Catching Flies With Honey

Gotcha! I'm not really catching flies. Flies are nasty. They crawl around on poop and then want to crawl around on my lips as I'm nodding off in my recliner. Not that my Mansion is filled with flies. A stray gets in every now and then, what with all the traipsing back and forth to check on those infernal chickens. M-O-O-N. That spells flies should be swatted as soon as they are seen, and killed DEAD DEAD DEAD! Don't you go worrying about the extinction of flies. For every one that you kill, another eleventy billion will take his place. You're doing flies a favor, actually, by providing those still living with less competition for those fly real estate tracts of food on which to land, rub their hairy little paws together, and vomit upon. Oh, and what a waste of perfectly good honey that would be, too. Honey is delicious. Did you know it has different tastes depending on which plant the bees were pollinating? It's true. Mmm...honey. You can put your honey in a little clear plastic honey bear and squeeze his belly when you want honey. They are OH SO CUTE, as well as tasty.

No, I'm not talking about catching actual flies with actual honey. I'm talking about my adventure trying to buy a Papa John's pizza for my boys after their first day of school yesterday. It was an adventure in futility. After school, we made our weekly trip to the bank, where we avoid the tellers who think they are Miss Manners and choose instead the nonjudgmental cash machine. Upon leaving the bank, I tried to phone in a pizza order. We had to stop by The Devil's Playground anyway so the #1 son could buy some recordable DVDs. This call would give us just enough time to drive to The Devil and pick up that $5.00 large cheese pizza. Or so I thought. The Papa answered the phone and immediately said, "Please hold." I did. For five freakin' minutes. #1 told me to hang up and call back. I did. Same thing. After another minute on hold, I hung up. I tried one more time. Same thing. Keep in mind that I was driving at the speed of legal toward The Devil's Playground this whole time. So it reached the point where we were saving no time by calling in a pizza.

I parked. I sighed. I rounded up The Pony and herded him into Papa John's. I was not a happy camper. I was incensed. How dare they keep putting me on hold! There were only two customers in the whole store. One was already eating. Why did I have to be put on hold? I was ready to have a little snit fit over the holding issue. But I changed my tune. Perhaps because I'd had such a great first day of school.

Papa came to the counter, and I asked if he still had the $5 one-topping large pizza. "No. We are waiting on a shipment of dough. People have been buying us out of the $5 pizza. We get shipments twice a week." So I asked him how much a medium pan cheese pizza would cost. "We don't make a medium pan pizza. Only large. That would be $11." The Pony, who loves pizza more than he loves math, said optimistically, "That's only about two dollars more, Mom." I pretended he had just made a careless error. "No. That's more than TWICE as much." I looked at Papa. "OK, we'll take one." I can't deny The Pony his pizza. Papa fiddled with the register. "Tell you what. I can give it to you for $7.04." I handed him a ten. "I've got the change," said Papa, as he handed me back three ones. Oh, but that's not all.

The Pony and I sat down to wait. The plan was to go get two sodas from The Devil's cooler when the pizza was ready. Because I thought they would be cheaper than those in Papa's cooler. When the pizza was ready, we called #1 back up front, away from the $450 cameras he was browsing. I told The Pony to go get in the first line and get the two sodas. Papa carried out our pizza box, just in time to hear The Pony say, "Why don't we just get our sodas here?" I told him OK, to go get them, and I told Papa, "We are also getting two sodas." The Pony carried a Sprite and a Coke toward me. I put my hand in my pocket and pulled out my money, and started to walk toward the counter. Papa frowned. He shook his head. He shooed us out the door.

A large cheese pizza and two 20 oz. sodas for $7.00. That's cheaper than the $5 deal we usually get. It must be karma.