Do you want that to go, or do you want that to go?

Language has not been my friend today. First came a rousing discussion about possessive pronouns spurred by something the stupid DJs said this morning. And when I say, "rousing," I mean "pissy." Just in case you did not start the morning consulting your grade-school grammar book, a possessive pronoun is "mine, yours, ours," etc. As in, "That's your problem, and this is mine." "Your" in that sentence is not a possessive pronoun, it's a possessive adjective, modifying "problem." The "pissy" part came when I was arguing that the definition on usingEnglish.com was technically incorrect. They say a possessive pronoun substitutes for a noun. Well, that's just ridiculous. Applying their definition, the sentence, "That's your problem, and this is my problem," turns into "That's your problem, and this is my mine." Does that make sense? No, it doesn't. Wikipedia has it right. It substitutes for a noun clause. (That's a noun and all its modifiers.) I'm not sure why DH was so vehemently defending usingEnglish.com, but he was. He thought I was being overly critical of their defintion. Since I think like a boy about some things, I figured that since their definition didn't make sense to me, the problem was their definition, not me. ;)

Later, I went to a mall for some bargain shopping (mmmm...sale Clarks...) and to snicker at the people in line for iPhones. The shoes I got were so comfy, I actually asked the sales guy to pack the ones I had on up so I could wear them out of the store. I was amused that he put the plastic shoe forms into my old shoes (which are actually only a couple months old) and wrapped them up before putting them in the box. After scoring sale shoes and clothes, and enduring the scorn of the sales girl at Aveda (no, I do not need my look "freshened," thankyouverymuch, just the eye shadow) and the sales girl at Anthropologie ("I love how you just took your time trying that stuff on!" I'm sorry, did you have plans right now other than doing your job?), I sashayed to the food court for lunch. Note I am using lots of feminine language here to make me feel better about thinking like a boy. I wasn't too hungry, so I went to Hovan, where I thought I could get a three-slice sampler. Turns out I can only get a four-slice sampler, but that's OK. The bad news is that I can't get their new chicken salad roll as one of the slices. The good news is that the nice man gives me a little blob to try (and it was really good, too!) The other bad news is that he was out of pastrami, so I had to double up on roast beef. Really not a problem, but all this sandwich filling manipulation is making me feel wrong-footed and like a problem customer. Then he asks me, "To go, or take away?"

Schwunh?

"Excuse me?" He has a charming accent, like you want someone proferring stuffed grape leaves to have...I must have misheard.

"To go, or take away?" They sound an awful lot like the same exact thing.

"Ummm...I want to eat here. I mean, I'm going to go sit down in the food court and eat." Maybe Hovan has some feud with the FC and I'll have to stuff my bag of Hovan under my shirt and sneak it to a hidden bench or risk being escorted out of the mall?

"OK. That's to go." He pulls out a plate for the sandwiches, which makes it look like I'll be able to consume my food in the light of day at a table like a first-class citizen.

"What would you like to drink?"

"Just a cup of water, please."

"Do you want mountain spring water or bottled water?" Does this mall have hot and cold running spring water? I didn't think it was built on top of a natural springs...

"Um, can I just get a cup of tap water?" Now I'm really starting to feel like a problem customer.

"They won't let us sell it!" Is this a drought thing? Georgia's in the midst of a serious drought and some counties have already run out of water and are using emergency reserves. I'm really going to have to eat in some dark corner now, I'm sure!

"Can I just get a cup of ice?" Or just a cup, I'm not fussy, really, despite how it seems....

"No, but we can give you mountain spring water in a cup, and it's only 45 cents!" Yes, really, I can afford it!

"Oh, OK, that's fine, thanks...." Mental note: Carry a flask when eating at the food court in the future.

Somehow I did not translate "to go" into "sitting down in the food court with a tray". How about "on a tray or in a bag"??

After all that drama (my own private drama, I'm sure), I couldn't finish my sandwiches after the accompanying "fruit and cheese pick" and free chicken salad. I am definitely not going back to the nice man at Hovan and asking for a "to go" box or a "take away" box or whatever. I don't want to throw away three perfectly good sandwich rolls. If I wrap them up in a napkin, maybe...but they're kind of juicy, and I don't want my new clothes stained before I even get them home. Aha! My inner engineer comes out and I do the only sensible thing: I put the sandwiches in the plastic shoe forms! My old shoes don't need them, and my lunch clearly does.