Tag: random

Vegetable Chat

As you know, I’m not a huge fan of leaving The Compound during the busy parts of the day. I don’t like standing in line for stuff. Plus I tend to get edgy in this neighborhood when I see too many vehicles with Bush stickers. (Why are they here? Leave us alone!)

But sometimes duty calls, and today, I made a way overdue trip to the grocery store. I thought it wouldn’t be crowded. A lot of people are off today. I figured they’d already done their ham and egg-dyeing buying.

Boy, was I wrong. But it wasn’t so bad. Especially in the produce section, when I deftly caught a red bell pepper that was trying to escape from the Kroger guy who was stocking there. He was probably my age, maybe a little older. These are the things I learned during the conversation that ensued:

1. His wife is an RN who’ll be working Sunday, so he plans to work, too. He’s been doing this job for more than twenty years.

His grown children are all out of town for Easter.

3. He misses Bill Clinton. He likes Al Gore. He can’t stand Bush. He wants him OUT.

4. He says his family’s doing okay, but he doesn’t know how other families are making it. He doesn’t understand why oil company executives have no shame about the extraordinary amounts of money they’re making even as gas prices rise at the pump and their employees’ benefits packages are shrinking.

It’s not always bad to leave the house and meet new people.

Donations

From Houston’s wonderful bookstore, Murder By the Book’s newsletter, comes the following information:

In an effort to restock its shelves after Hurricane Katrina, the New Orleans Public Library is asking for donations of hardcovers and paperbacks for people of all ages. Library staff will decide which books should go into its collection; the rest will go to destitute families or be sold to raise funds for the library.

Please send books to:
Rica A. Trigs
Public Relations
New Orleans Public Library
219 Loyola Ave.
New Orleans, LA

Of course

My house went to hell during the last two weeks of finishing the manuscript. So I’m cleaning. My kitchen was in a complete shambles, and I just let the dog dirt fall where it would from the rugs when I took them out to clean them (the rugs, not the dogs), so my kitchen/mud porch floors looked like a dirt bike trail. And that is the moment when my mother, who believes that cleanliness is next to Joan Crawfordness, walked in the back door.

She commented on the floors, then asked if someone was coming. (Hello? How did I get the reputation that I only clean when someone’s due to visit—shut up, Tim!) Little does she know that, indeed, her son is due to arrive sometime within the next 24 hours to spend her 80th birthday with her. Heh heh.

For Jandy

For some time, I’ve suspected that my car is invisible. Because whether Tim is driving or I am, people obviously can’t see it. That’s why they’re always doing death defying things like pulling out in front of us, stopping at green lights to talk on their cell phones when we are behind them, or cutting over from another lane and almost grazing us.

But I didn’t know that my own personal super power is invisibility until yesterday, when that guy at the post office could neither see nor hear me even though he was always within three feet of me. Oddly, as I was driving out, he was walking to his car. I had a CLEAR SHOT at running over him, and he wouldn’t have known I did it because my car and I are invisible.

Since Jandy needs photographic evidence, here it is.
see photos