What Makes Me Laugh

Our clawfoot tub, now in the kitchen.

Our extended family may not agree on religion, politics, or sports teams, but they can agree on one thing: “You need a new toilet.”

Every family member who visits says this to us and we always have the same response: “We know.”

It’s funny. I don’t remember noticing the toilet before we bought the house, but as soon as we moved in it became the primary topic of conversation.

“Why do you think it’s like that?” I asked, staring down at the brown, blue and green stained porcelain bowl.

“Minerals,” Doug said.

Our house was built in 1918. The toilet looked like it was built in 1818.

Still, it worked. Okay, so you needed a plunger for anything besides number 1, but as long as you were careful, it worked. We nicknamed it the Geyser because of our close proximity to Yellowstone and its strange colors and ability to shoot water.

I tried various cleaners on the stains until I could no longer stand the thought of flushing another toxic chemical down the toilet. We had other remodeling priorities, we thought, and as long as we warned visitors it was no big deal. Turns out, when you live with something long enough, you forget to warn people until it’s nearly too late.

“Um.” Tap, tap, tap on the bathroom door. “Sorry to disturb you, but we really need you to know that the toilet was like that when we moved in here and if there is any doubt in your mind about whether it will flush please use the plunger.”

We forgot to warn my mother-in-law before she visited, and she was waiting for Doug on the porch when he arrived home.

“What happened in there?” she demanded.

“In where?” Doug asked, genuinely confused.

“The bathroom.”

“Oh.”

When my father-in-law came to visit he immediately offered to buy us a new toilet. “C’mon,” he said. “We’re going to the hardware store and we’re getting you a new toilet. Shouldn’t cost more than $75.”

This was a kind offer, but we gently explained that actually a new toilet in an old house would mean ripping out the existing floor, and once you go there, an entire remodel including plumbing. We didn’t want to ruin his vacation entirely.

Because, you see, this is our only bathroom. That’s right, and we are currently in week two of the remodel, which did include removing the clawfoot tub, ripping out the cheap  flooring put in by the previous owners, and taking out the toilet. Not an inexpensive undertaking, but a necessary one.

Our toilet is not gone, however. It’s currently a big part of our lives in the garage, where we are employing space age technology to take care of our waste until a new one can be properly installed.

The Geyser, now in the garage

I’m not kidding. A local company called Cleanwaste sells “Go Anywhere Toilet Kits” which includes a bag that fits over a toilet seat with a powder in the bottom called Poo Powder. They also sell Wag Bags for camping and emergency situations. According to their website, “Poo Powder is a proprietary blend of a NASA-developed super-absorbent designed to gel and encapsulate liquid and solid waste, and a natural deodorizing agent and decay catalyst.” Which means, that you can poo in the bag, it biodegrades, and you can dump the sealed bag into your garbage without having to worry about it exploding or smelling. I know, eww. But a bigger eww would be not having something like that around in this situation.

Where are we bathing? At the gym. Doug claimed that he could go without a shower for a month, which I told him not to brag about, and he broke down after Day 3. Remember, Doug was a river guide for many years and bathed in a river the whole summer, but even he admits that this is different since he is doing the entire remodel himself and is covered in construction materials by the end of the day.

I try to remind him. “When it’s finished the bathroom will be gorgeous, just like our kitchen remodel, and we won’t have to knock on the door when people come over for dinner. Won’t that be nice?“

St. Patty's Day Parade at The Villages

Doug and I have been vacationing with seniors in Florida, and it was an eye-opening trip. What keeps us young at heart and spry of limbs was on full-display at The Villages, a retirement community where Doug’s father now resides.

Let’s take the St. Patty’s Day parade, which not only sported the usual golf carts decorated with green ribbons and “Support the Troops” stickers, but an 80-year-old belly dancer and troops of “senior” baton twirlers.

80-years young and still dancing

I was lucky enough to mix work and play on this trip and arrived at my father-in-law Ed’s just in time for his Saturday-night dance club party. It was probably the most fun I’ve had at a party since, well, I don’t know when. Six couples of various ages and sizes participated in karaoke for the women and the men (Raindrops Keep Falling on Your Head, and Old McDonald Had a Farm were popular). They all gladly accepted kazoos, and pom-poms and marched around the room to a beat with Betty (Ed’s partner) leading the procession with a baton. Yowzas.

Doug joins in with the kazoo chorus

I knew I was having a good time at the party when Olive, an active 91-year-old, told me that the secret to her good health was … are you ready for this … beer. Yep! A beer a day keeps the Dr. away according to Olive, who also disclosed that she was also a Cougar.

“Really!”

“Yes, I’m three months older than Russell, my boyfriend.”

Russ later told me the secret to good health is sex.

Well, I never.

Later in the week I got to watch Olive in action again at the Village’s premier night club, Katie Belle’s, where we all took to the dance floor in earnest. The group of them go every Tuesday to waltz, polka, line dance, and go crazy and it shows. They are fit. Olive was called to do an impromptu solo dance to the song, “Bad Girls,” and she shimmied her hips right down to the ground while my jaw dropped.

Although Olive isn’t really a bad girl, they all know of them, and I heard tales of seniors’ parties where men put car keys in a bucket, and women go home with the owner of the set of keys they draw out. As a result, venereal disease is rampant in that part of the country (seriously).

Another lesson learned. You’re never too old to need a condom, and that’s the truth. Toot Toot. Beep Beep.

Yesterday I got an unexpected call from my massage therapist. “Hey, I’m looking for Doug. He hasn’t shown up for his appointment yet and I can’t reach him on his phone. I’m just wondering if he’s lost.”

Lost? In Livingston? This was theoretically possible since it was his first appointment with her, but I thought I had provided adequate directions the night before when he asked me if I knew how to get to her house.

“Oh, she lives just down the street from Mary,” I said, with a wave of my hand as if that wave would fill in the necessary details.

“She said something about turning down an alley,” he muttered.

I should have known then that I needed to be more explicit.

He called me fifteen minutes after his appointment had passed and I asked, “What happened?”

‘”I’ve just spent a half hour driving around a three block area,” he said. I could tell he was frustrated. “I still don’t know where she lives. I finally flagged a woman down in her yard and asked her, ‘Do you know a woman named Allison? She’s petite? Blonde? She gives massages.’”

The woman denied knowing Allison even though they lived next door to each other. “Don’t you get it?” I laughed. ”She probably thought you were a stalker!”

“Especially since I drove around the block slowly for a half hour.”

Anyway, Doug had to reschedule his appointment because he was so late, and he’s certain to have started a neighborhood watch alert in the process, but this is not something that typically happens to him. It typically happens to me.

My sense of direction is literally nonexistent. When I have to guess, it’s almost always the wrong guess. I once got lost during a run where I only made two right turns, and ended up causing my in-laws to be late for their daughter’s wedding rehearsal dinner. 

 This happens to me all the time. In fact, I now have to deliberate over whether I should go the other way just because my intuition told me the opposite.

My mother has this problem (so it’s inherited), but she is absolutely sure she’s right when she’s telling you which way to turn while driving. “Right, turn right,” she commands, and you do it, and then you spend 15 minutes trying to get turned around so that you can go left again.

Whereas, my brother inherited my father’s directional gifts including a superhuman talent that enables him to find his way anywhere in any city around the world without a map. He’s like a walking GPS unit.What I could do with this power!

I, on the other hand, struggle to grasp the concept of north, south, east, and west. Right now, I am in terror of anyone asking me which way is north in Bozeman. Seriously.

 Combine this lack of direction with the unwillingness to ask for directions (my pride will not suffer such a fall) and you usually have a recipe for disaster. Let’s just say that I have to add in an extra half hour for any appointment at a new place, and I could use a GPS unit in my car. Doug wouldn’t need one if I gave better directions.

After a two-week obsession with the Winter Olympics, I’m feeling tired from all that late-night television and a bit cranky with Canada. Honestly, the closing ceremonies put the hoke in the word hockey.

How many different ways can you dress people up as Mounties?  Why ever would you use your national police force as Las Vegas dancers?

Other than Neil Young’s performance (the only redeeming event), it was an evening of sad stereotypes with Bob Costas forced to deliver one-liners like, “We always love a little large inflatable beaver.” Oh Bob, really? Or when he couldn’t identify the electric horses in the middle of a large globe rolling around the stage. “They said there would be horses,” he said, and then finally, ten minutes later. “Oh, there they are!” At any moment I felt like he would announce that we were actually watching Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Anyway, Canada, we give you the hockey and ice dancing titles, but you lose the ceremonies until you can prove you can do something better.

In the meantime, I’m onto my last week of television watching before we shut it off for the season. Doug and I like to take regular tv breaks, so that we can get bored enough to entertain each other by dancing around the house to Steve Earle songs (you’d have to be there). Seriously, we take a six month break after football season, and would have shut it off on Monday if not for the last episode of Big Love, which airs this Sunday evening. I’m dying to know what secret J.J. is hiding and whether the polygamist clan will come out of the closet, so to speak. You’d have to be a fan of the show to speak this language.  Anyway, I’m happy to return to my regularly scheduled sleeping time and the less dramatic world of life without television. Thanks to all who gently reminded me I was off of my regularly scheduled blogging too.

I can’t even type the word “tradition” now without hearing the song from Fiddler on the Roof  and wanting to follow the first with another, louder, “Tradition!”

Last weekend I traveled to Canada for the second annual mother-daughter get-together over the Martin Luther King Jr. long weekend. This year’s entertainment highlight was an Off-Broadway production of Fiddler in Calgary.  I’ve been humming, “Matchmaker, matchmaker, make me a match! Find me a find!” ever since. It’s really hard to get those songs out of your head and I’m not kidding.

In the vein of traditions, Doug and I stopped at my parent’s ranch before heading north. A night at the ranch means a.) the early morning wakeup call from the rooster and chickens; b.) the real wakeup call from KSEN, the local radio station my parents listen to over breakfast. I woke up during the middle of the Swap-n-Bulletin board.

“This is Sharon, and we’d like to sell our dishwasher. It runs pretty good, but it has a little problem with the soap tray staying open — shouldn’t be too hard to fix. We’re asking $50 or your best offer.”

I put my pillow over my head. I’m not a morning person.

KSEN has always had an entertaining morning radio show, complete with a police report, a discussion with the local used car dealer, and a daily polka that my mother delighted dancing to just as the school bus pulled up in front of our picture window.  Talk about embarrassing!

Anyway, it woke me up in time for us to cross the border at a little border station manned by my least favorite border guard. This guard loves to come up with paranoid theories. Even though he has seen me a thousand times (okay, maybe not a thousand, but a lot) in past crossings he has rerouted me to a different border because he thought that my nephew wasn’t really my nephew, but a man I had married to help me declare Canadian citizenship after crossing the border (Real Story: My nephew was going home from college with a lot of stuff and I was going to a conference). He also detained Doug and I because he thought he had kidnapped me because our last names are not the same.  He took Doug inside to interrogate him and asked, “Who’s the girl?” in a threatening voice. Real Story: Doug and I were just married, without passports (no need for them yet) and on our way to a Bob Dylan concert.

Once we reached Cochrane, Alberta (our final destination) we melted off our border anxieties with a trip to the salon for a mother-daughter pedicure/manicure.

I was good and relaxed before the all-female let’s-help-our-friend-get-through-her-divorce party where we sampled (I’m not kidding) drinks called Sour Pusses. Did you know they have napkins for this kind of party? Awesome!

Canadian women are lovely, but I spent a good chunk of the party either getting attacked by the hostess’s cat (I thought the cat was purring when I petted it because I couldn’t hear over all the loud female voices, but it was actually growling at me), or trying to avoid talking to a Birther conspiracist about Barack Obama  (this was my sole contribution to MLK day).

Between the early morning chickens, KSEN, the Birther theories, and the Sour Pusses I ended up so exhausted that I had to lie down on the hostess’s couch to put my feet up, hoping that I could either fall asleep or convince the rest of my party that 10:00 wasn’t too early to go home.

On Sunday, Laura and I headed to Hot Yoga for a sweaty session of stretching (if you’re curious, hot yoga is like going to a yoga session conducted at a military boot camp in Florida in August but somehow relaxing). Then we all took quick showers before Fiddler, which was awesome (thank you Mom!), and finished the day up with a fried turkey dinner cooked up by the men in our life (and no, I’m not kidding about this either).

What else would you expect from my travels?

Word to the Wise: Don’t drink rum, then champagne, and then beer unless you want to end up singing both the Doxology and every lyric of Jon Bon Jovi’s greatest hits in one night. Not that the singing wasn’t enjoyable, but the morning after hurt me bad. I think it was the champagne.

The day of my friend Kayb’s wedding could be summed up by Billy Crystal’s famous Fernando character (think  Spanish accent). “It is better to look good than to feel good.”

Whereas, my impromptu birthday bash in front of the Jon Bon Jovi cover band was all about feeling good. Too good.

But, back to looking good. I used to think that men had no idea the torture women put themselves through to look beautiful.

But then after the wedding, when we were complaining about how our feet hurt, a friend of a bridesmaid told us that he could see our pain and we did look a little like, “cripples with severe hemorrhoid problems” walking up the aisle.

I certainly felt crippled after a day in heels and a dress that seemed to dig into me in all the most uncomfortable places on my body.

The pain began with the curling, ratting, twisting, and pinning of the hair. Then there was the underwear – which included itchy cheap pantyhose since none of us got the memo to bring black instead of nude hose and thus Kayb’s brother-in-law had to save the day (bless the man, buying ten pairs of pantyhose at a Walgreen’s is not exactly on the list of things to do to boost your male ego. Hopefully the store clerk didn’t think he was a pantyhose-obsessed tranny).

There were also the boobs — which in strapless outfits can be painfully smushed in several different torturous ways. Two bridesmaids managed to breastfeed while wearing it so I guess strapless had some advantages. Between the squeezing of my rib cage and the screams coming from the balls of my feet I think I felt more pain getting ready for that wedding than I did while running a half marathon.

Fortunately, the pain was for a good cause. The bride and groom are genuinely besotted with each other, and perfect for each other in every semi-strange way. Kayb’s quite petite (5′3″?) and he’s not much bigger (in fact, she said he’s only one inch taller). They looked like little wedding cake toppers together.

The clincher for me was his allergies. Kayb has an allergy to gluten, and has had friends (including me) and others in her life with many food sensitivies. So, she took it completely in stride that Will is deathly allergic to all foods derived from a cow (dairy and beef) and committed herself to a near-vegan-wheat-free existence for their marriage. Think a lifetime supply of chicken stir fry. Now that is love!

The gorgeous rehearsal dinner

Ocia, Kayb’s sister, made a delectable-looking gluten-free, dairy-free cake for the two of them to eat at the reception. Will couldn’t eat his Star Wars-themed groom’s cake (which actually looked like it could have doubled as a  Lord of the Rings Mordor cake). I’m just hoping they survive their Italian honeymoon. So much butter and cheese to avoid!

Cassie, one of the bridesmaids who actually is a southern belle, saved the day in so many ways. She made the stressed bride laugh with a throaty rendition of “Delta Dawn” and when she found out it was my birthday she came up with a plan to celebrate. She asked her friend Jimmy to make a stop at the liquor store and buy some rum shooters for us before the reception. We tossed them back behind the Christmas tree and it eased all of the pain and stress of the day away instantly.

After “buffeting it” — as they say in the South, at the reception, Cassie and Jimmy took me out to see the best Jon Bon Jovi cover band in Chattanooga (well, maybe all of the U.S. – who knows – I’ve never seen another Jon Bon Jovi cover band). The lead singer had had reconstructive surgery to look just like Jon so it only took a few beers for me to get my clogs a dancing while still in my bridesmaid’s dress (I shed the high heels) — playing air guitar and singing “Living on a Prayer” at the top of my voice. All I can say is, those southerners sure know how to show a girl a good time on her birthday.

P.S. I didn’t take photos of the actual wedding, because I was in it, so y’all will have to wait for Kayb to return from the honeymoon for the wedding photos to appear.

So, thanks to Kara and Travis, who mimicked the comments of spammers on my post about blogging spam (those wisecrackers), I had a very funny conversation with a spammer/hacker this week.

On Tuesday, I received this e-mail that said it was from my nephew Blake:

Hello,

How are you doing today? I’m written you in tears in my eye I’m sorry i didn’t inform you about my traveling to London,United Kingdom on a short vacation It has been a very sad and bad moment for me, the present condition that i found myself is very hard for me to explain.

we’re stranded in London right now, got mugged at gun point last night all cash,credit card and phone was stolen,It was a Brutal Experience but Thank God we still have our life and passport saved…our return flight leaves in few hours but having troubles sorting out the hotel bills…wondering if you could loan me some few $$ to sort out the hotel bills and also take a cab to the airport..promise to pay back as soon as we get back home…

you can have the $$ wired to my name and present location which is London,United Kingdom via western union. kindly get back to me with the full transfer details.

hope to read positively from you.

Regards..

I knew it couldn’t possibly be real, because a.) Blake can spell; b.) he’s currently in law school in Canada c.) I would know if he had gone to London (we have one of those families where that would be a big deal and someone would have mentioned it), and d.) I’m not the first person he would ask for money.

I thought, wow, he must have read my post about spam and decided to have a little fun with it. In fact, I was really impressed with his spamming skills, so I mockingly replied back:

Thanks God you still have your life and passport! Those hotel bills are hard to sort out. How much $ will you need? I will send right away.

Of course, this was the hacker’s dream response! But he didn’t know what to do with all the other stuff I put in after I mocked him, like, “I’ve been meaning to write to you about the Road.”

So, I got this reply:

“thanks for the mail i’m freaked out here and i will be glad if you help me out of here please i need you to wire me 430 bucks..promise to pay back as soon as i get back home.

below is the western union info:

Name: Blake Hafso

Location: London SE12 9T.United Kingdom

as soon as you wire the money kindly get back to me with the transfer details….

hope to read from you Asap

At this point, I still think it’s a joke (albeit a little tired one). I was really looking forward to discussing the release of the movie, “The Road” with Blake.

So, I perked up a little when I was on facebook, and Blake started to chat with me.

“Hey” he typed.

“Hey,” I typed back. “How are you doing?”

“not so good.”

“Really? Those hotel bills still getting you down? I hear they are hard to sort out.”

“Yes need you to send money right away to London.”

Brother, I thought, still, will he give this up already?

“What do you think about ‘The Road’ coming out?”

This is when I stumped the hacker. If he had known anything about Cormac McCarthy’s book, “The Road,” he might have convinced me to check whether Blake had gone to London. Might. I repeat. Might. He stopped typing, and I signed off.

A little later I noticed this note from the real Blake on his facebook page:

someone hacked my hotmail!!! I am NOT in London. Don’t send them money

I was shocked, shocked, to find out that it wasn’t Blake. And then I laughed really hard.

apparently they hacked my facebook as well. I have changed my password but if anyone asks you for money pretending to be me don’t give it to them!

A further explanation from Blake:

“ya the bastard was chatting with someone on my list while I was logged on to facebook. I looked at the bottom of the screen and became concerned that I was currently involved in a somewhat lengthy conversation but not aware of it.”

When I told him about my fake conversation he wrote to say, “The number one way to know that it isn’t me is the complete lack of a reference to “The Road”, I can’t wait for it!”

Yeah, good ‘ol Cormac McCarthy, he’ll stop a spammer in his tracks every time.

Well, I can pretty much guarantee that I won’t be welcome in the Rising Trout coffee shop in Lewistown anymore. Which is really unfortunate, since I travel to Lewistown frequently for work, and it’s the only good coffee shop / bookstore in town.

On Friday, my colleague Mark and I stopped in there for a quick cup of coffee and a scone for the road. While we were waiting for several others to get served, I noticed a pile of fly-fishing dvd’s sitting on the counter, and the devil made me violate the other Golden Rule, “If you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all.”

“Have you seen any of these?” I asked Mark.

“No, what are they?”

I picked one up and flipped it over to look at the back. “Oh, they’re kind of like those extreme skiing films you see where a backcountry skier gets dropped off by helicopter and they film his descent with a soundtrack playing behind it. Only, in this case, it’s a lot of slow-motion fishing sequences. It’s kind of like fly-fishing porn.”

Now, at this point in the conversation, what I don’t know is that the owner of the shop, who is serving us coffee —  well, her husband and her travel around the world to make these films. And I have just compared them to pornography. It’s not funny, and yet every time I think about it I get the giggles.

“Have you seen any of them?” she asks me, with a sort of challenging voice, while making Mark’s coffee. “They are kind of like the Warren Miller films for skiing.” (You can see a trailer for a Warren Miller film below. You’ll get the idea pretty quickly what I’m talking about.)

“I think I’ve seen parts of Drift,” I say. Unfortunately, I don’t stop there. Instead, I make a casting motion with my hand and simulate fly fishing in slow motion. “I fly fish, but I don’t fly fish in slow motion.”

Ouch. Suddenly, I realize she is giving me the look that could kill and it dawns on me that she’s taking this awfully personally.  We all fall silent while she finishes up Mark’s coffee.

When I get up to the counter she says slowly, “What do you want?”

Gee, I think, I hope my hot chocolate won’t be poisoned, and try to make sure she notices the $1 tip I leave. When we reach Mark’s car I say, “Well, I guess I shouldn’t have said anything about those films. I seem to have really offended her.”

I don’t know how badly I’ve put my foot in it until I repeat this story to a friend from Lewistown, and she explains why I got the look of death and suggests the next time I go back in there I buy a few of those films.

It’s honestly tempting. If you check out the trailer for Drift above, you’ll find some beautiful images. It’s very well made, but my problem with these kinds of films (especially about fly fishing) is that a.) Nature is “conquered” as a plot theme; b.) I don’t consider fly fishing an extreme sport (unlike backcountry skiing); and b.) as a group, fly fishing guides already have egos the size of Texas, and they don’t need films to make them feel more “special.”

I know Montana is famous for Norman MacLean’s book, “A River Runs Through It” and the the subsequent film and I love both. I also understand the fly fishing obsessed since Doug has been bit by that particularly bug. I just think the bro brah competitive culture around fly fishing gets a little old. That’s why I loved the short film by RA Beattie that my cousin Mary forwarded to me. It pokes some fun at the male fly fisherman and really makes me laugh. I couldn’t load it to my page but you can find it at Drake Magazine (click here): 177-stream-of-consciousness. Enjoy!

Right now I have nine spam comments on my blog just sitting here, waiting for me to delete them.

The thing about comments generated by spammers (people who don’t actually read your blog, but want others to click on a link from their comment to an advertisement for genital herpes medication – or some other stupid product)   is that they can be harder to sort out than spam e-mail.

For e-mail users, if you can’t recognize the fraud tempting you to buy herbal Viagra, or look at “photos of me”, or provide your bank account information because you won a Nigerian lottery you never entered, then your genetic code has suffered some Darwinian maladaptation.

Comment spam, however, is a different beast. For instance, here’s a frequent spam comment:

“Hey… This is the second time I have visited your blog and I really enjoy your work. Please keep us updated! Thanks!”

Well, how nice of this person. A complete stranger has visited my blog twice, and has said good things! I’m flattered.

Turns out, the person who commented (Ashley Madison) is probably not enjoying my blog. In fact, the description of her website is pretty terrifying:

“ The website called “Ashley Madison” can be a little deceiving and is not as obvious and upfront as most discreet affair sites like Lonelywivesaffairs.com. The Ashley Madison foundation has been using the name strategically to target mostly male audiences who wish to have an affair outside of marriage. Their motto reads: ‘Life is short, have an affair.’”

Life is short, have an affair? Now there is a quotable quote.

Here’s another spam comment:

“In truth, immediately i didn’t understand the essence. But after re-reading all at once became clear.”

In truth, this one is not so flattering. You really don’t want your readers to “not understand the essence” of your writing or have to re-read  your post to get it.

This guy, named “Crasty” is trying to sell generic Viagra. His site features a  photo of a guy in a business suit, leaning over another guy in a business suit, holding a pill in front of his face. Hmm…

I must admit, I fell for the following comment when I first started blogging because it seemed so personal:

“I’m so jealous of your blog! I can never get mine to function or look like yours. Good work though…Keep it up!”

Wow! Someone is jealous of me? Little old me? I didn’t even think it looked that good. How nice of her.

Yeah, it would have been really nice if she wasn’t trying to sell a get-rich-by-working-from-home scheme on her website.

Almost all of my spam is automatically filtered for me through Wordpress, but a few sneak by them into my e-mail, and my ego picks up for a few seconds when I read ones like, “Great article! When are you going to write more about this?”

And I think, “Soon very soon, as soon as I buy Cipro.”

Unless you’re a Goldman Sachs banker, you’re probably looking for ways to stay within your budget. I normally stay away from financial ideas that seem too good to be true, but I happened on an article on Slate.com (my favorite online read during my lunch hour) by Alicia Barney who test-drove the concept of saving big bucks at the supermarket with coupons:

“After disappearing into the coupon blogosphere for two solid days, I felt ready for my first outing. But I didn’t feel confident enough to go it alone, so I arranged for a coach. I met couponer Pam Rea, a finance secretary for the local government, at her sprawling suburban Chicago Jewel-Osco store, the Midwestern outpost of Albertson’s Inc. I had previously assumed that a couponing diet meant only boxed and processed foods, but Rea’s yield seemed balanced. She picked up pork tenderloin, apples, bananas, and organic milk in addition to Pringles and frozen French toast sticks.

When every item was scanned, Rea’s total was $174.55. But after each coupon was validated, the number dropped—to $36.89, including $6.08 in taxes. She handed over $30 worth of store credits and charged the remaining 81 cents plus tax—which couponers must pay out of pocket—on her debit card. She’d saved $167.66. Not bad at all.”

Alicia’s narrative busted two myths of mine: 1.) Coupons are only useful if you’re looking for savings on Hamburger Helper type products; and 2.) Coupons won’t save you much money so it’s not worth your time.

Mathematically, the idea isn’t hard to grasp. To get the lowest price on a product you pair manufacturer’s coupons (say, General Mills $1.00 coupons for Cheerios) with the supermarket’s best sale price or coupon, and voilá! Mucho money saved on your grocery items.

Even better, supermarkets offer Catalinas, coupons that give you cash back for buying a certain amount of goods or groceries.  Think: If I buy $30 worth of these products, I’ll get a $5 coupon good for any item in the store back when I finish my purchase.

This knowledge was enough to set me off on an obsessive compulsive week of trying to game the supermarket system. If someone else is smart enough to get most of their groceries for free, well, I can too (I thought).

I started with Jill Cataldo, the syndicated columnist and expert on Super Couponing whose blog offers 200 places to find coupons, and a whole primer on how to super coupon. She actually offers courses on using coupons, which I think kind of defeats the purpose, so I decided to launch my grocery savings on my own.

A couple of things surprised me. A lot of organic companies offer coupons for milk and eggs and other products I buy. And, you can “load” your electronic grocery card with coupons online so you don’t have to take any paper with you to the store. I also found out that you don’t need your local paper. At Albertson’s online you can find an electronic copy of their sale flyer and even make your own list of sales items by clicking on them. Last week they advertised their own Catalina  – buy $30 worth of groceries from their sale flyer and get a $15 coupon back!

Wow, I thought. Ok, I can do this. I picked out mushrooms, avocadoes, organic chicken for $2.69 a pound, orange juice, even ice cream (2 for 1). With my list in hand. I was ready to shop. Unfortunately, it took a little convincing to get Doug in on my plan. We were driving back from Bozeman when I announced that we were going shopping – supercouponing to be exact.

“So,” I said. “Here’s the game plan. You’re going to get a separate basket, and fill it with $15 worth of  items that we need that are not on sale, like milk. After I check out, I’ll get the coupon for the $15 and then hand it to you for your transaction.” It sounded like a bank heist.

“But I didn’t bring my wallet,” he said.

This didn’t faze me.

“No problem. You shouldn’t need your credit card. You’ll have the coupon?”

He didn’t look convinced. This whole separate transaction thing seemed problematic. I tried a different idea.

“Ok. How ’bout you wait until I’ve finished checking out, and then will go into another aisle and check out your basket.”

“Why can’t we come back at another time for the $15 worth?” He clearly wasn’t into this.

What ended up stopping his participation was the price of milk. He walked over to the dairy section and found out that the milk was double the price that we normally pay at Town and Country. This ended his participation.

“Is there a problem?” I said, frustrated that the Cheerios was now not marked on sale.

“Tell me, why are we buying more expensive milk here again?”

I started to explain one more time, and then I just decided to lose the battle.

“All right, let’s just use the coupon another time. Don’t worry about picking out groceries.”

With my sale items in hand, we march up to checkout, and a sales clerk who we happened to know (small town).

I tell him I hope to get the $15 coupon, but when he checks me out my total bill is $50 and no coupon appears from the Catalina machine.

“Huh,” I say. “I know I bought the sales items in the flyer.”

This sparks the most embarrassing point of the night, when the supervisor gets involved.

Our clerk turns to ask his supervisor for help, “Mary, we have a problem over here. The coupon isn’t printing out and she says she purchased the food.”

The manager beckons me over and pulls out the sales flyer. “Now, she said, which foods did you buy?” The back of the sales flyer where she is pointing does not contain any of my items so I flip it over to point to the avocados and she says, “No, I’m sorry, did you buy any of these items?” and flips it back.

“Um, no,” I say. “I thought the sale applied to the whole flyer.”

She gives me an impatient sigh and points to a small box on the back with about 12 items – mostly canned iced frosting and country crock margarine. “Well, I’m sorry, but you have to purchase $30 of these items in order to get the coupon.”

“Oh,” I say. “Thanks.”

I think I hear Doug snicker in the background. I feel like I just got reprimanded from the teacher for reading the Cliff Notes version of Romeo and Juliet.

I managed to outsmart myself, which is deeply embarrassing, especially in front of a skeptic, but I’m not giving up. I’m going to figure out supercouponing if it kills me, because that’s what obsessive compulsive disorder does to people.