Carol and Eric Fight Battle with Costco

We bought a paper shredder at Staples on the weekend. We were sorting through papers and things and needed to destroy documents containing sensitive information. So we went out to Staples and spent about $80 on a paper shredder, plus $1 donation to the Special Olympics. They actually had a couple Special Olympics kids there, running around clumsily and yelling things, so you felt like an ass if you didn't donate the dollar.

Turns out the paper shredder sucked huge. Don't buy ArmorID paper shredders. They are loud and ineffective. They could compete in the Special Olympics of paper shredders, if you know what I mean.

So yesterday, Eric picked me up from work, and we drove up to Markham to return the craptastic paper shredder. We decided to pop into Office Depot and Costco to check out alternative paper shredders as well. Office Depot had nothing good. But Costco! Costco had an awesome paper shredder, for $52-ish! It shreds up to 10 pages at once, plus credit cards. My mom has a similar model, and hers shreds cds. I don't know if this will shred cds. But in any case, it's an awesome paper shredder. So we grabbed one and we were on our way.

Royal Paper Shredder: $52
Total: $52

Then Eric said "Let's walk around a bit, I want to get some orange juice." I knew this would be trouble. Within two seconds of walking out of the aisle with the paper shredder, we saw an endcap display with all-purpose wine glasses. Eric and I have two sets of gorgeous and expensive Reidel wine glasses. One set of chardonnay glasses and one set of burgundy glasses. They cost hundreds of dollars, and we're obsessed with them. But we don't trust anyone to use them. It's all part of the obsession. So Eric wanted to get these wine glasses - they were supposedly for both red and white wine, there were 8 in a box, and the best part, they cost $18.99 for the whole set! This is fantastic. So he grabbed one and we were on our way.

Royal Paper Shredder: $52
1 Case Red/White Wine Glasses: $18.99
Total: $70.99

Then we passed by the books section. The thirteenth book in the Series of Unfortunate Events books had come out, so Costco had in stock a box set of all thirteen books! I had been wanting to buy up this set for a couple years now, but had held off thinking that a complete box set would probably come at a better price. The books look very entertaining! Eric said that if I didn't get it now, I might well regret it later. I had no choice. Eric had to go and get a buggy. We loaded the paper shredder, wine glasses, and the giant box of hardcover books into the buggy, and we were on our way.

Royal Paper Shredder: $52
1 Case Red/White Wine Glasses: $18.99
Lemony Snicket Box Set: $114
Total: $184.99

Three metres later, we walked by the dvd section. Eric paused and made a case for buying TWO boxes of wine glasses. He had obviously been pondering. After all, they were a great price, and it would come in handy when we had more than 8 people at the condo drinking wine. That's some pretty good logic right there. So he jogged back to the display to get another case of wine glasses. While he was gone, I glanced at the dvds. The Little Mermaid Special Edition 2-Disc DVD set was RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME! I snatched one up, and held it up for Eric to see when he came back with the wine glasses. He looked at it, gasped, and said okay well I guess we have to get that! I love Eric, he's awesome. Into the buggy it went, and we were on our way.

Royal Paper Shredder: $52
2 Cases Red/White Wine Glasses: $37.98
Lemony Snicket Box Set: $114
The Little Mermaid DVD: $23.98
Total: $227.96

On the way to the refridgerator section, we resisted Christmas cards, display snowmen, 4-packs of Guylian chocolates, and giant Toblerone bars. As Eric went to look for the orange juice, I wandered into the Italian/Greek refridgerated foods section and found a big jar of anchovies - for under $6!!! We had eaten some amazing anchovy antipasti in Rome. I wanted more of the anchovy action! Into the buggy it went with the case of four Tropicana orange juice boxes.

Royal Paper Shredder: $52.00
2 Cases Red/White Wine Glasses: $37.98
Lemony Snicket Box Set: $114.00
The Little Mermaid DVD: $23.98
Italian Anchovies: $5.67
Tropicana Box of 4: $11.99
Total: $245.62

As we made our way up to the cash registers, miserable with no self control, I stiffened my resolve. I don't need all this! It's the end of the month, we have bills to pay, Costco sucks and doesn't accept any credit card other than Amex. We shouldn't be spending the cash! I stopped the buggy and turned to Eric. "We don't need all of this." Eric looked at me in surprise. And then slowly, he said "Okay....what don't we need?" Together, we decided we didn't need two boxes of wine glasses. 16 wine glasses is a lot, and we don't even know if they'll really be any good. The second box of wine glasses came out of the buggy. Then I finally blurted out "I don't think I need the books!" Eric searched my forlorn face carefully. "Are you sure, honey?" I nodded. I could ask his sister Haley to borrow them. She had all of them. I'm uncomfortable with this in general, as I hate lending out my books, and thus do not like to borrow books from other people. But do I need a $114 box set of hardcover children's books? Perhaps not. Eric ceremoniously lifted the box set from the buggy, and took it back to the books section.

Royal Paper Shredder: $52.00
1 Case Red/White Wine Glasses: $18.99
The Little Mermaid DVD: $23.98
Italian Anchovies: $5.67
Tropicana Box of 4: $11.99
Total: $112.63

WOW! I was so proud of us. We had managed to cut our Costco bill by nearly half, just seconds from check-out! We had fought Costco, and while we may not have dominated, we were also not raped.

Of course, later that night, Eric opened up the wine glasses and was so impressed with them that we decided we would go back maybe today and pick up another box. And I did some research online, and found that the Lemony Snicket books were actually a pretty good price at Costco, and maybe I do want them after all...my kids might like to read them in the future. So we might be going back to get them as well.

Damn you, Costco.

That's Amore!

Setting the Scene
I’m sitting on an airplane somewhere over the Atlantic. There are two ditzy, materialistic, middle-aged Canadian-Italian women from Etobicoke in the seats behind us who think they are still young. They are loud and I hate them. The seats are uncomfortable and I didn’t buy the $5 headset, so I can’t hear the dialogue on the shitty Keanu Reeves movie that is playing on the shitty television screens. I’m sick of playing Tetris on my Nintendo DS. I have no book, because I only packed four, and I finished them all earlier this week. I have mosquito bites on my arms and neck, my skin is dry and flaky, my mouth tastes gross. My hair is starting to feel greasy and is clinging to my neck. With five and a half hours left to go on this flight, I have nothing to do and can’t sleep. So I’m composing a blog post that I can upload as soon as I get home. Yay blog post! Now you'll know why the if the post is impatient-sounding. I'm in airplane hell.

Why I Haven’t Posted in Three Effing Weeks
We’ve been on vacay in Italy for two weeks! And the week previous to the trip, I had nothing. Okay, this isn’t true, I totally had a thing, the hair thing. But I was too busy trying to pack for Italy. If this makes me suck, then I’m sorry. Please keep reading!

The Hair Thing – In Brief
I was sick of my seriously long hobo hair. I went to get it cut. Bitch cut it way shorter than I told her too. Will be seeking new hairdresser soon. Am now ugly. Uglier.

LUSTY ITALIAN GETAWAY
So! Down to juicy bloggy business! The husbo and I set off on a Contiki tour exactly two weeks ago. It was an itinerary called Simply Italy. There were about 35 people on the tour, some were cool, some were not cool, and we ended up roughly divvying up into rough cliques, much like high school.

Okay, I must pause for a second. I thought long and hard about how to approach this blog post. If there’s one thing I find horribly boring, it’s people’s travel blogs. There are a few notable exceptions. But for the most part, they’re bad. Sorry, people with travel blogs. But you suck-o.

I’m not going to tell you everything I saw, because that can pretty much be summed up like this: “I saw some big-ass cathedrals, and some big-ass ruins, and some big-ass important pieces of big-ass art. It was all big-ass amazing, and my life has been enriched and my perception of the world has been big-ass changed forever. That reminds me, I still have a big ass.”

So apart from all that, here’s the other stuff:

I Revealed Too Much Information
Being the only married couple in the group, Eric and I were socially overlooked in the beginning. For about two hours. For all you Contiki people reading this, don't try to deny it. You were friendly, but assumed that we would be bland, and probably wondering if we would share private kisses awkwardly in front of you when you didn’t want to see that kind of domestic intimacy, thereby spoiling any kind of partay mood. Then I started exposing private details, and everything shifted into normal focus: people laughed at my stories, and pitied Eric who obviously seemed uncomfortable but resigned to the sharing of said stories. Welcome to our married life! It's like a car crash. You can't help looking and listening, but you know you shouldn't. These were some of the things I revealed during the course of the trip:

• Good Wife/Bad Wife a.k.a. Eric Loves Figure Skating and Carol is a Bitch in the Morning
• Eric Pukes in Carol’s Mouth in Cuba
• Carol Waxes Her Yoohoo/Eric Trims His Entire Body
• Frequency and Satisfaction-Rating of Poopies Made on the Trip
• Eric Has a Big McBumhole
• Sometimes When We Do the Sex, I Just Lie There
• We Pop Each Others’ Body Pimples
• Eric Only Asked Me Out To Get Laid
• Eric Dumped Me To Get Laid By Other People
• Eric Failed To Get Laid By Other People But Did Make Out With a Large Girl With B.O. In An Alley
• Eric Won’t Let Me Put Things In His Ass

I Made Out With An Aussie
Everyone makes out with an Aussie when they go to Europe. And now, I have too! Her name is Lucy, and she’s a great kisser. Eric was passed out at the time, and Lucy herself doesn’t remember it. I later found out that Lucy threw up afterwards. But it was good. Lucy’s hot. I was less hot, I was wearing my glow-in-the-dark flannel jammies with the sheep on it, and I had my hair tied up on top of my head so that it stuck straight up. It's possible this is the reason she puked off the side of her bed following the Cana-Aussie lesbian tongue action. But the important thing is that I molested her over my husband’s unconscious body, and she was totally digging it.

Eric Can’t Do Accents
There were two people on the tour who did the best accents ever. Tara from Sacramento was a tiny little hot powerhouse who was completely hilarious, and Jim from LA was an uber-deep musician. They hooked up on the second night and totally stole our couple’s thunder. But it was cool, because they could do accents – Tara especially. She could imitate everyone, and she would act it out too…so when she quoted her oddly silent Brazilian roommate, it turned into a one-woman side-splitting comedy act that made me want to shit my pants.

I can’t really do accents. I can sort of do a really poor English accent, and then everything else I try comes out sounding like a Chinese accent. It’s really kind of embarrassing.

After the tour ended, Eric and I secretly tried to practice Tara and Jim’s Mexican accents. I could kind of do it. Eric couldn’t.

Carol: “Eeef dees eess torchurr, chayne mee too da waal!”
Eric: “Haha! Yeah! If this is torture, chain me to the wall!”
Carol: “You’re still not doing it.”

All Homeless Italians are Cripples and Amputees
This is really just an observation. But they are. It started with a few men with exposed stumps in the place of arms, sitting in some doorways, mumbling something incoherent in Italian (I suppose it could have been coherent to Italians, but it was not to me. I speak not the Italian tongue). Then there was a man limping around in a church courtyard, making humming and clicking noises. Eric's guess is that he was mute, and didn't have the use of one leg. But the best (worst) one was one woman with no legs, pushing herself along the ground on a skateboard and wailing. We thought she was a dog at first. It was really creepy, and it makes me wonder how they all lost their limbs. I actually secretly wonder if they did it on purpose to make more money on the streets. They gave me a new appreciation of the regular homeless people in Toronto.

And most importantly...
My Best Poo
I pooed every single day in Italy. In fact, sometimes I pooed twice! And they were mostly excellent poos, poos that I would be delighted to dump out every day forever. But the best poo was in Capri. I hadn't gone to the washroom all day, and it was mid-afternoon. I had to go pee really badly, so we found a public washroom in Anacapri. It cost 0,50 euro to use this washroom which was clean and smelled okay, and had soft toilet paper. I made giant pillows with the toilet paper to line the seat, then I sat down and revelled in a zen-like stream of urine. Then at the tail end of the pee, there came a sudden swift and powerful push from my rectum and a firm, solid, satisfying load of poo came rushing out of my bowels like a giant cobra exiting its snake-hole. The poo just came and came and came, as I sat in horrified delight at this unexpected and aggressive move by my intestines. When I got up and looked in the toilet, I saw the most beautiful coil of fecal matter piled up high and proud in the bowl. I had bemoaned the folly of European toilets, and the way the holes are so deep that you can never see how much poo you've made. This toilet was no different, but my incredible - nay - death-defying bowel movement had risen above all such hindrances and was displayed there in all its glory. The best part was that it only took two wipes with the soft toilet paper to clean my bum, and then I was on my way.

And that, my friends, is truly amore.