Except Backpacks

Except backpacks, school shopping for Sarah and Jeffrey IS DONE! Besides that this weekend -- between our local Dollar Tree where items are always a dollar each and Kmart where nigh everything this week is on special, we ended up spending about thirty-six dollars -- we've also endured some bitter truths about area eateries which could inspire us to NOT go to them again. The Little Caesar's franchise in Kmart which in seeming defiance of the profit motive stays open (I've never seen it full, or even half so) has people that ... um, don't seem to want to satisfy customers and a ridiculous turnover rate for that reason. All Martha wanted was freshly made Italian cheese bread.


Not made-five-minutes-ago-claimed-the-worker-and-sitting-in-their-heater Italian cheese bread.


This is really not a rant today, although when Martha and Nicole (the young lady's name at Little Caesar's who wasn't at first willing to make it and I was ready to say something lest this get ugly) were with the kids and I there, this felt like it would become one. I think we're watching Gordon Ramsay get served everything wrong which seems to show up only when he's ordering in Kitchen Nightmares a mite too much. But what's wrong with a higher standard and holding others to it? At Perkins Saturday night the kids ate free (a reason we go there besides the good and filling food ON Saturdays) yet it seemed the place was maybe half full when we went and we were dead last on the list to be served.


Even with a skeleton crew, serving us non-grey hairs should have been easy enough.


I can't get too mad at the waiting staff of Amy, Mindy, Angela, and the others though. I just didn't think we'd have to flag them down in a half-empty restaurant. Meh. After dinner Saturday we headed to Carmike Theatres and filled our popcorn bucket full of hot buttered popcorn at the concessions stand and then went home to watch Zootopia that we had rented. Before Martha had gotten off work at Burger King Saturday afternoon the kids and I went to Rodeheaver Boys and Girls Ranch Thrift Store and among the items we got -- I needed a newer belt anyway -- individual popcorn holders, one for each of us. And it's Sarah who thought of those, she's quite bright.


I almost say that as though Sarah's the matter and Jeffrey's the energy in our household!


After church Sunday we got to meet a prospective new successor to head our education and family ministry. I admit at first I expected to get into a fight with somebody regarding it. Oh, not because I applied for the job so much as I feel Bethany Lutheran's focus on training the young people there is ... or feels to me ... lacking. But Shauna's experience with youth ministry in Virginia and I'm guessing Wisconsin where she and her husband Ryan live now, even though she's originally from North Dakota will give her an outsider's perspective that I often feel the second-and-third-generation-born-and-raised members here lack. That I appreciate, being a North Dakota import myself.


I was born in Illinois and I grew up in Florida -- I'm here because of Martha.


I told Ryan the short version of how Martha and I met online at the turn of the century and met in Minot a year later and I moved to North Dakota the year following and he said he's heard about people meeting online a lot. I referred to how yes, you can successfully meet and stay together online as a start but it takes both of you to make the relationship work, and he replied that it's a choice. "Choice" is one of my trigger words, as opposed to a decision where you will weigh advantages and disadvantages and go with the best option for you. With a choice, you can still weigh alternatives -- but you'll go and stay with the one you want anyway. You'll have standards.


Martha and I not only have a covenant but also we have made the choice to stay together.


David