The Devil's Dance Card Is Full

I think I finished my Christmas shopping today.

The Devil was his old cantankerous self this afternoon. I surely do not make it a habit to shop on Saturday afternoons, but I've been iced in since Wednesday evening. I had to make a run to the bank for a couple of deposits, then backtrack to drop the boys off for their bowling league, then backtrack again to visit The Devil. It was 12:15 when I entered, 1:37 when I got into the checkout line, and 1:53 when I wheeled my cart around a passel of kids clogging the exit door.

Of course The Devil was fresh out of foil 9 x 13 cake pans, lined leather gloves, Simpsons pajama pants, St. Louis Blues hats, and the new release of Avatar. So if anybody reading this was counting on those items as a gift, stop counting your chickens, because they ain't hatchin'. I was lucky to snag the last two Pillsbury Classic Vanilla Frosting tubs from the back of the shelf. Some genius restocked, and instead of putting cake mixes together and frosting tubs together, as they've been located in the past, ever since The Devil was a pup, he put different frostings beside different cake mixes. For example, if you were baking a vanilla cake, then you could grab the vanilla frosting right next to it. Just like The Devil to assume everybody uses the same frosting on the same cake.

At The Devil's Playground, you're always sixth in line. Remember that advertising slogan? Yeah. Me neither. Silly old Mrs. Hillbilly Mom expected to be next in line. But that would only have sped up the pace of her slow burn at The Devil's Handmaiden who rang up and bagged her merchandise. How thoughtful of The Handmaiden to separate the cold items which I had stacked in one pile, expecting them to huddle together in a single thin plastic bag. Nope. Milk had to bag with the Pringles, french toast sticks rode with the crackers and non-stick coating spray, and the eggs shacked up with two loaves of bread.

Yes, I bought eggs, because we had only been finding one egg a day, until Pluckin H discovered his chickens' secret stash in the old henhouse, the one with the ramp for the very special chicken who is no longer with us, the one who didn't know how to hop up into the house, the one we should have named Just Pat, because we never figured out if it was a hen or a rooster. Or a chicken, as Frank Costanza might have wondered. Anyhoo, Pluckin H found 24 eggs Wednesday evening, but he tossed them all, because we don't know how long they had been there, and even though the frigid temperatures probably preserved them, they must have been frozen for a couple days, so we jettisoned the newfound hen fruit.

We won't even dwell on The Handmaiden's problem with classification, as she could not group all shapes or temperatures or even like colors together. There's a method to my madness of piling merchandise together on the conveyor. It means I want those items bagged together!!! I do not want my frosting tubs rolling around with my cake boxes. They don't fit together in a plastic bag.

Now the slow burn is starting again, and I'm not in the mood to tell you about Zamboni Driver H's icy adventure. Maybe tomorrow.

To bring back my Zen moment, let's talk about my big bargain online about an hour ago. Faceoff Fanatics has 3-day shipping for $4.99. And to make it even better, there's a code for FREE 3-day shipping on orders over $50. Can't beat that with a stick, when other sites are charging $27.99 for expedited shipping.

Om...