Maxine

Welcome to another Monday. I wish it was Sunday, 'Cause that's my funday, My I don't have to runday, It's just another manic Monday. Thanks to the Bangles for that little uplifting ditty. This weekend went by pretty quickly. But it was not without its charming moments.

Friday I went to lunch with the family. Always a good time. It actually wasn’t too bad. We dined at Chez Cici’s. The kids love it and I can tolerate it. Then we took the girls to their knitting class. We left them there despite my protests so they could watch the premiere of High School Musical 2. If you don’t know what this is, thank your lucky stars. I have known about this phenomenon for a while now, but I have been avoiding it. The kids were none the wiser. But our great friends, the Hawkmen, from North Carolina subjected my children to the soundtrack from the first movie on a recent trip. They can’t stop singing the songs. So when their friends invited them over to watch the new movie, they were soooo excited. Being the good father I am, I rented the first movie for them and let them watch the second that night. Now they sing the songs and talk about the movies. Thanks again Mrs. Hawkman.

Saturday I took the wife out for her birthday. Now us getting out of the house alone is a rare occasion. So it wasn’t a very glamorous day but it was a day without the kids so it made it all the better. My parents watched the children. They even brought us a new trampoline. Now we had two trampolines already but they were looking a little haggard or so my pops said. We took down one of them and took it to the dump so we could add the new one. So the birthday date went like this. We stopped at the dump to get rid of the trampoline. She dropped me off at the barber to get a haircut while she ran to the bank. We dined at the Bonefish. Good food. Then I went to Costco while she stopped by a store in the mall.

I am tooling around Costco, just loading up my cart when it hit me. Obviously the Wolf Fish went right through me. I phoned the wife and she is on the way. I didn’t want to just leave the cart. So another minute or two elapses. I make a dash toward the front of the store since wifey has not arrived. I find her leisurely perusing the baby clothes. Obviously she did not detect the urgency in my voice over the phone. I thrust the cart at her and trot to the facilities. My business doesn’t take long but I am amused by another stall mate. I hear a constant cycle of heavy breathing followed by a flush and frantic wiping. This cycle is repeated over and over. I left the man in there but I hope he made it out alive. I am glad I didn’t dine with him.

Soon after this all time stands still. We load all the groceries into the vehicle and head home. But wifey suggests we stop at Walmart to get a few things we couldn’t get at Costco. We shop and fill up a cart. I make my way to the registers while wifey picks up some peaches. I choose lane 18 and Maxine.

Maxine is an older woman, but she has one of the shortest lines. There is a woman almost done checking out and two full carts behind her accompanied by six illegals. Now I am not POSITIVE they are illegals but they didn’t speak Ingles and they all carried large wads of cash, must probably because they had no bank accounts. So FIFTY MINUTES later, we are done checking out. FIFTY MINUTES. I thought I fell into some kind of time warp. It was the most horrible hour of my life. Maxine moved below snail speed. Once we finally got to the register, I could see the method to her madness. She was there for her work shift and she was going to get paid regardless how slow she was. She was deliberate with her actions. She once dropped a bottle of Worchester sauce on the scanner. She picked it up and caressed it and scanned it to make sure she had not broken it. She commented on purchases. She put one or two items in each bag, not to overcrowd. She would wet her fingers on a wetnap before she attempted to open each plastic bag. She would spend a good ten seconds on each attempted opening of plastic bags. She was the slowest human ever. If she was any slower, she would have moved backwards. So we are almost done and the wife, for some unexplained reason, busts out a coupon. One coupon. Almost two hundred bucks worth of crap in the cart and she busts out a coupon. A dollar coupon. Maxine has to find the items in the cart. ARE YOU KIDDING ME??? I had to leave. I walked across the isle and chatted up the people at the new WoodForest Bank. One of them was playing Guitar Hero. So after five minutes of scanning the bags for the cereal, we were allowed to leave. FIFTY MINUTES IN LINE. It kind of sucked the life right out of me. We went back home and the parents ran for the hills and their freedom.

Yesterday I got a two hour nap while the baby was asleep. The kids did some stuff during that time. What they did? Who knows. Who cares. I was asleep for TWO HOURS. Heck they could have gone to Walmart and checked out on lane 18 TWICE during that time.

One last note. On the way to town we passed the nursing home and saw an old couple in wheelchairs rolled out into the parking lot, taking in the breeze and watching the traffic on the main thoroughfare. It was romantic and cute. On the way home, the same couple was still there in the same spot. Obviously the same spot since they can’t move. It was no longer romantic and cute but sad. And it was getting dark. Hopefully they hadn’t forgot about them. Hopefully Maxine isn’t responsible for putting them back inside.