Groceries and all.

Was about to make the turn and head back toward the house--I was figuring on making a quick run to Food World at the foot of the hill. “Where’re you going?”

“Grocery store?”

“We’re going to Sam’s.”

“Ah.”

Sam’s. With four kids. And a large grocery list. And no grocery bags. “I was thinking--well, you know, they don’t have anything to carry…” Best not to finish that thought, mister.

Sam’s, park, unload, enter, grab two buggies (what Northerners quaintly call “shopping carts”), and then go pee. Of course. After the pit stop, on then to go shopping--Boy and I were tasked with finding canned and boxed goods and detergent. That was fine--I like being around Boy, because he’s actually a good helper and doesn’t wander off.

And it allows me to show him how to shop like a man--get what’s on the list, and get the cheapest unit price you can find. Don’t agonize over whether the oregano and polished glass shards spaghetti sauce is better than the roasted toenail and pesto--just get some plain old spaghetti sauce and GO!

Finished up in about an hour by wrestling the 500 pound box of Gain detergent into the cart, and found the girls charging toward us with a stack of food, mostly of the “wow, that looks like it would be good if it was served in a restaurant” variety, although, thankfully, enough of the ‘just plain old food that requires preparation’ so that we can actually afford to eat some of it.

Paid, and then tried to get it in the van without any boxes or bags. This worked about as well as anyone could have predicted.

Home, and tried to set up a hand-to-hand brigade with Reba at the van, me at the deep freezer, and the kids arrayed in the middle. This worked about as well as anyone could have predicted.

They never did really ever figure out the intent of the line was to facilitate the moving of rapidly-thawing stuff from the back of van to the freezer QUICKLY. There was much dispute about line order--oldest to youngest? Tallest to shortest? A honor roll to A-B honor roll? There were the findings about who got to hand what to whom, and how much each thing weighed, and why hamburgers aren’t made with ham, and gales of laughter when someone exerted her little tiny self a bit too much and popped out a raucous pants-ripping, thunder from down under. ::sigh::

Finally got everything stowed in the freezer, then moved to all the stuff that had been carefully thrown all over the kitchen floor. Pantry well stocked, time for laundry.

Launder, launder, launder. And while this went on, I put away some of the stockings, and then thought I might put all the pictures we’d taken with my new digital camera onto the computer. Much easier than I ever thought it would be, which means you can expect to be assaulted with more photographic ephemera of my life--maybe even by tomorrow! I brought my camera with me today, and took some pictures around here and on my way to lunch. It might be good, or not.

Baths and hair-washing for everyone, more clothes folding, Oldest finished her report (that I would be responsible for typing) and at some time toward the late evening I collapsed and went to sleep.

Sunday, up, breakfast, get all the classbooks and Bibles out to the van, get wife and kids to van, learn that Ashley is also supposed to bring some sort of Greek food product for her presentation today, on to Sunday school, taught the 3rd-6th graders (a pretty good group, two of whom belong to me), preaching, then some sort of indeterminate time afterwards when we didn’t know if we’d be staying or going home to eat, decided to go home after everyone else had left, and made the decision that Reba would stay home and study and I would take Bec to the other side of the county for her Bible Bowl meet. Reba was still quite agitated that she had not studied enough (despite the fact that she allowed herself to become distracted in doing things she could just as easily allowed someone else named Terry to do) so she really needed just to calm down and not worry about going anywhere.

Got home and noticed that in our haste to leave in the morning, I had neglected to lower the garage door. We usually park on the driveway facing the house, but with the unloading strategy I had used Saturday, I had backed in for ease of operation. And so, when we left, I blithely drove away, not looking back, and not realizing I had left it up. Sadly, upon our return, none of the junk in the garage or house had been stolen.

Between lunch and time to leave with Rebecca, I was informed that someone wanted to know if we had anything with Greek letters on it that someone could copy and use to spell Alpha tau alpha lambda alpha nu tau alpha. [Hey, what can I say--Blogger hates Greek text--I tried to get it to work, but it won't.] Computer to the rescue. I printed that out, and then set in on transcribing the words of the report, judiciously applying some editation to them so they would make sense to someone other than a 14 year old girl.

Didn’t get finished, but had to leave to get to my old stomping grounds side of town before 2:00. Hopped in the Focus with Middle Girl, and drove like a madman the 26.4 miles from Trussville to Adamsville in 30 minutes flat. Sadly, none of our teams won this time. Oh well. Back to home at a bit more sedate pace, stopping by to show Rebecca the house I used to live in (long since converted to a lawyer’s office) and the school where I attended (long since sold off to a church). ::sigh::

Home, put stuff away, gathered everyone up and headed back to church, got to lead singing--I had picked out songs that I thought would go with the text, only to find out the text had changed (oh well)--then on home, finished the Atalanta discourse, printed it out and gave it to Ashley to stick on the board, had supper, and then, “MOM! What are you going to fix for me to take tomorrow?”

Oh, that was JUST the thing to say.

More consternation and put-uponness for Reba, and much ignoring of the tribulation by Oldest, who ran over to the cookbook rack and started poring through a Greek cookbook, coming up with everything under the sun, none of which required anything LESS than two hours to fix.

More growling. “Reba, don’t worry. I’ll go to the store and get something.” She had found some spanakopita the other day at Target, but it only served six, and Oldest has thirty people in her class, and it would have to be hot, and it was just a non-starter of an idea to begin with, which I thought would be rather obvious.

“Don’t worry about that stuff.”

We put away the supper plates and I sent the kids to get ready for bed (it being after 9:00 and all) and had just dumped a sack of trash into the big can in the garage when I turned around and was met by Oldest--“CAN I GO WITH YOU!?”

Er. No. “No, sugar, you just need to finish your project and go to bed. It’s late. And you need your sleep. Don’t worry, I’m going to make you some Greek appetizers!” She couldn’t see it, but in my mind, I was making quote marks around “Greek.”

On to the store, with the idea in my head of something cheap. Found a block of feta that went out of date today--regularly 5 bucks, it was marked down to 99 cents--some imported-from-Greece calamata olives, some imported-from-Greece Greek peppers, and some little made-in-America precooked phylo cups.

Home, sliced peppers into rings, pitted and sliced olives, sliced feta into quarter inch chunks and placed in phylo cups and garnished with pepper ring and olive slice. Just like in Athens! (Athens, Alabama, maybe, but I am not one to quibble over mere geography.)

I’ll see when I get home how these went over, although I did tell her to tell the rest of her 14 year old [goofball] class members that these weren’t candy, and if they didn’t like real, grown-up food, and were too immature to eat it without saying anything about the fact that olives are salty, NOT to get any of it.

For some reason, I get the image of them throwing it all over the place. Anyway, we’ll see.

Anyway, that’s what I did this weekend.
posted by Terry at 3:51:00 PM