I did not shimmy at all.

First off, let's have a cheer for my sister Camille coming home from her mission. HOORAY! We picked her up from the airport yesterday and had a tearful reunion. Katie, Lindsay and I vowed at breakfast that we would not cry. Why would we cry? It's a happy joyous moment. We could totally be strong. But then we saw Camille coming down the escalator and she was crying and my mom was crying and then they hugged, all weepy like, which made a lady in the security line start to cry and well, when complete strangers lose it it's all over, right? We had a great day of laughing and joking and commenting on the size of her head. It was just like old times. (A brief note to Gina: Dad told me a story involving your head at a dance recital and I'm pretty sure that if ever there was a story worthy of blogging about, that one is it. I'm commissioning you to write the story. I'll pay you in chocolate covered cinnamon bears when I see you in a few weeks. The people deserve to hear it.)

Anyway, I want to tell you about how I got free meat from the butcher at Stater Bros. But I should first say that it was entirely unintentional and I did not use any womanly wiles to get it. I think. I wanted carne asada tacos for dinner so I went to Stater Bros. on my way home from work on Wednesday specifically because I love getting meat at the butcher counter and I know that Stater Bros. has one, unlike a lot of stores now a days. It makes me feel like Alice on the Brady Bunch. And you can get bacon by the slice. By the slice, my friends! If that isn't magic, then I don't know what is. Anyway, I went up to the counter and asked the butcher if I could have half a pound of carne asada. I don't need a whole lot because it's just me and Katie and it's just tacos. A half a pound is more than enough. So I asked for the carne asada and the butcher said, "Carne asada is my favorite," and I smiled and said, "I like it too," and then he said something like "we should carpool sometime," which I didn't quite understand but took to mean that we have so much in common wink-wink, nudge-nudge, so I just kind of smiled. And then he said, "but you only want a half a pound?" and I said yes and then he winked - winked! - at me and took out one piece and weighed it and printed out the sticker with the half a pound price and then he proceeded to pile more meat into the bag. I told him that he really didn't need to do that, I only needed half a pound, I couldn't possibly use all of that, it just didn't see right, but he just kept smiling and piling and not saying anything until I had like 3 lbs of meat in there. And I swear I didn't shimmy or anything. He just wrapped it up and handed it over and said, "Don't worry, it's on the house." and did a little ah-shucks when I said thank you, which is ridiculous because I'm certainly not the kind of girl you ah-shucks over.

So part of me feels a little guilty that I got all this free meat, even though I tried to stop him. And I'm not sure exactly how to feel about being a girl who gets free meat from the butcher. What does that say about me? But then part of me is like, awesome - free meat! And I want to high five people over it. But the real issue is that I have all of this meat in my freezer. Does anyone want to come over for tacos?