Faith in our Future

Opie and I bought our nephew a refrigerator for his college dorm room.

As I'm not generally in the habit of starting a blog (especially after such a long hiatus!) with such a mundane matter, you have probably inferred that this did not occur without incident.

On the bright side, however, I've had my faith in the younger generation somewhat restored.

Here's what happened:

I went to Target and walked up to the customer service counter. There was a young girl behind the counter and I said "Hi, I'm here to pick up the refrigerator I ordered online."

She took my ID pressed a few buttons, bada bing bada boom, she said the guy would be up with the refrigerator momentarily.

And sure enough a few minutes later this guy in his 50s or so pushed up one of those flatbed dolly things with the refrigerator on it.

He took it off the dolly, set it on the floor and said "Here you go," and turned to walk away.

"Excuse me," I said politely. "But I assumed you'd help me get it out to the car."

"I can't go push a dolly all the way through the parking lot," he said like I was some sort of crazy person.

At this point I gave him my best "look." You know the one, the one that says "The only reason I haven't already killed you is because I'm so afraid of prison."

"I could put it in a cart for you," he offered then.

Like I was going to schlep the refrigerator all the way across the parking lot and throw it in the car in the manner of some freakishly strong mutant.

So I turned back to the young girl behind the customer service counter, smiled, and said "Hi, I'm here to return a refrigerator I bought online."

She glared at the older guy, smiled at me, and said "You can just pull your car around, and we can load it up."

I pulled the car around, turned on the hazards, got out and my feet had barely hit the curb when the older guy said "it's not gonna fit."

Since prison was already on my mind, I stood there a few minutes silently contemplating whether or not I would get actual time for punching him in the throat or if I'd get off with a fine and probation.

Just as I was about to throw caution to the wind and descend upon this idiot in a whirlwind of fists and fury, these two teenage boys walked up. Apparently they work at Target but weren't working that day, they were actually just coming to pick something up for themselves.

"Need help getting that in the car?" They asked.

And in seconds had it off the dolly, in the car, and I was good to go.

If I ever carried cash, I would have given them a tip on the spot. As it was I didn't want to insult them by offering the 32 cents I could scrounge from the bottom of my purse and a stick of gum.

So I thanked them profusely, gave the older guy one final glare and drove home happy to have my faith in the young once again restored.

The Great Cupcake Search -- Jilly's Cupcakes

Opie and I don't have any children.

It's not that we don't want kids of our own, it's just that we reconnected and married somewhat late in life and we haven't been blessed with kids.

We have pets instead.

Which means that, like all childless couples, we know exactly how other people should raise their kids.

But it also means that we don't always fully grasp the sacrifices parents make for their children.

Like not stealing their cupcakes. Even when they're Jilly's Cupcakes.

Jilly's is located in St. Louis but I didn't discover it until after I moved to Oklahoma---which is a little sad considering it's right down the street from my friend Martha's and I've probably driven by it about 4365 times.

But then I saw them on Cupcake Wars--which they won! A while after that, when I went back to St. Louis to visit Martha, she happened to have a fresh 4 pack because her daughter loves them.

I'd like to say that we were strong and resisted the urge to steal a toddler’s favorite dessert.

I’d like to say that but I don’t like to lie on my own blog .

The thing is, the whole reason I was in town was to see Martha's band play...which just naturally translates into a late night, little food, and lots of alcohol.

When we got back to her house at 2:30 a.m. and there they were on the counter. Just sitting there, taunting me with their chocolate and peanut butter goodness.

In the interest of holding on to some shred of self-respect, let’s all just acknowledge that fresh cupcakes were purchased the next day.  Not by me—I was on a plane back to Tulsa first thing in the morning—but they were purchased, that's the point here, and Martha’s daughter never knew the difference.

And don’t lie, most of you would have a hard time resisting their Reese's Chunkage:

  

First of all, they're HUGE. About twice the size of other cupcakes. We could have easily shared one.

The cake was great, light and moist and just the right amount of chocolate.

The icing is the extra fluffy style that I usually don’t like as much but stick that many pieces of Reese’s Peanut Butter cup on anything and it’s automatically fabulous.

Final Verdict:

Size: Enormous

Price: Free ,when stolen from a small child, Higher than average when actually purchased $4.75.

Cake: Good, moist and chocolatey.

Icing A little too much on the fluffy side of light and fluffy but packed with enough Reese's Peanut Butter Cups to compensate.

Overall, good enough to steal from a toddler...which is why it's probably a good thing Opie and I just have pets.