Melissa and I have done a fair bit of shopping/shoplifting in the last bunch of days. I’ll get home from a hard day makin’ a honest living and she’ll have a grocery list a mile long. Relentless. My arm hurts from reaching for my goddamn wallet.

Last night we made a late stop out to the Home Depot. See, I’m on a “handheld vacuum” hunt, which has taken us all over Hell’s Half Acre looking for just the right one.

So we’re out at the Jantzen Beach shopping mecca, well, shopping. Home Depot was a bust, so we navigated towards Old Navy. I swear…it was the bright lights and bad graphics that sucked me in. Melissa was on the hunt for a plain red t-shirt or something.

We go in, find a couple options and head back to the dressing room. I’m finding myself harkening back to old tactics, involuntarily. Melissa goes into the dressing room, I find somewhere to lean on. So it goes.

She’s in there, trying stuff on. There are yells and screeches coming from the dressing room area. Pretty annoying. Melissa comes out with that, “It didn’t work/I didn’t like it” look, I offer a sympathetic, “Well, you want to look for somethin’ else?”

“Nah” she says, “But I wish someone would shut those fuckin’ kids up.”

Right after she says this, a gal walks by, gazing at us.

“You mean those kids?” she says, pointing in the direction of the little fuckers.

“They are both mine,” she adds.

Ha. Good stuff. Way to go Melissa. Loose lips sink ships.

But then again, that hag should have kept her mouth shut, and while she was at it, those little bastard rodents of hers too. What, she was proud she owned a couple of screaming banshees? Take care of yer raging children!