A Christmas Story

As a little back-story, Sunny and I got out of bed at about 1pm yesterday afternoon. This may seem late but, as regular readers know, Sunny works nights, 6pm to 6am, and I tend to keep the same hours.

Well, when Sunny got in from work this morning at 6.30, we were both hungry and as it's grocery shopping day, just like Mother Hubbard, the cupboards were bare...so we went to IHOP for breakfast.

After we'd finished eating, I was struck with an AWESOME idea. On the way back to the car, the following conversation took place:

"Hey, how tired are you?" I asked.
"Why?"
"Well, I know we were going to get the last of the Christmas shopping done this weekend...and it'll probably be a lot easier to get that done if we do it at 7.30am on Friday than on a Saturday afternoon. Why don't we just go ahead and get it now?"

So we did. We headed to Dollar General for some cheap stocking stuffers, and then we went to [redacted] to get [redacted] for [redacted].

The problem was it was only 9am and the store opened at 10, so we had an hour to kill. So we drove around, looked around some other stores and by the time we got back to the car it was pushing 10.30.

For those keeping score, at this point, I'd been awake for 21 and a half hours. When we pulled back up to the store, I told Sunny I was just going to wait in the car as she was just going to nip in and out of the store.

"Ok." She said. "Don't forget that mumble, mumble, mumble."

In order to protect my testicles from wifely rage, I should state for the record that she didn't actually mumble...I just wasn't really paying attention.

About fifteen minutes later, I'm wondering where the hell she is. This is a pretty small store, there weren't very many people inside and she should have been in and out in just a few minutes.

So I do what every good husband should do and waited patiently got out of the car and went into the store to see what the hell was taking her so long.

Apparently, the [redacted] we were getting for [redacted] was hella expensive, but we could buy all the [redacted] separately at a much better price, so she was buzzing around the store, looking for [redacted].

Anyway, eventually, we're standing in the line and Sunny turns to me and says:

"You did get the car keys, right?"
"No." I said, laughing. Sunny always has the keys.
She laughed too. "Yeah, right."

Suddenly, part of my brain retroactively translated "Don't forget the mumble, mumble, mumble." to "Don't forget the keys if you get out the car, I'm leaving them here."

Shit.

So Sunny realises I'm serious, and gives me her best "You dickhead" look. I run out to the car, hoping I've left at least one of the doors unlocked.

No such luck. The car's locked up tight. After the customary half-hearted attempt to see if we could roll a window down or something, I point out that our only real option is to call a locksmith. So, to do this, Sunny has to walk into the State Farm office, ask to borrow their phone (her cell, you guessed it, is locked in the car)...and call a locksmith.

With this our last payday before Christmas, everything was budgeted down to the cent. We got to wait by the car in the cold for close to an hour (waiting in a store wasn't an option. Sunny's purse, my wallet and a bunch of Christmas gifts were prominently displayed inside the car)...then pay a guy forty bucks we don't have to slide a slim-jim (the tool, not the disgusting mystery meat snack) into the door.

There are two morals to the story:

One, no matter how smart you think you are, you're always capable of mind-blowing acts of stupid.

and

Two, it's never a good idea to try and hurry your wife up while she's shopping. Bad things will happen.