A Favorite Agave Once Bloomed Across The Street

Agave plants are far from friendly. All those I've seen have at least one long hard stabbing point on the tip of every leaf. Many have more up and down the leaf edges, including curved ones that you'd swear reach out in order to flay your skin into shreds. Don't believe me? Try cuddling accidentally with one and then come back to me with your more educated opinion. After, of course, you decide whether you really were secretly after getting your own source of tequila, and still think it's a good idea while you're bleeding out.

None of that stops a lot of people in the SW desert from using them in landscaping. I'm sure there are people for whom the painfulness of running into one of them is considered a lesson well learned by some people who grow them. Think of it as cheap fencing.

While I never planted that kind in my own yard for that purpose, I grew plenty. My personal favorite was the octopus agave, bearing a single terminal long spike on each leaf, but with smooth leaf edges. It was an easy task to take plant clippers and snip off the last inch of every leaf, leaving something slightly pointy and hard as a reminder, but not capable of shredding you if you stumbled into it. Many varieties came with the house, or grew through the chain link fence from neighbors yards. Mostly they never change, and require very little care once established. Plant and ignore. Or plant and AVOID!!!

I didn't pay a lot of attention to the neighbor's agaves, since they didn't require my attention. Just more desert plants in a huge metropolis of desert plants. Just a few years after we moved in, that changed. Right across the street, the spiky nasty plant our neighbor had growing at the corner of their sidewalk and driveway started sending up a tall stalk. OK, noted and ignored, went about our business, whatever it was.Taller and taller, resemblance to asparagus noted, still ignored. Sending out branches from the top, again noted and ignored... until one day, the top half or so of the plant stood holding red paddles! Or that's what it looked like!

I grabbed my camera, because of course. I couldn't get far enough away in a vertical shot to include all the top unless I cut out the "bush" of ground level leaves this grew from the center of, around three feet tall itself. I got in the habit of stepping into the street to take a shot, since across it was too far for detail of the upper branches which rapidly took precedence, and taking half a dozen new photos or more every time. It absolutely fascinated me! I was sure each new shot captured some new subtle  change in details than the last set a minute or hours before.  Surely the light changed? I shot a completely different branch? My camera performed differently?  

I went online to try to identify this species, thinking maybe I could buy one... like I had any decent spot for one, or, I found out, would even be alive to see it bloom without making medical history!

Note this this shows that each flowering branch has an accompanying long sharp thorn protecting it - in case anything big and hungry got that high I suppose. Details like those can show up as a surprise even years later when reviewing old photos. I probably shot the same things over and over for days. Thank goodness digital is free, no film processing needed! Each shot seemed brand new, different in another undefined way from the last dozen, important to capture for posterity and the happiness of the world!

OK, not the entire world. Or did I decide that too soon? Traffic on our street grew, and grew, cars slowing down, stopping for pictures before driving off for the next person to capture their shot. The word must have traveled. We weren't that busy on our street even when there were fantastic yard sales going on, not even with curbside merch behind large "FREE!" signs.

I changed how I shot,  going for close-ups to capture the details as they changed daily. Or at least I shot daily, never willing to miss an "event". The red bits paled a bit, but they became identifiable as  buds which split open on top to allow the pollen coated pieces to pop out of each. Over some days that process in any particular branch went from top center to lower and lower buds down either side, front and back, or left and right, depending from whichever perspective I shot. It also advanced up a branch at a time, until the last red was  in the top branch, much like a distant red sun was setting.

 By the time the blossoms turned mostly yellow, traffic died back. Yellow agave flowers? Ho Hum. I got the chance to safely cross the street almost any time I wished, shooting in this light or that, trying everything for the 17th time. Yep, that's fascination!

What a very sharp eye can notice is the sky in the above shot looks like I had a very dusty lens, especially the left half of the picture. What it really has is an enormous, relentless swarm of tiny pollinators, something like gnat size, doing their best to assist Mother Nature in procreating more of this spectacular  agave.

I toyed with the idea of asking the neighbors, who I never did meet, if they'd mind if I harvested some seeds once they developed. They either were very reclusive or residing elsewhere, possibly even  underground with an estate to be settled. It's common enough in senior's communities. I did keep an eye out for activity for a few weeks after it first grew its stalk, hoping they knew what kind it was for sure and perhaps wanted to be casually friendly like some other neighbors were.

Alas, seed collecting wasn't to be. Just a few days after this shot,whoever was caring for the property had a crew come in and totally remove the agave in pieces before it had a chance to develop seeds.  It was a Parri's Agave. It could easily take 50 years between seed planting in the exact perfect place and conditions, and another display like this one. No wonder it attracted the attention and traffic that it had.

 I never did see another in our years and travels in the Phoenix area. At least I got about a hundred pictures of this agave, now winnowed down to half a dozen. The memories are not limited by numbers. Any regrets have faded long since, beyond the casual way a treasure was lost.

So Now I'm "Great Grandma Boxes"?

I eventually learned once I was no longer outfitted to entertain kids (toys, art supplies, swings, etc.)  that little kids visiting Great Grandma expected SOMETHING to entertain them, keep them occupied. It was kind of new to me, having been an official family day care home provider following all the state requirements for 8 years while I was raising my own three. After years across states and a divorce, I needed a higher paying job and my youngest needed somebody else's daycare.  There was no longer a whole room in the house dedicated to kids, toys, entertainment, and education. In fact, from their perspective, it was pretty bare.

Once I fought for and won legal visitation with my one grandchild, visits were alternate weekends, plus a week for travel each summer. A huge fenced yard, climbable trees, pets, and planned activities pretty much averted boredom, and summer trips included camping, road trips to places like the Black Hills and the Lake Superior Circle Tour, often including a younger sibling of hers unrelated to me, or once even a cousin. As she got older, airplanes spanned the distance to Arizona, Washington state, and even Alaska. The farther the distance, the more packed with activities a full week was, and the more likely my youngest, now adult son came along as well. We were long past a houseful of toys by that time. I returned to an all-adult world. The treasures kept for future years and new generations were a section of the home library with special books, authors like C.S Lewis, Kipling, and Laura Ingalls Wilder, and some inherited from my parents full of photos of seashells and coral, saved from their post-retirement craft/business involving shells. Shells came with the books too, but as fragile as they are, and even then with climate change threatening their future,  most of those remain packed away. A few unique ones reside in shadow boxes on the walls, and of course there is one huge conch so supervised kids can "listen to the ocean".

No toys however, despite between my family and Steve's, having all kinds of grand kids and now great grands on both sides. They don't visit all that frequently, but they still like something to play with when they're here, up to the age where adult conversations start to get interesting. Or they bring their own kids. Or both. The cycles repeat.

In the process of moving in to our last home, there were all kinds of boxes left over. We did find happy homes for the regular packing boxes with people whose own grown kids were moving off to college or had friends who could use some. But for months I kept my hands full converting informal packing boxes, often scrounged from Arizona store dumpsters for the move back north, into recyclable pieces. When we had two elementary school grandkids over, bored while the big folk talked, they discovered two things: a mattress on the floor still in a plastic cover waiting for a room to get needed carpeting so the frame could be put together and that mattress have its home, and empty boxes.  The mattress would stay clean inside its cover whatever the kids would do  with it, so they got our blessing to have fun. Boy did they! And the empty boxes were in need of destruction by anybody's hands. So we grownups had our conversations and the kids had a blast!

Over the last three years, there have always been reasons for  more boxes to show up. Needed unassembled roller chairs came in them. Folding tables for entertaining large family groupings came in them. So did the needed folding metal chairs, and shelving unit pieces, and... and.... Sometimes I look around me and wonder just what didn't need its own box? But there is a large open space in our living room, as distinct from the family room with the TV, where large boxes of all sorts wind up until kids have an excuse to visit. They can decorate them with markers or colored pencils, turn them into their own construction projects, hide in them, destroy them - all is fair aside from damaging each other and the real furniture, or houseplants. After a good visit, the pieces get fed through the recycling stream. Sometimes it's all at once, sometimes it takes a month or more with pickups only alternate weeks.

Yesterday I had one of those multiple-errands-in-the-cities days. With gas prices being what they are, it's nice to make a large loop since it's fifty miles just to get to the first one, and fifty back again. I consulted with my granddaughter and she was open to me popping in there and dropping off a few things for the family, as well as just getting together for a visit where they didn't have to drive 80 miles each way. Just like me, she had three kids, the oldest a daughter, the other two boys, the youngest of which will be three tomorrow, and which, when Steve and I were snowbirding, we delayed our return south for, to see and hold him in the hospital after birth.

I have a history with her middle son. When we'd get together in my youngest son's yard for backyard bonfires and weenie roasts followed by s'mores, there were always piles of dead branches from all the trees. Those were what we burned. This kid would always find a stick and go around hitting everything he could with it. If he got a little too close to me, I'd simply reach out and hold it, so he had to stop hitting whatever. He wasn't pleased, just giving me a long stare. For the next couple years he'd basically ignore or avoid me. But he's been coming over to our place with the family and joining in the play with the boxes. Last Thanksgiving he and his siblings turned a bunch of boxes into a cardboard version of a huge easy chair, among other transformations. He was especially impressed with that big 7-foot long furnace box this summer. 

When I showed up at their house yesterday, apparently he'd heard I'd be bringing something for the family. He was very disappointed that I hadn't crammed my little hatchback car full of huge boxes! But at least he finally had good memories of me replacing the Mean-Old-Great-Grandma memories, since he talked to me, posed for pictures, and even demonstrated how he could turn cartwheels now (almost - shhhh) as good as his big sister could! He also made a point of showing me each new iteration of of a new Lego creation - before destroying it for the next idea - and announcing just what it was (for an old lady who just might not understand what he'd made.)

We're not ordering so many large things these days - thank goodness - but my youngest works for a company which gets a lot of things delivered in tri-wall cardboard. He's keeping his eye out for larger boxes and will drop some off when he visits, knowing kids will be using them. Of course his car is the same size as mine, so no 7 foot long boxes from him either. But yes, the pile is again growing.

Maybe next time I head over to their house for a visit I should ask how many fresh boxes they'd like? I won't - I think - be hauling plants that trip. There should be room.

Nine-Eleven: Twenty Five Years Later

After the first few remembrance ceremonies, I tended to pretty much forget that day. It wasn't part of my daily life. I did not lose anybody I knew there - unless a passing acquaintance I never knew was involved. It's not that I didn't live that day glued to information sources, because I did. I was horrified, confused, angry, worried about what else might come from whoever our enemies were that were doing this, and even more, worried about what our current leaders would do or not do as a result. I was not worried personally for my safety that day, because the targets so far had all been along the east coast, centers of power and of government. Who'd attack Minnesota? Why?

There are memories tied to visual images that day, though with a single exception not of images of the destruction. Not then. I was in my car all day, working as a courier. Because we were now computer dispatched rather than radio dispatched, the car radio could be turned on all day, and was. My choice was the news service of Minnesota Public Radio. There were times I flipped over to their classical music station when I needed calming, but I liked to start with news most mornings. I still do, plus weather.

I can tell you we had sunshine and blue skies that morning. I'd just pulled into a parking spot at some medical building in Stillwater, almost to the very east of the state but still up the hill away from the river. The radio program was calmly interrupted by a rumor they couldn't verify yet that a plane had just flown into a building in New York. As I was leaving my car, my immediate thought was that some idiot tourist showing off in a little two-seater had made the wrong turn, or hit some unexpected updraft. and probably broken a few windows, maybe hurt somebody inside, but not very likely to repeat their stupidity... permanently

I walked into the building which was my first stop of the morning at 8:15. The receptionist was upset, having just heard the news herself. Neither of us knew more, but did our business, and went on about our day. I headed the car into the cities, waiting for any work that might go along with what I had on board, listening to the news.  There was more information already. They now confirmed the crash - it wasn't an "attack" yet - was from a passenger plane. Details filtered in. It was a regular commercial jet, full of passengers, and ground control confirmed they were ignored by whoever was flying. The authorities were still looking for expected causes, problems with controls, something mechanical in the cockpit not fixed in time... nobody could tell... yet.

At this point I called my parents. Their usual routine would have them at the breakfast table, no TV on, just a quiet meal and conversation. They would always answer the phone, however, and by this time I had a cell phone. Mom answered. I skipped the pleasantries and asked her if they had the TV on yet? She said no and asked why? I didn't answer directly but told her to just go turn it on! I wasn't quite ready to break the news to them yet. She asked me what channel to turn on? I said it didn't matter, there was bad news and it would be on every single channel. Pick whatever you usually watch. She said she would, and since it was a land line, hung up to go turn on the TV.

When I write that I recall 9/11 in pictures, this conversation's image is not the highway I was driving on. It's always my mental image of their apartment, them at the table with the TV across the room. Obviously I did a pretty good job of driving safely and not remembering any of it. For hours I went from job to job, recalling only what I heard on the radio while making sure I went to the next place I needed to be for the packages I need to move. What registered? A second plane. The second tower. Fires and people jumping to a quick death to avoid death by fire burned imaginary images into my brain, wondering who one would chose to jump off with? Or go alone?  Would you watch the ground approach, the fire you left, or each other? That too is indelible even as an imaginary image, understanding instantly why that choice was being made by so many people. I still had no real visuals the way most of the world did by this time. 

News filtered in piece by piece, the second tower, the Pentagon, the heroes forcing the fourth plane to crash, knowing they were going to die either way but this way preventing the planned damage. I imagined some of those phone calls to loved ones, wondering if all the passengers had cell phones or they were being shared in the few minutes left to them. Somewhere in there news came that all airports were shut down, all flights cancelled until further notice. I wondered who would be selfish enough to pitch a hissy fit over that, (imaginary image inside airport terminal here) sure there'd be a few, positive they knew they were more important than some plane crash(es) somewhere else.

My second real indelible image from that day I can't place in time of day, though I'm sure others can who were glued to their TVs watching events unfold in a world where cameras are everywhere whether something is happening or not. I know I walked into building after building,  doing my job despite the people in those building being glued to TVs brought in from who knows where - I never asked - and getting very little business work done. I'd manage each time to get my package, claim a signature when it was dropped, but had no direct evidence other work was getting done anywhere.

Not, at least, until I walked into that church in Wayzata, a town as far out past the west edge of the metro as my first job was past the east end of the greater metropolitan area. I recall parking because I was trying to figure out which door to approach. Whatever I had was heavy enough to make a long hike a consideration, and no, I almost never knew what was inside whatever packages I had. So many churches have office doors open during the week and all else locked tight. Looking for clues and finding none, I climbed the many stairs up to the front of the church, surprised to discover it wasn't locked. There were more stairs inside, and I could see a portable TV on a table up at the top, turned on, and just as I'd told my mom, tuned to the only news of the day. As I stood for a moment, getting some energy back before hunting the church offices, of course I finally watched the first TV I'd had access to that day. They were repeating the towers going down, first one, then the other, over and over. My image insists, despite other people's denial, that the floors pancaked down, one dropping onto the next dropping onto the next, and so forth until clouds of destruction rose and obscured everything. I'd been out of my car long enough that my radio hadn't mentioned they were falling yet. I hadn't thought that it might happen, somehow thinking the fires would be put out (miraculously I suppose) and the damage fixed, the towers again on the skyline.

It must have been shock enough on top of other shocks that day that I quit making new memories of that day. I know I continued working. I know I came home and watched TV, though by then for most of the world it was all old news. Somewhere in there I did make a mental note that I was glad it hadn't happened a day earlier, ruining my birthday forever, followed immediately by remembering I knew another woman whose birthday I'd just learned, and for her, her birthday was now forever spoiled.

I wonder if she's gotten enough distance from that day that she can celebrate again, have a normal day on "her day". I hope so.

Just A Couple Small Surprises

 I decided to walk past one of my recently replanted gardens the other afternoon on my way to get the mail, checking on possible rain damage from a heavy rainfall on loosened soil. I almost tripped over the duck which had bedded down between a well-set Japanese iris clump and the wall of the house. It's not because I was going to walk through the garden, but her calmness as I approached made her slow movement away from me a double surprise. First, because she was there. I've had rabbits in the garden, or squirrels, even a racoon. They are easily spooked into a run in the opposite direction, which sometimes is only the far end of the live trap from me.  But this female mallard merely stood and waddled calmly away while casting her head back to see - perhaps - if I had any food for her. In her case, "away" merely meant down onto the grass where she settled down calmly, unchased as I continued past. 

She wasn't limping, a possible excuse for not avoiding me. She never raised her wings, though they didn't look to be clipped or dragging, another possible excuse for not rushing away. She did keep an eye on me, but very calmly. I decided she must be very used to humans, especially when she was still on my grass upon my return with the mail. A check a while later didn't show her in view. I concluded  she was likely healthy but way too used to humans, possibly having been raised by somebody thinking doing so after finding an egg was a good idea. I only hope she can fly well in a couple months before the lake ices over and manages to hook up with others of her breed to learn the best pathways for the trip.

The mail itself was the other surprise. It started - to my awareness - weeks ago with an email, letting me know I was to benefit from a lawsuit against my insurance company. There had been some kind of legal/financial misbehavior on the company's part which I'm still not clear on, other than it meant they took too much money from their customers and had to repay.  I as a customer was on a long list of beneficiaries for getting a refund in the mail, and all I had to do was return the email to them via a form I'd get sent after a click in a specific spot. I was to enter the series of letters and numbers already on this form, identifying me and my case and expect a reimbursement in a few weeks. I had several days to reply, or not.

I let that sit in my email for a few days. It must be spam, right? Scam maybe? Except as I looked at it, it did appear to have been sent by my insurance company, no weird email address. They didn't ask for any further information beyond the letter/number codes already in the email. They didn't need bank account info to put it in for me, they'd be mailing me a check. As the deadline to file neared, I looked it over searching for anything that seemed off about it. The insurance company was already on an ACH payment system for monthly bills, I had indeed been their customer since we moved in at our current address. I couldn't find a reason to avoid sending them their own code back to them. So with days to spare, I did. 

Today was the deadline to reply.  Yesterday the check arrived. I wasn't expecting it to be very much, and I got that part correct too. However, I had to drive into the Twin Cities to my credit union to deposit it since the local ATM which works with them is only a cash machine. Oh well, I needed actual cash funds as well, so my lawn mowing lady can get paid later this week. I'd stopped in where that "free" ATM machine was yesterday but as a holiday weekend just ended, it had been tapped out by EVERYBODY two days earlier, and not scheduled to have their cash supply refilled till mid week. It happens that way there every holiday weekend. We know to tap it ahead of holiday tourism. I just had no need to do so until now. All in all, I needed a second road trip! I'd had my own planned road trip the day before, heading up to Crex to see how things fared with the drought, seeing what might be worth shooting with my camera. I found unexpectedly colorful ferns along the roadsides all over where I'd expected instead just dead brown due to the drought.

The dead brown will be along soon enough. I've never caught them in any stage other than lively green or end-of-year brown. Yellow, orange, and red were supposed to be for trees! Hmmm, maybe next year's photo contest? Would they believe it was real?

Now I needed a second road trip into the metro in order to deal with the check. Of course it happened the day after gas prices rose about $.25 per gallon, which I needed to fill my tank with. If I'd filled up when I got home the day before....

 Starting with the deposit, the withdrawal for two weeks lawn mowing, after which the ATM has no excuse to have funds again, and a later charge to fill my tank, my reward for applying for the lawsuit payout was two weeks of mowing paid for and part of a full tank after some weekend driving, before dipping into current funds. I guess I could call that a win...?

I had been thinking maybe some ice cream on my way home....... I guess my insurance company wasn't greedy enough to have to reimburse for ice cream too. No real surprise there.  Oh well, yogurt and blueberries are almost as good. If they were better than "almost" it would have been a real surprise!

Covid's Back

OK, I'm sure it never really left. But it's fall, kids are starting school, people are flying back in aerial  germ cans to go to work. Whatever the timing is and why for other people, I just heard from my daughter that she's just tested positive for it.  We'd had plans together for next weekend. Obviously they are now cancelled. I'm hoping for "just postponed".

Just a few weeks back I'd asked my primary doc when was the best time this year for getting the latest booster for covid. Steve and I have always been first in line - or as close as possible - for every shot and booster offered. He's never tested positive. I've had it twice. One hears of new variations, possible new ways to fight it better, and hopes for the latest whatever to come on the market by some specific close  date.  So I ask.

Her answer was that no new protections or immunization combinations are coming out in the near future, but be sure to  renew our boosters early this fall. At our ages, Medicare coves them. As for flue shots, there will be a best-guess formulation for the likely varieties out this fall, so we'll get in the line October first. Same coverage for those. There are some good things about getting old. Hey, If I made good art with my wrinkles, I'd be wealthy! Then again, maybe my contribution is to make my surgeons wealthy.

Meanwhile I sent my daughter the information I learned early in covid years about how to deal with it once you've caught it. First is paxlovid, providing that's still the best on the market and you or your insurance can cover it. About year three in the ongoing pandemic there was a sudden, poorly explained clamp down on using it. I'd just gotten my second case of covid, was told I'd have to pay for the shot myself, but simply didn't have an extra thousand in the budget. The only difference noted in my illness without paxlovid was brain fog severe enough that I didn't recognize how bad it was except in retrospect, marveling afterwards in my stupidity.

The rest of the symptoms weren't severe, unless you count long covid. I lost my senses of taste and smell for a long time. Taste came back... sort of. Mostly I still can't smell a thing. But then there'll be a few minutes in some totally random day when suddenly my nose returns for a bit. Not all comes back. Usually it's a single thing. I missed smelling fresh mown grass, but got a reprieve for a  couple minutes, once. Not since. For years I couldn't smell skunk spray when Steve was overwhelmed by it as the car passed a roadkill. Then I smelled one, once. Period. It goes like that, a quick sniff of something, then quickly squelched, for good, at least so far. Skunk? Once. Bacon frying? Once, briefly. Onions being cut? Same. Get the pattern? I almost compare it to a single receptor being healed, then whatever caused it returning, with some new tactic to make sure it doesn't get "cured" again. I'm told I raise fragrant flowers in my garden. Can't prove it by me. Good thing the blossoms are lovely. The scent of gunpowder is supposed to be strong on 4th of July. Was the west wind  from the wrong western direction? On the other hand, I used to hate fresh tomatoes. Something isn't there any more and I find them delicious.

I'm still trying to decide if it's a good or bad thing I can't smell my own combinations of nasty stinks. If I'm doing a good job of tamping them down, then hooray. If other people are simply being polite by not commenting, then not so much. About a year into long covid I read that my symptoms are officially on the long covid list. I'm not alone! And compared to other people's lists of long covid symptoms, I figure I'm blessed. Things could be so much worse. Barring something like a gas leak, my symptoms are not considered life threatening.

But my daughter has covid now, and while I am certainly not a medical professional of any kind and not about to suggest ivermectin or bleach for use in or on humans, or going out to sunburn your nether regions for some idiotic incomprehensible reason, I memorized a list back when of what to do at home to minimize your illness. 

Much like the "Spanish flu" epidemic in the early 1900s, the worst way to get sick with covid is to have your body over-react to it. It's called a cytokine storm. The body's fight goes into overkill, harming healthy parts of you. Studies showed that it happens with covid on (at least) two fronts, each of which have over-the-counter remedies to help fight it. One is like an allergy reaction in overdrive, and cetirizine is the better allergy medication which slows that down. You can get the expensive  brand name or the generic, but one, twice a day, helps prevent that reaction. (It helps that I already take that daily, and have it on hand.) The second reaction is much like the way your body reacts to something by giving you  heartburn, and studies have Pepcid AC working on that reaction. It also has a generic version OTC, but don't ask me the name. I haven't needed to know for a couple years now, but mostly those generics are on shelves next to the brand name items. Read the labels.

One more easy thing helps. Covid drains you, depletes your energy. Taking a high dose vitamin B Complex pill twice a day for the first few days helps with that. When your normal returns, go back to whatever your normal vitamin intake was. Almost nobody needs more than standard daily vitamin dosages.

Of course it's always best to avoid getting it at all. Masks still work. Social distancing still works. Hand sanitizing still works. Best, injections against the disease still work most reliably. Denial is a crap shoot. If you're going that route, I could wish you "good luck", but just ask yourself exactly how that works  for everybody. How many deaths has the world had so far? One estimate taking into account the reluctance of certain governments to admit incompetence or scare off tourists, is 35 million.  Just how much power do you think my "good luck" wish holds over the planet,  and follow that by just how sarcastic you think my "good luck" might have been  if you''re avoiding masks, staying close to other possibly sick people, not washing your hands, and neglecting immunizations.

Yes, exactly! So take care of yourselves. Or.... "Good Luck To You!"

Walmart Wants Comments... Or Do they?

 Every so often I get an email from Walmart asking me to evaluate my recent shopping experience, or sometimes specific products I purchased there. Occasionally they try to bribe me with a "chance" to win a thousand dollars.

Oh Boy! Me and how many millions of other people? Are the odds as good as the ones from Wheel Of Fortune that I could be a lucky winner of the same thing their top contestants won in the days leading up to Christmas? I actually hoped I didn't win Wheel from home after a while, for a couple reasons. First, I hate their vacations. Too much sunburn, too much hiking, too much spa blah, too many bars and too much gambling. That's supposed to be an incentive? A few destinations might tempt me... if I had a passport. And if I could go wherever the heck I wanted to, with easy transportation, a savvy translator,  and my camera. The other reason is I had no way I could find of contacting them and letting them know I moved and where I really am now. You send that trip prize to the old address, somebody would probably use it, leaving me to pay the taxes on it. No thanks!

Anyway, most of my enthusiasm for giving Walmart a piece of my mind has nothing whatsoever to do with winning something. If I do, fine. If not, and we can assume "not", what other reason do I have to respond? Mischief? Hope for honest change?

Ummm, you do know me, right? Kind of, maybe? Willing to learn, perhaps? You are still reading here, you know.

Let's start with them finally changing something which needed it. Take their pharmacy lines. Please!  OK, I know that line has long  been trademarked, just substitute "wife" for "pharmacy lines". But for a while they took out the zig-zag path they created with posts and straps so more of us could stand in line in a small spot instead of way out blocking main aisles. When they asked me about my experience after that change, I complained about not having them and the difficulties with traffic flow. Then when the zig and zag returned, I complimented them on it. I do hope they keep it.

Other times they ask me about a shopping experience giving only the date I was there.  If it was two weeks ago, what the hell did I buy anyway? And how did it go? If you don't show me thumbnail photos of the merch, I have no comment for you. Life has long since moved on. If I order online and go pick it up, generally all goes well. Sometimes something is out of stock, but I long since learned to not allow substitutions because I'm picky, both by taste and by cost. In summer I also pack a cooler with ice. Otherwise ice cream arrives home as a puddle. It used to be tasty.... 

For so many times when I gave them my two cents that their store brand of raisin bread was never stocked, mentioned that I'd gotten none to bad reactions from employees in the store, and nothing changed, I simply stopped buying any brand of it. Other products go through the same phases. Suddenly they stocked General Tso's chicken in single frozen meals. Just as suddenly they stopped. Or everybody else bought it first. Maybe middle America has developed a palate?  I'm still waiting for them to come back with the healthy version of a frozen single meal of lasagna. I don't need 15 servings at a time, and who needs to put that much strain on their budget when one serving is all that's wanted? Their Pad Thai is good as long as it's Amy's and I add more peanuts to it. Their frozen foods section has vastly improved with the addition of foods that aren't just another pasta.

They do have an ongoing procedure that drives me nuts. They keep moving stuff. Perhaps they believe that it means we shoppers discover new things to buy in the old places we automatically steer to. Perhaps it does work with some folks. It annoys the heck out of me, and I have a lot of heck to be annoyed out of. Most days I don't take a battery shopping cart any more, though there is the occasional exception. However my long-trained mindset is still that shopping shouldn't be painful or too much work. Top shelves are impossible, with the next one down merely just completely miserable to have to reach. Guess where the heavy boxes and bottles are kept? Most day's I'll simply not buy it. Very occasionally one of their blue-smocked shoppers, pulling or pushing their stacks of carts to fill with drive-up orders, will be in the aisle and I can request them to please reach me X number of item Ys because I can't reach it or lift it or whatever. Nearly all of them are both pleasant and helpful.  If I wait for an ordinary but tall shopper to come through the aisle so I can request a bit of help, it's usually given but at the cost of annoying other shoppers waiting to clear that aisle. When it doesn't happen, both Walmart and I are disappointed, though my bank doesn't tend to complain at my savings.

If something has moved several aisles over, I have neither the clue as to where, nor the patience to hunt all over in the store's devious hopes I'll find other stuff to buy on my way. One item in point is Propel, a product of Gatorade, a sugarless beverage with electrolytes and actual flavor. It's nice to have in the car for "just because" times. In the last two months it's had three totally different locations in the same store. The first was at floor level two aisles away from sports drinks, the second on a top shelf, and finally where I could reach it. (Who else complained about it? Let me shake your hand!!!!)  I'm more likely to leave with a royal bad attitude - which I've almost perfected now so that it doesn't include swearing, though not guaranteed - and either not buy it at all or just go elsewhere. But they simply must keep moving stuff. And moving more stuff. And moving other stuff besides.

Hey guys, listen up: Walmart shopping is not my version of sports equipment!

I'd just gone through it with the one thing I needed at a Walmart hours earlier, when I got one of their requests for a "how did it go?" I decided to answer. I'd  needed car oil, 5w20, synthetic, and for high mileage cars. I've been told I should stick with the same brand already in the car if I was just topping it up. Hunting was involved. I'd just bought some a month earlier, wanted more on hand for in case. My car doesn't leak, witnessed by no oil puddles under the car,  but oil does get burned up over time and needs to be topped up before oil change time. So of course I pushed my cart to the exact aisle end cap where it was the last time. It wasn't there, but you already knew that since I'm writing about it.  Now of course those bottles come in a precise color, in a precise shape, and with all their minisculely different varieties stacked together, they take up a lot of shelf space. Of course you have to bend way over and reach way in and pull out each bottle and triple check every precise detail of every bottle. Who knew there's now a ZeroW20 oil? Oops. How did that get in my cart? Or who knew that high mileage oil is somehow different from all-synthetic oil when I use synthetic oil  because my car is high mileage? It won't be the bottle you think you reached for because it was directly behind the one that was correct. At least one of those requirements is bound to be different than the only bottle exactly in front of it was. Somebody else pulled one - or three dozen, who knows? - bottles out, found it wasn't their precise specifications, and simply found a bit of space to set it on before trying the next bottle. 

Who, me? Are you kidding? Of course I'd never tell if it were. But it's not. Or is it?

A store employee came by and asked me what I was looking for. It was a long list of specifications and I'd just located the brand and was combing through individual bottles. She heard part of what I needed and promptly went off, I thought to attend to some other task. Thirty feet down the aisle, well past shouting distance, she grabbed and started loading the huge full plastic bottles into my cart. Each was more than I needed in total. My first reaction was they weren't "X" specification, but before I could get another word in, off she went to return with two more huge ones with that particular specification correct but the next one wrong. She started reaching again into my cart to pull those out and this time I managed to stop her, pointing out I only needed the three small bottles now in my cart. I tried to feel bad for her and grateful for her attempt to be helpful, but this wasn't tee-ball  and she wasn't listening. At least I got to stop her from adding more oil. But where could she have gotten the idea I needed enough oil to fill a barrel?

Of course that's when Walmart sent me the feedback request. 

You must know that they only allow so many characters per answer to each question. I gave it some thought, and finally opted for brief sarcasm, saying things highly improbable, congratulating them for obvious flubs, that I could only hope they were so outrageous that somebody had to get the point. One example was their only relocating product X far enough from its usual location that it only took me half an hour to locate it. Now my granddaughter might have added a wonderful story about a pesky racoon, but I was totally beat by that time. I'll keep it in mind, though....

In hindsight though I'm not so sure. Might I have been too subtle? More to the point, does anybody anywhere read those? Or care?

Two-Showers-A-Day Weather

 This is summer in Minnesota. We live in a geographic anomaly, and have for at least part of every year since 1991, barring one no-travel year for covid before immunizations when we stayed in Arizona. It's the high point of the county here. For whatever reason, weather coming from every direction splits and goes around us.  When the sirens go off, we're more likely to stick out heads out to watch the distant action than go hide in a basement or shelter.

Note that we're having a drought locally. Northern Minnesota and southern Minnesota have been getting nailed with heavy weather. It's not always in time to stop a forest fire, like the ones in the BWCA for example. When the TV announcers claim we're likely to get rain here, we politely snicker. (By politely I mean we're so many miles away they'll never hear it in their fancy studios. Mom would almost approve.) It doesn't mean the air isn't humid. Fogs are common enough:

Where is this weird area? Look at a map of Minnesota and note that it looks like somebody tied a belt around it's waist and cinched it tight, leaving just a little bit of the state to poke out either east or west into a neighboring state. Blame the rivers. My dad grew up near the western bump. We live in or near the eastern bump. When the big rain systems roll in, they tend to slide by north of us or south of us. When the winds are governed more by northerlies or southerlies, rain tends to slide by east or west of us. 

I'm not saying we get no weather here. We just get less stormy weather. When the county weather sirens go off, invariably they are sounding for the northern end of our county. We can enjoy watching, maybe trying to capture lightning in photos.( I haven't perfected that yet, but can try for screen grabs of one of my paused videos. Just ignore the extraneous graphics in the lower left corner. The white zig-zag lightning is real. So is the lit cloud around it, though pink wasn't its real color to my eyes. I'll keep working on that technique.)

   Or we can shoot rainbows afterwards, much easier in daylight.

All three of the previous shots are from our main porch - the covered one, thank you  - and over our neighbors roof. Different storms, different times of day.

It's been a particularly dry year here. My grass is turning brown, and "weed" grasses are taking advantage. No, I'm not going to put chemicals down. The lawn is by fiat mowed weekly, need it or not. Anything somebody puts out to kill weeds will kill gardens, and we have the right to refuse them. (Just claim health issues!) 

So when I call this "two showers a day" weather, I'm referring to how fast sweat builds up, requiring two showers a day for the person working outside in the sun and humidity. Of course the option exists to maybe just start the day with one, or end the day that way. My skin insists that salt from my clothes itches unmercifully, does not disappear with indoor fans on, and only changing the wardrobe frequently, paired with rinsing off the skin, can do the trick.

I'm confronting a deadline here. My new plants need homes. Those homes are currently occupied by other plants needing relocation, and occasionally gifting to others. Relocation before frost requires giving them a chance to establish roots in their new homes, as well as plenty of watering in dry hot weather. Watering requires hauling a pair of hoses across the yard and putting them back again, as well as standing around aiming the spray. Even early in the morning, any or all of that work  means I return to the house dripping wet, itchy, and beat.  Mid day it's impossible, and close to sunset hasn't given the muggy air time to cool off. 

I did finally manage to tie the bandana around my head so it actually catches the sweat before it runs in my eyes. That much salt stings! It also coats my glasses lenses. I refuse to look in a mirror until proper showering and grooming have occurred. I'm not saying I'm vain, but really - who needs to see that? Last winter my hair was growing out longer from the previous haircut than I'd let it do for years. The air was dry enough that it didn't frizz. Now just in drying after a shower and being brushed in place after the shirt goes on - emphasis on "after" - it only settles down for half an hour or so. It's supposed to be too short to do that!!!!!

I'm beginning to feel like I'm a toddler again, with that curly hair my mother loved because she could just comb it around a finger, remove the finger, and voila! Ringlets, perfectly formed, all hanging even and in rows around my head. I heard a lot of references to Shirley Temple. Somewhere along the line I decided Mom wished she was raising that perfect little girl instead of me. That's part of why I keep it short enough so many years to just frizz. Even in those spots where it's supposedly too short for frizzing it manages to frizz. I suppose I could try braids, if I had the wherewithal to keep my arms up above my head these days long enough to put them in, but back in those years where I did braid my own hair, mostly twin french braids done either over or under, they still frizzed. Been there, done that, never allowed any photos. 

You're welcome! Really!

When menopause turned my hair white, it also changed the texture of it. Hooray! I thought I was done with the frizz. Those years in Arizona did nothing to disabuse me of that hope. My hair, properly cut, behaved!

Meanwhile, while I typed out this, the ceiling fan has cooled me down enough for me to finally quit sweating. A shower alone wouldn't have done it. My body has to adjust first. So now it's time to go take that first shower of my day.  It's supposed to rain/storm tonight, but we'll see. Either way I'll be out early in the morning again, shovel in hand, digging the last of the iris out, trimming their leaves, setting them in a pail of water to soak wounded roots for a bit. As soon as it's suitable to plant a few of them, in they'll go. The rest I'll pop in the fridge in wet paper towels in a bag. I'm seeing a friend next week who's agreed to plant them in her yard, colors unknown. Meanwhile there will be a space to fill back in with new daylilies, hoping all settle in for winter, living up to their hardy reputation. Winter should bring drier air, straighter hair, and....

      Oh Dammit! Ice and snow! Blast it!