Is that a chuck roast in your purse, or are you just happy to see me?

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Updated Aug 7, 2017

chuck-roast-story-pic-memeI’m pretty sure I hold the record for the only person in the history of Goodwill check-outs who can say I have been asked if I had a chuck roast in my purse.

That’s right. I had a roast in my purse. So what? If we had been in a truck stop the question would have never been asked in the first place, and I wouldn’t have a Wednesday piece, and TD would be disappointed in me.

Sometimes, I forget we live among people who don’t frequent truck stops. People who question the sanity of someone who would carry a roast in their purse. People who don’t understand the very core of a purse’s purpose is to carry things.

When you travel with a trucker, you carve away the unnecessary while carrying as much of your life around with you as you can. You learn to compromise and adapt, and if you’re a woman who uses a purse, you get one that works like a pack mule.

My traveling purse is big. It comfortably carries my giant, golden blow-dryer and still comes off as a fashionable leather bag. It’s a huge old beast, and if you care to delve far enough into it, you may find a loaded snub nosed .38 snuggled next to a delightfully tiny copy of “The Art of War,” and enough “Elf” makeup to paint the broad side of a barn. Efficiency is the name of the game out here, and I practice it, even when I’m heading up the home part of the trucking empire we participate in. Unfortunately, not everyone understands it.

First call of the day from my trucker asserted that’s he’d been running hard and fast for two days without the benefit of a hot meal, surviving on the fridge and cold cuts, and as much as he appreciates those things, he’s cold, too old for this, and going to be at the home 20 in 10 hours, no matter what.

Trucker wife rules dictate there must be hot food available in ten hours. Trucker wife who has limited uninhibited-by-a-trucker hours left at the fabric store also comes into play in this scenario. Fortunately, the grocery and the fabric store reside in the same little block of consumerism, and I’m able to grab a roast in the grocery after a quick trip into the fabric store. My one item purchase keeps me from accepting the plastic bag at the grocery, and I take my top round trucker-hot-food-in-ten-hours roast out wrapped in butcher paper, tucked into my huge, traveling purse.

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I’m toodling towards home, happy with the fact that I have a three pound top round roast and ample time to cook it into submission in the crock pot, when I notice a 50-percent-off sale advertised at Goodwill on the way home.

I know I’m not the only human who will bend time and space to get to a 50-percent-off Goodwill sale.

So I roll into Goodwill, because you’re a dang communist if you pass a 50-percent-off Goodwill sale, and find some really cool Christmas decorations for 99 cents.

I’m not gonna lie, I was kind of on a high when I laid the Mikasa Christmas decorations on the counter. I knew they were worth at least $1.99 and clearly marked .99 cents. I may have even have had the annoying smugness that bargain shoppers adopt when I lugged my travel purse up on the counter to get my wallet out, but when the cashier asked me if I had a “chuck roast” in my purse, I was as close to offended as I have been in a long time.

The Goodwill clerk was obviously puzzled by more than my excitement over the purchase of Mikasa Christmas decorations. “Uh … do you have a chuck roast in your purse, ma’am?”

Me, being righteously indignant, because if we had been in a truck stop there would have been absolutely no questions asked: “No. It’s a top round.”

She attempts a standoff with stare-down, and because I am well-versed in the “I can’t even” stare-off, I won.

Don’t judge me. I buy nice cuts of meat. Just because I carry them in my purse occasionally doesn’t mean a thing.