Karma 1, John 0

Not sure what possessed me to do this but the other day I offered to my darling wife that I would cook dinner for her tonight.  No, not Mac n Cheese with hot dogs nor Sloppy Joe.  This is a full-on meal with meat, veggies and pasta.  I'm going all German on her tonight with schnitzel, spaetzle and a cucumber salad.  Hey, it's about time I earned my keep around here and my status as "trophy husband" has pretty much lost it's luster. 

Carrying a significant amount of German blood in me and having spent a good eight years living in that glorious country I have quite a taste for German delicacies and especially their beer.  I thought why not share one of my favorite meals with my girl?  So what does all this have to do with Karma?  I'm getting to it, just hold your mustard.

This afternoon I needed to get a few things from the market in order to make this magnificent meal.  My plan was to go to our regular King Soopers to get the food stuffs and the liquor store next door because, hey, this is Colorado and they haven't quite figured out this whole "sell booze in the grocery store" thing that so many more evolved states have figured out.  Of course this booze store has a very poor, overpriced selection of wines.  Even the crap stuff was more expensive than a decent bottle found at most other stores.  Alright, bag that.  Just walk over to Soopers and get the food necessities.  Of course they have everything save one, lemon juice.  Of course when I asked where I could find it three different clerks sent me to the different parts of the store, all for naught.  SCREW!  Ok, fine, I'll drive across the street to Safeway to get what I need.  What happens there? Karma kicked in.  I find my little bottle of lemon juice and as I make my way to the EXPRESS FRICKIN' LANE, a woman walks up with a cart full of items that far exceeded the 15 item limit.  Of course she sees me and my little bottle and proceeds to whip her cart right in front of me.  Oh well, don't be a tool, just let it go.  BREATHE.......   As she slowly puts one item at a time on the conveyor belt another clerk is just standing there, taking this all in.  A couple other folks fall in line behind me and this clerk is still watching.  As the checker is scanning the last item and "Gladys" starts filling out her checkbook (Ahem, it's a FRICKING EXPRESS LANE!!!), the comatose clerk who'd been standing there decides to open the other express lane and before the last item is bagged for this lady in front of me, the other two folks that WERE behind me are now walking out the door of this lovely establishment.  Oh, did I tell you I had a couple of frozen items that were now melting in my car thanks to this great thing called Global Warming?

Well, eventually I made my way out of the store with my little lemon bottle in hand.  I was immediately accosted by a crack dealer, I mean Girl Scout Cookie Seller, but had to quickly make my way to my car because I still had to pick up a bottle of wine.  My go-to guys were there with exactly what I needed.  In my head I'm lecturing myself that I should've just come to these guys first.  They've always got what I need at a reasonable price plus during baseball and football season they always have a game on and I get a chance to carry on with some sport talk banter that I otherwise only get to do through text messages with my friend Gina.

So a 15 minute trip probably was a bit closer to 30 just because Karma was feeling a little frisky today.  Oh well, if that's the greatest of my worries then I'm a pretty lucky guy.  So now I'm keeping my fingers crossed and trying to channel the great German cooks to hopefully prepare something nice for my girl.  But just in case I've got several boxes of Mac n Cheese at the ready...