I can't get away with anything...still

Yesterday, we went to Harmony, Minnesota and spent the afternoon looking around in Amish country. When we got home, we were tired. Dad went up to read and Mom fell asleep in the room. I thought I'd be helpful, so I went to the kitchen and started to fix dinner. We had leftover rice and chicken, so I was converting that into a soup. Earlier I had suggested we stop of at the store so I could get a pot roast, but we had decided against it.

While I was shredding the chicken, a woman, who was cleaning out her stuff preparing to go home, started talking with me. I was telling her about the roast, and she said, here, take this one. She took it from the shelf of community foods. I was so excited and cooked it up with potatoes and carrots and a bit of onion. It was delicious.

Later that evening, we went back to the kitchen, for a late night snack. When I went into our section of the fridge to get cream for my coffee, there was a note : This shelf is not house food, it belongs to room 5.

I was horrified. The roast had come from the very shelf with the note. Yes, I accicentally stole a pot roast from a cancer patient.

I was just mortified. So first thing this morning, I headed off to Mega Mart to get a replacement. I was hoping to replace it before it became a big deal - or before my folks found out.

As I came in, my folks were just finishing breakfast. I thought I was home free, and I left the groceries in the van. Then my mom came around the corner, talking to her friend, who was saying that someone had taken the food from her. God love her, she wasn't worried about the food, but the note had been removed, and that worried her.

There was that moment, you know the one, where you know that all your efforts to NOT look like a complete idiot, were in vain. It was humbling to say the least. So I stepped up and explained what had happened. She assured me that she didn't care about getting the roast replaced, but I was thankful that when I actually had to admit my error, I had the replacement in the van. So all day long, my need to steal food has been the ongoing joke. Oddly enough, there was a robery at the WalMart I went to this morning - but that really wasn't me.