Shopping With My Father-In-Law, or A Quaint Afternoon In Hell

Ah, shopping with my father-in-law. If it's not a trip out to Home Depot to test the physical limits of a Dodge Caravan, it's a rice run to Chinatown. Whatever it is, it's always an adventure.



Every weekend we have a father (in-law) and son trip to the grocery store. That is a weekly treat in itself. My FIL has gifts. Skilz. And they are mad. Imagine you are in the meat section, a meat section full of every cut of meat possible from an entire herd of cattle. Imagine one of those thousands upon thousands of packages of meat is broken open and leaking blood. This is the package my FIL will choose. It doesn't matter if it's buried under a literal tonne of meat. It doesn't matter if it's still in the back and hasn't been brought out yet. Hell, it doesn't matter if it hasn't actually been wrapped up yet and put out on display. If it hasn't, if it will be wrapped shortly and fate has determined it will fall to the ground or be crushed under something else causing a tear in the cellophane, my father-in-law will wait for it. His senses are that good.

Beef, pork, poultry or seafood, he will find it. On a good day he'll find more than one. His other ability, which I believe to be supernatural, is to choose a broken package that I will not notice until I'm picking it up to give to the cashier. Why just get blood over the rest of the groceries when you can get it all over your son-in-law's hands? The show stopper though? Bones. Bones are much better because not only do they cause the container (I'm trying to stop writing package. Did you read Steenky yesterday?) to break, but they also stab your son-in-law! I love that. LOVE IT! Wondering what kind of bovine, porcine... um... chicken or fish disease is coursing through my veins as I empty the rest of the cart warms my heart. Or maybe that's the poison?

Last weekend was a trip to Chinatown for rice. Now for all my non-Asian readers, when an Asian family buys rice, it's not a family sized box of Rice-a-Roni. We're talking 50lb bags. Bags plural. My father-in-law likes to tell me about these trips at the last possible moment so I have no time to prepare, either mentally or with an excuse. Joking! I'd never make up an excuse. Honest.

Driving in Chinatown. How does one describe it? The throngs of pedestrians, the stream of cars fighting for non-existent parking, delivery trucks parked in the middle of the street, rabid sea gulls and pigeons, old men with cleavers hollering at you in Cantonese to buy something that, quite frankly, frightens the hell out of you. Oh, and those fifty pound bags of rice? They don't walk themselves to your car so you need one of those non-existent parking spots. (Ok, that's stretching it a bit, they will carry the rice to your car on a dolly, but it kind of spoils the story.) Imagine drinking a six-pack of Red Bull and then playing Need for Speed on your Xbox. Kinda like that. And then your father-in-law mentions, oh ya, heh heh, it's Chinese New Year next week. Ya. It's kinda like that.

Shopping

Storm Trooper 1: What did you think of the red ones?

Storm Trooper 2: I liked them, but when would you ever wear them?

Storm Trooper 1: If my transfer goes through to the Imperial Guards they would totally work with the new uniform.

Storm Trooper 2: Want to go back and get them?

Storm Trooper 1: Let's look around some more, I'll think about it.

Overheard At Canadian Tire

(If you're not from Canada, think big-box retailer that sells everything but started out selling car parts)

Saturday afternoon we were out shopping for... everything. I had the boys in a cart and was headed towards the check out when I passed another father with his three kids. As we passed I heard him muttering "...and if your mom had her cell phone turned on, we'd be able to find her in here, but of course..."

I feel your pain brother.

Twenty minutes later after relating this to Bern...

"Where's Mommy?"

"She's buying some food with Liam. We're going to go get the pictures Daddy had developed."

Daddy stops, realizing he doesn't have his wallet.

Quietly, "Shit shit shit."

Equally quietly but in a 4 year old voice, "Shit shit shit."

You'd think I'd learn. Then it's back to the grocery store to find Mommy and Liam. She's already disappeared so I pull out my cell. You know what happens next...

Where's The Wii?

We decided to get a Nintendo Wii for the boys this Christmas. They love video games but Dad's Xbox is a little too gratuitously violent for their young and impressionable minds. The Wii has lots of children related games and is a lot more interactive than other systems. Don't get me wrong, we're not trying to raise couch sloths here, but the kids need something to do during the day. It started raining on the September long weekend and it won't stop until May. There's only so much they can do outside in this weather.

Anyway, just try finding a Wii right now. I've checked all the flyers for Future Shop, Bestbuy, Walmart yadda yadda yadda, nobody has them. They have the games and various controllers but not the actual system. Even the online stores don't have them. You can order them off Amazon but they're starting at $100 more than their normal price, and you have to wait.

So yes, I have well over a month before Christmas, but you know what's going to happen. Nintendo is probably sitting on tonnes of them but they're going to hold off until December before dumping them back on the market so they can build up media hype. Thanks bastards. I really want to be one of those suckers fighting Xmas traffic, parking lots and last minute hype shoppers. November the 7th and I'm already feeling the spirit of Christmas. : P

Madre de Dios!

Sure it's all smiles and giggles in this shot, but what the image doesn't show you are the tracks of fat alligator tears down Liam's face. The snot on Mommy's sleeve because we didn't have any kleenex. How is it that shopping for a new pair of shoes is more traumatic than getting a needle at the doctor's office? What's the deal with that? The wailing and ululations could be heard across the mall. Probably from the parking lot. And why? Because Daddy changed Liam's pair of size 6 and a half shoes to size six to see how they fit. Not to a different pair of shoes or anything, but the exact same shoe. You'd have thought I'd taken his stuffed frog away and lit it on fire in front of him. He got his 6 1/2's back. Couldn't put him down to put them back on because of the emotional stress we'd put him through so he had to clutch them to his chest instead. Then it all started up again when the sales girl had to take them away to ring them in and remove the security tag. His attachment to these shoes is so deep he insisted on napping with them. He's the gift that keeps on giving.