As you readers know, I ran out of food and cash on Saturday night. That was not actually the worst thing that's happened this week. While it's been cold enough that no sane person would be spraying any kind of poison on anything, my Bad Neighbor is not really concerned about weeds or insects, so he got hold of that other weedkiller the state highway department sometimes uses--the one that gives me dang convincing fake heart attacks--and sprayed that on his fields. I'm not sure which poison that is, suspect it's a combination formula that also includes glyphosate, but even if it doesn't it needs to be illegal too.
So Tuesday was a wasted day. All I asked of myself was to try to read one new post at a large forum I always enjoy observing. With time lost to lying down recovering from heart-burdening efforts like sitting up, but not sleeping because my normally steady to low blood pressure skyrocketed if I went to sleep, a forum that normally does take me three or four hours to read took twenty-six hours.
Doing its very best
the snail takes a long time
to climb the mountain.
That's my rendition of the classic Japanese haiku. I always suspect that Basho empathized with the snail because he thought it was doing the classic Japanese thing and trying to climb all the way up Mount Fuji, and I wonder whether real snails ever try to get farther than the next leaf or puddle, but it's a good poem anyway. I felt like that all week.
On Wednesday I dragged myself out to call a relative who might feel concerned from the nearest store that has a phone, a one-mile walk, walking 100 yards and sitting down to rest, then another 100 yards and sitting down to rest, with my shillelagh to lean on if I felt faint before reaching a place dry enough for sitting down. Since this is very abnormal behavior for me, concerned neighbors offered me lifts both to and from the store, and one of them sponsored a half-dozen more Petfinder posts so I had some money to buy food on Thursday.
After some rain overnight I felt stronger on Thursday morning, but not much. Poison was still in my system. Sitting up felt normal, but walking did not. I left the house about 1 p.m., reached a store that offers free wrapped candies to shoppers about 4 p.m., and with that blood sugar boost was able to flag down a neighbor and offer a gallon of gas if she'd drive me less than one mile to the convenience store.
I had intended to go to the supermarket and buy beans, peanut butter, and chicken as well as ice cream and chips (the chips and the beans make a balanced meal, with salad from any unpolluted spring branch), but since the neighbor was going out of her way I thought the convenience store was far enough. Anyway the convenience store I usually use usually has cold turkey and beans.
It also, however, has the Chicago Horrorcow, so the neighbor drove straight to the other convenience store, which stocks fewer grocery items and runs out of them more often. Not a can of beans, not a turkey cut did I find. Only one brand of caffeinated soda pop--I like the variety of rotating among three or four. For food, well, they did have chips, although chips without beans and onions are a dry, paltry meal. And they had those Christmas candies that are a local Thing--the candy coatings aren't treated with chemicals to help them endure hot weather, so they can only be sold around Christmas time. Well, peanuts are nutritious food. I bought some chocolate-covered peanuts. And ice cream, for the first meal after four days of water and calcium supplements only, because I had not had the fortitude to go out and pick any vegetables. But I didn't want to complain, because it was nice of the lady to go out of her way, at the last minute, at five o'clock, just before her suppertime.
Anyway in the condition I was in it might have been dangerous for me to be around that Chicago Horrorcow. I usually just think of worse things to call White trash employees who call me rude names like "sweetie" in stores, but based on my reaction to hearing another horrorcow call one of my former teachers "honey," it would not have been a good idea for me to have been present if she'd started spewing "lover" at some respectable old gentleman who never would have touched a horrorcow like her in his lifetime.
Feeling so ashamed of working in customer service that they try to compensate by cutesipating customers is definitely a White Thing but the emphasis here is on "trash." Allowing that kind of mis-hired people to be seen by customers is like allowing wads of toilet paper to remain on the floor of the store. People need to see the police taking those former employees a couple of hundred yards away from the store and telling them not to be seen within sight of that store again.
So, ice cream from the convenience store cost about twice as much as ice cream from the supermarket. Christmas candy is not sold at the supermarket, but it's not cheap. The chips cost about the same--too much. The caffeine was the convenience store's big bargain-hunting attraction. There was money left over for either chicken or peanut butter at Food Lion but I didn't want to ask the neighbor to make another stop, since she had a friend coming out for dinner. Those purchases would just have to wait for a day when I felt more like myself and walking to Food Lion would take only about an hour each way.
On the way home I said, "At least now I have some food! Thank you!" and the neighbor said, "Yah, junk food."
Well, it was well chosen junkfood, anyway. I can run quite a distance on fuel like that. I think some things that would have been healthier for some people--a cheese sandwich on whole-wheat bread, or maybe one of those protein-packed wheat-and-raisins-with-extra-gluten bars--might have killed me.
I decided not to have that conversation, because during these heart-endangering reactions I probably do need to mind my blood pressure. I probably wouldn't have died, but I might have fainted and done other unladylike things, like being sick in the nice neighbor's car.
Then she said another thing that really shocked me: "I really am not supposed to do this. A police officer told me that they give out tickets now if you stop to pick up anybody. Even if you know them, he said. Even if they are family you see hitchhiking on the highway!"
Now that I don't believe. If that had been a permanent part of the law I would have seen the news somewhere. Probably what she had heard was one of those temporary COVID-panic rules, like wearing masks, that are no longer in effect. (The Grouch says he's had COVID four separate times, been miserable every time, and he wishes those rules were still in effect.) Probably this neighbor, who happens to be Black, was just being hypercautious. But I would like to see a bottom-front-page news story to the effect that common decency is still legal, for the benefit of people like her.
I can see some benefit to common-sense rules like not stopping in traffic lanes where there is no shoulder to park on while offering someone a lift, although I think we need a law about not having traffic lanes without shoulders, because cars have a tendency to break down.
Another common-sense rule is not opening your car door, or even window, to anyone you feel physically afraid of, or as if you are receiving spiritual guidance to avoid. Now when I am riding with other people, I always figure there are two of us and two of them, so if they ask "Should I stop?" I tend to say "Of course." I will never know why Grandma Bonnie Peters still felt moved not to stop for the Army officers stranded beside Route 66 that day, but there might have been a good reason. There might have been a rule about not abandoning military equipment. They were out of radio range from Arlington but they might have needed a car phone rather than a lift. Neither of us ever got into car phones. Whether it's coming from the Inner Light or from (a body part the mention of which would definitely violate this web site's contract), this kind of guidance is worth heeding.
But during the past two years a couple of State Troopers have told me that, although walking down the road is still about as innocent as it gets, people have called the police on me because "that old lady was WALKING ALONE and I wanted to HELP but I don't know her and I was AFRAID to stop..." COVID-panic, no doubt, but I still think that's just tacky. People who are afraid of little old ladies should not be operating motor vehicles. Or cell phones.
At 5 p.m. I got out of the lady's car with all of my groceries, or junkfood. I carried the groceries for about as long as it took the neighbor to pull back out into traffic. That cost me about twenty minutes of seated meditation, and then I laid all but one of the heavy bottles of pop beside the road, and then with only five more rest stops I made it the rest of the less-than-half-a-mile up the private road.
That was when I saw the message that my cousin's driver would have made time to drive me into town, on my cousin's payroll really though I would have given him a tip, if I'd waited two hours longer. Oh how I miss the days when we had private taxicab companies.
Then while I was still slowly eating, with frequent pauses to keep my pulse rate down, I heard more rain on the roof. Hooray! By morning I'd be myself again! Full of protein, flushing out the poison, ready to roll!
Junkfood is at least rich in calories, so although my appetite for veg to eat with those chips the way nature intended will be unsatisfied, I should feel well nourished through Boxing Day. Though if history repeats itself I may be poisoned again; last year the Bad Neighbor was spraying poison at 6 a.m. on Christmas morning, from pure spite. And it'd be worth it if Providence could only arrange for him to get a good dose of his own poison in his own face and be crawling down the road howling "Help, I'm blind, I'm having a heart attack, won't anybody please call an ambulance?" I am not usually sadistic but I would be able to stagger up to his truck, find his stupidphone, and hold it up over his head cackling "First you sign over the title to the land, and then I'll call the ambulance." I believe that would be the Christian thing to do, as distinct from a primal, savage response like applying the flat end of the axe to all of his bones and dragging him to the bear's cave
We need a total ban on spraying anything outdoors that you wouldn't drink. Water, oil-and-water emulsions, vinegar, and possibly vodka, are enough to kill any weeds or insects anyone really needs to kill from a distance. Other sprays merely create ill will among neighbors.
But since I like Canadians, and Ukrainians, Russians, Swedes, Minnesotans, and Vermonters, and see no harm in their having a good laugh, I'll admit that I have spent most of the day watching the Weather Service report online, as the official temperature (a few degrees above the real temperature here) wavers between 3, 4, 5, 6, but it's still not up to 7 degrees Fahrenheit. Soda pop that has frozen will never be quite the same but it still delivers the sugar and caffeine it was bought for. I am a Southerner and this does feel cold.
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