Laughing My ASS OFF!!!

So I follow a Blog Called Pioneer Woman and the woman is hilarious!! This is her latest post. Im SURE you all can relate to this one!!!




Yesterday Marlboro Man and I ran to the big city to shop for his mom and grandma, to pick up a couple of last-minute things for the kids, and to be alone together and have one-on-one conversation without our four precious children, our hungry, demanding cattle herd, or our two malodorous Basset Hounds needing something. And we didn’t “run” to the big city, we drove, which brings me to my point: part of the topic of conversation in Marlboro Man’s pickup was our new wintertime plan—which is to start today—of getting out of bed at 5:00 am so that we can spend an hour working out together before the kids get up and before Marlboro Man needs to go feed cattle. This conversation began after I spent ten minutes lamenting how jiggly I am after a summer and fall of cooking constantly for my cookbook, filming two seasons of a cooking show, and discovering the joys of semi-soft unripened cheeses.
“My jeans are tight, my back fat is violent…” I said. “And I’m at the point where I either need to buy bigger jeans or do something drastic.” So Marlboro Man calmly and without agreeing with my back fat lamentations, which is why I’ll keep him, laid out his prescription of early morning exercise, and committed to joining me in my new fitness regimen so I wouldn’t have to go it alone. Of course, he didn’t empathize much. He is chiseled out of granite and weighs the same as he did when he was seventeen. Not that I’m complaining. Granite’s my favorite.
Two-thirds of the way to the big city, I asked Marlboro Man to pull off the highway and stop at a very busy convenience store so that I could get some coffee. I’m nursing an upper respiratory infection and had been feeling a little draggy, plus the conversation about my getting up at five to work out for an hour really wore me out. So we both went into the convenience store: Marlboro Man headed to the refrigerated case to get a can (not a bottle, as bottles don’t taste right) of Dr Pepper and I headed to the coffee area to fill a large cup with the nectar of life.
It took me awhile to fill my cup because this particular convenience store has a beautiful run of coffee options. You can get French Roast, Columbia Roast, Breakfast Blend, Kona Blend…not to mention all sorts of little squirts of flavor and shots of different forms of cream. I want this coffee area in my house, is what I’m saying. So I stood there and decanted, squirted and decanted some more until I had a great big ol’ cup of beautiful convenience store coffee that was likely extremely caloric but I only had one more day before my new exercise program so I figured I’d go out with a bang.
I headed toward the register. I could see Marlboro Man standing there waiting for me so he could pay for his Dr Pepper and my coffee together because he’s chivalrous that way, and because he has never known me to have a single dollar of cash on my person. The store was packed with other patrons, because it’s a choice location on a busy highway and because it’s an incredibly nice convenience store that offers many coffee choices, many wiener/hot dog choices…and doughnuts. Along my journey to the front of the store, I passed the very large, very impressive and beautiful glass doughnut case and was accosted by a very large, very crisp-and-sweet-looking apple fritter on the top shelf. It tapped me on the shoulder, then it reached out its long, evil fingers and said “Come…come to me.”
Without thinking, I removed an individual square of paper from the dispenser and reached for the knob of the window that was separating me from the apple fritter. I say without thinking because I somehow had completely pushed the entire conversation I’d just had with Marlboro Man about my back fat out of my consciousness. Or if it was at all in my consciousness, I must have rationalized it by reminding myself that I only had one more day to party before my 5 a.m. boot camp began, or even that apple fritters are actually a healthy doughnut option. They have fruit in them, after all.
I pulled the knob to the right, thinking the door would slide to open, but it met with a tiny bit of resistance. I had Christmas shopping on my mind—what size top I should get Edna Mae and how I wanted to find a perfume counter and sniff all the men’s cologne—so I inexplicably pulled backward on the knob, possibly thinking that the door opened by flipping up rather than sliding over. Then, suddenly, a horrible sound crashed through the heavily trafficked convenience store when the entire tempered glass front of the beautiful doughnut case shattered into thirteen million tiny, sparkly pieces. The sound was deafening and seemed to happen in slow motion, as if a house of glass sitting on a frozen lake had fallen down wall by wall. I stood there in shock, not knowing what to do. Glass was everywhere: in the doughnuts, on the floor, in the adjacent sandwich case, in my boots, into which I’d tucked my jeans. And the small stainless knob was still in my hand.
Customers ran over to see what had happened, my husband among them. And when he saw me standing there in the middle of a sea of tempered glass, a small knob in my hand, the now-exposed array of doughnuts right in front of me, and a look of horror and confusion on my face, he had but two questions for me:
“Are you okay?
“Yes.”
“What happened?”
“I wanted a doughnut.”
By now the manager, assistant manager, cashier, assistant cashier, and probably all their friends and relatives had rushed over to the scene. The manager wanted to first make sure I was okay.
“Ma’am, are you okay?” the nice gentleman said. “You’re not hurt, are you?”
Still holding the knob, I answered, “Yes. My pride is hurt. It is badly, badly injured.”
But other than that, I told him, I was totally fine, and may I please borrow a broom and a shop vac so I can whisk all this away and pretend it never happened? I noticed a woman out of the corner of my eye. She had her hand over her mouth.
“Oh, we’ll take care of it,” the manager said. “I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.”
“I’m absolutely fine,” I insisted. “I am so, so sorry. I don’t know what happened. One minute I was reaching for an apple fritter…the next minute…” I shook my head in disbelief.
“It’s perfectly okay, ma’am,” he reassured me. “This has actually happened once before.”
I immediately felt better. I’m not the only person who’d shattered the doughnut case at this convenience store. All was suddenly better now. But then I did something I can’t explain. I instinctively began reaching for the apple fritter. I don’t think I actually had any control over this action. I didn’t logically believe I should get the apple fritter; I think it was a desperate attempt to just carry on and pretend the whole thing hadn’t happened. Or maybe I really just wanted a doughnut.
That’s when the assistant manager stepped in. “Oh, ma’am…you can’t have a doughnut now,” she said.
I know she was just trying to protect my gastrointestinal tract from glass shards, but at the time she said it I felt like a little girl who had just been grounded from round, delightful yeast treats. It took me a minute to realize she was just gently reminding me not to hurt myself. My face felt hot.
After several minutes of offering to help clean up and insisting on paying for the broken glass and trying to figure out what country I was going to move to once I left the store, I finally made my way to the counter so that Marlboro Man could finally pay for my coffee. But when we got there, the cashier held up his hand and said, “Don’t worry about it—no charge.” I think he wanted me to leave as soon as humanly possible.
When we got in Marlboro Man’s pickup and continued on our trip to the big city, I looked at Marlboro Man, who had a look on his face that I’ll never be able to describe. It was the look of a husband who is married to a complete klutz who complains about her tight jeans then stops at a convenience store and shatters a doughnut case while trying to retrieve an apple fritter. It was the look of a husband who has seen his wife fall down, run into doors, use the wrong remote control to change channels on the TV, and wear her black leggings inside out for an entire day without knowing. It was the look of a husband who had just filed another incident into his vault of similar moments…and who couldn’t wait to remind me of it the next time we’re driving together and I say I want to pull over and get coffee.
“You’re…funny,” he said, reaching over and squeezing my knee, which made me squeal.
Then we continued to the city and went Christmas shopping.
As for lessons I learned from this incident, I took away two:
1. That’s what I get for trying to eat a doughnut.
2. I’m never leaving the house again.
I hope you all have a joyful day. Merry Christmas Eve Eve!
Pioneer Woman