Bliss Thru Shopping: Duct tape. Snakes. Expired underwear. Proceed with caution.

This week Bag Lady organized two kitchen cabinets and bought four new stove-top drip pans. As a result, I’m feeling like a complete domestic goddess.

These were not just any kitchen cabinets; they were those kitchen cabinets, the ones with so much tumbling, jumbled nonsense that they had been rendered near-unusable.

A sampling of what I tossed out: Two full containers of catnip (Bag Cat, rest her bones, died more than a year ago); eight packets of Jell-O, including orange and strawberry kiwi (because, at some point, someone 8 or 80 was doing my grocery shopping?); two Dr. Atkins cookbooks (once upon a time, eating lots of bacon and cheese sounded like a phenomenal idea); three drink cozies (because I was too polite to immediately throw them out); cake decorations that had surely expired (there was no specifying on the label, but sprinkles can’t be good for more than 15 years, right?); and . . .

. . . a pair of candy-necklace-style edible underwear that expired in 2008.

I’ll say no more. Namely, because I was really vague on what they were doing there in the first place. (When asked, Mr. Bag Lady did remember their origin story. Weird, but it checked out. You’ll just have to trust me.) All these years, I kept waiting for the right time to re-gift them and it just never came to pass. House-warming? Baby shower? Christmas? Nothing felt appropriate, which I’m sure has plagued many an edible underwear re-giftee.

It’s funny, but I’ve just realized in their five-year-plus stint in my cupboard, not one guest ever opened the cabinet and gasped or chortled.

Shows I’m having the right people over.

Those two formerly inoperable cabinets, now paragons of order, flanked the kitchen stove whose drip plans had started to rust in place. Ten bucks on Amazon.com took care of that. (They’re an odd size I can never find locally; hence, the perma-rust.)

Now, it’s just glorious.

Snakes!

They’re back. In the basement. Three of them (which is only one shy of the four horsemen, so, dodged a bullet there.) Mr. Bag Lady dealt with them. There was a shovel involved, possibly some sweet-talking.

I was only alerted about it in hindsight, which is just how I like my snakes.

Just ducky

So Gov. Paul LePage revealed he’s keeping a roll of duct tape on his desk so “when I want to say something that is off-color, I’m going to tape my mouth shut.”

Bag Lady only hopes it’s the fabulous kind.

Duck Tape has gone amazing places of late. Pickle-print. Penguin-print. Mustache-print. Bag Lady even saw One Direction* Duct Tape in Claire’s a few weeks ago.

(* A boy band, like New Kids on the Block. Only British. And having no direct tape-related tie-in that I’m aware of.)

Now to eagerly await the next near-miss that has LePage diving for the tape. It’s going to be a long campaign season.

Might need two rolls.

Tit for tat

Crowd-sourcing for new breast implants? Anonymous fellows pitching in to stack your, well, deck?

Ugh. The news story I didn’t need to read this week. Ladies, you don’t need them. And if you really, really do, you don’t need Skeevy Steve’s helping hands.

In an absolute pinch, if it’s of any help, I do have a line on an expired candy bra.

Bag Lady’s true identity is protected by a pair of stylish, sweater-wearing Doberman pinschers (who demand Doberman-print duct tape) and the Customer Service counter at the Sun Journal. You can reach her at [email protected]