It is hard to believe that we are approaching our fifth anniversary of living in Houston. When we first moved down here Pickle made one friend right away. All of the local K-Marts were closing and they were having huge sales. We took all seven children with us and went to one of these K-Marts together. Pickle had a whole in his head at the time. He had fallen down and cracked it wide open. We had gotten a staple put in and were just waiting for it to heal.
Considering we had just moved in and that everything in the store was now 75% off, you can just imagine how much we wanted to buy. If I recall we had 3 carts full of goodies including all kinds of things like, new dishes and clothes. I think we bought a few things from every department that day. Each buy was a steal in our book. As we rounded the back half of the store, Pickle fell and bonked his stapled head.
He was fine except for the blood dripping from his head. I remember leaving dad with the other six children, one of which was a 4 month old crying Princess. He had the carts divided Pookers had a cart, Goobers had a cart and he had a cart. He had Princess and Moogie to watch over. Goobers had Sugar to help push the very heavy cart and Pookers had the help of Bear. I knew we had reached the end of our money and our nerves. Three over filled baskets, one bleeding child, one hungry and crying newborn was our limit for this evening. Dad and the gang were to head to the crowded check out while Pickle and I headed to the bath room to find something to clean up his bloody hair.
The bathroom was the dirtiest place I had ever seen. They were days from their final sale and had been out of toilet paper and paper towels for a while it appeared. I rinsed my hands, took off my sweatshirt, tied it around his head and met the gang and the 3 heaping carts at the checkout. The carts were fuller, and Dad pointed out they found a few more bargains on their trip to the check out. I could barely hear him over the cries of embarrassment from Pickle (He did look ridiculous with a bloody turtleneck on and his mothers sweatshirt tied around his head), the crying baby, hungry children and rude strangers that were trying to “shop” out our baskets. Dad helped push the carts until we were next in line. He left Pookers to help me and the rest went with him to find the car.
Pookers’ job was to guard the carts as I unloaded the others and then to guard them after they had been repacked by the rude, soon to be out of work, we don’t really care how you feel baggers. It wasn’t pretty. The bargains were awesome but I am glad sales like that don’t come around too often.
While unloading I came across a few items that I did not remembering seeing go into the cart. All three items were from the lawn and garden department. I must have still been picking out dishes when the family visited that section. I saw fire ant yard treatment (at that moment I had no idea what a fire ant was), Miracle-Grow, and a ceramic squirrel. He was a cute squirrel but I thought it was odd that my husband had added it to the cart. We probably paid all of $1 for the little guy so I wasn’t too upset. I did wonder where dad planned to put it.
When we got home I set off to put the younger kiddos in bed and to nurse the baby. Dad, Pookers and Goobers started the chore of unloading and finding spots for all of our new treasures. After getting everyone settled in bed, feeding the baby, and putting her to bed I set out to clean Pickle’s injury one more time. I helped him to change his clothes and while taking his shirt to the laundry room to work on those blood stains I saw the fire ant product, the Miracle-Grow and Squirrel.
“J what is the extra stuff doing on the table? What are fire ants? And why the squirrel?” I asked.
My dear husband just laughed as he responded, “I was going to ask you the same questions. I don’t remember us getting those things, do you?”
“I thought you had to have gotten them when I saw them in the cart, you didn’t.”
“No, that store was crazy maybe someone else just threw them in by mistake.”
“No worries, it didn’t cost us much! I love the Miracle-Grow, what are fire ants?”
“I hear they are bad down here, they bite and it burns, but how bad could it be they are still little ants. Can you take the stuff back?”
“No the store is closing, no returns, remember!”
As it turned out we were very thankful to have the fire ant stuff, those little bites really hurt. It is much better to get rid of the ants before they attack. Pickle walked into the kitchen to say, “Oh there is my stuff. I glad you got it.”
Normally we find sneaking items into the basket to be a very grave offence. Pickle was only two years old and he sure looked cute when he said,
“There is my new friend, he is a ‘gwirl’, ya-know?”
From that moment on the ‘gwirl’ has had a place of honor just inside our front door. That is until yesterday when the ‘gwirl’ was playing with the children and was dropped on the concrete floor. Our dear ‘gwirl’ broke a leg and we have decided to put him out of his misery. We can not bring ourselves to actually throw him away so we moved him outside to sit with Holy Mary.
The ‘GWIRL’ is moving on!
