Chapter 53
Man I am glad we got home when we did today. I can’t believe it, but our little town has had a riot. I kid you not. And … OMG … I may have shot someone. I mean I am pretty sure that I did. I meant to shoot him, and I think I did. I saw the guy grab his butt and fall - and no I wasn’t aiming at his butt - but he’s not there anymore. Neither is the little Toyota truck he’d been driving.
My brain is pulling a Porky Pig. Let me start at the beginning. The day actually started boring-normal. We got up and I fixed oatmeal so the twins wouldn’t get hungry too soon before lunch. I also grabbed the lunches that I’d fixed last night. I know a lot of people still run down to the Dixie Café for lunch, but I’d go broke if I did that. How people can still afford to eat out I don’t know. Maybe that’s all they do, and they don’t buy groceries. Anyway, work went smoothly even though Taylor was in the office and wanting the same kind of attention he gets in Mr. Dayton Barnes’ Jacksonville office. It meant that I had to keep the twins and Daniel really quiet as well as hop to it and provide whatever was wanted at top speed. I think he’s forgotten how to say thank you. The closest thing I got from him today was a grunt, one that was usually followed with another order. Sigh. Such is the life of a receptionist/paralegal. Oh well.
I was getting a little suspicious at how quiet the kiddos were being, and man did I have reason. I didn’t know it, but they’d created a project for themselves and had been MOC’ing “home defense tools.” Oh, my gawd. I am so lucky that no one figured out what they were doing. They had found an old laptop computer in the office junk room and had figured out how to get it hooked to the internet. They were watching vids on making office weapons
[1] and stuff like that. I clued to something was going on when I saw a “shopping list” to start looking for when we were helping to clean out foreclosures.
Well, I knew a conversation was going to happen, but I couldn’t until Taylor left. Only he didn’t, he was working late and then going to dinner with Mr. Barnes and Mr. Musgrove. Geez Louise. That meant someone was going to have to watch Daniel, so yeah. I have the Twins and Daniel hidden in Knox’s walk-in closet in his bedroom on the second floor.
I didn’t think anything of it because it is no longer unusual for me to have Daniel at times other than at the Firm’s office. So, I finished my workday, avoided being asked to stay late to complete “just a few more things”, and took the three caballeros with me to pick up my order at wallyworld. While there I also decided to pick up some stuff that I would need to keep canning. The supplies I was looking for weren’t where they used to be located, which is over in the grocery area. Instead, I decided to look in the kitchen gadget area and booya, they were there but pushed behind some fancy canning jars left over from Christmas. Feeling only a little guilty I took all the various kinds of pectin they had left - Sure-Jell regular and low sugar, MCP brand of the same, and a brand of bulk powdered pectin I’d never heard of called Wincrest, Mrs. Wages brand, Ball brand, and liquid Certo. I winced but got a dozen more half gallon Ball brand jars (all they had) because I needed them for storage of dry bulk items. I figured in for a penny in for a pound and since nothing was getting cheaper, I went back to the grocery area and got the limit allowed of bread flour, cake flour, self-rising flour, baking soda, baking powder, yeast, and cornmeal. I made sandwich bread by the loaf with the automatic bread maker, but I was also planning on turning my hand to Amish Friendship Bread
[2] because there were a ton more recipes than I had ever considered. Like 100s of recipes. And since the starter for the bread was easy and didn’t require the yeast needed for the bread machine, I didn’t feel bad about it.
I also picked up several boxes of canning and pickling salt, some boxes of iodized salt, a few boxes of ice cream salt that was on the clearance shelves, some popcorn seasonings left over from Christmas that hadn’t sold, and then a bunch of no-salt seasonings that were also hanging around with the other clearance items. That’s when I noticed they had an entire clearance area just for the grocery section, so I decided to try and see what all they’d put there and if it was worth spending even more money. Uh, most of the stuff was serious junk, a lot of Christmas candy and other food gifts like skillet cookie kits and enough hot sauces and mini liquor bottles to flambé an entire herd of rats. Nope. Wasn’t going to spend money on that stuff. I didn’t need the twins climbing the house like King Kong; they still had candy left over from the fall festival at church last October.
There was some Asian stuff that I grabbed like rice noodles and rice crackers and particularly flavored rice mixes. There were bottles of soy sauce, teriyaki sauce, duck sauce, and a few others that were hot sauces that I’d seen Derek put on food from the packets that came from the oriental deli. There were also some seasoning packets for rice dishes, like fried rice and a few other things that were so cheap I got them even if I didn’t know what they tasted like. They had ghee stocked pretty deep, and since I knew what it was and how to use it, I got almost all they had. And then I saw more seasoning packets for things like sloppy joes, chili, spaghetti sauce, taco seasoning, enchiladas, gravies, chicken wing seasonings, and almost too many more for me to remember. No idea how that stuff made it to the clearance area unless it was because it was in the old packaging. They also had a bunch of kosher stuff as well as stuff that came from the “healthy” food aisle. Why was I able to get so much? They had taken the limits off all clearance items. As promised, they’d instituted rationing on the first of February, though they were careful not to call it that. I decided to take advantage of the clearance exception and then I was going to leave but I decided to check to see if they had my favorite flavors of bubble water back in stock. Sure enough they did, and I got the limit I was allowed. Then I knew I would have to leave or break into money that I hadn’t budgeted to use.
Daniel, I love the kid, but he can be a little clueless. Not as bad as he used to be, even with just a month under the influence of the twins, but he was still oblivious to what I was doing and that was fine. Nat distracted him while Knox helped me to load all the clearance stuff in the bags and then into the buggy in the self-serve check out. I had arranged things in the buggy, so it was easy to ring them up quickly. All finished and out of the store without a door person going over every item to make sure I didn’t try and steal anything. We got it loaded into the minivan and then it was quickly off to rendezvous with Mr. Musgrove only it turns out that they were held up by something going on on that side of town and he asked me to go straight home and get the kids in the center of the house.
“Listen Mina … go straight there right now.”
Hearing what he wasn’t saying I asked, “Is this like what was on the news?”
“Yes. Do you understand what that means?”
“It means you are somewhere you can’t talk, and you need me to take care of Daniel. Don’t worry, I’ve got this. Just do what you gotta.”
“Mina … you too. Do you understand?”
I was fairly certain I did so said, “Yes. Sheepdog rules.”
Then the cell phone started doing what it sometimes does during a storm and kicked out and only had _ _ _ _ where a signal bar(s) should have been. I’d already turned towards the Homeplace, but it was like swimming upstream, and I couldn’t understand why people were driving towards whatever was going on rather than away from it. But I was shocked more to find there was a truck parked in front of my gate.
[1] View: https://youtu.be/3wTM2u-HMoI?si=_xMhv5aWPPcNEO-O
[2] Amish Friendship Bread Recipe Box