Morning all, ready to jump into the day? Fab. Let’s go.
I think I will probably spend the day trying to figure out what happened to John.
Tuesday, March 18th: The note was hard to decipher.
The note was hard to decipher. ‘This handwriting is appalling,” Gina thought squinting at the page. John either went to the grocery store or was abducted by aliens who only allowed him enough time to say he was leaving.
‘Or an agitated spider fell into an inkwell and scrambled across the page seeking safety.’ Gina thought.
As there were no inkwells of any sort anywhere in her world, not ink coated spiders lurking she set the page down.
‘I guess it is to the grocery store,’ she thought. Gina frowned at the thought. She walked to the fridge. She went to the store just a few days prior for their weekly grocery trio. She sat down with John and they made a meal plan for the week. He added in things he had to have and then she went shopping.
John hated going grocery shopping but loved to pop into the store to pick up a few things she forgot. He was fond of using that phrase. Despite sitting down and planning, he loved to believe she forgot something. As Gina liked to budget their grocery spending, she found herself more annoyed by the spending than the belief that she forgot.
‘Especially as he comes home with duplicates of things I already picked up.’
That was becoming old fast. She would make the meal plan and he would add the things he wanted. If he added something like potato chips she would pick up a bag. Then on one of his single forays, he would decide she forgot them and pick up a second bag. As this happened repeatedly, Gina got into the habit of checking the pantry after she made the list to see if the requested bag of chips was already there. If it was she marked it off the list and didn’t repurchase, so they would only have two bags of chips not an exponentially increasing supply.
This worked only as long as he didn’t see her unloading the groceries. If he did, then he would purchase two bags of chips when he went convinced she forgot. He had actually taken to watching her unloading the groceries when she returned so Gina had started slipping the extras, whether chips, cookies, fruit leather or whatever he was craving, out of the pantry and into her trunk before she left. Then when she returned with the groceries she added it to the newly purchased items. It seemed to keep him happy.
‘And us from being sunk into a morass of chips and cookies,’ she thought. Gina checked and everything was as she thought.
She shrugged and resigned herself to him picking up extras of what was already there and having to bite her tongue when he claimed she forgot. ‘At this point I’ve already budgeted in the extras.’ She thought as she left the kitchen, John’s note still on the counter.
After several rounds, Gina simply added the extras into her food budget so that she could keep track of what was actually spent regardless. Not for the first time she wondered how to talk to John about this. ‘If I even can,’ she added as she made her way into the living room. John was never one to admit mistakes. They were always someone else’s fault. Gina didn’t have the driving need to be right that John did, but she was getting rather tired of always being wrong.
She settled herself on the chair in the living room and picked up the book she had been reading. She was more than willing to let her own thoughts go as she fell into the story. It was a riveting one and she found herself unable to put it down. She reached the last page and finally closed the book. She read longer than anticipated. Gina blinked. She hadn’t heard John come home. She checked her watch.
Ten til Midnight 