Every night, he has a bedtime snack while watching the news or the late show. And that may not seem to be an unusual habit to have...except that Aaron will choose one particular dessert favorite, and then eat it every single night until he literally gets sick of eating it. Literally.
Example: early in our marriage he would put three scoops of ice cream in a bowl and then sprinkle powdered chocolate Nestle's Quik over the top. He ate that every single night for more than a year. I am not kidding. One day he got tired of it, and switched to chocolate pudding with cool whip on top. And then he ate that for nearly a year. Every single night.
This is all the honest truth, I swear it. He will settle on one and stay with it until he doesn't like it anymore or until something more interesting comes along. Sometimes it's ice cream, sometimes it's a baked good like brownies or white cupcakes with frosting. One summer I made the mistake of learning to make Raspberry/Cream Cheese-filled turnovers with icing, and he decided THAT was going to be his bedtime snack. That's the only one I balked at - those take nearly an hour to make and I do NOT have that kind of time on a daily basis.
Regardless of the treat, this has been his habit for as long as I've known him, and usually it doesn't ruffle any feathers or make any sort of disturbance in the force, if you know what I mean.
Until last month. We were shopping at HyVee and Aaron must have been inspired to make a change in the routine. He was poring over ice cream bars, and stumbled on something called "JC's Pie Pops." They came in three flavors: banana, strawberry, and key-lime pie. He grabbed one of each flavor and brought them home to taste test.
Strawberry was the favorite, so he went back the next day for an additional box. Life could have gone along smoothly, except for the fact that JC's Pie Pops are a limited quantity item. Once he bought out all the strawberry ones, tragedy struck: they restocked the strawberry shelf with only banana. He came home in actual distress. He had stopped at Fareway and Wal-Mart and neither of them carried the product.
"Oh well," I said. "Guess you'll have to find something else." He looked at me like I had just suggested he go to the moon. He said, "Well, you know some of the people who work at HyVee. Why don't you call them tomorrow and see what you can do."
Um, what?
I said, "You cannot be serious."
He said, "It's not that hard, you talk to Matt and Chris all the time. Just stop by there and tell them I need some strawberry ones. They'll do it. They probably like it when customers request things."
I think I just stood there blinking at him. Finally I said, "Aaron, I am not going to go to HyVee and request strawberry pie pops for you."
He kind of glared at me a little, but let it go. A couple of days later he sat down next to me on the couch and said, "Hey, do me a favor. Grab your phone, I need you to look something up for me. If you Google search JC's Pie Pops they give you this form that you can fill out and turn in to your grocery store so they will stock more of them. Just quick download that form and fill it out and you can just leave it at customer service." I laughed out loud and said, "Aaron! I am not doing that. Seriously. Just find something else for a snack, for heaven's sake!"
A few days later he came home from work with the saddest expression. I asked what was wrong, did he have a bad day at work? He said, "No. I stopped at HyVee and asked about the Pie Pops. Turns out there's a distribution issue and HyVee isn't going to carry them anymore."
"Oh, that's too bad," I murmured. I tried my best too look properly sympathetic, but secretly I was glad not to have to hear any more about them.
And I never heard another word...until last weekend. Carys had a gymnastics meet in Owatonna, while Emma and Cooper both had basketball games. We split up - I stayed closer to home with the basketball crew and Aaron took sis to gymnastics. They took forever getting home, it was really late, and I was wondering how long the meet actually lasted, whether or not they stopped to eat, etc.
As it turns out, their late drive home had nothing whatsoever to do with gymnastics. During the meet Aaron got to thinking...if HyVee was discontinuing JC's Pie Pops, then there was a possibility that they would still be in stock at other existing HyVees. And maybe even discounted! So Aaron did a little Google searching, and when the gymnastics meet was over he stopped at every single HyVee between Owatonna and Fairmont. He actually bought out the entire stock of strawberry JC's Pie Pops along the way.
So now my freezer looks like this on every shelf:
The worst part about this whole affair, is that last night he sat down next to me, Pie Pop in hand, to watch the end of the Super Bowl game. I said, "you know, those do look good. I should try one."
He looked at me, deadly serious, and said, "Absolutely not. You cannot have even one. Who knows how long that will last me until I can get more?"
I laughed, uncertainly, and said, "for real?"
"For. Real." And he went back to watching the game.
