Shopping For Pumpkins Is Fun!

A couple of years ago our house got skunked for pumpkins. There was an early frost that year or something and as a result there was some kind of pumpkin blight. The poor kids were totally bummed out when they found out that they wouldn't be carving any Jack-O-Lanterns. That year I vowed that it would never happen again.

So, I was out grocery shopping with #1 yesterday and figured I had better pick up some pumpkins for Halloween. After all it was only 3 days until the big day. No big deal. Just pick up a few pumpkins and head home. I'd seen plenty of pumpkins in the stores so it should be as simple as going in an picking them up.

It turned out to be quite a bit more complicated than that.

When we got to the grocery store I immediately went over to check out the pumpkins. I made sure to keep calling them "punkins", it was driving #1 bonkers. They had pumpkins alright, but they were all about as big as my torso. I was kind of hoping for something that weighed in under 25lbs. They had nothing like that.

Again not a big deal there was a locally owned store close to our house that I could try on the way home.

We wandered into store number two and found a similar scenario. They had some pumpkins but none smaller than 25lbs and they cost twice as much as they did at the first store!

On to store number three!

Store number three was Super Store. I HATE Super Store. I hate everything about it. I hate the the parking lot, the building, the carts, the products, the staff and especially the other shoppers. Luckily #1 feels the same way, so we both complained about it from the time we pulled into the parking lot until the time we drove away.

First we got out of the van and grabbed a cart. Not just a regular cart. Super Store has those giant, god-awful carts that can seat 4 kids across. The bottom of the cart is about double the size of a standard cart but for some reason the sides only go up about ten inches. What is the point of that?! Anyway we grab our stupid cart and head for the store.

Outside the doors they had a bunch of "Ghost Pumpkins". I'd never seen Ghost Pumpkins before. They were regular pumpkins that were the color of a honeydew melon. I thought these might be cool, however #1 said she didn't want that kind because people would laugh at us. Whatever.

We finally made our way inside and began to enjoy the Super Store experience. Hordes of other people with these ridiculously large carts trying to navigate aisles that are not quite large enough for 2 carts to pass. As if that isn't bad enough, there are all of these shoppers that just stand there in a daze. They are totally oblivious to the fact that they have blocked the aisle and have created a jam of 10 shoppers on either side. I think they must have shell shock or are having a stroke or something.

We navigated around all the stupid carts and stroke victims and finally managed to reach the produce department. What did we find there? More carts. More non-moving people. More anger. But not a single pumpkin. Now we had to push our stupid cart all the way back through the store so we could get our dollar back for returning it. God I hate that place!

Next we drove across town to Sobey's. Finally we found the secret stash of pumpkins! They had a bunch. We picked out three nice ones and proceeded to the checkout.

As we were walking to the van with our bounty I saw an older couple loading two nice pumpkins into their van. I suggested to #1 that we should beat them up and steal their pumpkins. She didn't go for it.

Those people are lucky we didn't come across them in the Super Store parking lot instead. Those pumpkins would have been ours.