feeling sad.

i wasn't earlier. had a pretty good day. this morning lisa called me at home and told me to have breakfast at home so i could go grocery shopping right at eight thirty. lisa has a cold. i know she's miserable. two of us go grocery shopping on monday mornings. one to superstore--the two cart shop and one to save-on. it was my turn for save-on and lisa wanted me back earlier because she would be the lone person in the kitchen until then.

i dropped off my two rolls of film, or what i thought were my two rolls of film before i began my shopping. then i began collecting produce. produce is a majour part of the save-on shop. today i gathered seven heads of green leaf lettuce, a big bag of field tomatoes, five cucumbers, ten green peppers, ten red peppers, three celery, two big bags of broccoli, a big bag of carrots and six bunches of green onion. doesn't leave much for anything else in the cart. but i was far from done.

vance the manager of the deli department was washing the display when i arrived for my eight dollars of hungarian salami. vance is great at customer service. he remembers you, he remembers what you tend to get and he sometimes brings it all around and places it in your cart for you. i like vance. he's in my good books. it was when i pulled up to the deli counter that lisa called me and i scrambled to dig my cell phone out from under the red peppers. i get in trouble for not answering my cell phone. "you're not responsible enough to have a cell phone." and such comments. it was lisa. she wanted to know about what beans we use for the baked beans "we used to use the romano beans but lisa found navy beans so i think that's what we're using now." i told her. she told me we were short of molasses. i agreed to add it to my list although i thought we probably had some in the places that i happened to know our molasses likes to hide. you can never have too much molisses (kaz spelled it that way once on the white board and ever since i say it that way in my head mo'lisses.). then a nice girl gave me my salami. it was actually 7.88 of salami if you want to be technical about it.

i moved on to gather my meats. i package of boneless, skinless chicken breasts (6), four of chicken wings. lately they've only had the whole chicken wings. those are gross because cutting them up is gross. the stretched skin across the wing is gross. but what can you do when you need to serve teriyaki chicken wings on the menu? you buy the gross ones that's what. next i got two tubes of lean ground beef. i was pleased to see the tubes of hamburger because often there is only the small pkgs and i have to get a lot. tubes of hamburger do please me, i cannot lie about it. i was in the thick of the meats when the lady at the photo shop called me. she said i gave her an empty case with no film in it. that's what kicked in the memory of not taking the film out of my camera, if you can have a memory of not doing something, that is. i told her i was still in the store and would bring it to her.

the bakery was next on my route but i always walk past it to get the milk first. i don't agree with the placement of the bakery in the back corner of the store. it means you can't get your bread last and therefore keep it safe from squishing. this is one thing i like better about superstore's set-up. these are the lame things i actually think about. i have a carefully set up route of shopping for each store. that's what comes from so almost 4 years of shopping. so i had to make room for the milk and creamo and my cart was fast getting what most people call full. luckily i am not most people. luckily i am one of those people that try to carry obscene amounts of things at time. i am one of those that believes if there is a will there is a way. so i turned back to the bread, grabbed two loaves of brown italiano, three white, three garlic bread and four dozen butter rolls. they sat softly on top of my cart. a dome of soft bread.

there was still more. the taco seasoning wasn't a big deal. the parmesean was bedded amongst the the bread in gaps as was the five mister noodle pkgs. i slid the flat of old dutch chips underneath and somehow found a place for the eggs and two cartons of molisses. i don't even know where i put the nine dollar cheese. but the last test was the five spaghetti sauce jars from the warehouse aisle. my cart was already impossible. i rested three on the handle and carried the other two against my chest with my right arm folded over them.

it was hard to steer but i didn't have far to go. to turn i had to put my foot as a block and pivot tool on the back wheels. the only non-express cashier open was shane. shane was a bagging boy. he's got some devolpment issue that i don't know what it is. he's a good bagging guy is all i know. now he's being trained on cash. i think that's cool for shane. but i have to admit that i wondered how long it was going to take and also if the other cashiers would think i was mean to bring shane my huge overwhelming order when he was just learning. but to be fair, he had a bagging boy helping him and if he needs to practice why not practice on me? there was lots to practice with. gloria girl with the wrist brace came and 'buddied' him after a while. i think he's going to do really well.

i had a good parking spot. i feel pretty good if i ever get one of these spots. the 1 hour max spots that are right against the building. so i rolled my cart there and grabbed my film handed it in packed up my trunk with foods--chips in the back seat and back to work. not that i hadn't been working.

and that's probably more than you wanted to know about my shopping experience at save-on foods today. but that's the joy of this blog. you get to know more than you wanted to.

had to have a talk with garry today about friday's incident. i basically found myself repeating what i put in the email/incident report. the guys are banned until they talk to garry.

afterwork i drove back to save-on and picked up my pictures. i forgot how exciting it is to pick up your pictures. you don't know how they are going to turn out--if they're going to turn out. it's exciting and sometimes disappointing. i got them and sat in the car and looked them over. there were some good ones. i captured the owl bethan, elicia and i saw last sunday and there's a cute one of a little bird preening. some other ones too. maybe i'll get a chance to scan them some time.

i drove back to work, parked my car got my bike and started to ride home. meanwhile the fog had rolled in. i was passing the field of long grasses by the dinsmore bridge that also is beside the new bcit aero-blahblah school and i was thinking that "hey that grass is the kind the herons like to hang out in. i should keep an eye out for a heron." just then i saw one right on the edge of the field. those silent sneeky creatures. did i tell you that on friday i thought one was a stump? maybe i did, maybe i did. anyways this one looked a little nervous when i stopped so i didn't swing my leg over my seat. i thought leg swinging would set it off. so i had swivel and grasp into the backpack for my camera. it was hard to reach because of the bungies criss crossing it, but i finally got it.




here's a pic i took. you can see the fog down by the river. i guess all these grassland pics of herons can be tiresome for others but my hope is that one day i'll get a good shot of a heron. this guy started sneaking away from me, probably hoping i didn't see him sneaking off, so i left him. i've bugged enough herons in my day after all.














me in some of my bike gear. i have no idea who's helmet this is. i think i gave my helmet to amy that october she spent some time at my place. i thought this helmet was elicia's but she said it wasn't. is it yours karey? anyways one day when i was leaving work and unlocking my bike i was flanked on one side by mark and the other side by john. they took great interest in my bike riding. john is quite the cyclist. he remarked on my seat. "yeah, it's not that comfortable actually." i said. that's when john showed me his seat. his seat is, from what i can tell, a huge mushed up soft back rest thing in a plastic bag strapped on to the real seat. he says it's really comfortable. whatever works john. "hey laura" says mark "you should come swimming with us sometime. "ya!" pipes up john. "it's good for you. and there's a sauna and it's good for your skin" mark tells me. a vision of an uncomfortable me in my bathing suit flanked my mark and john flashes before me. luckily i sincerely don't like swimming pools. i tell this to mark. "there's a sauna." he says. "there's a sauna at the gymn." i point out to him. (we go to the same gym). "only in the women's" says mark. "well?" i say. i got them there. john tries to say that he and mark can come with me to the girl's sauna. "we'll wear bathing suits." he says. "but some of the women won't be." i say and put on my helmet in an attempt to change the subject. it works. mark says my helmet is a good colour for my eyes. and my shirt too. that made me want to laugh. i rode off.

after i put my bike away i got the mail. i looked at gerta's door. i should go and say hi i thought, so i did. she was playing scrabble by herself. i sat and talked with her for an hour. she offered me paint brushes and water colour paper. on the one hand this is so great, but on the other i don't want to take advantage of her generosity. she says she won't paint again and she has no one else to give them to so what am i to do?

gerta told me this funny story of this man out east who claims he was her boyfriend but she has no recollection of him. he has the exact same birthday as her and he showed up at her brother's memorial and told her daughter that they used to be 'lovers' (gerta's words) she didn't know who he was so she got her daughter to google him and she called him. they exchanged pictures and he wrote her a letter but she still does not recall him. he insists that they know each other and seems to have quite the soft spot in his heart for her. a mystery.

well i'm going to bed.