Shopping Cart Psychic

A woman walks up to the cashier and places the following on the conveyor belt:

• box of South Beach Diet protein bars
• dental floss threaders
• Head and Shoulders 2 in 1
• 12 pack of Scott Tissue toilet paper
• paper plates
• sun dress
• two 12-packs of Meow Mix Market Select
• three bags of Temptations cat treats

Question 1 – What store is the woman in?

Question 2 – What do we know about this woman from the purchases she is making?

Bonus Question – Are you genuinely interested or are you playing along just to humor me?

Please post your answers in the comment section. Answers to this edition of Shopping Cart Psychic will be posted eventually.

No purchase necessary to participate. Winner need not be present to win. Some restrictions may apply. Answers must be submitted by 11:59 p.m. EDT, Friday, August 7, 2009 to qualify for the grand prize drawing. No substituions allowed. Processing fees may apply. Some side effects may occur. If any develop or change in intensity, inform your doctor as soon as possible. Only your doctor can determine if it is safe for you to continue to participate.

Speak now or forever hold your beet!

While I absolutely love cupcakes, I’m really not that much of a junk food eater.  I’ve always just loved food – good food.  Growing up I remember my mom having a conversation with my friend’s mother about how she only had to open one can of corn for a family of five, meanwhile at my house we fought over the vegetables, and my mom, being the wonderful Italian Mama she was, always made more than enough food. 

I’m the youngest of seven, three boys and four girls – Bill, Geryl, Dee, Jo, Mike, Tim and then me (I broke the tie), by far with 22 years separating me and my oldest brother, so by the time I came around, Bill was out of the house serving in the air force, and my sisters were getting married and moving out soon after that. That left me, Mike and Tim at home with Mom and Dad for the most part. 

Most of the time I ate dinner in front of the television, with my plate and glass on my Cabbage Patch tray, watching Little House on the Prairie and People’s Court with Judge Wapner.  “The boys” were usually not home, they were busy with lacrosse practice or band or friends.  My Dad worked the graveyard shift at the General Motors plant, so he was always sleeping at that time, and my mom would sit in the kitchen eating alone.  I always regret not eating with her or having had more traditional family meals.

By the time I was in college, my Dad was retired, and when I came home for breaks the three of us would sit down together as a family.  And even just between us we went through more than just one can/bag/etc. when it came to vegetables.  As a matter of fact my Dad and I would always fight over the last bite of spinach – we loved our spinach!  Must have been all those Popeye cartoons.

During the summer in between my freshman and sophomore year, I was going through a phase of being extremely health and weight conscious, which meant even more vegetables – yum! In fact, during that summer we ate very little meat.  I remember one night, out of nowhere, my Dad saying “where the hell’s the meat?”  Actually, it was probably out of the frustration of being forced along into my new eating habits.  But ya know, the kicker of it all is that he ended up losing more weight than I did more quickly!  He’d show off how loose his pant were, meanwhile I was eating the same things and working out all the time and the pounds just weren’t melting away like they were for dear ‘ol Dad.  So not fair – losing weight by association!

My latest kick is beets.  That’s right – beets.  Odd, isn’t it?  I actually think I’m a borderline beet addict.  My brother and sister cooked some on the grill a couple of months ago, and ever since I crave beets!  I pop ‘em like candy … they come off the grill, and they’re just so perfect, I can’t resist. 

I tried beets in my salad for the first time at lunch today.  They weren’t grilled, but a beet’s a beet – right?  If you’re addicted to one kind you’re addicted to them all!  Before tearing into my salad and devouring the generous portion of burgundy beauty, I did, for the record, offer to share my beloved beets with the lunch crew.  After all, I’m not a greedy addict.  I’m a happy beet addict.  They make me want to share they’re deliciousness with everyone.  I guess that kind of makes me a beet pusher …  “C’mon eat some beets, everybody’s doing it.”  Anyway … there weren’t any takers, and just before I sunk my teeth into that first bite of beet heaven I gave fair warning that it was the last chance … “Speak now or forever hold your beet!”

Crumbs Don’t Have Calories …

… I thought this was a well known fact, but apparently my sweet Mama made it up.  Today I celebrated my one year anniversary at work, but technically, I worked with the organization from 2003 to 2005 and then volunteered in between then and when I came back last July, so really I’ve been around for three years professionally and five years overall.  Anyway … appropriately, to celebrate my anniversary, the staff surprised me with a cake in the shape of … you guessed it – a big, honkin’ cupcake!  Can I get an AMEN!?! 

After devouring a slice, I realized there were some lonely crumbs sitting on the doily that were just screaming to be eaten, and since my Mama always told me “crumbs don’t have calories,” I figured the only right thing to do would be to eat them.  After all, waste not, want not.

I mentioned this crumb theory to one of the office interns and she totally rained on my parade, telling me how crazy I was (which, I am) for saying such a thing.  But isn’t it kind of like Santa or the Tooth Fairy or just the simple power of suggestion?  If I think the crumbs don’t have calories than they must not – right? 

Or maybe I want to believe it so badly because it’s something my mother taught me.  My wonderful mother passed away earlier this year, and I miss her madly.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think of her and at least come close to shedding a tear or lots of them.  But I can hold onto all of the wonderful things we shared, like her silly theories, and all the times that we spent eating cupcakes together.

Perhaps she’s the reason why I love cupcakes so much.  I worked for a PR agency in the city for a year and during that time I brought home cupcakes, at her request of course, to taste test from the likes of Buttercup, Magnolia, Junior’s, Zaro’s, Cupcake Cafe and Crumbs.  It was a tough job, but we were up for the task.  Really, we felt a responsibility of sorts to mankind, okay, so that might be stretching it, but we at least felt a responsibility to our family and friends to be connoisseurs of cupcakes and have the ability to make appropriate recommendations for a variety of occasions. 

We ate carrot cake cupcakes, Twinkie cupcakes, black & white cupcakes, lemon cupcakes, red velvet cupcakes, cookie dough cupcakes, devil food cupcakes … you name it, we ate it.  And every time we would dig into those delicious and even more delicious bites of heaven, she would always say “the crumbs don’t count because they don’t have calories.”

Of course I know it’s not true.  I’m not quite as dumb as I look, but I choose to believe that crumbs don’t have calories because the theory works for me.  Okay, so maybe it doesn’t work for me to the extent that when I eat crumbs upon crumbs upon crumbs I don’t take in hundreds of calories and gain weight, particularly in the hip and thigh region.  But I choose to believe it and like to believe it and share the theory with the world, because my Mama told me so. 

Cupcakes & Cat Food???

Welcome to my wacky world … I know what you’re thinking – Cupcakes & Cat Food?  Not an enticing combination I know, and no, I don’t eat cat food.  The title came about during a phone conversation with my good friend Mollie.  After having a bad day I had been on the phone with her on the drive home from work rambling on about something, that I was surely over dramatizing, and was craving a cupcake to comfort me.  I needed to go to the grocery store to pick up cat food for my cats so that they would be fed and happy, and I thought why not pick up cupcakes to make me happy.  As long as there are cupcakes and cat food all is right with the world.  I mean c’mon … who doesn’t like a cupcake?

Then it dawned on me … how pathetic would I look going up to the register with cupcakes and cat food?  Clearly the cashier would know I was a pathetic, single, lonely woman with cats – an up and coming spinster of sorts.  And to top it off, a girl with quite a few pounds to lose buying cupcakes no less!  I could go to the self check out, but I hate those things.  I always end up needing assistance and having to press the button to make the check out aisle light flash, which would then bring even more attention to my pathetic purchases.  Plus I didn’t have my handy dandy discount card to save a few cents on the cat food that was on sale, and a human cashier could enter a discount code for me.

It was that night, in the conversation with Mollie that I declared I would someday write a book and call it Cupcakes and Cat Food.  This may not be a book, but it’s my attempt at getting it started.

If you’re wondering … I never did go to the grocery store that night.  The cats ate a can of tuna and I went cupcake-less.