March 2 – “A sad story”

We did some out-and-about-ness yesterday.  New word for running errands, I guess.  Our first stop was the post office.  No, not to see Kel at work, although we did keep our eyes open just in case.  We had to get our income tax documents in the mail to our accountant.  Once I’m through putting that stuff together, I am ready to get it out of the house. 

Next we stopped at Payless Shoe Store.  They are going out of business, so Chris was checking to see if they had any sandals she could wear.  I looked for Nike Air Monarchs, my weird feet’s cross trainer of choice.  Nope on both accounts.  And since we were right next door, we popped into Target as well.  The idea was to do some indoor walking since the weather was bad … again.  But something strange happened in there. Chris bought some stuff.  For herself.  That just doesn’t happen.  And even the process was odd.  She saw what she needed, looked at it briefly, and tossed it into the basket.  Less than a minute or two in some cases.  Socks … check.  Purse … check. 

She was on a roll, so we also went to Palais Royal.  She heard they were having a big sale.  Well, I guess they hadn’t gotten around to marking the prices down yet.  And they didn’t have the shoes we were looking for anyway.  Bust.

Randall’s was the next stop.  That’s where we intended to go in the first place.  Fruit and coffee run, you know.  In Randall’s we met what could only be described as a really funny guy.  He was buying some kale and spinach mixture as a salad to go with some chicken he had in his cart.  Seems he was trying to lose some weight.  But that led him to confess to us that he did have two cookies in the cart as well.  “That’s not much, right?  Gotta have a little bit of sugar, you know.”  So all that talk of food led him to tell us a sad story.  The night before he arrived home from a hard day’s work, and his wife hadn’t made him any dinner.  “Now a man needs some dinner after working all day, right?”  But all was not lost.  His son cooked him some chicken wings.  Well, he tried to cook some wings.  “He burnt those things to a crisp.  But I ate ‘em.  You gotta have something to eat, right?  Had to choke them things down.  And this morning, I had some problems down here in my stomach, you know what I mean?”  He smiled real big and proceeded on with his shopping, happy as a lark.  Oh, and we saw him later.  Walking away from the hot wings table.  He was just enjoying the aroma, though.  However, now he had an entire box of bakery cookies.  And he immediately felt guilty about it.  Said he hadn’t had any sweets in forever.  He frowned as he picked up the pack of two cookies from earlier.  “Guess I should put these back, though.”  He didn’t.  He left us with this thought, “I need to go home and get some rest, you know?”  Absolutely, my friend.  You have earned it.

Romans 4:7 says, “Blessed are those whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.”

Father, be with our new Randall’s acquaintance.  Give him the rest he wants.  And maybe some food when he gets home from work?  Amen.