Just Your Average Raisin-Free Day
It was a quiet day in Lake Woe�wait! Did I almost say that? My apologies. This is not 1986, right? Right. Let�s begin again.
It was a quiet day in rural Virginia. All the children were rambunctious. All the noses were alternately running or stuffed up. All the throats were slightly sore.
But that didn�t stop us from venturing out to the local library where Dusty saw the chess set in the �adult� area and asked me to play it with her. I claimed utter ignorance of chess (checkers is about my speed) and Dusty offered to make up a game with pieces. She is never put off by adult stupidity. She can always find a way to make someone play with her. Making up games is her current specialty. Recently she�s combined Chutes and Ladders with Lite Brite pegs (housed within the circles of various fancy bracelets), and the famous Candy Brite/Lite Land game.
We then went down the road to shop at the newly opened Food Monger. My, what a dreadful, dreadful experience! Bad service, high prices and everything thrown willy-nilly into five bazillion plastic bags that caused the groceries to slop out all over the back of the car on the way home. God, I despise plastic bags. Not to mention the items I couldn�t find: raisins, whole wheat bread, sorbet, hummus, eggs, cashews (no bulk items of any kind), water chestnuts, soy �faux-chicken� nuggets (a Red staple), broccoli and scallions. No broccoli! I ask you! And this is a store that carries an entire aisle of Mexican products � including twelve different kinds of dried peppers and cornhusks - for the influx of immigrants who are moving in around these parts (who I welcome with open arms, I might add.). And no raisins! I swear � I checked twice! And the day I pay $2.50 for 6 bagels when I can get them for $1.49 elsewhere? Joking they must be. The produce section was about as big as a pair of nail clippers. The small ones, not the big toenail kind. I guess if I�d just emigrated from Vegetarian Land, I�d have every brand of tofu, seitan and bok choy at my disposal. But alas!
So, tomorrow when I drop Red off at daycare, I�ll make a trip to the good local grocery store where I am treated nicely, things are reasonably priced, my food is bagged with care by a trained employee in PAPER BAGS and...carried out to my car! I will never again accept anything less.
The ONLY good thing about the Food Monger is that they sell beer and wine. Lots of both. The good grocery store is owned by Baptists so they don�t sell alcohol. But they have no qualms about selling cigarettes. Ah, the South! We don�t cotton to certain vices (likker and gamblin�) and you can�t make us sell it but SMOKE UP! Think of the poor tobacco farmer who�s...growing soy beans these days fer all them crunchy granola hippies. Who eat all them raisins.
Anywho. Back at the ranch(er), Red went down for a nap and Dusty and I baked banana muffins. Then, once naptime was over and half the muffins had been eaten, we went over to the school�s playground (so they could �whee� on slides and swings) while the clouds built up and darkened and made the world feel thick and cottony. If it had been cold enough, I would have thought snow was imminent but since it was close to 60 degrees, we�re looking at rain. It rains a lot at Christmas in these parts.
While at the school, we admired the tree Dusty�s class had decorated with bird treats. They�d strung fruit loops (poor birds � how we destroy you, too, with our junk food!) in patterns (Dusty�s was ABBABBABBA) and the teacher had draped them on the bare branches of the tree closest to the kindergarten playground. It was very festive but I couldn't get over my feeling that birds just really shouldn't be eating fruit loops. Neither should people. I mean, really.
Farther down at the �big kids� playground � which has a much better slide � I looked at the other, more appropriate bird feeders: pinecones rolled in suet and birdseed, suet balls stuck through with tooth picks resembling interstellar objects. At the tips of the tooth picks were raisins.
So THAT�S where all the raisins went! Damn, I shoulda shopped much earlier!
I hate when that happens.
I was thinking of something much more interesting to say but I�ve forgotten what it was now. I�m sorry. As you were.
