Day 85: Save Money. Live Better.

Enough family time, let’s go to Wal-Mart! In my defense, I’m going to buy Bananagrams, a game my sister A just introduced me to (she played it with sister J, who apparently is queen of Bananagrams since she’s memorized all the two letter words). I want to play it with my kids – quality time –and beat them handily.

I’ve only been to Wal-Mart once or twice. My initiation took place while on vacation in Rhode Island; I went to buy a beach umbrella. D was getting ready to file a missing persons report when I finally struggled into the house hours later, weighed down by bag after bag of must-have items, including Mary Kate & Ashley clothing I knew H would go gaga over. Wal-Mart also came in handy later that summer when the dog got sprayed by a skunk at 11:00 p.m. Did you know that hydrogen peroxide gets out the stench better than tomato juice?

It’s so absurd to be able to buy cilantro, jumper cables, and cultured pearls all in the same place, isn’t it? I wander around, slack-jawed, and happen upon the Institutional Aisle. That’s just too good to pass up. Have to check it out. Have you ever seen a four-pound can of StarKist Chunk Light Tuna? What about a six-pound can of Chef Boyardee Beef Ravioli? Surreal. And also kind of stomach turning.

Donuts do not turn my stomach. I love donuts almost as much as I love cake. We notice that the parking lot at Wal-Mart smells like donuts – turns out that there’s a Dunkin’ Donuts (a.k.a. Drunky Do-Do) right inside the entrance. Just the other day I read that a doctor in Florida was fired from the county health department because he put a sign outside reading “America Dies on Dunkin’”. Apparently the county commissioner owns a donut shop and didn’t take kindly to the message.

The Donut Pub, on the corner of 7th Avenue and 14th Street in Manhattan, makes the world’s best donuts. But in a pinch, Dunkin’ Donuts will do. The local donut chain in Rhode Island printed Bible verse on the side of the bags, which I thought was a little weird but not weird enough to stop me from buying them. Even weirder? On the drive to Maine the other day we passed a church with a sign out front that read “Come worship with us! Love and AC here!” Powerful combination. Now just add some donuts and you’ve got yourself a faithful flock.

Jim Gaffigan is a comedian my kids watch on Comedy Central. He does a really funny bit about how embarrassing it is to eat fast food: “That’s why they invented the drive-thru. Look, no one has to see you, just drive around back, we’ll hand it out the window!”

It was relatively early in the morning when I headed home from the Jersey shore last week. I asked N where I could stop for coffee. She suggested Dunkin’ Donuts and then asked whether I’d also get a donut while I was there. I’m guessing that was a rhetorical question. There were at least twenty cars waiting in the drive-thru line. Maybe it is embarrassing to be seen in the shop, but how can you possibly choose a donut without checking them all out first, debating which looks the tastiest, which has the most frosting…

I finally made my choice and walked out the door, dreaming of the mouth-watering glazed stick in my bag. HONNNNKKKKK! Please, tell me, who thought it was a good idea to put the exit right in the middle of the drive-thru line? America Dies on Dunkin’ indeed.

Anyway, Wal-Mart didn’t have Bananagrams but Amazon did and promised to deliver it later this afternoon. The first word I’m going to spell is ET, as in “I have et my last donut” (for a while anyway). I don’t want to be fat on my 50th birthday. I also want to live to see it.