Water Up My Nose, Walmart Down the Drain, and an Armadillo Karate Show
Ode to Saturday: A Tragicomedy in Ft. Lonesome
How many things can go wrong? Let me count thy ways. Actually, grab a calculator—you’re going to need it. Hang on, this one’s a little wordy. But hey, it’s tax season, and wordiness is free.
While some people take their tax refunds and buy cars, jewelry, or other shiny things, in this house we go full pioneer mode: we stock up on meat and groceries like we’re preparing for the apocalypse.
It’s our biggest monthly expense because, friends, we live so far out that even DoorDash looks at our address and says, “Nah, fam.” Ft. Lonesome isn’t just a name—it’s a lifestyle.
The Morning Chaos
My day started at 5:20 AM because I’m a morning person by all stretches of the word—like, if “morning person” were an Olympic sport, I’d have a gold medal and a Wheaties box cover.
I sit up, stretch all my muscles (because blood flow is life), and take a sip of water. Except, apparently, I decided to inhale it instead of drink it. Cue choking, water shooting out my nose like a busted sprinkler, and then—because my body loves a good punchline—I let out a fart. 🤦♀️
Thank the Lord I didn’t pee myself. Small victories, people.
After composing myself like a lady (read: wiping my nose and dignity off the floor), I make sure I didn’t wake up the bear—Damian. All is good except now I have water bogies and an urgent bathroom situation.
I put on my comfy clothes, slip on shoes, and head toward the door. No, no, nay nay. I trip over the fan leg, jolt my knee, and suddenly become Octomom—one hand on the dresser, one on the bed, and somehow the little dog catches my other hand like he’s auditioning for Cirque du Soleil.
Then this tiny turd starts growling at me. I apologize. To a dog. For disturbing his royal slumber.
Finally, I make it to the coffee station, open the curtains, and thank God for another day of life. Ooh, coffee—how I love that first sip that hits my soul like a warm hug from Jesus himself. You magical nectar of sanity.
I take my cup to the porch, turn on the string lights, and sit back to listen to the earth wake up. Birds chirping, roosters starting to crow as we all wait for the sun to rise.
The Freezer Saga
One of the items we ordered was a small stand-up freezer. Before Friday, we were scouring Marketplace and every local “for sale” site like treasure hunters, but people were posting broken freezers for a hundred bucks with captions like “easy fix.”
🙄 My guy, if it’s so easy, why didn’t you fix it?
Anywho, we found one for $98 on rollback and a flash sale. Add to cart—click.
Saturday around 8:50 AM, I get a text that the freezer is on its way. Boy, I love a quick delivery—like a kid with cake!
I wake up Damian because he’s the muscle and my knee isn’t kneeing thanks to the fan incident. The freezer shows up with the nicest couple who do deliveries for extra money. They pick it up and bring it inside the gate.
Damian grabs the dolly because I’m not about to carry this thing around the back like a contestant on World’s Strongest Woman.
We get it on the back porch, unwrap it… and oh my stars, it’s so shiny! Like, “cue the angel choir” shiny. I half expected a beam of light and Morgan Freeman’s voice saying, “Your freezer has arrived.”
Now, figure out where to put this new shiny freezer. We move some stuff around, find a spot… and the cord’s not long enough to reach the outlet. Of course.
So we move some more stuff around and finally get it plugged in. He’s supposed to let it do its thing for 24 hours, and we gave it 36 because we’re overachievers like that.
The Walmart Disaster
My text song goes off—your driver has picked up your Walmart order and your delivery is on the way, ETA 10:22 AM. Fantastic!
I check at 10:15, and now it says 10:45 AM. Ookkkk.
I check at 10:45, and now it says 11:20 AM. It was at this point Damian and I knew something was very, very wrong.
You see, Walmart has this nifty little tracking app so you can see where your driver is on the road. Our driver looked like he hadn’t left the Walmart parking lot.
I try to call the store, but of course nobody at Walmart knows how to pick up a damn phone. At 11:47 AM, I get a text message: Sorry, we could not deliver your order due to unexpected issues.
Are you kidding me right now?!
So he gets on his app, I’m already on mine, and I pull everything up on my computer. All it says is delivery attempted but failed. No delivery was attempted—I can assure you—because the car never left the Walmart parking lot.
Damian says, “Looks like you can switch it to pick up,” which would be convenient since they already pulled the order, right? But nowhere on the app and nowhere on the computer is there a button that says switch to pick up.
So I try to call the store again—option 4, grocery department. It rings until the man says, “No one’s available to take your call right now,” and then disconnects.
Damian calls Walmart, option 4—same thing. So I call Walmart back and hit the option for customer service. To be honest, I’m so irritated and pissed off right now I don’t even remember what option that was.
Transferred to customer service, but guess what… nobody picks up the phone and I get that same message: Nobody is available to take your call right now, please try again later.
It was at this point the old Shawna and the new Shawna were beefing about who was going to come to the surface to handle this situation. 😂
Damian finds me the toll-free number for customer service, and I call it. I get a young lady named Ava, who was very nice and very apologetic.
I tell her I’d be more than happy to go pick up my groceries, and she might as well have said, “No no, nay nay.”
What she proceeds to tell me is that we have to cancel the order and reorder everything. Then she says, “If you would like, I can add everything back to your cart for you.”
Ava, that is a bigger-than-normal food order. When you place it, Walmart puts a hold a little higher than the actual amount, and it takes 7 to 10 days for that hold to come off. I do not have the money to reorder the same groceries!
While Ava was very apologetic, that was the only option we had. She ended up giving us a $25 promo code to take off our next order, which she informed me she’s already put in our cart.
Oh, that’s lovely—very nice of you. If I wanted to pick up my groceries, I would have picked pick up instead of delivery.
Ava proceeds to tell me there was a road blockage a half mile from Walmart—which explains why it looked like he never left the parking lot—and he ended up just turning around and going back. Lovely.
Damian and I are questioning our entire lives right now because we need the food. I ended up putting the new order on my credit card, and when Walmart decides to release the hold and credit my money back, I’ll just pay it down.
The Errand Marathon
Of course, you know I picked a completely different Walmart for the reorder.
So we went into Mulberry and South Lakeland and I went to Great Clips to get my haircut. While I’m getting my haircut, Damian goes next door to HomeGoods—which I’ve only ever window-shopped at—and I’m getting text messages like:
“We can’t afford anything here.”
“This is a store for bougie people.”
“It smells like old lady perfume in here.” 😂
Haircut done, we start driving and end up at TJ Maxx—one of my favorite stores, especially the home section.
I grab a bottle of avocado oil, balsamic glaze (fabulous on salmon), smoked paprika, and a few other odds and ends.
By this time of day, my knees are screaming at me like toddlers denied candy in a checkout line. But he wants to go to Bealls, so I take him there, park the car, and just wait.
Next stop: Dollar Tree. I did end up walking around Dollar Tree with him—you know I gotta get those steps in!
On the way to pick up our groceries (between 4:00 and 5:00 PM), I say, “Do you feel like cooking tonight? Because I surely do not.”
PizzaPizza
He nods. I say, “We could just get pizza at Little Caesars.” He says, “Deal.”
So he pulls up the app, asks me if this is the right location. I see it says South Florida Avenue and say yes—but we would soon find out that I was very, very wrong.
He walks in because the app says it’s ready; and it was definitely ready… but not at the location we were at. #FML
There was silence for about 30 seconds, which may not seem like a lot of time, but when you’ve got two people who are not only in love but also best friends… it’s not that quiet that often.
I finally let out a sigh. He started his sentence with “You said—” and I held up my hand and said, “I’m sorry.”
While the storefront does face South Florida Avenue, the plaza recognizes Shepherd as the road.
I then said, “Well, at least it won’t be so piping-ass hot by the time we get it.” He nods in agreement.
We get our pizza and finally head home.
The Ninja Armadillo
We’re coming down the back end of our road, come around a curve, and two armadillos are crossing the street.
I come to a stop. One scampers. The other… well, the other stops, looks back at us, does a karate chop and flip, and then keeps it moving to meet up with his friend.
We were laughing so hard my eyes were shut and I couldn’t drive off. Damian yells out the window, “Well whopchopsuey to you too!” 🤣 I can’t even!
Moral of the Story
And that, my friends, was Saturday. A day that started with water shooting out my nose and ended with an armadillo doing martial arts in the middle of the road.
Lesson learned? Life in Ft. Lonesome isn’t for the faint of heart—or the short on patience. But if you can survive Walmart, wrong pizza locations, and ninja wildlife, you can survive anything.
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