I Need Pie!

Pumpkin pie is the pie of choice among those who know anything about pies. Even though pumpkin pie filling is usually made with seasoned butternut squash, it is still wonderfully delicious.


Well the holiday season is off to a great start. I declared the holiday season open, because today was the first day that I have been pissed off about a holiday-related matter. Between now and the first of the year, people will conspire to mess with me.

We will be going to Daughter Sneed's home tomorrow for dinner, so our Thanksgiving preparations are minimal. There are a few things that needed to be done in preparation, though.

Son Sneed and I had to be at his treatment this morning at the crack o'dawn, so by the time I got home this morning I was tired and grumpy. I was operating on less than five hours sleep.

Mrs. Sneed left me list of things that she needed me to pick up at Costco, chiefly pies for the dinner tomorrow, and some other things for Son Sneed's birthday bash which will be at our home on Sunday. After all, you can't have too many reasons to eat yourself sick, can you?

I found myself faced with a dilemma. Do I go to Costco at ten when they open, or do I wait until this afternoon? Go early and I assure myself that they will still have pies, but if I go later, the crowd might have diminished some. the issue was also do I nap now or later? What to do?

I decided to go at ten and get it over with, which worked out okay except for the million other people with the same idea. The joint was so packed that I had to park in the gravel auxiliary parking lot. In a city of about a million people, we only have two Costco stores. This is clearly not enough, especially when we have the entire state of Sonora, Mexico crammed into Chevy Surburbans and headed this way. No one told them that Thanksgiving is an American holiday.

Normally, I am a pretty nice guy and I don't go out of my way to make trouble, but idiots really push my buttons, and this was an idiot-rich environment. Way too often, trouble finds me and I am powerless to stop it.

After I got into the store, I went to the area where they had stacked the pies. I found a crush of people also trying to get to the pies. It was cart gridlock. I merged into the flow to Pieland and it just stopped. I couldn't go forward or backward. Me and my dreams of pumpkin pie were stuck, blocked by two women, carts side by side, who were not moving because they were trying to talk on their cell phones. Talking and trying to steer their cart with one hand. Can you imagine how mad that made me? Mad enough to say in my loudest voice, "Stop talking on your phone and move your damn cart." They were unmoved.

Call me a sexist if you wish, but it has been my observation that a large segment of the female population believes that if you own a cell phone, you have to talk on it. Driving, standing in line, shopping and doing God knows what else, they are on the phone.

Then, as if I wasn't ticked off enough, some guy decided that his two-foot-wide cart could fit in a one-foot space between me and someone coming the other way. This guy just came around me and crashed into the side of my cart. And I mean he crashed hard into me. I looked right at him and asked him if I had become invisible again? He just kept pushing until he got past.

My second chore was to go to the balloon store. Thanksgiving is a bittersweet holiday for us because our grandson Christian was born on November 23rd. Christian died five years ago. We remember his birthday each year at Thanksgiving by releasing one green balloon, his favorite color, for each year since his birth. This year it will be twelve.

I had to pick up the balloons and a helium tank today. We tried getting inflated balloons one year, but they are hard to transport. We also get a mylar character balloon, I got Buzz Lightyear. I had to get two extra mylars for the Sneedlet and Corrine, the granddaughter of Mr. Peterson, Daughter Sneed's significant other, who will be here tomorrow.

Me, the groceries, the balloons and helium made it home safe and sound, only to discover that one of the mylar balloons had a hole in it and was deflating fast. I broke open the helium tank and refilled it hoping that it hadn't closed properly at the store, but a half hour later it was deflated again.

I had to go back to the store, in the midst of the last-minute shoppers, to get another balloon. There was so much bumper-to-bumper traffic, that I had to keep cutting through neighborhoods in hopes of avoiding the traffic jams. I think I drove about fifteen miles out of my way and made at least two u-turns getting home.

Mission accomplished, as a guy once said. I hope I'm more right than he.

Happy Thanksgiving! (I really mean it).













Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgmental and cranky