'in fact, it was a little bit frightening'

So my weekend, it was random. Guess what that means! You get a little taste of it! It's been awhile since I've served up a piping hot casserole dish of random ("But what about Shark Week?" "That was literary greatness! Pray for it's return!"), so grab your forks and dig in:

• I'm at the WalMart on Saturday afternoon because I'm on a quest to find the perfect round hair brush and I needed some generic Goldfish crackers (only the best for my little spider monkeys!), and I'm in line at the customer service counter to remit my receipts after returning empty pop bottles (we've got a house payment due and that Diet Mountain Dew is gonna own me one day). I'm minding my own business, thinking about why in heaven I'm here at the WalMart on a Saturday afternoon, when I feel something warm behind me. Having some experience with back of the neck action and a predilection for personal boundaries since my Dirty Dancing days, I venture a peek up to the security monitor hanging behind the customer service counter and notice an older woman so close to me I fear she's going to mount me and ride me through the store like a mythical unicorn (People have wanted to do this, I assure you. That or something about wanting to get behind me and cut me to watch me bleed. I get fuzzy on the details sometimes). Alarmed, I turn my head just a bit (because a bit is all my new Siamese twin has given me room for) and think "Perhaps you'd like to step back just a smidgen, Sugar" really loudly in my head, thinking since we seem to now share a brain and I like it when strangers call me Sugar, she'd pick up the message and do as I thought. Not so much. Every step forward I could take in my escape attempt, she was right there on me. Like a shape shifter, I think she wanted to actually be me. In retrospect, that migh have been a good idea, because her hair looked pretty good, leaving me to assume she's secured the reigns of a really great round brush, and my life is so ragingly great, what with the redeeming empty pop bottles for spare change, that it would be a win-win for the both of us. Eventually I lost her around the toiletry aisles, but I feel a part of me is gone. I miss you, Sugar.
• You know how you sometimes do something and don't remember doing it (or remembering doing it, but can't imagine why you did so now - Hello, 2007!). That's the sense I got yesterday on the way home from WalMart when I was busting my groove to the iPod and Kung Foo Fighting came up next on the shuffle. There's never been a time in the two years the iPod and I have carried on this torrid affair we have that I downloaded this song, and how it got on there is a mystery to me. But oh-ho-ho -ho, oh-ho-ho-ho, you bet I sang along with it, and now I hope you are, too. Thanks to me. You're welcome.
• Remember my husband? That guy who's basically a 14-year-old with only one friend and even that friend wonders what he's doing hanging around with him? This is the kind of conversation we had Sunday that keeps our marriage throbbing: Him: "If I go get you a pop, you gonna suck on my straw?" (laughing, laughing, laughing, 'I just said the funniest thing ever!' grin). Me: "Does Diet Mountain Dew come out of it?" I'll stop now so as not to make you uncomfortable describing the exchange we shared when he discovered I was reneging on the hand action I promised him if he took me to see Sweeney Todd Friday afternoon, but clearly, I think you can tell he's a happy boy.
• So I'm playing catch up with kimmyk this weekend when talk turns to the french fries at Red Robin and we had a momentary time out to the topics at hand so I could ramble about how I'd just recently discovered the addicting crack that is Red Robin french fries. Kimmy's good to me like that. Let's me be all wordy and stuff and will politely LOL me. Thanks, girlie! Anyway, with our conversation fresh in my mind Saturday night, I dreamt of Red Robin french fries. And they weren't layered across the body of some hot guy or anything. Just basket upon basket of piping hot french fries. Brought to me by hot guys. Whatever. So I got to thinking - I didn't really catch up with kimmy so much as I played ketchup with her. Ha! I know, right!? It's why I'm married to a 14 year old.
• Back to WalMart. I'm in the checkout and I ask the nice gentleman behind the register how he is, expecting the standard "I'm good, and you?" answer that doesn't require either party to commit too much to the other. Instead, he unleashes what turns into way too much personal information about his married life and his grown kids and grandkids and how ungrateful they all are, and how he's not appreciated unless one of them needs something from him. After taking a breath, he begins chapter two, which is a manifesto against his ex-wife and the drama holidays create in families. The entire time, I can only stand there and listen with the blank smile that attempts not to encourage him further, but serves as a pleasant "I'm listening" coda to the whole thing, and worrying he'll expect me to say something in response when he finally finishes what has now turned into his seething expose on the downfall of women and how they are never truly satisfied. Then I'm like, "Light bulb!" Blogging is like a vast worldwide cash register where we share personal information (sometimes way too much personal information - Hello again, 2007!) and hope that the person standing there waiting to have their toilet paper and peanut butter bagged up so they can be on their way will have something insightful or humorous to say in response. I considered suggesting he start blogging, but I think there are probably enough people out there already who think the world will implode because women are never truly satisfied, so I grabbed my hopefully perfect round hair brush and scurried out.

So there you go. Hope you're full because, like my brain, the casserole dish is empty. Feel free to offer up some desserts in the comments!