About this time last weekend, I was sitting in the Pend Oreille Veterinary parking lot with a very sick puppy, waiting for poor Dr. Vogel to arrive. He'd gotten home at 5:30 a.m. from a night of delivering puppies, and I'd gotten him out of bed at 7 a.m. Nonetheless, he told me to meet him in half an hour.
Dr. Vogel and the Pend Oreille Veterinary staff took a potentially sad situation and fixed it with their knowledge, expertise and care. Within two days, I had my puppy back as a survivor of the deadly parvo virus. And, in the last couple of days, I'm seeing a very healthy, busy little Kiwi. In fact, I'm figuring that medicine she's been taking has switched her from toddler pup to adolescent. Seems she gets into trouble from chasing the cats and chewing the shoes a bit more than ever.
Yesterday she was a good girl while accompanying Bill to Farragut to search out some geocaches. While they enjoyed the outdoors, Mother and I did our thing in Hayden and in Coeur d'Alene. We spent some time with Miss Aggie Sue, who's almost walking but not quite. She's a big girl who can put out a huge smile.
After leaving Aggie with her Hayden grandma, we moved on to K-mart where Mother wanted to shop for some new size-10 petite jeans with elastic tops. After walking around with her for a while, I decided not to hang around for the much-anticipated jewelry counter auction which was dominating the Kmart airwaves.
Instead, I left her and returned to the car to do some serious people watching. Haven't had a chance to do that for a while, so every minute was a delight, especially when the lady with long blonde hair sporting a red sweatshirt with a giant K-mart logo walked out.
"Now that's loyalty," I thought. Soon, Mother appeared at the door, so I drove around to pick her up. I noticed that gas at the Hayden Chevron was $2.69, precisely 22 cents less than I paid a few days ago, so I filled up.
Then, on to Costco where I was reminded why I select strategic times to do my grocery shopping---generally when the fewest people might be there. It was rush hour in the midst of Sample Saturday at Costco when I showed up about 1 p.m. Didn't dare take too long looking at too many items in fear of a causing a head-on with another shopping cart. So, I directed my empty cart toward the almond clusters, which Bill had ordered.
Rounding the corner where I thought they were located, I could see no sign of the familiar clear plastic jars with brown twist tops. So, idling my cart next to the pepperoni, jerky sampling stand, I asked a lady where I could find the almond clusters.
"These are your almonds," she said, pointing to some jars of plain nuts.
"No, I need the chocolate-covered almonds," I explained.
The lady said she'd look for them and headed down the aisle. Deciding I'd better stay right there, I looked over at the jerky and pepperoni sticks, noting that these were the samples. So, I reached out to pluck one pepperoni bite from the pile.
"LEAVE THAT ALONE!" the sample hostess yelled. By that time, at least three or four other people had gathered to get their samples. "DON'T TOUCH THAT!"
Reeling in shock, I whipped my hand away from her pile---a scene reminiscent of my days of youth and touching electric fences.
"OH-NO-----I'M GONNA CRY!" she wailed, as I figured out my error. I had put my finger near her supply pile and NOT the individual cups.
"YOU'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO TOUCH THAT!" she barked, as astonished people looked on.
"Well, I don't think I even made contact with it," I said. "I'm sorry."
"OH-NO, OH-NO!" she continued to shriek. The woman was giving me no slack, so I decided to give her no more of my criminal presence.
"Well, I'm totally embarrassed," I announced to her. "I'm getting out of here!" So, off I went with no almond clusters and planning never to meet that crazy woman again. I also decided to stay clear of any of the dozens of other sampling stands which keep the moochers fed on Saturdays at Costco.
A few seconds later, I saw one of my former students, Tasha Thomas, bearing an ample sample of chimichanga and feeling perfectly good about it. I told her of my pepperoni fiasco. We chuckled and enjoyed some catching up.
After collecting some cheddar cheese, french bread, pasta and a rotisserie chicken, I eventually found the chocolate almond clusters two aisles down from the scene of my crime. Confident my shopping was complete---just for for good measure and curiosity, I drove purposely past the nutcase standing next to the almond display to see if she was yelling at any other victims who had accidentally touched the wrong pepperoni pile.
Mother and I enjoyed frozen mochas as we left the scene of this horrific indiscretion on my part. I'll know in the future to take time to study the samples before taking one.
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