stench" because they aren't interested in buying anything for anyone. So you can pick whichever name you like the best.

On my way back to the house I passed the Eden Prairie Community Center, which is where we usually work out. The parking lot was completely full. Uuugggh.... I'm going back to bed.

And NOW I am done with my Christmas shopping. Except the stuff I am getting from Amazon....which I was hoping would be on sale today but isn't. And I even did some of Kevin's Christmas shopping. You know how the girl traditionally shops for gifts for both sides of the family? Not in our family.