The Free Turkey

My grocery store runs a special promotion every November. If you spend $300 in qualifying purchases, you get a certificate for a free turkey that feeds 4-6 people.

To my horror, I realized at 11:15pm on the last day of the promotion that I was short of the target by $60.

"Please tell me you are not going to the grocery store right now," said my husband. He said this in a way that made my midnight shopping trip seem ridiculous and even unnecessary.

The truth of the matter was that I wouldn't have been able to sleep that night or live with myself the next day if I knowingly let the opportunity pass me by.

I filled my shopping cart with dry cereal.

"That sure is a lot of Honeycomb," observed the man standing in line behind me.

Despite cleaning out the store's stock of generic brand Cheerios, I still found myself $5.64 short at check-out.

A wave of panic rushed over me. Thankfully, the cashier was moved to mercy.

"I'll just give you the certificate for the turkey," the woman whispered. "You're close enough."

With the voucher in my hand, I felt redeemed.

"Thank you," I whispered back.

The woman smiled and looked at her watch, which was fast approaching the time of the store's closing. "Clearly it's important to you," she replied.

As I loaded the sixteen boxes of cereal into my trunk, my heart swelled with happiness and joy. I couldn't help but feel cheered by the discovery of a kindred spirit, another person who seemed to understand the logic of expending great sums of money and time to get an object for "free" that can be purchased for less than $20.

***
Any more kindred spirits out there?

Stolen Goods

Last week, my mother-in-law (who lives in California), paid us a visit. I've been married for twelve years and have known Sue since I was twelve, so needless to say, we feel pretty comfortable around each other.

It's probably because I feel so comfortable around my mother-in-law that sometimes I do and say things that make her feel uncomfortable. Case in point: the food court at Target. Last week, one of my sons threw a temper tantrum in the middle of it. The problem started when I deliberately and maliciously placed four fewer kernels of popcorn on his napkin than on his siblings'.

"Now I'm taking your popcorn away," I announced after two warnings only escalated the volume of the complaints.

My mother-in-law nibbled on her nails and shifted in her seat as I carried my son out to the parking lot.

"Grandma! Save me!" he yelled at the top of his lungs.

Sometimes I make my mother-in-law feel uncomfortable. On her most recent visit, she returned the favor.

One morning, while the kids were in school, I took my mother-in-law to a local sporting goods store where she purchased a number of Christmas gifts for my kids including two baseball helmets and two equipment bags.

A few days after she returned home to California, she called me with some bad news. She didn't remember wrapping the equipments bags. In fact, she didn't remember leaving the store with them.

"The cashier probably put the bags in a separate bag and forgot to give them to us."

That evening, I returned to the store with my receipt. Two very nice teenage employees looked up from the games they were playing on their cell phones long enough to point me in the direction of the baseball gear.

"Take what you want," said one of the employees.

The next afternoon, my mother-in-law called again. "The helmets weren't in the bag we brought home either!" she remembered.

Back to the store I went. This time, I was greeted by the store manager, who was very concerned about my story of missing bags and helmets and possible employee theft.

The manager took my receipt and disappeared into the back room. He was gone for almost fifteen minutes. When he returned, his face was very serious.

"I have something on the security tape that I want you to see," he said.

My palms grew sweaty as I felt my adrenaline surge. I have always wanted to be the victim of a non-violent crime. I immediately began to wonder if I would be called to testify in court, and if so, what I would wear.

"So here's the tape of your transaction," the manager said, pointing to the television screen. Footage of the store employee ringing up our purchases was followed by very clear footage of the employee putting all of the items into bags and us leaving the store with those bags. There is even footage from a camera placed outside the front of store of us loading the bags into my car and driving off.

I half expected a police officer to jump out from behind a plastic ficus plant and handcuff me on the spot.

I apologized profusely and promised to return the equipment bags within the hour. The instant I left the store, I called my mother-in-law.

"You just made me feel very uncomfortable," I told her.

After my mother-in-law laughed herself silly, she apologized for her mistake.

*****
P.S. I made my husband return the equipment bags so he could feel comfortable too.
P.P.S. We found the equipment bags and the helmets in the hall closet.

Caught on Tape

If I were a Neanderthal, I would be a hunter-gatherer. My heart races whenever I step foot into a store like Marshalls, where inventory changes daily, half the stuff doesn't have a price tag, and nothing is where it is supposed to be.

Last week, I found what is perhaps my greatest treasure yet: a pair of navy wedge heels for $10. I found the shoes in the shoe department of all places...and they were even in a box!!!

After purchasing the shoes and taking them home, I realized that there was a good reason why they were so cheap.

"Those shoes are really ugly," my husband observed.

A few days later, I tried to take the shoes back. After scanning the shoes and my receipt, the woman at the return counter informed me that she couldn't refund my money. The product code on the receipt didn't match the shoes I had in the bag.

After a considerable amount of head scratching, we noticed that the price tag was missing half of its bar code. Rather than hunt down the correct bar code, the cashier who rang me up probably typed in a generic code.

The manager was super understanding. "People bring in bogus receipts all the time," he told me. To give credence to his theory that I was trying to swindle $10 from the corporation, he called the supervisor of the shoe department, who confirmed that she had never seen the shoes before in her life.

The manager smiled smugly as he hung up the phone.
"There's nothing you can do?" I asked.

"The only way to verify that you bought the shoes when you did and for what you said you did," the man told me, "Is to look at the security tape at your time of purchase."

Searching 8,000 hours of security tape to verify a $10 purchase seemed like a reasonable request and a productive use of everyone's time, so I agreed.

"This is going to take at least an hour," the man warned, clearly annoyed.

I told him to page me when he found the evidence. I would be digging through the clearance section of the housewares section.

As I made my way to the shelf of unfolded towels, chipped serving platters, and ceramic Easter eggs, I began to have a change of heart. The shoes weren't that ugly. The more I looked at them, in fact, the more I started to actually like them.

Fifteen minutes later, I stopped by the return counter.

"Tell the manager that I've changed my mind," I told the woman. "I've decided to keep the shoes."

A possible reason why certain name brand products end up at the dollar store

When I was at the dollar store earlier this week, I spotted several bottles of name brand spray sunscreen. Since this stuff typically runs upwards of $9 per bottle, I swiped the whole lot into my shopping cart.

As I was applying the bargain sunscreen to myself and to my children later that afternoon, I noticed that the substance had a distinct odor which I couldn't quite place...until one of my pool friends sniffed the air around me and asked, "Do you smell ant poison?"

The QVC Studio Tour

My sister has been visiting us for the past few weeks. I offered to take her to some of Philadelphia's famed historic sites, but she made a wise choice and decided to pass up a trip to Constitution Hall and the Liberty Bell in favor of visiting an attraction that is ten miles west of downtown. I am speaking, of course, of the QVC Home Shopping Network Headquarters.

"What is this place?" my kids asked as we pulled into the parking lot.
"Where grandmas die and go to heaven," my sister replied.

Understandably, my kids were confused. Much to their dismay, they didn't find any coffins or headstones in the gift shop; however, they did find a large collection of angel figurines and "God made Grandma" throw pillows.

Our tour guide was a retired school teacher named Harriet who told us right off the bat that not all QVC customers are elderly, live 50 miles from the nearest Wal-Mart, or suffer from a compulsive shopping addiction. As proof, she pointed through the soundproof window below to where the Quacker Factory lady was peddling embellished t-shirts and crop pants on live television.



Despite the fact that my children lost interest in what Harriet was saying after five minutes and had to be bribed with gum and promises of Slurpees after it was all over, the tour itself was fascinating, and very informative. It concluded in the lobby, with Harriet handing me and my sister complimentary gift cards worth $10 each.

"Welcome to QVC!" chirped Harriet as she handed us our gifts.

My sister used her gift card to purchase a set of six light-up holiday brooches.

I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of a pair of foam shoulder pads.



***
Congratulations are in order to Hilary who won the $100 gift certificate to Alphabet Garden Designs. She said, "For an LDS chick, I am sorely lacking in the vinyl lettering department. Winning this giveaway will at least allow me to hold my head up high in Relief Society!"

Glad to be of service, Hilary. Glad to be of service!

New Year, New Me!

One of my resolutions for the new year is to update my style. My look for 2008 could best be described as "I've just been mauled by a mountain lion." For 2009, I'm going for the equally attractive but slightly more understated "I'm slowly being pecked to death by a flock of chickens" look.

It's only the second day of the new year, and I'm already making great strides toward embodying my new vision of mother martyrdom. Yesterday, in the mall parking lot, I hit the bridge of my nose on my car's trunk door (don't ask). The cut took over an hour to clot, giving store employees, fellow shoppers, and other good Samaritans plenty of time to tap me on my shoulder and let me know that my forehead was bleeding.

We're off to a great start! How about you?!!!!

The Paint-Your-Own Pumpkin

There are lots of scary places to take your kids this time of year. Far more creepy than a Kiwanis Haunted House, but just as expensive, is your local paint-your-own pottery store. The one in my town is made extra frightening by the perplexing overuse of personal pronouns in the store's name: Color Me Mine.

Based upon this flagrant abuse of grammatical convention, I decided that I was justified in never stepping foot into the store. My daughter, however, had a different opinion.
"Please?" she asked.
In a moment of weakness, I agreed.



The contents of the store made my spine tingle. Lining three out of the four walls were floor-to-ceiling bookshelves filled with unpainted ceramic figurines, organized by genre. The left wall housed the mammals (represented heavily by sea creatures and house pets), while the back wall held an impressive collection of life-like fruits, vegetables, and desserts. The wall to the right was filled with mammoth-sized coffee mugs, an assortment of decorative plates, and other mock serving ware.

"I want to paint that!" squealed Camber, pointing to a $50 stallion jumping over a rainbow.
"I like this pumpkin," I said, holding up the least expensive item in the store.
"How about this?" said Camber, pointing to a ceramic rope basket holding a large bundle of grapes.
"I like this," I said again, taking the $13 pumpkin ($5.50 pumpkin + 6.00 "paint/glaze fee" + tax) to the cash register.


After paying for the pint-sized pumpkin, I turned to find my daughter sitting at a table with a small dish of orange paint.
"Don't you want to paint your pumpkin a lot of different colors?" I asked, figuring that if I was forced to pay for five colors of paint, then we might as well use them.
Camber looked at me like I had two heads.

Not only was my daughter not interested in my paint color suggestions, she also didn't want me to watch her paint. This was fine by me, as it freed me up to watch other people in the store. Of chief interest was the mother and daughter sitting at the table next to us. The other mom clearly loves her daughter a lot more than I love mine because she bought her little darling a $45 porpoise jumping over a large wave.

After listening in on their conversation, I was relieved to discover that I was not the only mom in the room concerned with using my money's worth of paint supplies.

"I didn't pay 50 bucks for an unpainted whale!" hissed the mom to her daughter, who had just announced that she intended to leave the porpoise "white."

After watching this exchange, I began to feel pretty good about my $13 pumpkin.

"I should have bought that pumpkin," the mom mumbled under her breath as she glanced in our direction.

The nice thing to do would have been to console the poor woman, or at least validate her judgment. I couldn't bring myself to do either. The presence of the $50 unpainted porpoise made such gestures impossible.