strange Tuesday

Last night I had the strangest experience. Because of it I'm sitting here in my robe, drinking my second cup of coffee of the morning, with a doubleshot of SouthernComfort in a glass beside the coffee. I'm hoping to repeat the experience.

I'd dropped th'Mr at the new coffeeshop, where he's decided to hold his workshop for a while. From there I went to the Post Office to drop a letter to th'Son in the box, and then to Food Lion. I've collected the "six-of-eight-weeks" register receipts for my free ham :) certificate, and we needed dog- & cat-food, as we always do.

I parked the truck and walked into the store; got a cart and headed to the back of the store where the bathrooms are. The store was close to empty but I snagged a bag of potatoes to act as "placeholder" in my cart while I went into the bathroom (I'd drunk three beers in the hour or two before leaving the house, and they were done with me and ready to leave). I then looked over the produce section, replaced my potatoes with a bigger bag, got a couple of things from the candy aisle, cornstarch and olive oil from the bakery aisle, looked over the meat, not really intending to get any because it would sit in the truck for three hours till we went home --it's cool enough to do that yet, but I'd rather not-- got a twelve-pack of coke and looked for the canned ice tea th'Mr likes, and had a problem finding it in the soft drink aisle. My eyes seemed to not want to stay focused. I had left the cart sitting at one end of the aisle, so I didn't feel too foolish when it took a second trip down and back to find the ice tea, and I put it in the cart and headed for the dog- and cat-food aisle. That's when things started getting weird. My eyes really didn't want to focus on catfood cans and the prices on the shelves (they're different every week) and finally I just grabbed six four-packs of 9lives and pushed the cart to the other end, where the canned dogfood is. It was even harder to focus on it, and took real concentration to make sure I got the less expensive Food Lion brand and not Alpo. I was beginning to wonder if I ought to call th'Mr to come get me instead of driving three miles in the dark (both literally and figuratively).

Somehow I pushed the cart to where the milk is kept --I couldn't tell you what route I took-- and once again it took real concentration to pick out the quarts of half-and-half from among buttermilk and other similar-shaped packages. I was beginning to see kaleidoscopic. I saw what I was looking at with clarity, but also cheese and orange juice, which was forty feet away and behind me to the left, and also people pushing carts down aisles of canned goods. It was like I was three places at once, all in the same store, but looking in different directions. I put the milk in the cart and pushed the cart down the outside aisle of the store, which begins with eggs and biscuits, segues into breakfast meats, then juices, cheeses, beer, and finally ends in a bread cul-de-sac. I stopped at the cottage cheese and as I looked at it I also saw the frozen-fish case (sixty feet away, to my right and behind me) and the checkout lanes (sixty feet away, to my left and behind me). I saw the cashier and bagboy talking to each other at the checkout lane. All this while I was looking at the cottage cheese. Nothing was blurry; instead it was all clear but sort of ...refracted. Like a kaleidoscope with three lenses. It was absorbing, too. Trying to keep my shit together, fighting down a smidgeon of paranoia (can they tell I'm tripping? are they going to call the cops?) I pushed the cart toward the checkout lanes. Ended up in the bread cul-de-sac instead and had a hell of a time finding my way back out of it. Kept having what felt like dead-ends in front of me (a potatochip case, a donut display), and finally stopped the cart at a disposable camera, film, & battery rack and called to the cashier and bag boy (who were standing there talking to each other, just like I'd seen in the cottage cheese), "I'm going to check out, I just need to go outside and make a phone call first."

They smiled and nodded and I abandoned my cart and walked outside, feeling like a pinball bouncing off the many images that kept blocking my way. I'm glad I was in such a familiar store!

Outside there are three or four pop machines and then a couple of payphones. When I finally found my way to the phone (took a while) I couldn't remember how to make it work with my calling card (memorized, but a complicated jumping-through-hoops procedure calling out of AllTel into AT&T), and I didn't know the phone number of the coffeeshop anyway and would have to check with Directory Assistance. After four tries I gave up and went back inside.

Turning in my six-out-of-eight-weeks free ham receipts wasn't something I really wanted to do, so I didn't :) ...just put my groceries on the belt, maintained while handing over my discount card then some cash, asked for "an extra dollars' worth of change"

"Quarters okay?"

"Sure." and fled. Calmly. Back to the pay phone. Dialed information. Asked for the number. Got the number. Dialed the number wrongly while repeating the number rightly. Hung up quickly and redialed, rightly this time. Asked for th'Mr. Said, yes, I'm sure he's there. Breathed a sigh of relief when I heard his voice in the background saying, yes, that's me. Into the phone he said, "hello?"

I said, "I'm at Food Lion. You have to come get me. I think it's the higher dose of Welbutrin, maybe mixing with alcohol. I'm tripping."

He said, "_REALly_."

So I sat in the truck for ten minutes or so, waiting while Sam brought th'Mr to drive me home :) In the meanwhile a van pulled up next to me and a family spilled out, mommy, daddy, and five or six toddlers; daddy wearing a black tshirt with a loooong biblical quote on the back ewww. They seemed to want to only frolic around their van but I guess they finally went away because when I saw Sam's truck and I put my foot on the brake pedal a few times to signal "here I am!" and I looked up again they were gone. Maybe they were never there. :)

At first I said take me home, but then I thought it would be fun to sit there and pretend to knit with Sherry and Jeanne, and maybe even tell them about my excellent adventure, which seemed to be over. The kaleidoscopic action had gone away - I think dealing with the checkout and money and then the dialing of the phone brought me down. I forgot that the reason I wanted to go home was to drink another beer and make it come back... So, that's why you see me sitting here in my robe, with a cup of coffee and a glass of Southern Comfort, at this time of morning.

cat's not spoiled

Hi, I'm Roadie. Mom will tell the story of how I came by my name some other time, but for now let me tell you I am not spoiled. I just don't like to have my picture taken. When anyone sneaks up on me with a camera I sneak out the window. But mom put bubblewrap on the kitchen table and a towel on the bubblewrap, so I guess I'll lay still for just one.