Happy Basha’s Memories

Basha’s is a local grocery store chain here in Arizona that I used to frequent a LOT due to its proximity to our house at that time.  We moved near Basha’s when I was pregnant with our third child and lived in that wonderful house for six years.

As you can imagine, I visited the store OFTEN with all three children.  The three children that God blessed us with who don’t really look that much like their mother or father.  We have two blond-haired, blue-eyed kids and one with dark brown eyes and hair.  My husband has black hair and light brown eyes.  I have light brown hair and green eyes. Genetics are a weird deal.  I tell you all this frivolity to set up the first happy memory.

Happy (sort of) Memory #1:  I was casually strolling the aisles at Basha’s with my three offspring, when a lady in her mid-twenties came up and inquired, “Are these all your children?” “Yes, they are,” I replied proudly.  Then she had the audacity to ask, “Do they all have different dads?”  What in the blue blazes was she thinking???  I glanced down at my attire, wondering if I left home with only wearing my underwear … nope, fully clothed, not looking like a hoochie-mama.  I assured her that indeed, these three angels did have the same father, but I didn’t go into the fact that none of them look like him.  Good gravy, lady!

Happy Memory #2:  In our homeschool we studied a unit in science about the motion of falling objects.  One of the examples was Galileo dropping a cannonball and a musketball off the Leaning Tower of Pisa to determine that falling objects fall at the same rate.  Of course we climbed up in the play house and dropped all sorts of items into the dirt below to test this ourselves.  Back to Basha’s…. months later we were in the pasta aisle and my middle child was closely examining the spaghetti sauce jars.  (Not sure why???)  When all of a sudden he yelled (because he never spoke quietly until he was 12) “Mom! Here is the crooked building that the guy threw the rocks off of!”  (Insert song from the Sound of Music as I mentally skip through the hills of happiness!)

Happy Memory #3:  Yet another trip to Basha’s with my two little boys in the seats of the cart and my personal shopper (7 year old daughter) walking beside me.  A kind, elderly lady with fluffy white hair shuffled by and stopped to look at my children.  She smiled so sweetly.  (I braced myself to explain that I only had one husband.) Finally she remarked, “You have beautiful children!”  I whole-heartily agreed, but merely said, “Thank you!”  As she slowly made her way down the aisle, my loud, middle child yelled to the grandma, “My daddy drives a fancy Cadillac!”  It was true, albeit a hand-me-down from my parents, but his statement shocked me, nonetheless.  The sweet little lady threw her head back and belly laughed, as did I.

Happy Memory #4:  This same store had a very generous produce manager who allowed our daughter to go behind the black swinging doors each week to get free “rotten” food for her bunny rabbit, Blackie Honey Bunny Crosby.

I miss Basha’s.

Blundering Butterfingers

Yesterday I did a Coupon $ense Safeway run.  The targets: Charmin TP, Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, Nature Harvest bars and eggs.  Of course I also picked up a few dozen other on sale items, but always the pull is the outstanding prices on the C$ Hot Deals.  I mean, please.  The Cinnamon Toast Crunch is normally priced at $2.89 a box.  Safeway had a special for 4/$10.  Then I had a Safeway flyer coupon making them 4/$6.  On top of that I had 75 cent coupons for each of the four boxes…. that are “doubled” to $1.00.  And the grand total for each box was a mere FIFTY CENTS. (An 83% savings) Why don’t they just hand them out on the street corner???

Onward to the broken egg picture.  The 18 count eggs were on sale B1/G1  (buy one, get one free), so 36 eggs were placed delicately in the cart.  At the check out stand, the eggs didn’t fare so well.  They were the last items I was pulling out of the cart and somehow the edge of the top carton caught the side of the grocery cart and out they plopped.  Trying to correct the situation, I gripped the carton firmly enough to hang onto it, but too firmly for the eggs in my G.I. Joe kung-foo grip. 

I have never broken a single egg in a grocery store in forty-two years.  That should count for something.  But no.  I looked up from the slimy mess that was dripping through the cart onto my Charmin TP, and said to the checker and the bag-girl, “Clean up on aisle 3…. I just broke a bunch of eggs.”  The bag-girl immediately grabbed a roll of paper towels and was heading around through an empty check-out lane, but then she disappeared???  What in the world??  Not a good time for a potty break.  She returned a few moments later and said, “I just went to aisle 3 and there weren’t any broken eggs.”  Oh.  See the drippy mess by my shoes???  I kindly replied, “It was a poorly timed joke,” and half smiled at the poor girl as we started wiping together.

The egg shells were still in the bottom of the cart so I picked up each goopy mess and dropped them back into the carton.  But, when I finished there was a vacant spot in the carton.  One egg was MIA.  How could that be?  They wouldn’t fit through the cart slots??  I looked all over and finally lifted up the carton to reveal the culprit, hiding from me!  Eleven or twelve of the 18 were smashed and oozing.  BUT, the whole mess was cleaned up in time for me to pay and run from the store red-faced.  “Did you need help out, Mrs. Crosby?”  Not today!

When I retold the entertaining story to my family, my daughter asked, “Did you have to pay for them?”  “No, broken eggs are absorbed into the dumb shopper fund.”  :o)  Thank God, Safeway has a dumb shopper fund.