"I can't believe Leena does this every week."
"Seriously. I think it's be easier to translate hieroglyphics."
"Well, with hieroglyphs you'd at least have the Rosetta Stone. This is just…Is this some kind of 'new guy' hazing?"
"No. Are you holding it upside down?"
"I have no idea."
Standing in the small Univille grocery store, Claudia and Steve peered down at the four shopping lists provided by their co-workers. Normally, Leena kept the kitchen at the B&B stocked, but, as she was laid up with a nasty case of the flu, Steve had volunteered to help out.
Claudia had decided to accompany him to make sure he came home with some veggies and not just a cart of bacon. He'd responded to her teasing by brandishing the lists he'd collected from the others. On top was Leena's neatly penned list of the B&B basics, bread, milk, cold cuts, cereal etc. All very straight forward…until Claudia flipped through the papers as they stood in the produce section.
On the plus side, Myka's was legible, but the others….
As neat as Artie's writing was on his beloved index cards, it was damn near indecipherable when scrawled distractedly on a loose scrap of paper and Pete's…well, it looked like no written language either of them were familiar with.
"This might be…pomegranate chunks? Do pomegranates come chunked?"
"Oatmeal!" Claudia exclaimed, pointing at one item on Artie's list. "I'm sure that says oatmeal. We can get the fixings for oatmeal cookies and hope that's what the rest of the stuff is."
Steve nodded, then paused. "Do you know how to make oatmeal cookies?"
Whipping out her phone, Claudia quipped, "Google is our friend."
"Which leaves us with Pete's stuff."
"Okay, we can do this. This is Pete. What does Pete like?"
"What doesn't Pete like?" Steve mused. "He eats like a stoned frat boy."
Claudia snorted. "Let's work from that. Pomegranate chunks is…."
"Potato chips! And I'm betting Incan is Ice Cream." Steve felt a bit triumphant that they'd managed to decode that much.
"Gonorrhea dog is garlic & herb dip!" Claudia said with a laugh and then quieted as one of the locals gave them a funny look. Steve gave the older woman a smile, but she just glowered and wandered off.
"I always thought small towns were supposed to be friendly," Steve mused as he loaded the cart with the veggies requested by Lena.
"They are," Claudia answered, piling on the fruit, "They just hate us, cause they think we're IRS."
"IRS?" Steve said, wrinkling his nose. "Any appetite I had left after the Gonorrhea dog comment is gone now."
"They do say it's a bad idea to shop hungry," Claudia laughed, gripping the front of the cart and stepping up onto the foot bar as Steve pushed the wagon toward the deli.
They totally had this mission under control.
Comments, pretty please?