Last Monday I had to make two trips to Walmart instead of one (by the way, I’m thinking of turning this into a Walmart blog, since all my posts seem to be about going there) because I somehow made it home without the lunch meat I specifically remember selecting from the refrigerated case and putting in my grocery cart.  No idea what happened to it; I checked my receipt and didn’t pay for turkey breast.  Possibly it stayed in my cart and rotted in the heat until some poor cart-collector found it.

This week, I was leaving Walmart when a voice called, “Ma’am!  Excuse me, Ma’am!”  I turned around to see my cashier chasing me down, waving what appeared to be a packet of seasoning.  “This is yours, Ma’am, you forgot it!”  I thanked her, thinking it was my fajita seasoning, and glad I wasn’t going to have a repeat of last week’s two Walmart trips.

Except that it wasn’t fajita seasoning.  It was buffalo wing seasoning.  Which the cashier insisted I keep, even though I insisted it wasn’t mine.  Maybe I paid for it; I didn’t care enough to check my receipt.

The point of the story:  last week I didn’t get all my groceries, and this week I got extra groceries.  It all evened out.

This wasn’t my only experience this week of situations evening each other out.

Also last Monday at Walmart, I was the victim of parking lot theft.  As in, someone whipped through a row, going the wrong direction, and stole the parking space into which I was just about to turn.  I was incensed!  How could someone be so rude — and to a lady with a baby in the car?!

Later that same shopping trip, I was having some difficulty unpacking my cart to pay for my groceries while holding a Burt Squirt who did not want to be in his carrier.  The man ahead of me in line noticed my struggle and then proceeded to unload my entire cart for me.  (Possibly this explains the lunch meat going AWOL.)

But see what happened?  Someone was rude to me, then someone was extremely kind to me.  It all evened out.

This of course reminds me of the Seinfeld episode “The Opposite” (quite possibly my favorite episode), in which George was down but goes up (by doing the opposite of his instincts), Elaine was up but goes down (thanks to Jujyfruits), and Kramer dubs Jerry “Even Steven” (because he loses a gig and then gets a gig).

That’s me!

(If only blogging about Walmart would reveal my comedic genius and lead to my becoming fabulously wealthy like Mr. Seinfeld.)

It was your average visit to the zoo, and the flamingos were doing average flamingo things:

standing around as a flock…

…sleeping as a flock…

…preening as a flock.

Except for this guy, who was either too cool, or not cool enough, to stand, sleep, or preen with the flock. In either case, he was a people flamingo, hanging out by the fence letting zoo visitors view him up close and personal. More likely, he wanted to view the zoo visitors up close and personal.

So I impulsively decided to oblige him and at the same time pose for a picture with the friendly flamingo. Because how many people have pictures of themselves with flamingos?

If I look less than thrilled to be one of the few people to be photographed with a flamingo, that’s because as soon as he turned toward me, I realized how big he was. And not just height-wise (note how he’s as tall as me). I’m talking about his beak. I never realized how big a flamingo beak was. Or how it was lined with little points, like a saw blade. I had visions of him leaning over and chomping me. Mr. Burt could not snap that pic quickly enough for my comfort, and as soon as he did, I dashed away from the fence.

I guess I can write “flamingos” on my list of weird phobias, between “car carriers” and “heights, other people doing them.”

The summer after my freshman year of college, I worked at a department store in the podunk mall in my home town, which reinforced my drive to earn my college degree so I could get a better job than a sales associate.  Like a housewife.  It wasn’t hard work per say, but it should have been a lot easier.  For example, there was no reason, in the twenty-first century, that we should have had to memorize all the sale prices and ring them up manually, when every other department store in the world had computerized registers.  Nor should we have had to do mark-downs by writing new prices on tags with pens because we didn’t have price guns.  Those issues had, thankfully, been resolved by December when I returned for a few weeks’ holiday work, but there was no technological answer to the problem of Senior Day.

The first Tuesday of every month, any shopper age 55 or over got a 10% discount on their purchases.  No big deal, right?  Just a simple matter of watching for the ladies with gray perms shopping in the Alfred Dunner section.

Except that those shoppers were typically 65 or over.  “Senior” does not necessarily equal “elderly.”  Those 55 year-olds can be tricky.  So can the 45 year-olds, for that matter.  I mean, the purpose of the senior discount is to drive up sales, not to drive it away with some hapless sales associate asking a 45 year-old if she qualifies for the senior discount because she looks like she might be 55.

After mortifying a few shoppers (not to mention myself) with such social missteps, I adopted a new strategy.  To each customer of indiscernible age, I’d ask,  “I’m not implying anything about your age, but I just want to make sure anyone who qualifies for our discount today gets it.  Are you 55 or over?”  Most often, if anyone was under 55, they’d say, “Oh, I wish I was 55 so I could get that discount!”  (Should have lied!  I’d have been nonethewiser!)

Still, I found the whole thing immensely stressful, as I’m sure current Belk employees do.  Lucky for them, some clever entrepreneur has arrived at the solution to all their age woes:

Frugally fashionable?  Or fashionably frugal?  Look out, Mom and Dad, Tim and Renee; you know what I’m getting you for your birthdays this year!

One does have to wonder:  where are the “thousands of seniors” this ad claims wear the Senior Discount Cap.  I’ve never seen anyone in one.  Have you?

Last night, for the first time in my life, I watched the Miss America Pageant.  It was TK’s idea.  I never expected her to be the Miss America watching type, so I agreed to watch with her because I was completely blindsided by the suggestion.  (Okay – I admit it; I’ve been watching way too much TV lately as I try to keep off my feet, and had seen enough commercials on TLC for the pageant to be just the teensiest bit curious about it.)  As it turns out, not only does TK watch the pageant, she does her homework and researches the contestants.  I plopped down beside her on the big leather sofa in her living room and she showed me the Word document where she’d ranked her top fifteen contestants to compare with the judges’ semifinalist picks.  (If she were a true fan, she’d have made an Excel spreadsheet.)

Before the show started, while we were waiting for our husbands to bring back pizza, we were checking out the contestant profiles online. Amusingly, their profiles included a favorite recipe, thus disabusing pageant skeptics of the notion that Miss America contestants are averse to eating.  Most chose something unique to her state — Miss Ohio’s was Buckeyes (or at least a recipe called Buckeyes, if not actual buckeyes),  Miss New Mexico (unfortunately named Nicole Miner — just say that aloud) chose Green Chili Chicken Enchiladas, Miss Mississippi chose Fried Catfish. (Miss Minnesota, wisely, avoided Lutefisk.)

Miss North Dakota’s recipe?

Baked Potatoes.

Incredulous, we clicked the link, thinking it must be something fancier than “poke holes in potato, throw in oven, leave for an hour, then serve with butter, cheese, and sour cream.” Alas, that was pretty much exactly what her recipe said.

I have to believe this recipe had an impact on the fact that Miss North Dakota was not among the final fifteen semifinalists. If only she’d been Miss Idaho — then a baked potato recipe would have at least been funny (in the way a Miss America contestant wants to be funny).

We’re having a family game night here in the Burt house, and I’m composing this post as I wait for Mr. Burt to make his third move in our Scrabble game.  Which began just about two hours ago.  (Oh!  He actually played!  And now I have quickly spelled my fourth word, so am now waiting on him to spell his fourth word.)

Though I’ve been playing Scrabble continuously for about three years with friends on Facebook, it’s been almost that long since I’ve played a game of actual Scrabble with my husband.  I’d forgotten what it’s like to sit and wait in real time for an opponent to make a move.  And Mr. Burt is, perhaps, the most agonizingly slow Scrabble player who ever lived.  He cannot be satisfied unless he lays down a high-point letter on a double or triple letter score tile and gets a double or triple word score, too.  Hence, four moves in two hours. Sounds boring, doesn’t it?  You’d be surprised.  There’s never a dull moment when the conversations go like this:

Mr. Burt:  “Is xenit a word?”

LR:  “No.”

Mr. Burt:  “It seems like it should be.”

LR:  “Why, because you want it to be a word?”

Mr. Burt:  “Look it up.”

Mind you, the whole time Mr. Burt was going on about xenit and axetin and xarent and tintax and a number of other made-up words, not all of which were appropriate for all audiences, he could have played extra, for a respectable twenty points.  After about forty minutes had elapsed in his turn, I finally cried out, in exasperation, “Just settle for extra already!”

To which Mr. Burt replied, “I’m not going to settle.”

“You have to settle!” I retorted.   “Sometimes you have no choice but to settle!”

Mr. Burt maintained his cool.  “I never settle.  How would you have liked it if I’d just settled for some ugly girl at Baylor?  But I didn’t settle, I waited, and I found you.”

I suppose I ought to have been melted by this, but despite my love of BBC costume dramas, I’m not particularly romantic.  “You didn’t find me.  I found you on that stupid college dating website you’d forgotten all about!  I contacted you!”

Mr. Burt sheepishly laid down extra and took his twenty points.

Actually, that is a lie.  Mr. Burt realized that if he played extra, it would leave a double word score and a triple word score square open for me.  So he played rex.  (Which, interestingly, in addition to a king, also means “an animal with a single wavy layer of hair.”)