For all you MMC mem­bers who read this, be care­ful what you open next year. Remem­ber the infa­mous leop­ard print steer­ing wheel cover? This will top it.

We were in Bed, Bath & Beyond this evening to use a cou­ple of the 20% coupons we get in the mail and/or in the news­pa­per. We bought a 2 big ol’ bags of pis­ta­chio nuts and were headed for the check­out when we hap­pened to walk by the Christ­mas close out area. Within sec­onds Donna found just the per­fect gift for under the com­mu­nal tree next year. It’s orig­i­nal price was $12.99 (although in our eyes worth so much more) and it was 50% off bring­ing the price down to $6.50. The 20% off coupon brought the price down another $1.30. Even with the tax it came to less than five and a half bucks. See­ing the look on your face when you open it; priceless.

We went shop­ping in Sta­ples this after­noon, we needed a new shred­der and some other stuff, chief among them, paper. It was time to buy our bi-annual ream of it. We walked into the store and I imme­di­ately headed off to the right side where the paper-like office sup­plies were. I looked along the wall and up and down every aisle (even though paper was not on the sign telling me what was down them.)

My wife sug­gested that I ask a kid in the red shirt where it was, but just like a man, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. On my sec­ond pass down the last aisle a woman who was arrang­ing items on a shelf looked at me and asked, “Can I help you find some­thing?” I can’t ask for direc­tions, but I can’t lie and say no to some­one offer­ing help, so I said, “Where is the paper?” She looked at me with a twin­kle in her eye and replied, “I hate to sound con­de­scend­ing, but (point­ing to the wall on the other side of the store) do you see that big sign over there that says paper?” (the let­ter­ing was only about 4 foot high…) “Man,” I said, “It always used to be over on this side of the store, why did it get moved?” “Don’t tell me, I know. The paper is over there for the same rea­son all stores move stuff around, to keep the cus­tomer in the store longer while he searches for some­thing, hop­ing for an impulse buy.”

About this time Donna walked up, so I said to the lady, “Or maybe it is like my wife who moves stuff around in the kitchen every six months just to make me feel inad­e­quate. She’ll ask me to get her some­thing, I’ll look in the spot I think it used to be, it won’t be there, and I have to ask her, so she gets to sigh that sigh that means, ‘Men are so helpless’.”

With­out miss­ing a beat, Donna says, “I never move any­thing, You don’t know where any­thing is at because you only come there to help me once every six months.”

Ouch.