Elgan speaks
...and her words thunder across the land

Exhaustion strikes

Saturday, May. 22, 2004
7:03 p.m.
Harri3tspy�s most recent entry has brought back a wonderful childhood memory. My father used to make icecream floats for us with Hires rootbeer and vanilla icecream. I loved watching the soda foam up over the icecream and partaking of one of those delicious desserts was a true treat. Thank you so much for that reminder. I am almost tempted to rush out and get the ingredients right now except that I have just had my dinner (hence I�m not hungry) and I�m totally exhausted.

This afternoon the man, the boy and the mom went shopping. Ladies, I do not recommend shopping with husbands, ever, especially in places like Costco. Firstly, they are oh so easily distracted by bright colours and electronic equipment. Secondly they don�t push the cart fast enough. Thirdly they make you buy things you would normally not even glance at. Finally Buddy Boy and I just left him drooling over some merchandise while we continued, aisle by aisle, loading the cart with the necessary items and scarfing down free samples whenever offered.

Another thing to avoid is Costco and the mall on Saturday afternoon. Both places were crawling with humanity. Hubby caught up with Buddy Boy and myself around the baked goods section, where I also (quite literally) bumped into Mr. Beattie the barber. He was out shopping with his wife, and we started up some good natured banter. When we finally parted ways, my husband said to me, �Why were you flirting with that fat guy?� It never occurred to me that the two had never met, and I had to explain who that �fat guy� was. We also saw a couple we know from the U (Hubby plays tennis and squash with her hubby) who got behind us in the checkout line, and I had to tell them this story because, of course, Hubby is the only person in L�ville who does not know Mr. Beattie the barber. His friend was quite surprised that he had never ever been to his shop.

At the mall we fought our way through dense crowds to buy Little Princess birthday-related items. Buddy Boy went upstairs to Accessorama to purchase some girlie item for her, but quickly came in search of me because he felt rather embarassed in that store alone among pubescent girls. He ended up buying her a studded belt (his sister is into Goth; don�t ask me why) and then we three proceeded through the throng to HMV, which has to be one of the most difficult places in the world to tear men away from.

On the way home I remembered quite suddenly that we had to buy booze, so Hubby made some quite illegal lane changes so that we could turn into the parking lot of the SAQ S�lection where the old bus station used to be. Lo, there was a sale: buy $100� worth of booze and get 10% off. We saved $17. Do your own math. One single-malt scotch, one blended scotch, one bottle of Crown Royal, one bottle of ouzo and one bottle of Italian strawberry liqueur were purchased. Why, you might ask? Because my friend Vlad and her husband are coming over tonight specifically so we can tie one on. I�ll explain later.

Anyway, to finish up this overly long trip in the car with husband and son which ended up taking all afternoon, we stopped at Le V�g�tarien where we bumped into our neighbour, shopping for both his family and another neighbour who broke her foot and is in a cast and unable to shop for herself. He was dragging around two shopping carts and had two shopping lists, and being a guy was extremely confused. So we left him to his task so as not to confuse him further with our idle chitchat. One final stop at the regular grocery store for chocolate cake making items, and we were finally on our way home.

After putting away the groceries I was so exhausted that I had to lie down, and ended up falling asleep for almost an hour. Now the living room has to be tidied, the cheeses taken out of the fridge, the crackers put on plates and the baguette sliced because Vlad and her hubby will be over in half an hour.

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