On The Town With Hillbilly Mom

HH and I did some last minute Christmas shopping today. My mom came out to stay with the boys, and we were in The Devil's Playground by 7:30. I had a list. HH did not. First cat out of the bag, he loaded up the cart with a 50-lb sack of dogfood, a large bag of salt to put down on ice, a medium sized pack of catfood, and some organic potting soil. Yeah! Christmas at the Mansion.

HH stuffed the stuff under the cart so we had more room inside for actual Christmas gifts. We were there for two hours. It was surprisingly uncrowded. My theory on this is threefold: people went to the city early, people are out of money, people like to sleep in on Saturdays. The organic potting soil was for The Pony's bean. They have been growing bean plants in class, and he brought home a bean of his own. We put in on a bed of wet paper towel in a red Solo cup, set it on the kitchen table, and promptly forgot about it for a week. Says how much we sit down to eat at the kitchen table. I checked on it to give it water on Thursday, and found that it had sprouted and grown half-way up the cup. The Pony was thrilled. Yesterday, it grew above the cup, and this morning it was WAY above the cup. It's a regular beanstalk. The 'organic' soil was purchased because it was the smallest bag they had. You can almost see that beanstalk growing if you watch it long enough.

I found everything on my list, and HH found many things to toss in the cart for his Number One Son's and The Veteran's kids. We were loading up on candy for stockings, and I said, "Shouldn't we put these in different sections, so we know whose is what?" HH declined. "We will remember when we get home." You know what that means. Once home, he said, "You need to look through those bags and see if you can remember what stuff I picked out." Yeah. I NEED TO. Puzzlingly enough, HH had selected 7 sets of Santa candy bracelets. There are only 4 girls. And 3 boys. I hope those little boys enjoy the candy jewelry. I divided up the big bags of stuff like Reeses and Hershey kisses, counting them out so each kid got the same amount. You know how kids are. They become expert counters when candy is at stake. Imagine my surprise when HH came up from the basement chewing on something. "What's that? What's in your mouth?" He stalled. "What? What do you mean, what's in my mouth?" That man exasperates me. "I mean, what are you eating?" By then it was swallowed. "Oh, just a 3 Musketeer. There was an extra." So what he's saying is...I can't count to 7. Some kid is going to have one less. I will point to the munchy Grinch.

I've barely touched on our little excursion. More tomorrow.