Mulch Me!

I love how life unfolds slowly, piece by piece, so that you're never able to predict what's next. Things never happen the way you expect them to and while uncertainty is something we all try to avoid, uncertainty is often what gives us the curiosity to keep trying.
That said, I occasionally love it when I don't have a plan because it leaves open so much room for adventure.

-->Adventure: a bold, usually risky undertaking; a hazardous action of uncertain outcome.

               Disclaimer: I do not condone doing stupid or dangerous things.

So yesterday I spent a few (meaning 6) hours at my friend's house editing pictures on her fabulous computer. If you've met my computer before, you'd be able to understand how ecstatic I was to be able to use a Mac AND Photoshop. I was more lost than a teenage boy in a bra store, but just about as excited.

That's not the point of the story. I went to pick Joe up from work and he suggested we stay in town and see the next movie, which happened to be 2 hours from then. Given two hours to waste in Cloquet, there's not much you can do without spending a good chunk of money, but lucky for us, we had been assigned to pick up a bag of mulch from Walmart.

It sounds pretty straightforward, I know.

And it would have been but Walmart has organizational problems. We ran to the lawn and garden section and scoured the area for mulch (assuming it came in bags and would be in the lawn and garden section). Upon finding none, we resorted to trying to find a store worker, which seems like it would have been a good Step 1, but Joe and I both have an aversion to talking to strangers. Anyways I walked up behind this one guy working at a counter and said, "Excuse me....EXCUSE ME!..." He didn't move. I'm assuming the guy was completely deaf (and works at a cash register?!), so we hustled out of there, having attracted the attention of every other customer within a fifty yard radius and successfully made fools of ourselves.
I forgot to preface this story with the fact that you're supposed to pay for the mulch before you go get it, and by this time we had already paid $13.65 or something for two bags of 'RBRMULCH'. So, having been tipped off by another cashier, we went outside to the parking lot where this dang mulch was supposedly located and we found piles of bags of stuff covered in tarps in an empty parking lot. Walmart workers are like car keys...you can find them everywhere until you actually need them. I saw movement behind a couple potted trees out in the parking lot and told Joe to go see if it was a person and then ask them to get us our mulch. It was in fact a person, but we kinda gathered he didn't know much about mulch when he croaked, "I'm maintenance!"
So back inside. There was absolutely no way we were going back to the lawn and garden section to try to speak with the deaf cashier, so we went up to the front and spotted an authoritative-looking cashier who saw she had been spotted and croaked, "This register is closed!" (I'm starting to see a pattern in how the workers there speak). At this point, Joe, my timid little brother, finally found a voice and said "Excuse me lady, I'm just trying to find my dang mulch and no one in this God-forsaken building will help us, now get me my mulch before I tweak!" (or something to that effect). Whatever he said it worked...she didn't know anything about mulch, but she had the sense to call someone who did. Tom, the Walmart worker that stole my heart and saved the day. Apparently, someone in Walmart had sold us a type of (very expensive) mulch that didn't exist and then sent us out on a wild goose chase to go find it.
AH HA! UR EVIL PLANS WUZ FOILED! TOM SAVZ US!
Sorry.

Anyways, an adventure was had and mulch was retrieved. Embrace uncertainty!...and apply this to the bigger picture. Sometimes you don't know what the heck you're doing and neither does anyone else, but just keep going! It might feel like you're running around in circles, but sooner or later you'll find what you're looking for.

Mandy-Pies