News flash: my feet hurt. They don't smell to good either, to be perfectly blunt. I have a huge blister covering half the ball of my left foot. Ouch.

I was pretty busy today. I updated my Avon accounts for an hour this morning, then went to Mrs. C.B.'s, doing the bank, post office and grocery for her. When she told me she had a huge list she wasn't kidding! I ran out of room in the cart! So I'll finish that up for her tomorrow.

I had lunch with my mother at Parks Landing. Thanks Mom! Then rolled down to the camp to pick up the girls, a little early at the request of their mom....

from there it was on to gas up the car and do my own banking, then "behind the counter" from 5-10.

There was sort of a lull in the action between 6 and 7 o'clock...that being the time normal people probably eat dinner. I was stuck way down on the end, practically in the produce department. As a matter of fact, I think the floor supervisor was hazing me a little, sticking me on a register with an extremely sensative scanner ( causing double rings. When dragging an item over that laser scanner she who hesitates is lost), a malfunctioning check reader, no "deli sheets" and a "cash" button that had fallen off. I had to tap the sensor where the key used to be, lightly, with my fingernail, every time someone paid with the green stuff. When I asked her for a pen,she told me I was supposed to bring one from home.

"I'm supposed to bring one from home?!" I said, loudly, laughing. "Oh, nevermind, here's one." ( it was another cashiers)

"That's Tasha's"

"She brought this from home?"

"It's extra" Tasha spoke up.

I put it in my pocket. After about a minute the floor super showed up with a pen. "Just stick it in your apron." she muttered.

"Yep. Now I've got two."

Bring one from home, indeed!

Anyway, not withstanding all of that, I had a period of time when there was not much to do but watch people in the produce department. There's a big display of cantalope over there.

I hate cantalope. I was never fond of it, but I once got sick off of it. I don't suppose it was the cantalope's fault. When I was a kid I used to get car sick ALL the time. There was never a single trip to Cumberland, which in those days was a four hour ride into the mountains on winding, switchbacking, unpredictible roads, on which I did not get violently car sick. There's nothing to sour your relationship with a whole branch of your family like assocaiting them was severe nausea...but I don't hate my Dad's family. I just hate cantalope. He insisted that I have some for breakfast right before we left. By now, I was older and was developing some techniques for dealing with "motion sickness", not the least of which was avoiding foods that made me somewhat queasy to begin with.

"That's gonna be a waste of a perfectly good cantalope. You know it's gonna wind up all over the back seat." I said, with irratating calmness.

I suppose he didn't want to look, to his parents, like his 8 year old was going to tell him what to do. "Eat it anyway."

"It's your car" I muttered, but I did. Anyway, you can guess what happened. And, in all fairness to Dad, he never made me eat it again.

So, the point is, that I have never developed a technique for picking a good cantalope. Apparently, from watching the display, though, there are a number of these methods, which look, to an unititiated person such as myself, completely bizzarre. We're not talking about just your average melon thumping, here, though there was pleanty of that going on. People pick these cantalopes up and sniff them. I don't mean they just kind of take a whiff of the cantalope. I mean, they give Winston, with his mastiff sized nose, a run for his money. They rake their fingernails accross them. One woman held it up to her ear and shook it violently, like a marracha! A man was over there feeling them up in such a way that it was almost embarrassing to watch. And, whatever method they used, they all did it like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like "doesn't everybody sniff, shake, and fondle their cantalope?" All accross America, apparently, people are engaging in these cantalope rituals. No wonder nobody has time to watch the election coverage!

Anyway, if knowlege is power and you learn something new every day then I got my dose of education....and entertainment!