errands « Kenny Smith | A remarkable thing happens …

errands

What I didn’t do, and what I did

See what had happened was, I was going to ride my bike. Then I didn’t, because I slept a little bit extra. And then I was going to ride my bike, but I didn’t, because there was reading, and then lunch. And then I was going to ride my bike, but I had a nice conversation. And then I was going to ride my bike, but the rain came down in great amounts once again.

So I did not ride my bike. Instead, I spent a few extra minutes getting ready for work.

Then I went to get gas, because that’s a requirement, just like driving right past that big glowing red sign that is our laziest indicator of economic health and foreign adventuring. That number is, as you probably know, too big and going the wrong direction. But, I said, as I saw my next eight meals go into the gas tank, I don’t have to buy gas that often.

Then I went to Lowes. We have a local hardware store. It’s small. The people are helpful. If you need precisely what they have, it’s convenient. We have an even smaller one. The people there are a little standoffish. Odds are they don’t have what you’re after. So, sometimes, you wind up going to a bigger store. My problem here is that the big stores aren’t especially close. They’re near work, but its a few miles off of that, and have you seen gas prices?

I bought a shower curtain rod, because I want to use more of the space in my closet. It’s a small walk-in, which is to say that on one wall there’s a row of clothes hanging. There are two shelves above it. There is also stuff below it. In the back of the closet, which is about three feet long, is where the clothes basket sits. But the ceiling is high, and so in this little space where I can walk in to pick up a shirt, look for a hat or some bit of cycling kit, or drop clothes in the hamper, there’s a lot of wasted space above me. There are also, meanwhile, a bunch of free hangers sitting on one of those two shelves above my clothes. Hangers, of course, just become a tangle and I’m sick of that. I’ve streamlined everything in my closet because nothing matters. I put on whatever is on the right side of the rod. Dress shirts, polos, t-shirts, each sectioned off, each waiting their turn. When the clothes get cleaned and put away, they go on the left side of their section, wait their turn, and move forward. I have done all of this to minimize my time standing in that small space. Now, the time I spend there is in dealing with those empty hangars. My genius solution was to get a high-tension rod, and put everything at about eight-feet. So I had to go to a store.

Then I had to go to campus. This evening we had the first meeting of the organizational communication in sports media class. It’s org comm in a sports context. On its own, org comm is important, but not always interesting as classroom material. This way, because of the sports angle, I can bring in whatever the controversy of the moment is and we can talk about things like imaging, branding, crisis management, internal and external comms, and so on. I like the class. I would. This is the second time I’ve taught it. Last year it was a twice-a-week experience. This time it is once a week.

My goal is to figure out which model is going to be the way we do it in the future, and then begin to change things up so that, hopefully, students will as find it as rewarding as I do. I want to do that because it is a valuable class, even if they’ve not yet realized that themselves. And, if they haven’t, they explain it to me before we’re done. We’re all here to learn, I say a lot.

Happily, the class was quite engaged on this first day. It’s pretty easy when there’s something to talk about, and there’s always something to talk about in sports. Next week I’ll put them into groups.

Anyway, I took no photographs today, but remembered that as I was waiting for the elevator after class. Here’s the building across the street from the building where my office is, and, of course more weather blowing in.

The drought monitor report comes out tomorrow. Surely we’re out of this dry spell by now.

I was eager to put up the shower curtain rod in the closet. (It’s amazing what you can look forward to.) I got greedy and wanted to hang some shirts on it, too, but the thing will only hold so much weight. It took me four failures to realize that. Eventually, I settled on just the hangers. It isn’t pretty. It’s a closet solution in a closet that no one but me is ever going to see. It doesn’t have to be pretty; it only needs to be effective. I’ll let you know. You’ve come along this far, you deserve that at least.

Tomorrow, we return to 1926.

errands / Friday / photo / woodworking, sorta — Comments Off
21
Aug 26

A day in rebellion

Because I did not do it yesterday, because I was working, I spent the morning running the weed eater. The backyard needed it. Also, I plucked some giant mutant dandelions. The web will tell you that dandelions can grow two feet tall, and if I knew that before just now I would have taken photos of the three and four-feet tall stalks that were threatening the rose bushes. My plan had been to hit just the edges of the lawn, the high spots at the fence, and the parts that were growing beyond their design intention. But, you know how it is with weeds. One thing leads to another and before long I had built up a decent sweat and a giant lawn bag full of mint and whatnot.

Want some mint? Come get some mint. Be sure you want it first. It’s an opportunistic plant, willing to grow in any free space, and it is all but impossible to eradicated.

Give the mint three pieces of credit, though. It pulls up easy. And it will choke out just about any other weed. It smells pleasant. And now the car smells like mint. I took the recycling and the green things to the county drop off site after my lovely bride did a bit of weed-pulling too. So there I was, two big containers of glass, aluminum, and a bit of plastic to drop. Two bags of weeds. Great armfuls of boxes. I even put them in the car well this time, such that I was a whirl of efficiency at the county site. The one other guy doing his part to save the earth was amazed at my industry. Two trips to the cardboard bin, two long walks to the mixed recycling. The only wasted motion was when when I accidentally closed the trunk too early.

Back home I left the garage open, and broke out some of the tools with which one works wood. I had, by then, just decided I wasn’t going to get in front of a computer today. (Except I am now, but that’s different, somehow.) The weather was just right, in the shade, anyway. And I decided to make a little thing for the garage. One of the few shortcomings in our house is that the garage is awfully crowded. And the wall upon which I store the tools with which one works wood is also where the bikes and various cycling accessories live. There are two problems with this. Last year I got tired of all the helmets and shoes and whatnot sitting on top of my table saw, so I got myself a corner cabinet, made myself some French cleats and now we have two shelves for helmets and shoes. But, still, the sunglasses have worked their way back down to the saw area. I’m the biggest perpetrator. So lately I envisioned a little sunglasses holder that will also go onto the elongated French cleat.

Today, because the weather was nice, in the shade, and I was in a computer rebellion, I decided to take the afternoon and make that happen.

The problems are these. One, I’m not an especially good woodworker. You improve with practice, though. But this brings me to my second problem. Space is limited, and so I don’t practice all that much. I had to go downstairs to fetch the ladder so that I could climb up it to see what scraps of old lumber I’d use. I had to move the miter saw to get to the table saw. I had to pull the table saw into the drive way. I had to run an extension cord. I had to peer through the garage shelves (which desperately need attention, which is my fault, and something I’m looking forward to addressing on a not steamy day) for things like a framing square, pencils, the table saw fence, the orbital sander, and so on.

Once I had all of the right things I proceed to doing the work, breaking down a random bit of plywood I picked up from somewhere, and then ripping a lovely bit of pine for the sides of my shelves. And then gluing one of those sides to the plywood. Then I dug out my brand new brad nailer. I picked this up sometime back and now was the time. The battery was charged, some long brads came in the box (I picked up some others, too, and they’re on that shelf … somewhere.) I drove in my first-ever brad nails today. I felt macho doing it.

With my ear protection on and everything. The brad nailer works well. It is also louder than you’d expect.

Then I ripped some more pine, so that I could crosscut it for the shelves themselves. Here I managed to not hurt myself, but relearned a lot of things about what not to do with your table saw.

(I’ll never hurt myself on the table saw. I fear it enough to respect it. I will hurt myself on pretty much any other thing. Though, today, happily, I didn’t hurt anything.)

I decided to make the shelves larger than I’d envisioned. I figured maybe it will evolve into a storage space for something else one day. Besides, it just didn’t seem like a small project day. I don’t know how to explain that, otherwise, but you should always listen to your gut around power tools.

Plus, I figured, you can never have enough space for the little things you carry.

Anyway, all of the pieces got cut. And I made a little dry fit test. It’s going to look something like this.

I glued up the second side. I’ll drive some brad nails into it this weekend, just for fun. And I’ll develop a process to space out those shelves, too. They’ll be attached all in one go at some point soon. Then we’ll just have to install the cleat on the back.

I sanded all of this down, but decided I’m not going to finish it. It’s garage furniture, after all. The Yankee might want to. She likes staining things. So I’ll leave that up to her.

Anyway, by this point, on a project where I decided to do more thinking than measuring, I realized I was approaching being done for the day. This is an important thing to consider because there’s still the cleaning up and the putting away. I timed this. It took 32 minutes to throw away the little bits, to put the sander and the sand paper and the square and the ladder away, to find a place the shelves can safely sit while the glue fixes, to put the table saw back in its corner, and the miter saw back on the table saw, to roll up the extension cords and, finally, to clean up my sawdust.

Truly, it is the most first world problem that ever existed, but set up and tear down is an investment all its own in my scenario. I need a shop so that I might do more of this, and get better at it. Which is to say, really, I shouldn’t buy any more second hand tools. There’s no room in my non-space. A new space can’t be the basement — too much sawdust and noise. It can’t be the garage — that’s where the cars live. I don’t have an outbuilding for this, nor is ours the sort of neighborhood where that would fit in. And I can’t afford an off-site location. So I’ll dabble, me and my average to poor carpentry skills, when the weather and scheduling and big chunks of available time permit.

The good news is that I have plenty of projects in mind.

This evening I’ve spent chatting with The Yankee, making weekend plans, having dinner, catching up on the day’s news, doing the dishes, doing this … pleased I spent a day doing something that was just for fun. Aside from the weeds, anyway. Backyard looks good, though!

Someday, soon, the sunglasses will, too.

errands / Friday / photo / site — Comments Off
14
Aug 26

Do you know praying mantis?

Sometimes strategies that you develop turn out to be accurate. There’s always the possibility you’re wrong, or you misread a situation or a third alternative arises. But sometimes you get it right. In this deliberately obscure case a time management strategy I’ve been employing has worked in my favor. So, go me? The thing about patting yourself on the back about barely referenced strategies is that you can’t count on the next one just because you were right on the last one. That’s just hubris and it will eventually catch up to you. Or me, in this case. And where will you/I be with the much ballyhooed time management choices then, huh?

You’ll spend all of your time searching and stretching for a metaphor that explains the thing without explaining the thing, thinking that one day, some seven or eight years from now, you’ll come across this post again and recall and know exactly what was going on here. You will not. I will not, in this case. I think exactly one time in the decades-long history of the site is there an allusion to something unsaid that I can recall and regard as important. And it was! And you’ll never find it, because I’m not telling.

(I wrote three paragraphs of a personal anecdote I like, one of those recollections-of-a-life-lesson I taught myself in 2003 or so, and I included the phrase “lightning bolt and thunderclap of clarity,” because I’m proud of that realization. It was an important story and a great lesson, but doesn’t fit here, so I deleted it and you are welcome.)

I woke up roughly on time this morning and made my way downstairs and outside. Parts of the southern side of the house and the gardens there are still shaded a bit, and I needed the shade to crawl around on hands and knees and do more weeding. I plucked at grasses and mints for about two hours.

I made a friend.

For a few moments, we did a bob-and-weave dance together. The insect craned its neck this way and that. I did it in response, then the mantis did it again. Then I did it again. Mid-way through the third round the insect got bored of it. But, I felt, we’d bonded in that time.

Then I felt bad about ripping up all of the green things upon which it had been living its best life. But it scurried off, headed for another patch of growth I wasn’t going to pull up. Other insects and greener pastures and all of that.

One year and one day ago I met this guy on the northern side of the house. I wonder if they are related.

How often do various insect groups have family reunions? I only took one entomology course in college and, I must confess, that did not come up. If I had undergrad to do over again, I definitely would not ask about that.

Late this afternoon, after pretending to do some computer work, I took all of the fruits of my weeding, five giant bags over four sweaty hours, and loaded them into the car to take them to the county’s drop off site. I drove there, smelling of decaying green things, and dropped them off. Usually there is a crowd, maybe even a line, but there was only one other vehicle there as the Friday closing hour loomed. I gave the bags the ol’ heave-ho without making a mess of things and then climbed back in the car.

This is my favorite part of the recycling and waste run. There is a little building that sits in the lot and the man that runs the place, when he’s not outside moving stuff around or doing the other things he does, sits in there. You can’t see into the building because of the light and glare, but I also give it a little wave. Here I’ve been working on my uninterested-but-thankful expression. A fixed lip, a nod, a casual wave, and then down the gravel drive, onto the road and that chore is done. Until the next time the chore must be done, and I will try another version of that wave. Maybe three fingers next time.

I went over to one of the local grocery stores, picked up a few things, and then pointed toward home, where I almost got in a tangle with the driver of this vehicle.

It’s a company car, and the driver was rather aggressive. I followed him a bit as he weaved through town and near a school zone at high rates of speed. Soon, I caught him at a light where the road allowed me to go past him and better see the company logo. And don’t you know I looked them up. It’s a local concern. They work on restaurants and businesses and commercial remodels. I sent the family-owned business an email, sharing the license plate, telling them the driver was erratic and dangerous on their insurance and, what’s more, with a great big company log on the side of the van. “That’s probably not the word of mouth you want,” I concluded. “Certainly it isn’t the risk the rest of us should accept from your company.”

That felt like a good way to end a Friday. I hope it is an issue for someone in their office on Monday.

cycling / errands / memories / Monday / overwriting / photo — Comments Off
10
Aug 26

Weekend summaries, never as satisfying as the real thing

A midday storm is an inescapable display of power that changes a day’s entire attitude. When the winds and thunder roll in and the rain pecks at the walls and windows, that’s a thrill, a romance, a terror, a cozy companion, he wrote after careful proofreading.

That time just after the storm has passed needs a name for its sadness.

And it is. This was on Saturday afternoon, when there was no immediate need for melancholy. After an hour or so the sun was brilliant and drying everything out, as if nothing had happened and we were back to a wonderfully hot, now humid, summer day. The sort that is observed nicely from indoors, because let’s be honest about the need to be outside. And that little storm was fun, but the part that follows seldom ever is.

Anyway, we’ve had several nice summer rains of late, and they have been immensely helpful. Presently, 100 percent of our county is rated as “abnormally dry” on the drought monitor. Only 9.8 percent of it is in the moderate drought category. Most of the county has been in a drought since last October. Three months ago it was of the “severe” variety.

This is the second moderate drought we’ve experienced in three years here. In 2024, we got some rain one night in November which broke the longest consecutive-days drought in 130 years of local record keeping. It’d been two months since anything fell out of the sky. Even then, when even the people that pay close attention to these things began to get squirmy, it wasn’t like the 2002 drought, when people were having to change their habits. “My lawn! My car!” When the veggies shrivel or you’re asked to take shorter showers, that’s when people notice. If we’re emerging from a drought right now, a slow-motion, year-long effort, I don’t think it’ll figure into most people’s thinking. Certainly not the neighbors, with the sprinklers.

But if we’re emerging from a drought, it could be a lot worse. Look out west. Look at Europe. Look around.

And if you don’t look too carefully you might think that I caught this maple leaf, midflight, and with a drop of rain on it.

If, that is, you overlook the spiderweb, which I’ve obviously been doing.

Everything grows well out back. Morning sun and afternoon shade and look at the Brown-eyed Susan. It is about to break containment.

Right next to it, the honeysuckle, which we had to cut way back in the spring of last year to replace the trellis upon which it depends. I had no problem with that. Honeysuckle takes your attacks on its free will and laughs in the face of your determinism. I need to prune it more, because it has grown wild and woolly once more. Add it to the list of things I need to do when it isn’t 98 degrees outside, which is the case as of this writing.

There are so many things on that list, and I made one slight in-road yesterday. I visited Harbor Freight, my first every visit, and picked up yard bags — cheapest I could find, and yes I did an extensive price comparison because I have the internet available for my every thought.

I also had a list of other things I wanted to pick up, a note on my phone, complete with names, prices and aisles. To say I have been preparing for this trip for sometime is overstating it, the previous two sentences notwithstanding. And then I got there and —

I’d like to leave the previous shopper a note of encouragement. The important thing is that you almost tried.

Completing the job of landing the cart in the corral would have taken an additional nine steps and a sophisticated heel pivot — I know because I did it for you — but you almost did the thing that society requests of you.

It calls to mind times when I would go to the IGA in wherever it was we lived last. Someone was always leaving carts out. Mind you, I don’t cruise the parking lot looking to solve this problem, but if it’s there I will fix your shortcomings, sure. And I’ll feel good about myself, as I did the times at that IGA when I moved the carts from the handicapped parking spaces into the corral that was mounted right next to the handicapped parking spaces. The grocery store kids were taking a smoke break on the stoop and laughed at that, and, eye contact being a fate-worse-than-death in that part of the world, I gave them a look, in turn.

I don’t miss anything about that place. Well, the 9:30 sunsets in the summer were nice. They also had good multi-use paths. Seven years, those are the two things I miss.

Anyway, I purchased the lawn bags. Probably should have picked up more — but how much of that do you want to do at a time? I also picked up two corner clamps. You really need four, but they only had the two. I decided to wait on some other items on my list, but I did indulge myself by picking up two cheap tape measures. One will live upstairs. One will live downstairs. This plan accomplishes two goals, keeping the good tape measure from wandering all over the house for weeks at a time, and keeps me from having to go to the garage to fetch the good one when I need to determine the empty space on that wall over there. At $4 a pop, these two new ones will pay for themselves somewhere around 2029.

The tape measures were in one of those blister packages though, the sort that involves great risk of bodily harm to free the thing you now own. The easiest way to free the tape measure was by unscrewing the little belt clip from the back. The easiest way to do this was to pierce the blister package with the tip of a pointy Phillips screw driver. Then you unscrew it. Then you wiggle the screw out of place. The tape itself is now free of the packaging, but you must now dig out the little silver belt clip. And here it helps if you pretend like you are a 19th century battlefield surgeon trying to find a bullet, and then dig the thing out in a grotesque way for moviegoers.

Then you have to reassemble it. Now, this is a tiny screw on a cheap tape measure from Harbor Freight. You must take care with this, pretending like you are the first 21st century surgeon to use a sonic scalpel to remove a three-micron imperfection on a patient’s iris. Then you have to test the tape measure, because who knows what secondary role that screw had. Does the tape come out of the case? Yes. Does the lock lock the tape? Yes, also it has a satisfying click. Does the tape retract when you unlock the lock? Yes. Do you do all of this for the second tape measure? Yes. Does the cat look at you like he is wondering if you’ve completely lost your mind? Yes. Do you know where these two tape measures are going to be stored when they aren’t in use? Absolutely not.

Well, another day for that, then.

I am the type of bike rider that can ride the same road a lot. Some people get bored. I suppose some people find the repetition meditative. Me, I’m usually too close to hypoxia to worry about meditating. I am also the type of bike rider that likes to ride new roads, or revisit the rarely ridden roads. But, what I’ve really learned about myself is that I’m the type of bike rider who, once there is an idea in place, absolutely must do that ride.

Saturday evening I had the idea of doing some hill repeats. It’s all very flat here and I haven’t ridden a real hill in several years now and I was never good at it and it’s hot and I am not riding enough and so this was a good idea.

I recalled this road, which I’ve been up three times perhaps, and down twice. It has a hill. It’s gradual. It is also quiet, and part of it is, as you can see, nicely shaded.

People do hill repeats to get stronger — or, like me, to say they’ve done them. There’s a method to the madness of going up the same hill over and over. Probably more than one. I just decided to go up the hill, and figured I’d do it several times. And so I soft-pedaled my way to that hill, an easy 17 minute ride with no exertion. And then I went up that hill. It tops out, then goes up a bit more, and does that a few times before the road forms a T-intersection with the nearest highway. If you saw the hill in profile it looks a bit like a molar. The climb isn’t hard or long, but what I know about hill repeats is that you want the concerted effort and then the repetition. What I want out of the hill repeat is to be able to turn around safely. And this road does all of those things. So I rode the road, and figured, “I’ll do 10.” And then later I said to myself, “It really is hot out here.” And then I said, “I’ll do five.” And then I said, “I think that’s five.” And then I took the long way home, turning left at that highway instead of turning around, letting the road pull me past the veteran’s cemetery and back into town, feeling the asphalt bend to my right between the gas station and the biker bar. Apparently they have good pub grub, though I have only seen the “biker’s welcome” sign on the wall, and they wouldn’t turn me away, but I think they mean motorcyclists. The little side road I was on after that falls downhill, usually I’m on this bit of infrastructure in the opposite direction. I turn left and and then left again, past the town lake, and into downtown. I timed the red light, singular, just right. Make the right past bike shop and opposite the old fire ring, and then the left for home.

At that point I am 3.5 miles from home, I have been out for about 90 minutes, drank three bottles of water, had enough of the heat and the little hills. I am counting, in my mind, the little rises between my bike and my neighborhood. I estimated three. There were four. After the second I started thinking of the alternate ways home, because I didn’t want that last hill. At the four-way stop I could go left and then right and go up a hill on bad chip-and-seal and then do the reverse side of this climb. I could turn right and go down a hill and then up two actual hills before the final incline and … no, straight ahead was the easiest way to get there and I was just done with the heat. When I got home I was right on the edge of shivering, which is one of those early heat exhaustion symptoms. Or the sweat wasn’t evaporating because I was no longer in the wind and perspiration could finally do its cooling job.

Inside, then, more water, this time with electrolytes. Shower.

There’s a very, very small wound in the next photo, and I’m just telling you now. It’s hardly the worst thing in the world, but it is a part of the story and now you’ve been warned.

I’ve bled on a bicycle in several different ways. Crashes. Hailstorm. Whacked by a limb too far out into the road.

Some 10-plus years ago I cut myself so badly I had to turn around, go home and bandage myself up. The little rubber cover on my handlebar hood had disappeared and it hadn’t yet been replaced. Beneath that hood is a screw that holds all of the stuff in the shifter-brake area together. I reached up to adjust and grabbed the screw and sliced my pinky. It was at the beginning of the ride, and so I went back out, gauze and tape and Band-aids and such. I could follow the blood trail back out. I still have the scar.

Anyway, and here it comes, as I was getting ready to shower I noticed I nicked the ring finger on my left hand. No idea how.

It’s fine. Didn’t bleed. I’ll keep it clean and it’ll heal itself because I believe in first aid. But it’s right in that spot where the finger touches the middle finger and it’ll be a reminder, for a few days, that I have no idea how that happened.

My lovely bride, meanwhile, did an aqua bike == a swim and ride race — and she finished second. Podium and proud! We did the proper sort of celebration: Chinese for dinner, and basked with ice cream from the local creamery.

The teens running the place closed as we were there. Removed the garbage bags, shut the windows, took away the umbrellas, turned off the monitors and figured “These two are the upstanding sort who won’t cause us any problem. They’ll probably be home and in bed before 10, anyway.”

And they were right about that.

Well, I had a lot of other things I was going to talk about, but I have to save something for the rest of the week. Besides, I have written now almost 2,300 words and said absolutely nothing. You deserve a break.

errands / photo / Tuesday — Comments Off
21
Jul 26

Skin, I have it

I had a dermatology checkup today. The short version: I have skin. The slightly longer version: I have skin and it is in good condition and there’s nothing to be alarmed about.

I am alarmed. The guy that called my name in the waiting room and escorted me to an exam room asked me, I am sure, the basic array of triage questions. I was going to give him two more questions before I asked him how old he was and what time his mom was picking up today.

But it is a dermatology office, maybe he just knows how to take care of his skin.

Then the doctor came in with his two PAs in tow. We shook hands. I made the acquaintance of his PA-in-training and was trying, for some reason, to make sure she felt seen. The dermatologist interrupted me with all of the dermatology questions.

We discussed my poison ivy, which has cleared up right on schedule. Apparently they’re seeing a lot of that this year. Makes you wonder about the down years. Are there years when urushiol oil is in short supply? How does this never make the news? What does that mean for issues beyond the local ecological environment? People are going to tell you it is good for animals and insects. People are also going to tell you that climate change promotes more poison ivy and, thus urushiol oil. Don’t believe Big Poison Ivy. This is what you need to remember:

When the oil gets into your skin, your immune system’s sensor cells recognize urushiol as foreign to your body. These sensor cells then call in protector cells to the area, warning them of the invasion. The protector cells defend your body against the intruder by attacking the urushiol in the skin. Unfortunately, some of your body’s normal skin cells are casualties of this war, which is what leads to the itchiness and swelling of a poison ivy rash.

I think that the PA-in-training needs to both know these things (and I’m sure she does) but also how to deal with people who bring this sort of information with them. And what she learned from that experience, from her mentor, was “Keep the patient on task.”

We’ve all got roles to play, and that’s the one I played there today.

Anyway, an exam was taken. I passed for another year.

I was given a shopping list by my lovely bride. I volunteered to take the grocery shopping off her schedule if she gave me a list and some aisle direction, and she did. I don’t mind the store. I dislike aimlessly wandering from aisle to aisle, squinting at signs, dodging people and peering on every shelf for that One Weird Thing that will make my skin as young and as fresh as that 14-year-old I just met. So she give me a list and gave me some directions for some of the slightly more obscure things.

And then — confident that I’d saved her virtually no time while I happily texted away at her, aisle-by-aisle — as I approached the checkout, I got a message for additional things. Oh, these are for dessert. Which is the only reason I went back into the fray — also because checkout was a bit of a mess itself at the moment, but dessert. If it had been, say, brussels sprouts, I would have said, Nope. Not on the list. Not on the contract. Can’t have it.

Instead, I got an additional request for these things … entirely off-setting all of the healthy things I’d picked up. But, I also picked up something else. A mystery. What kind of dessert is this?

I guess we’ll find out in a few days.

Also, hon, they were out of brussels sprouts. So sorry. Couldn’t be helped. They’re selling like … well, whatever undesirable vegetables sell like.

And now the storms are rolling in, anyway. Can’t cook brussels sprouts in bad weather. That’s like a rule, or something. Might effect the flavor. I’m sure that’s one of those old wives tales that’s true.