Saturday Morning Shopping

First of all, an addendum to the previous post: I forgot the biggest DOWN of all! My dishwasher is kaput! It made a really, really weird noise the other night and Mike said it's had it & don't use it any more. To the best of our knowledge it was original with the house, which was 17 years old when we moved in, so it's done its time. That was the one disappointment when we moved here--the plan was to swap the dishwasher out with the new one Mike had bought me about a year before we moved from the old house (2000). Well, the old house sold and closed fairly quickly and with his weird work schedule we just couldn't get it done. So. . .it was back to a loud and creaky dishwasher for the past eight years. But it worked. Oh well, it's the loss of a convenience but certainly not a necessity.

Some random thoughts from a Saturday morning of shopping:

--I stopped at a yard sale and a little boy was seated at a stand with a cooler next to him. I commented, "You're selling drinks, are you" and he immediately ran yelling to his brother, "We've got a customer! We've got a customer!" Well, I wasn't really thirsty but after that much excitement, how could I let the kid down?!!

--I stopped at another yard sale where some little girls were selling candy bars for a fundraiser. I asked them if I gave them a dollar, would they just take one of their candy bars and split it between them and eat it for me? Their eyes got wide as they solemnly nodded. The mother mouthed "Thank you" to me, and I remembered times people were kind to my children and how much I appreciated that kind of thing. As I walked back to the car, I could hear them whispering, "Which one should we get?" "Do you want M&M's or Snickers?" It was a feel-good moment.

--The Food Lion a stone's throw from our house is a nice little store - I like it - but some of their deals, designed to bring people in the store, are so good that I wonder how long they can stay in business. A produce manager said they're prepared to stick it out for five years even if they lose money. They sent me four weeks' worth of "spend $15, get $5 off, as well as another coupon for some various product each week. A couple of weeks ago it was for a free BBQ rotisserie chicken. Quite a free offer!

--Why do people not push their carts either back to the store or to the corrals in the parking lot? How many times have I tried to pull into a parking place only to see that the reason the space is empty is because a cart is right in the middle of it. It would be so simple to move it to the proper place. I remember as a child when you had to take the cart back to the store - there were no corrals. But it seems that the more conveniences that are provided for people, the less considerate they get.