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Barren

As I've mentioned before, the Mild Wife and I tend to cook enough food for a week at a time (we meal prep, basically). Generally, this means that we try to buy food in larger portions at places like Costco, because it's more conducive to this type of meal prep. However, we've found it difficult to buy absolutely everything there, because we don't need ten pounds of onions. So, there are still smaller grocery trips on occasion. This post is all about one such trip.

In this particular case, the Mild Wife and I decided at the last minute that we wanted some dessert on a particular evening. I don't quite remember if it was a date night, if we decided to inject a bit of Sensuous Life into our evening, or if it was just a whim. Either way, I volunteered to make the trip to the store to get some ice cream. I figured that the store was only a five minute drive away, so it wouldn't be a big deal.

Well, when I got to the actual aisle, I saw ... very little. The freezer had something like five shelves, and four of them were empty. Now, when I say "empty," I mean literally devoid of items. I am not speaking figuratively nor am I exaggerating in any way; those shelves were literally, completely empty. There were a few tubs of random flavors on the remaining shelves, but they were definitely not of the flavors that the Mild Wife and I wanted.

As you can imagine, that left me in a bit of a quandary. I had left the house to acquire dessert, and I was in serious jeopardy of not acquiring dessert. There were other stores in the area, but I'd have to drive farther than I expected. That wasn't out of the question, but it wasn't part of the original plan.

So, I messaged the Mild Wife, and sent a picture of the barren shelves. Basically, I wanted to get a second opinion on how to go about dealing with the sudden dessert dilemma. Honestly, this whole blog post was predicated on how she reacted. I obviously wasn't there when she received my text message, but as best as I can gather based on conversations after the fact, her immediate reaction was something like, "oh nooo!"

Apparently, the Mild Wife had really been looking forward to that ice cream. To make sure that we settled on an appropriate plan of attack, she actually called me back. That way, we could have a real-time discussion about what was left on the shelves, whether I should drive farther, and other assorted details. During that time, her dismay with the lack of ice cream on the shelves came through loud and clear, so I had a good laugh about the state of affairs.

I don't even remember what we actually settled on (though I have a strong suspicion that the Mild Wife told me to just come home), but the laughs had already happened by that point. To this day, if I walk past that particular aisle in that particular store, I can't help but chuckle about the time the shelves were barren.

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