Shopper at large, in a little car

Today I can say, with complete confidence, that I purchased enough food to feed a small army. Enough bread stuffs, processed meat product, and condiments to feed a small country. Or for a medium-sized rural Wisconsin church's picnic...which is really the case. I had a hundred and thirty hot dogs, two-hundred and forty hot dog buns, a hundred and twenty hamburger buns, and large bottles of ketchup and mustard, along with all my personal bulk shopping from the Asian store (twenty-five pound bag of rice, anyone?) neatly arranged in the trunk of my car into little piles before leaving the stores, only to come home and find that my efforts were all in vain when I discovered a jumbled mess in the trunk after the forty minute drive home. But, still, look at how much food this is, and how amazing it looks all piled together...

I love this part of my job that lets me have random, crazy experiences like this one every now and again! This experience also reminds me how much I love my little car! My little 2-door Cavalier, that is truly a "compact" car in every sense of the word. I am always surprised at how much stuff fits into my tiny little car! Ah. But the best "I love my car" story of all is what is fondly referred to in our house as "the futon mattress episode of 2006".

Every young married couple has a few of these kinds of stories, crazy experiences from the early days that bring you joy whenever you remember it. We always laugh when we think about this one! Ryan and I went into Madison one balmy evening in the fall of '06 to buy a new futon mattress, which we really needed. It was time to slowly start replacing the junk we called our "college furniture" and transition into adult living. The old futon mattress was hanging on by a few threads, stuffing all gone, and had been used well beyond its potential. After about an hour of browsing product and negotiating with the sales guy, we emerged from the mattress store having picked out a beautiful new ten inch thick futon mattress. Twenty minutes later, we thanked the sales guy for his "loading help" getting the mattress into the little car and we were on our way home...testing the boundaries of physics with every passing minute. The beautiful new ten inch thick mattress was folded in half and stuffed into the Cavalier, back seat down, Ryan was driving, and yours truly was squeezed into the passenger seat pushed all the way forward, my left arm tethered to the front end of the mattress lest it explode through the trunk unable to withstand the pressure of being stuffed into a space only two-thirds its volume. If it did actually burst through the trunk, I'm sure my arm would have gone with it. It only took one person to sit on the trunk to make it close in the first place. I am still amazed at that trip home. And it still brings a smile to my face.