If I say it was a crabfest it’ll sound totally wrong–people were totally good to each other.  It’s a Bay Area tradition to serve newly-caught Dungeness off the docks to celebrate the new year. The (non-sun-avoidant members of the) groom’s family tried providing some of those themselves, the Texas contingent adventuring for local flavor while they’re here, but Grampa told me the sea lions got most of the bait. The fishermen didn’t mind helping out, I’m sure.

There’s a whole lot more than a calendar becoming new. Two families together, the young and the old and the in-betweens. A rehearsal dinner and almost done.

The father of the bride smiled warmly as he told me, See you tomorrow!

Got some bad guys and some good guys for you today.

Back in September, when I caught the flu with all the autoimmune flaring that went with, I was barfing nonstop from the Crohn’s. The lupus was going nuts, too, my blood pressure was tanking, and I needed IV fluids, fast, just to start. (There would be chest and abdominal x-rays too.)

There were a lot of other people around with early-season flu, too, but for whatever the reason, when we called my doctor her nurse emphatically told my husband not to take me to Urgent Care but rather straight to the ER.

This was not a decision made by us. She insisted. She said if we went to Urgent Care they would simply send us over to Stanford, and we knew what the co-pays on the ambulance they would insist on would be, not to mention it would tie up that ambulance unnecessarily.

Turns out Anthem Blue Cross requires in their fine print that you verify with each health care provider before seeing them each time that they are still in contract with Anthem. Doesn’t matter if they were in-network for all the years you’ve had a policy with them, they reserved the right to yank that at any time. Doesn’t matter if you’re in an emergency with no capability of sitting on hold on the phone for two hours. Etc.

Now, by the contract we’d signed at open enrollment, if you go out-of-network in an emergency they’re still supposed to pay such a percentage and even though it’s less, it’s still a substantial amount.

Anthem and Stanford were in a contract dispute. Anthem never notified us in any way, not so much as an email, nor by their terms do they have to, and our trip to that ER was a life-and-death emergency with my already-very-low blood pressure. As far as I’ve been able to tell since, that day we had and we still have no in-contract hospital to divert to, either; I could be wrong on that but Anthem certainly hasn’t offered us any information to the contrary.

So we are paying for insurance to cover things they will not cover despite selling us a policy on the grounds that they would. I’d call that fraud, myself.

So, out of network, painful, but I thought we’d be out about a grand. Someone on the phone at one point said three. Ouch. But we waited for a bill. And waited. And waited, while the two sides hashed it out.

We got a notice finally last week from Anthem, and a day or two later a letter from Stanford.

And this is what Anthem said:

Not.

Covered.

Except this one unclear thing here that was probably that IV and only that IV, or maybe one individual doctor they were not in dispute with. But whatever, so, one thousand paid towards the claim and that was all it was going to be. “Your responsibility”:

Twelve thousand nine hundred ninety-nine dollars.

Breathe.

Hello? Out of network percentages, at least? How can they…?!

They don’t care.

Then came a letter from Stanford Hospital.

And they said, It is not your fault that we and Anthem Blue Cross are currently out of contract, and your health is more important. We don’t want you to be afraid to get medical care when you need it.

They said they will only charge us what our co-pays would have been had everything been as we expected when we went in there, as if all prior contracts had been in full force.

Multiply that times the whatever number of patients, given that Anthem covers something like a third of all the people in California, and what their bills could be and that Anthem should legitimately be covering and refuses to… Staggering. Just staggering.

I just felt (and these words look so faint on the page compared to how I feel) that Stanford deserves my praise and my thanks as loudly and as publicly as I can offer them.

Okay, y’all, I am writing this down for me. Not for you–shoo, run along, go read the ad for the drunk kleptomaniac pet kangaroo that beat a burglar senseless (but didn’t run up the home insurance rates because it wasn’t dogbiting!) and that needs a new good home. Cheap! But only to a serious animal lover! Steel wallboard a plus.

Me, I’ll sit here quietly transcribing this for the ages. My ages. Because, as she reminded me while trying not to quite say it, they’ll be coming down on my head in no time, but meantime…

Sunday School was going on and two people were in that room who were clearly sick–so I quickly excused myself and sat down around the corner instead on the steps to the stage, glad for my knitting. I don’t like the sense of exile; I don’t like the germs; I do like staying alive. Should I have been reading scriptures to be a good example while being a bad example to the random eight-year-old going by? Ya wanna make something out of it?

Okay, then, in baby alpaca/merino/silk it is, the essence of softness in heathery royal blue, and I sought comfort in pretty yarn and good intentions of the season. (Hey, Morgan, now that I’ve already started this, what are your girls’ favorite colors?)

MJ, just a little younger than my mom and not in class just then either, came up to me.

“Have you been painted?”

Doubletake. Have I what? Surely I didn’t hear that one right?

She repeated, “Have you been photographed or painted?”

Total head tilt.

“Because you’re gorgeous.” I looked around to the other side to see who she was talking to, and I meant that.

So did she.

She asked me how old was I going to be next month? (We’re fellow December babies.) She described a little of what aging does to one’s face; I told her I’d had skin cancer off the top of my head and in the surgery had accidentally lost my grandma eyes, but I assured her I had had grandma eyes and said with a grin that I missed them.

“They’ll come back,” she nodded, and said I had it just right right now and someone needed to photograph or better yet paint me as I am. Right now, at the peak of perfection, basically.

This from the most-original-60’s-version-Earth Mother I have ever had the great pleasure to know. I so was not expecting a conversation like this. She was quite serious. (It dawns on me at last, proofreading this, that her late husband had been a serious photographer. The connection clicks: she was missing him a lot today after spending Thanksgiving with family with him absent and I didn’t catch it in time to remember him to her. I will now.)

I told her helpfully that my sister Anne was a professional water color artist, and with that she was satisfied. “Have them take lots of pictures,” she counseled me one last time before she headed for Sunday School, for Anne to work from or for my grandkids to marvel over later or to convince me or what I wasn’t entirely sure.

That stupid hair I was fussing over this morning while wishing I were way better at fussing with it?

For today, it totally would do.

Okay, y’all can come back now, I’ve put the vanity mirror down. Did anybody snatch up that kangaroo offer?

Celebrated Small Business Saturday at Cottage Yarns and Purlescence. Two 100 g skeins of Cascade cabled baby alpaca/merino for a grand sum of $5.77 from the latter’s sale table, with that AmEx promotion? Yes please.

Three’s the magic number of shops, so from there we celebrated at Timothy Adams for hot chocolate and truffles. We tried first to buy outdoor heating cables from the local plumbing supply place but no such luck, so, the chocolatiers win.

And then, having been up early yesterday and then up way late for an airport pickup and then a busy day today, I suddenly crashed. I was trying to do all. the. things. but admitted how hard it was catching up to me and Richard told me to go put my feet up. Take a rest. Sit. Now.

And that is why the baby hat is (finally) done. The next one will be far faster because now I actually know what it looks like when I’m done with that particular doodle idea. And I’m tired enough that I didn’t realize till I hit publish that I hadn’t even taken the thing’s picture (she edited).

It almost matches the yarn I bought today to make a baby dress with–close enough to look, rather, like I just missed.

So I will have to make a new hat and that new dress and it will all be good. Because you can never have enough baby gifts waiting their turn.

First, a side note to Peter and Terry if you should read this: my father would like to offer you written memories of Marcelline, if only he knew where to send them. If you leave a short hey I’m here in the comments section, your email address will come to me and I will pass it along but it will not show on this site. Thank you so much.

Meantime, hawk sightings nearly every day of late and quite the territorial displays. Glorious. The male flew in next to the window this afternoon and–well, he was saying something right at me, but you’d have to ask him. He seemed to wait for an answer but all I could offer was that I loved having him there.

The crows are staying well clear.

Speaking of which. There are neighbors with a tall old persimmon tree that bears heavily this time of year.

The last year or two, whoever had been helping them harvest didn’t and once the fruit was overripe and grossly sweet, every crow and raven in miles was going at it for several weeks, the whole tree one loud heaving mass of flapping black wings, and when that source was spent they went looking for more to claim in the near vicinity–and they drove out my Cooper’s hawks for a goodly while. Hunting doves is enough work without being constantly mobbed and stolen from.

So I confessed to the one neighbor that I’d had an ulterior motive in asking his wife if they needed help with the picking: I love Hachiya persimmons, and I wanted to thwart those corvids.

Boy were they with me on that one.

And so it was that near dusk today, with their strong encouragement (Please! All you want! Take it! Give lots to your friends!) I went in their back yard and picked a big bag’s worth and then walked from house to house, offering it out.

One took the whole bag. Cool, that works.  I started over.

I was amazed at how tiring picking and carrying the stuff around could be.

They will ripen (they’re almost there), I will puree, and I shall have frozen persimmon for whenever I need a fix out of season. As long as I don’t inflict them on my husband, we’re good.

Lots of living crammed into a single day.

I went to the funeral mass of the woman who had been my dad’s last surviving high school classmate, a beautiful service for a woman who’d lived her 88 years loving every person who’d crossed her path. Every time my folks had flown into town Marcelline and Bill had invited us all up for lunch and Dad and she had swapped stories in that beautiful home overlooking the Bay far below and we’d had a grand old time. Many fond memories.

Bill passed earlier this year and now he has his sweet wife back.

The family invited me on up to her house afterwards and I was glad to go. I’m going to link to a blog post about Marcelline and Bill here so that they can find it.

It did mean that I ended up spending twenty minutes out in the late-afternoon sun.

I came home and checked in with Richard. He’d wanted to go but his job had done the two-ended candle thing of late, a lot harder to do when you’re not in your 20s anymore, and he was simply wiped–he was sound asleep when I walked in.

An old friend of ours from back in his doctoral days at Stanford was in town to give a lecture tonight, one of several, and again, we wanted to go.

And again, Richard had to pass, and at the last second I called a friend nearby and asked if she were going? I’d done sun time so I wasn’t sure driving home after ten was going to be wise; could I bum a ride?

Sure! (She knows my lupus re the sun.)

And so I went, again offering Richard’s regrets but glad he was finally getting some rest.

I came home to find the phone had rung after he’d woken up: our niece was stranded and could we pick her up?

Because I’d caught that ride he had the car now and he could. He could always rest again afterwards, and did.

I can just see Marcelline, who so adored her nieces and nephews, making sure ours got taken care of too when she needed it. Looking out for others was the way she’d lived. Go call Phyllis. (I thought of it and didn’t do it and then I felt it more persistently.) Go call Phyllis. I called Phyllis.

Good friends make for, as Chan likes to say, no coincidences.

My doctor told me to get my flu shot as soon as I, in her words, wasn’t very sick.

And so Richard was going to leave work early and get me to the clinic before their flu-shot nurse called it a day at 5:00. I just wasn’t up to running lots of errands on my own yet.

The lights were not with us. We got there 5:02, no dice. Oh well.

It was a moment of truth: I just really, really didn’t want to have to worry about going through the last two weeks all over again if I could do anything about it–I wanted that shot done with. (He’d already gotten his.) And so we drove across town to Costco.

Pro tip: that was the fewest people I have seen in that store in ages, 5:25 must be the right time to go.

Not to mention the fewest infectious agents around us and for me to be around them.

There were questions to check off: are you currently sick? I simply left that one blank and they did not call me on it. Do you have any immune disease such as AIDS or cancer? Uh, yes no no–so, yes.

They made me wait 15 minutes while they shuffled paperwork. I had not brought my knitting, deliberately: my hands needed a break after major baby blanket time, but I’d forgotten my book, too. It is a sign of how quickly I’d run out of steam that I forgot that I could simply read the news on my phone.

I sat on their bench that faced a towering display of Men’s L/XL incontinence help (charming), noting the heavy towers of pallets to right and left, the emergency exit door thataway, and plotting my duck-and-cover should the quake strike. I’ve been under swinging chandeliers before, but at least they were anchored to the ceiling. Get away from those aisles. (The bored mind in earthquake country.)

And then they called me into a back room and the deed was done. I cannot begin to tell you what a relief it is that that is so. I have my flu shot. The world is a slightly safer place.

I was 31. They did tell me cerebral vasculitis. Nothing at all to compare to what this woman went through, but at the same time so many parts of her story sound so familiar.

I was someone who never forgot a face. Suddenly I wasn’t remembering them instead, even having trouble, when I was tired, recognizing my own husband’s. I suddenly couldn’t spell anymore, my short-term memory was gone, and I remember the time I ordered something over the phone and had to have the sales clerk read the numbers back to me to make sure I’d read those squiggly things correctly: Tell me the name of the item back to me, too, just to be sure. Letters were far easier. Still, I could tell which numbers they were just fine if she told me first what they were, kinda hard for her to do, y’know, so we did our best. (Online ordering didn’t exist yet.)

It helped clinch my lupus diagnosis.

Read what Christine Hyung-Oak Lee can write now. She’s amazing.

Thursday, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings I was not home to do my usual watering but for just long enough to keep the pots of tomato plants going and I was off.

There was a one-plant surprise party for me Monday way across the yard over next to the cherry tree: having weeded there last Wednesday, I know it wasn’t there then.

Okay, then, squirrels do bury food for the winter, but squirrels don’t even like tomatoes–they just steal the juices out and toss the rest.

Curious little mystery. It’s a vigorous little grower, maybe we’ll even get a harvest out of it.

Meantime, thinking about yesterday’s post some more, I realized that I have no idea what time my car actually got done and my showing up to ask might have been right as they finished. In my hurry to finish the post and call it a night I neglected to mention that the mechanic had asked me for my cell number so he could tell me when it was done.

I explained the hearing impairment (I’d forgotten my bluetooth pendant to my Iphone) and that in that noisy store, I would never hear it ring; I asked if it would be possible to text instead?

He thought about that for a nanosecond and decided, with no question in his voice, a firm Yes. He added quickly that it would be from his personal phone, not the store’s (I’m sure so that I would get it despite its being an unfamiliar number.)

Now, we have a cell plan with unlimited free texting, which they don’t offer anymore; we’re grandfathered in, along with two of our kids and my parents. This guy probably pays by the text and he was willing to offer that out of his own personal pocket to a customer. He didn’t have to do that–and in the moment that he did, there was a certain joy in his face in the offering.

They’ve got a good guy there.

I got two notes back from Costco customer service this evening. The first was an automated, we don’t answer after hours but we will get back to you tomorrow.

The second, sent soon after by someone who had read it anyway and clearly had felt compelled to answer, was a note thanking me and saying they would forward my email to the manager so that Luis could get the recognition he deserved.

And now I was the one who was smiling. May that little moment he created not be buried but come to full fruition for him.

It is supposed to rain come Thursday, a whole .12 of an inch, but still, actually measurable rain as opposed to last week’s random scattered few drops that couldn’t even clean a skylight.

The first of the season in California always brings a string of accidents from all the months of accumulated oil on the roads as the surfaces all go slick in a way they will not after a good washing-away, an annual phenomenon I’d never heard of till we moved here.

It was time. The new tires went on today.

The mechanics forgot to tell me my car was done. I was in no hurry to walk outside and risk the UV exposure, so having commandeered a padded chair I found inside next to the photo lab I simply sat. And knit. And watched the reactions of passersby to the randomness of a woman knitting at Costco.

The photolab guy kind of sneered and silently but clearly wished me out of there. One woman made up for that when she stopped midstep at the sight of my needles: she looked thrilled, and almost, almost struck up a conversation. I would have myself but I let her decide at her own comfort level, wondering if there was a language barrier–but I would have told her that really, there was not. Her face lighting up like that had said what I’d needed and I wanted to tell her thank you. So I smiled greatly in return.

I knitted on. That purple scarf for my cousin I’d been meaning to really get going on? Now I have. I really like how it’s coming out, which is when a project about knits itself, y’know?

When my hands needed a break after two and a half hours I finally did get up and go back outside and in the other door to ask after that car.

Oh, right, here’s your key!

And so one sense of satisfaction at a needed job getting done became closer to two.

(Edited to add the next day: when it got past 5:00 I saw my chance at redeeming the interaction between me and the photo lab guy. I asked him what time the tire center closed up for the night, I mean, y’know, I hadn’t missed…?

He said he was pretty sure they had the same hours as the rest of the store and that everything was okay. And in that moment, he got a chance to help and he did so gladly and we both came away better off for it. Good for him.)

I always thought having a hyperactive immune system with no sense of direction ought to be useful for fighting off cells that actually shouldn’t be there. Say, cancer.

Looks like I was right.

This has nothing to do with the story, but, the pews in the building where the stake conference meetings are held always hit my back just exactly wrong. There was another meeting there this morning and this time I remembered to grab a small pillow off the couch and stuff it in my large purse.

And as I was getting dressed this morning, what I’d planned to wear simply felt wrong: it felt too fragile, too easily damaged. This made no sense whatsoever. Wear something indestructible. Why? I argued with myself, I wasn’t going camping, I was going to church. Wear the boring black polyester skirt, came the insistence yet again: can’t hurt that one. What a weird thought, I thought, but, I did.

So. The story. Somewhere in my brain, all morning church meetings start at nine and when you have some percentage of 1800 people in that stake converging on one building, however large, parking is going to be intense. If I didn’t want a long autoimmune-risking walk in the sun we were going to have to get there early, so we headed out the door at about 8:15.

Only… There was a smattering of people, maybe a dozen if even that, but certainly not the number usually gathered by the half hour before the start. Huh.

(In a small voice, oh. right. duh.)

And so we had an hour and a half to wait in. My good-natured husband said, Well, he thought that had been a little early but he wanted to get good seats and parking for me, so, *shrug*. No biggy.

I got to talk to an old friend for awhile.

My glasses were bugging me. I’d been going to clean them before leaving but had forgotten but I certainly had plenty of time to spare now, so, off I went to take care of that.

One of the things about having an ileostomy is that one has to use the facilities quite often. I was there, so, whatever.

The door refused to unlock to let me back out of the stall.

Wait. I tried again. This is not rocket science.  You just unturn it.

Not that way either. It was jammed hard. Richard later said, well, you could always have called me and I’d have sent someone in, to which I reminded him I’d left my purse with him.

There was simply nobody around. Give it an hour and there would be a steady stream of people but not right now. I gave it my best as good as my hands could do but the thing just would not budge. Likely nobody would hear me. I could stay there.

Or not.

The floor, thankfully, was clean as far as I could tell. In the utter epitome of grace I got down on my hands and knees and scrambled low underneath the door, got out, reached back under, grabbed my cane, and washed up.

Then I went looking for help. I found Randy. Randy knew everyone and he had keys to everything.

Because so very few people were there yet, we were in no one’s way as I minded the bathroom doors while he went in there and tried to fix that lock. Having gotten tools from a supply closet, he got the thing open–but he could not keep it from re-jamming and the next person was going to have the same problem. Not cool. Not when there are I think four women’s stalls in the entire building and there were about to be that many people present. He thought a moment, walked across the building while I stood guard, came back, and handed me a piece of paper and scotch tape. He handed me a thick pen.

“Door lock jams. Do not lock this door.” (I needed to be able to write it in Spanish, Samoan, Tongan, Vietnamese, and Chinese, too, but at least it was clearly going to be a warning, and most of those members did speak enough English.)

“Looks good,” he affirmed, it being what we could do for now, and waited a moment as I went around the corner past the rest-and-chair area to put it where it needed to go.

It happened when no one was around to be embarrassed. And I’m old enough not to bother to be embarrassed, it just simply was.

It didn’t happen to, say, an 85-year-old with mobility issues as the building emptied out leaving nobody to know. It didn’t happen to a small child who would then simply leave the door locked for everybody and long lines after her.

It was a small thing, and leaving the door unlocked would be a pain–but it surely also inspired multiple moments of, hey, could you hold this closed for me and then I’ll hold it for you? Acts of kindness imposed by randomness, in all locklihood.

I got home glad I’d worn that sturdy skirt, put the small pillow back on the couch on top of the old afghan I’d taken it off of…

…And only then did I finally notice that the thing seemed a tad lumpy. Huh? I pulled it back.

There, underneath, was the long-missing baby blanket I’d started for my granddaughter on the way. The white one I’d begun for her christening day. Right there at my knitting perch. The Rios yarn I ordered yesterday in replacement? That was pink and much thicker, so as to be an everyday blankie like her brothers’.

It’s all good. It’s all very good.

If you get to Kings Mountain Art Fair a half hour before they close, there’s not much sun getting past those redwoods to worry about and you can park close in. (And you’d better, because you won’t have any time at all to sit around and wait for their shuttle bus.)

And yet people were still arriving, not just me.

All weekend, Mel and Kris had wondered where I was and if I were coming.

There’s a short video on that link of Mel creating a bowl like mine. I love it and I love what they create and best of all I love them to–oh wait. To pieces is exactly not the phrase to use here, never mind.

I had long wanted a serving tray in their pottery; they had two left. I bought a few more mugs, since we had found ourselves running low or out while the kids were visiting. A bowl, a gift for a friend.

Ohmygoodness. They had toddler mugs. Almost all gone.  Oh if only. I had just seen Parker handling one of the regular mugs in person just fine. Mel and Kris had previously told me this could be so, that their boys hadn’t broken things, and I’d answered, But they were raised by potters.

Parker raised my faith in the possibilities after all.

At the last, I decided I would wait till I see Mel and Kris again at a show in November so I can pick out one set all together. I think I’d still get doubles of each because, y’know, toddlers. That means I’d need six. Let the budget breathe a moment first and besides, they didn’t have that many that late in the show.

I intend to see them at the next one early rather than late. It’ll be indoors.

Moving carefully the last few days; I did a number on my back in that twist-and-fall while planting the tree, quite mindful at the same time that I got off easy, all things considering.

I am motivated to take good care of it. Parker and Hudson won’t have to wave hi through the computer screens next week,  they’re going to be here. I cannot wait to hug my grandbabies and their parents. A big Tonka digger truck is ready next to the toy basket and Parker will tell you the type of truck that’s in it. Knitted animals by LauraN and Diana.

Theoretically we’re getting long-overdue recarpeting done before then. We really should paint that one wall first. In reality, any possibility of my helping move furniture is completely gone for now–as we wait for an upgraded quote.

There’s this long-accumulated  wisdom learned via lupus flare after lupus flare after Crohn’s flare that sometimes, it’s okay to just let things be as they are and not be too fussy over the things that don’t matter.

And sometimes we just plain need to get a move-on here, folks.

It came it came!

And I wasn’t even home. I was at a carpet store way down in San Jose and Richard was working from home so he’s the one who got to answer the doorbell; he told me he called out, “Thank you!” to the UPS driver heading back to his truck, as one does.

I got the text while comparing berber vs plush and how it would feel on a crawling baby’s knees or little boys tumbling down. I tried not to be jealous as I drove home.

I took pictures of the box. Dusk never felt so far off. Hurry, hurry! I finally had to at least see and slid it out and found it looked like a NASA experiment.

A little while later, not wanting to risk drying it out or anything…I peeked some more. Cute little kitten’s-paw leaves sneaking upwards.

At last it was 7:00, Wunderground said UV was 1 out of 12, I declared it good enough, lupus-wise–but before I went outside, I asked Richard once again if he thought I should widen the back of the hole away from that pipe.

“I don’t know,” he said honestly. He offered to help but since this was my baby he let me do it myself like I wanted.

Got the spade, put the tip exactly right there and gave it one good heave ho pushing down hard with my foot.

I actually don’t quite know how the next thing that came to be was that I was suddenly facing the other way, rear end to one side of the hole and the backs of my legs–well, mostly one–fully scraped and muddy down the calf, but my feet were way over up on the other side and how did they get there and all in one nice smooth motion and I have no idea how that happened. At all.

Okay, maybe not so much on the widening thing. It’s trying to tell me something there and me, I try to be a good listener. Really, I do.

I looked at the hole. I looked at the dug-up dirt to the side, which was full of now-dry clumps and gravel and it would all need to be figured out which was which: the former owners did love their (now deeply embedded, 50-60 years later) gravel path. The obvious hit me at long last–I definitely needed better soil than what I had there and I should have thought of that sooner. Dad and his rhododendrons and all that.

So I was glad I’d gotten an earlyish start and headed over to the hardware store less than a mile away. Bought two bags, organic, pasteurized chicken poop, the works. The fellow they asked to help me to my car with them looked bored and like he couldn’t wait for that work day to be over so I thought I’d lighten it up a little by sharing in brief my sense of anticipation: the commissioned truck. The Page mandarins you couldn’t get any other way. The thirty-seven years since I’d had one, and finally, “My tree came today.”

Suddenly he had this big surprised grin all over his face and he teased me that I was going to have to bring some of those mandarins back to that store for him to test out, y’know! To make sure they were good enough!

Richard got those heavy bags out of the car for me and over to the spot and I got back to it.

And…I didn’t have enough soil, clearly, from trying too hard not to spend too much money on my hobbies….  But you only get one chance to start that tree off right. I checked with him. Orchard Supply Hardware was still open. Back I go.

The guy did a doubletake as he spotted me going past his aisle again: “Back already?!”

“Yeah, needed more soil,” I said to him. “Just, don’t fall in the hole,” and I did a quick below-the-knee skirt hoist  to show him the row’d rash. He started to gasp but then since I was laughing a good one he about fell over in relieved guffaws. It WAS funny.

“You’re REALLY going to love those oranges now!” he told me.

Y’know? He was right.