It Still Felt Good

When we got back from VEGAS, BABY! there was no food in the house. Well, not quite literally. The pantries are crammed with canned goods and the freezer is full of half a beef, but the refrigerator echoed with the lack of anything healthy or applicable to our new cholesterol-improving lifestyle. Also, we were out of salsa.

So I went to the grocery store, and because I needed some ribbon and a lampshade, I went to the Big Box where I filled a cart with good-for-us food. Then I got in line to check out.

Check-out lines at the Big Box are especially bad at this time of the year, particularly in the hour between office-closings and suppertime, but just after I joined the queue this line stopped cold. The woman ready to pay at the register apparently did not have enough money, and she was confounded as to what to do.

"MomQueenBee," I thought to myself, "you came back from Las Vegas with money. Also, you got to go to Las Vegas in the first place, and this woman can't afford to pay for new underwear." (Yes, judgmental me had checked to make sure she wasn't buying cigarettes, because after last week I realize Kansas is a pretty wonderful smoke-free-ish place.) So I handed the clerk a $5 bill to make up the difference, the woman thanked me profusely, and the line began to move again.

It was not a big deal, and I didn't think much about it until my cart-load of vegetables and yogurt had been scanned through and the clerk announced the total.

"That will be $73," she said.

Whoa. That was an enormous load of vegetables and yogurt--obviously God had seen me giving that woman her early Christmas present, and in a cast-your-bread-upon the waters moment had DIVINELY LOWERED ALL THE PRICES. It was a Christmas miracle!

I felt wonderful all the way home, through the unloading of the groceries, through supper, until halfway through the evening when I suddenly thought of something. Because the checking out had taken so long I hadn't even really looked at the receipt--I'd already swiped my debit card and I just tucked the receipt into my wallet for recording later.

Oh. Turns out the total was $173, which was not at all out of line with what I had expected to pay. I laughed at myself--but I still felt good about the shopping experience.

Feeling good about a Christmas-season shopping experience? I believe I did experience a Christmas miracle; it just wasn't the one I originally thought I was seeing.