Happy Day In Merryland

Hubby and I drove to Wally World (aka: Walmart) for the elusive shoe strings. Rumor had it that the megalomaniacal all purpose chain might just have some brown shoe laces, so we girded our loins and headed to the magical land of mark downs.

Frankly, I ONLY go to Walmart when there is absolutely, positively NO other place on this earth that carries the thing that I need. Frankly, after today I'm thinking that nothing short of an actual functioning organ would be so important to ever go there... EVER AGAIN.

First of all, the circus is in town. Well, a mini strip mall version circus that is, and its parked in part of the vacant lot near the discount mall that really isn't a discount mall (no discount mall could possibly include Sachs 5th Ave and call themselves "discount", but I digress). How did we know the circus was in town? Well, there are the mini "big" tops, and the sideshow trailers and the elephants grazing in a pen. Of course, we didn't notice these things until we nearly plowed into the back of a mini van that had stopped IN THE MIDDLE OF THE HIGHWAY to look at the elephants.

You see, that's one of the quaint traditions of Maryland. People just randomly, and sometimes for no reason, stop on a highway. Sometimes they stop to read a map. Sometimes they stop, then back up on the fast lane because they missed their exit. If backing up wasn't enough, they generally then shoot across three lanes of traffic to get to the exit. This idiot saw elephants, and instead of saying "hey, why don't I pull off into the vacant lot, where I won't be endangering the lives of those drivers behind me" oh no, that probably didn't even occur to the moron. He just slams on the brakes and looks at the elephants.

That being said, you can imagine that when we finally did get to Wally World... we were in a wonderful mood. The mood got even better when we discovered that a new law must have been passed that said "It is now legal for anyone driving a car with handicapped plates to run over pedestrians". Had we known this, we foolishly wouldn't have been walking in the cross walk toward the store when the chucklehead in the minivan came careening around the corner, and even though he saw us walking (my face was only about 2 inches from his), he continued turning, causing us to leap for our lives. I hurled some rather biting sarcasm at the moron, knowing that even if he challenged me to a fight, I could probably tip his chair over and run if it got too out of hand.

Once inside the store, our mood only got better when we were assailed by the smell of what could only be vomit. I'm not sure why all Walmarts smell like someone just hurled in them, but they do, at least to me. You would think with all the discount air fresheners they sell, they could get rid of that smell of sweat, urine, and vomit that permeates their stores. Why does it smell like that? Has anyone else noticed that or is it just stores in Maryland?

Anyway, we actually DID find shoelaces... black ones. AAAAH oh wait, over on the other side, here is the brown shoe laces. Fine, grabbed two of them and ran for the card department, grabbed a box of "thank you" cards and kept running, made it to checkout.

For some reason I find the carousel of bags very disturbing. Does it actually speed up the process to have the carousel of plastic bags? How many items do people lose in an average day because they didn't realize that a bag had been trapped on the wheel of bags? I'm also glad to see that Walmart doesn't require you to actually show ID when you use a credit card, but I did have to put my zip code in. Yeah, there's security for you. That should be implemented at banks to keep our money safe, cuz nobody gonna know my zip code after stealing my wallet with my FREAKING DRIVERS LICENSE IN IT! Sigh...

We ran about of Wally World.

The only thing I'll say about Circuit City (other than "gee, what a shock they're going out of business") is: TURN THE FREAKIN MUSIC IN THE STORE DOWN SO I CAN HEAR MYSELF THINK ABOUT WHAT A CRAPPY STORE THIS IS!

And then we went home.