The Nearly Rotten Store

How exciting, Mark has made another shopping trip to the Nearly Rotten Store. I'm not sure if that's the real name of the place, but that's what I call it. The Nearly Rotten Store is a farm stand where Mark picks up cheap produce. Calling it a farm stand is a stretch because the produce in the place hasn't been near a farm for over a month. The cherries that Mark has brought home, while appearing to be luscious, deep red, and ripe, are an illusion. When you bite into them they are mealy and sour. The grapes are no better, soft and squishy, with the flavor of a bums armpit. At least the bananas are ripe and sweet, the only problem is, if I don't eat the entire dozen today, by tomorrow morning they'll be nothing more than a brown pile of goo.

This is one of Mark's biggest failings, shopping for bargains that aren't really bargains. I've explained over and over to him that if you buy the nearly rotten produce, you don't really save because I end up throwing most of it away. This goes right along with his other habit of bringing home utterly useless crap, that we would, and could, never use.
"But it was fifty percent off. I only spent twenty dollars on it.", is the common story. The fact that he could have saved twenty dollars more if he didn't buy the talking toilet paper roll in the first place just doesn't sink in.

I'm sure there are hungry people around the world who would love to have all the rotten produce sitting in our kitchen. I wish they could all come by today and dig in, help themselves to the cherries, grapes, and bananas. In fact, right now, there are five quarts of blackberries sitting in there that need to be eaten before they turn into compost. I will try to eat as much of this stuff as I can, I hate to waste it. Besides, I've found that there is an added benefit to eating overly ripe produce. It keeps me very regular.