Today my wife and I went about our business on my day off from work. With a possible storm coming, we wanted to get as many errands out of the way as possible. We had to drop off some books at the library and then get some lunch. After that we needed to do some Christmas shopping and then onto grocery shopping.

Before going to Kmart, we needed to have some lunch. We went to Subway. I love Subway and could eat it most everyday. My wife however, could do it maybe once a month. She isn’t a big fan but tolerates it. I opt for the foot-long Spicy Italian with pickles, onions, tomatoes, and banana peppers. I like it on honey oat bread, not toasted with American cheese and spicy brown mustard.

The women starts assembling my sandwich and in normal Subway fashion putting things on a little at a time. She gets to the vegetables and asks me "What else do you want?"

I say, "Tomatoes." She places three small ones on this long sandwich.

She looks at me and asks “What else?” I look at the sandwich thinking “Really?”

I look back down at the options and say, “Pickles, onions, and banana peppers.” She puts a few pickles on maybe five, goes for the onion and layers a few slivers in a way that looked like she put fingernail clippings on it. Finally I get irritated with the skimpy manner she is building my sandwich and say, “Would you put some more onion on there please?”

“Okay.” She says as she layers a few more nail filings. “What else?”

I say to my wife out loud, “I am never coming here again." I turn back to the woman "Banana peppers.” My wife has been watching and giggling because it is so ridiculous in how she is skimping as if they will use this same vat of vegetables all week long. Times are hard I guess.

My sandwich makes it to the register and I am waiting for hers to be finished so we can pay. I am looking at this flat sandwich that somehow, the bread deflated on the way down through the sandwich building process and it is so much flatter than before toppings were put on it. The process actually reduced the size of the sandwich: really?

My wife looks and says, “That’s awesome.”

Again, out loud to the woman’s face that carried herself as if she was the owner, this is an assumption, I say, “I will never be here again. The sandwich is actually smaller than when it started. I can’t see veggies, maybe I will be able to taste them.” I think to myself, “I will drive 8 blocks to avoid using this stingy deli.” Out loud, my inner monologue absent now from the silliness I was involved in I say, “$14.00 for two loaves of bread and mustard. This is not going to taste good.”

My wife gets her sandwich built. We paid and sat down to eat. Sure enough as I bite into it, a little meat, some mustard and occasionally the crunch of an onion with little flavor.

I am not saying I need to be catered to or held to a different standard than others but come on, is it that hard of an economy that you have to skimp on veggies, the cheapest ingredient in your arsenal. I know there are standards used to build these sandwiches in order to maximize profit and I have been to so many subways across the land there is no way she put the minimum on that subway instructs them to. Anyway, it's not a big problem. It was just a part of the day where I viewed someone differently than I normally would. It gave me an urge to discuss money saving and the impact to repeat customers with her just to understand why she did what she did.

At Kmart, we got many of the things we wanted as before for the kids. We had placed quite a few items in lay-away with them a couple of months before, and on the weekend we were supposed to pick up the lay-away, Kmart called us with some bad news. They lost it. All the things we searched for and found for finicky little snot nosed brats, was lost in the digital universe. The store had been the last of many Kmart’s in the country to move to a new system right in the middle of the lay-away season and Christmas. My wife went down and worked things out with the manager to get the lay-away money back and he gave us a 25% discount on our next lay-away. At first my thought was, “Yeah right as if I will be doing this again with you people.” Yet here we are doing it again. The 25% goes along way now that we need to increase the drive to finish shopping for Christmas.

That finished we head to the grocery store. While in the store and actually in the last few minutes of standing in line at Kmart to pay for my new house shoes, (I am wearing fake fur lined slippers. I am so old. However, this is frickin Chicago and its cold damn it!), I was on a conference call with work. While on the road to the grocery store and most of the time in the store, I was on the phone. We made our way through the store in a speedy fashion not really noticing the increased business of the store, at least I didn’t due to the distraction of being on the phone. Of course, many people are stocking up for the storm and getting ready for Armageddon as always: Milk, bread, cheese, eggs, etc.

Finally, I get off the call and we realize we missed some things. I head to the other side of the store to pick up a few items and just before I make the turn down one of the aisles, an awful odiferous yet unholy funk hit my nostrils in a way so strong I could have vomited. This odor was so odd and strong I couldn’t begin to describe it. I can only compare it to the protestors I had the unfortunate opportunity to arrest demonstrating in the United Kingdom when I was stationed there in the military: The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament or the CNDer’s as we called them. These people were horrible. As an added problem to policing their activity near the bases, they would not bathe or shave whether woman or man. They would stuff used sanitary napkins in their pockets, not use the napkins during mensus and many other vile things we would have to feel through when performing searches incident to apprehension. It was very disgusting.

This smell took me straight back and almost made me vomit. As I got around the corner, it was visible where the smell came from; it was a mother and an older teen-age daughter, both dressed in baggy clothes and disheveled. Messy hair, unkempt skin, demeanor, and this horrid odor wafting all around them like the cloud from pigpen on Peanuts.

I don’t know how anyone can walk around with that kind of smell emanating from one’s body. It was so drastically awful even being the one sporting such an odor would have to smell it surely!
Quickly I ran down the aisle and got the items I searched for and ran even faster through the wake of the “two anti-glade crew”. The stench was so strong and thick it lingered in the air. I saw people twist their faces in anguish as they walked by and poor pedestrians that walked unknowingly into the wake of their draft, physically bent backwards at the waist to avert their nose as if someone had stuck a festered foot in their face. The amount of people bending and wailing was growing as the smell lingered. If anymore patrons moved in their direction, it would look like something out of Bible where they describe the rapture: One being aken and the other left. "Just fall to the floor ma'am, dont worry about the nausea. Let it happen naturally. Dont fight it.

We finished our shopping and headed home. I talked my wife into having my favorite meal and one she doesn’t care for as much so I won twice today. She made my favorite burritos and I stuffed myself as usual.

In the news, my White Sox seem to be wafting on the personnel front. They are keeping some players I don’t like and letting the ones I do go. Some of the core team looks to be remaining but many are going into free agency this year so I don’t know what the season holds this year.

I like that my wife has become a fan and has her favorites. It’s very nice to have a spouse that has an interest in sports. Her favorite is football, mainly NFL. I like college and NFL as well as the MLB. I feel like a know it all at times when we talk about certain events in sports by spouting off inside information as to why certain plays happened the way they do but I enjoy talking about it so much.

I make predictions and for the most part, I come very close in being accurate. I don’t feel confident enough in my predictions to put money on them but if I did, I know I could make some good money: Maybe one day.

This year I liked two teams for the Rose Bowl. Mostly out of the interest that I just wanted to see them in it. I knew Wisconsin was looking good and I like many of the players on there. I would love to see them and Stanford in the Rose Bowl. Stanford has a great quarterback and I think the match up would be classic this year.

After all the mess they have been through, my college team, the Tennessee Volunteers look to be headed to a bowl. They look great for a rebuilt team with a new coach and system and I can’t wait to see how they develop. So New Years Day will have some nice excitement this year where it has lacked it in the recent past.

Tomorrow I plan to play in the snow with the daughter a little and do some inside stuff like paint while watching some Christmas movies and of course, I will do another one of these Blogs. I plan to keep this up and work on my writing a little. So leave some comments and feed back. I am looking for some feed back on my writing style and flow. I tend to be a little opinionated, who isn’t? Never the less I want to decrease that harsh judgment from my writing and just tell the story I see with a little color of my take on it to let out some of who I am as I tell the story.