What the &^%*?

I've been struggling with a sore throat for awhile. It started with a few pin-sized red dots and two or three white fuzzy spots on my soft palate. Mostly the white spots like to hang out on the left side of my uvula - the answer to the Far Side cartoon's "final page of the medical exam". But today the dots high up on my palate turned into full fledged red blotches. Ewww! No fever so I gargle with salt water and hope for the best. Ah, to be uninsured and sick in the U.S.. I feel like 46 million other Americans now hoping they won't get hit by a car. Another reason to kick back and relax, as if my lazy butt needed another reason.

I did have to venture outdoors to 1) use the pay phone, and 2) shop. I keep a good eye open for crazy taxi drivers now. About the pay phone, I'm cheap, almost out of cell minutes, and needed to ring my 503b folks. I need the forms to ask for roll-over. If only they were as helpful as most dogs with that trick. Yikes. Had to stand in the cold for over 15 minutes while on hold. Lincoln sucks. Still haven't gotten my forms; they guaranteed they'd email them to me within 24 hours. Still waiting. Frickin' economy is killing my savings. Oh well, I'm young and hopefully will soon be back at work bringing in dollars instead of spending 'em. Just need to watch that crazy cab driver at 77th looking to hog the bus lane I'm standing near. 

The supermarket run was much needed as I'd been running short on t.p. and had to use a paper towel this morning (TMI?). I ventured out to the über-busy Fairway on Broadway and 74th thinking that it wouldn't be crowded just after the lunch grazers cleared. Why would anyone eat something from a community food space where sneeze guards are required? The name alone should scare the bejeezers out of your immune system. As for the crowds, I was soooooooo wrong. This was the most crowded I've ever seen it. Lines snaked back past the Ceres juices boxes almost to the olive oil section. Total chaos with the lines. And people were downright mean. It was shopping cart wars. Banging, herding, ugliness all around. Using baby strollers AND their babies and weapons. Aisles so tight packed that even on a good day you feel like a salmon swimming upstream. Today they fish ladders 'cause gridlock at some intersections was creating some serious thrashing. I got my t.p., my lemon soda, eggs, tortillas, cottage cheese, and a bag of oranges and made a beeline to the upstairs checkout line. Even if the line is long, I'm happily in a little shut protected from the swarms of roving shoppers. It's only upstream in this line and that makes me happy. 

Surly checkout folks apathetically and very slowly rang up my items. The bagger just sits there idle when folks like me bag their own groceries in their cloth bags> Is it a union thing? Can they only do bags? Waste of human power, opposable thumbs, and floor space. They use BOTH plastic AND paper for ONE combo-bag. Fairway has an insane policy of putting the paper bags INSIDE the plastic as the default method for bagging. This isn't done by request; it's done by default. Dumb and really, really wasteful. WTF? Why would someone need the paper INSIDE the plastic? Is this some screwed up way to give plastic structure and form? Don't think the customer could handle just the paper bag without the plastic handles? Did some evil little old lady harass the staff so much that THIS was the proper way to bag that EVERY customer now has to have their groceries bagged this way? 

I would love to find a better store with friendlier service but this tends to be the approach every store uses to train staff with the exception of Trader Joe's. Love TJ's - not just the staff but the products, with the exception of those nasty ones still using trans fats. Just wish TJ's was closer and the lines not so long. Next shopping adventure, I'll wear my combat boots and channel my little-old-lady personality. And DON'T put my items in that insane bag combo or I'll just have to leave my cart in the aisle.