Chickengate

This is yet another tale that takes place at Target. It seems to be the setting of most of my stories.

So I was at Target, buying just a handful of things which quickly turned into a cart full of things. I got home and Frank kindly unloaded the groceries. I was going to sneak off and get a pedicure but just before I walked out the door I said to Frank, "Hey, what did you do with the chicken?" I wanted to make sure he put it in the fridge and not the freezer, since we planned to grill fajitas the next night.

"Chicken? What chicken?" he asked.

Panic.

Where was the chicken? We checked the obvious places--the fridge, the freezer, the gridge, the greezer…nowhere. Did I leave it in the car? Hurry, time is of the essence! I ran to the car…no chicken. I surmised that I must have left at the store. Referring to my recent mishaps at Target as well as a situation at a Wendy's in Waco in which I left my driver's side door open the entire time we ate, Frank said, "You've been doing this a lot lately." Low blow, dude. But he did have a point. I mean, I completely forgot to take Gus to gymnastics on Monday even though a friend asked me, "Where does Gus take gymnastics? Does he like it?" DURING the time we were supposed to be there! The universe was giving me all kinds of clues!

But back to the chicken. I decided I would go back to Target, replace the chicken (cause they are always nice about that. Yes, this has happened to me before) and then go get my pedicure. So I did just that. Except the pedicure. Cause when I was walking out of Target I realized I can't leave chicken in the car while I get my toes did.

So I gave up on the pedicure and went home. But as I opened the fridge to put in the new chicken, I remembered the cream cheese. Where was the cream cheese? And holy heavens, where was the GUACAMOLE?! How many perishable items did I lose?

I checked the pantry. My eyes landed on the Halloween candy I had just purchased. It was way up on the top shelf still in a Target bag. I jumped and pulled the bag down. Yep, it was slightly cold. At the bottom of this bag, under the Halloween candy was the cream cheese, the guacamole, and THE CHICKEN! (That's some weird packing, btw.) I took it to Frank and said, "I found this in the pantry. You seem to be doing this a lot lately."

We had a little laugh and quickly agreed to throw out the chicken.

Oh, but wait. There's more.

Popsy was here and had been part of the original search team for the chicken. When I told him the story, he said, "It would be a bigger sin to throw away the chicken. It's fine!" And he proceeded to get it out of the trash. Well, I'll admit I was sort of sold on the fact that the chicken was probably fine. But Frank and his mom WERE NOT. They insisted we keep "Popsy's chicken" separate and only Popsy--not Frank, me, Granny Jo, the kids or Thea (our guest for fajitas who is just learning of this by reading this post) would eat the chicken that sat in my car, then in the pantry and then in the trash.

But despite his best efforts to separate Popsy's chicken from the good chicken they inevitably got mixed. In the end we all survived. (Thea? Are you there? Please comment if you are alive.)

So the moral of the story is…if you have plans to go get a pedicure, just go. Don't mention something right before you walk out the door. Especially chicken.