beyond cinderella

I spend Wednesday mornings with my daughter, Shantel. Usually I arrive at her apartment at around 8:30. I always have some homemade meals for her to freeze and heat up when she is ready. This week I took her a meatloaf, a pound of bacon that she asked me to fry up for her, and a big container of chili. Shantel makes some of her own meals like chicken enchilada casserole, pasta with her own homemade sauce, and macaroni and cheese etc. and she is always baking something from scratch for herself on the days she doesn’t have class.

Today when I arrived at Shantel’s apartment she asked me if I would take her to the bank to get her one dollar bills for dial-a-ride this week. Then she wanted to go to the neighborhood Walmart store because she said she can get some of her cleaning supplies cheaper there than at Fry’s. After Walmart we headed over to Sally’s Beauty Supply to get her hair conditioner. Of course, running in and getting one thing and getting right out is never going to happen when Shantel gets in Sally’s. No, she will touch everything on the shelves and ask me what it is and what it says on the label about what it does… There is every kind of hair product known to man in Sally’s, so this can take hours if she didn’t have to get to class. Lucky for me she does have class on Wednesday’s… After we touched and smelled lots and lots of products, Shantel said she was ready to go pay for her conditioner and leave. Shantel was very excited to know that I had a 15% off coupon for Sally’s that came to our house in the mail for her. She smiled that beautiful smile and said “oh, my, this is turning out to be the best day ever…!”

When we left Sally’s we went to Fry’s to get her groceries. We shop the same store every week and go up and down every aisle the same way. I tell Shantel what we are passing and she tells me if she needs the item or not… We always end up in the bakery department and the first thing Shantel asks me is if there is anything on manager’s special? Usually we find something on special that she likes but sometimes there isn’t anything on special at all. Today, she hit the jackpot! I had to laugh as I told her what all was on manager’s special. It went something like this:

Me – two pieces of yellow cake with caramel frosting for 99 cents

Shantel – OK, I’ll take that

Me – four chocolate eclairs for $1.79

Shantel – Oh wow, I’ll take that

Me – one large chocolate brownie for 99 cents

Shantel – Really, I’ll have that too

Me – two small pieces of turtle cheesecake for $1.49

Shantel – OMG, I’ll have that too. Then she smiled and said “Can this day get any better? First the Sally’s coupon and now all these manager’s specials!”

This is what Shantel’s grocery shopping looks like.

It looks like a good supply of groceries… but in reality, most of it is manager’s special junk food items like this…

Or, ingredients to bake more sweets from scratch for herself like pumpkin roll cakes… I told Shantel I can feel myself getting fatter just by helping her shop for all her junk food! She just laughed and said “oh, mom, I don’t even worry about that. I just relax and enjoy it!”

Note to readers: With all the sweets Shantel eats, she insists on buying diet Dr Pepper! Now, isn’t that a HOOT? 🙂 🙂

Stay Tuned!