GOING BANANAS

 Grocery shopping should not be this stressful.   When it takes two Valium and a pint of Vodka to give me enough "calm" to shop for groceries then I know I have a problem !  

I used to enjoy going to the grocery store and wandering up and down the aisles checking out new products and goodies. I always have my list and I usually manage to find everything that is on the list.  But then there are the other 30 things that I decide we REALLY need to buy.  My grocery bills are never under $100 and now-a-days I am happy if the bill is less than $200.   I am pretty good with checking prices and buying that which is not necessarily cheaper but is a better deal.  I enjoy the challenge. 

The Man has not been in a grocery store since the year 1200 BC.  He still thinks that a dozen eggs cost thirty five cents and a quart of milk is still twenty five cents.  He is shocked at the price of ice cream . . . EIGHT DOLLARS for a half gallon of ice cream ??????  This is one product that he cares about the price. Not that he is paying for the groceries but he likes to think he knows a bargain and a rip off when he sees one.  

Every time I go shopping, (which is at least once a week), The Man sits at the kitchen table waiting for my return.  (I love it when I can sneak in while he is napping) But usually he is sitting at the kitchen table waiting for me to unload the bags.  With each bag I bring in I have to listen to him saying things like, "I thought you only had to get a FEW things", or, "Why did you get two of those? We'll never use two of those before we leave!"  or my all time favorite, "You do realize we are leaving here in . . . weeks".  It NEVER fails.  I have gotten really good at tuning him out and leaving things in the car until he is in bed or the bathroom before sneaking things in.  It's either that or a full blown war and I don't feel. like fighting over something as silly as groceries. 

But what really makes me crazy are the times when The Man asks me to pick up something for him.  Donuts are at the top of that list. I have no issue buying donuts because that is what he eats for breakfast every morning. morning, a Nutrition drink and 2 donuts.   Whatever !  But then there are times when he asks me to buy something and it sits here for 2 weeks before we throw it out.  BANANAS !!!!  That is at the top of that list.  Today as I was leaving You Know Who asked me to stop and pick up some bananas for him.  OK, No biggie.  I was going to the store anyway so picking up some bananas is no problem.  I bought Green bananas because I know they will sit in the kitchen on the counter top for the next two weeks until they turn brown.  We will be sitting in the kitchen and The Man will start flailing his arms around like a windmill gone wild.  "Damn Fruit Flies" he will start yelling. "Where are they coming from?  Do we have any fruit out?"  I will casually point to the now brown and rotting bananas.  

For some reason he finds it totally unrelated to the fact that these are the bananas that HE requested I buy. They have been staring at him for 2 full weeks and he has made no attempt to eat them. 

This drives me BANANAS !!!!! 

THINGS THAT GO BEEP BEEP BEEP IN THE NIGHT

 I LOVE my bed !   I LOVE to sleep !  I LOVE to snuggle down under the covers and dream my dreams !   I do NOT love being woken up in the middle of the night by "friends" texting me at 3:15 AM because they can't sleep.  And that is why we have silence mode on our cell phones !   Feel free to text me at any hour of the day or night because my phone will be turned off from the time I turn out my light until I decide to wake up and face a new day.  Occasionally I will forget to turn off the ringer but that doesn't happen often. And if it does it is my fault if I am woken up so no harm, no foul.  

What I can NOT control is the assortment of sounds that come from my partners various machines that are stuffed in the bedroom along side the bed.  The Man has no less than 5 different machines that have alarms and all of them seem to prefer to go off in the middle of the night.  Granted they are all attached to him so if the oxygen stops, or his heart stops there is an alarm to wake ME.  

Last night was one of those nights. The Man uses a Bi Pap machine at night. It is similar to a C pap machine, just more powerful. The problem is that because he needs to have a constant flow of oxygen so the machine needs to be connected to an oxygen concentrator. If the concentrator fails to work then the alarm on the concentrator goes off.  BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!  If the concentrator is not delivering oxygen to the Bi Pap machine then the Bi Pap machine's alarm goes off.  BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!! If the concentrator AND the Bi Pap machine are both failing then his heart monitor goes off BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP !!!!!!!!!!!!!   

You know that these things never occur at 11 PM while we are still awake.  NO . . . .  it always waits until 2 or 3 AM when we are in a dead sleep.  It is like the fire drills they had when I was in college living in the dorm.  You had just fallen asleep when the alarm would start blaring.  With luck you were not hung over, just exhausted but you had to get out of bed and out of the dorm until the drill was over.  

Now I am flying out of the bed, grabbing my hearing aids because I know The Man will be talking to me so I need to hear him.  Besides the hearing aids I have to grab the flash light so I can find my way to the light switch in order to see what the hell is going on.  All this time The Man is still asleep.  How this is possible I have no idea but it's true.  By the time I have ears in and can see where I am going The Man is now waking up and asking, "What's going on?".   My reply in my head is, "How the "F" do I know" but my mouth says, "I have no idea what's happening",  Now comes the fun part.   Trying to figure out at two in the morning where is the problem.  My brain has woken up immediately, The Man is still trying to figure out where he is, who he is and what is this strange woman doing in his room. As he begins to focus and realize where the noise is coming from he starts pulling plugs, adjusting wires, reading display screens, and throwing orders to me to get this, that and the other thing.  Now I am REALLY awake because I am roaming through the house searching for things he wants.  I get orders like, "get me the thing from the cabinet" . . .   Seriously !   When I question, "What Thing" and "What cabinet" I get a look that says I must be an idiot for not being able to KNOW exactly what it is he is talking about.  I am used to this by now and it doesn't bother me at all because I KNOW EXACTLY WHO the idiot is.  I patiently ask questions until I figure out what I am looking for and where I will find it. It's a great game but not at 2 AM. 

Needless to say I manage to keep it all under control, fix the problem and go back to sleep.  Knowing full well that in the morning when I get up I will get to relive the entire episode with The Man.  It will be the topic for the day, phone calls will be made to different companies to complain about their machines and The Man will be thinking about the problem all day trying to come up with ideas to help avoid this happening again.   I am the listener . . .  I will say nothing, I will not offer suggestions and I will write a blog about it because it really is pretty funny.   

OH,   and I will also take a nap.  

THE BAND - AID

 If ever you were to see the true nature of a man just watch what happens when he get a small cut. I'm not talking about loosing a leg or breaking every bone in his body, I'm talking about a paper cut or a bruise caused by bumping into something that breaks the skin ever so slightly so as to cause blood to appear.  Should this happen the world will come to a complete halt while medical attention is given to the injured.

This past week The Man bumped into something and broke the skin on his arm.  There was no GUSHING blood, only a small cut that, once he held a tissue on it for 3 seconds, it stopped bleeding.    There were no stitches or cast required but you would think he was in imminent danger of bleeding out.  Quite a fuss was being made on the part of The Man so I suggested he put a band-aid on it to protect it from getting opened up again.  The huge surprise to me was that he actually DID put a band-aid on and he did it himself.  Usually I would be called to administer aid but he handled it himself. Go Figure !   Fast forward to that evening . . .  I was sitting on the bed reading when YKW (You know who) came in needing medical advice.  Should he shower with the band-aid on or take it off.  (Big decisions like this usually  require us to call all of our acquaintances and get their thoughts but I figured we could handle this one alone.). I suggested he leave the band-aid on until after his shower and then put a clean, dry bandage on.  That seemed to make him happy so off he went to shower.   When he came out of the bathroom he had a new band-aid in his hand and asked me to put it on for him.  (I didn't bother to ask why he couldn't do this himself since he had put the first bandage on his own, I just said "Sure!").  I had my glasses on and the lights were on in the bedroom but in spite of all this I could not see where I should put the band-aid.  Aside from a large bruise on his arm I could not tell where the cut was.  My indecision caused The Man to get all excited because I could NOT see where to put the band-aid so he started pointing to where it should go.  I really didn't think he had the right spot but hey, his arm not mine so I'll do what he wants.  Band-aid was on, it was time to go to sleep.

The following day we had to go to a hospital for The Man's monthly infusion of gamma globulin to boost his immune system.  We arrived at the hospital infusion center, got settled in, connected to the IV and ready to spend the next 2 hours relaxing.  As I was sitting next to YKW I see him picking at the band-aid on his arm.  He was attempting to get the band-aid unstuck from the hair on his arm without opening up the cut.  As I'm watching this I notice that there is a scab just above where the bandage is.  It is totally healed up so I'm thinking maybe he had 2 cuts on his arm?  With that one of the nurses comes over to ask if YKW would like her to get some ointment to help get the band-aid off painlessly. Of Course we do !!!  Within two minutes she has applied the magic cream and painlessly pealed of the stupid bandaid much to the joy of The Man.  I'm sitting watching this and as the band-aid finally lets go it reveals the un broken skin of The Man's arm with a scabbed over cut just above where the bandage was.  The whole time "Dr. Kildare" was worrying about his cut getting covered so it wouldn't bleed he had the band-aid on the wrong spot !!!!!

I did NOT mention this to him !   It is better to just shake my head and think about the blog I will write about this. 

MOUSE !!!!!! IN THE HOUSE

 It is no big surprise that there are mice living here.  It is a farm, we have a barn, a milk house, a garage and a house.  All of these buildings are packed with "crap" that has accumulated over the years.  The barn is empty except for the straw on the floor and a pen or two for sheep. (The sheep have been long gone from this residence but their memory remains.)  The barn is dark so a great number of creatures have taken up residence there.  The milk house has 2 large garbage cans filled with the corn we feed to the deer, a large bag of bird seed for the bird feeders and a large bag of sunflower seeds that are fed to the turkeys. The garage is jam packed with junk and furniture, all of which are perfect places for small critters to make them selves comfortable.  As for the house . . .  well you got to read about the red squirrel incident a few months ago so you know all the other critters are looking for a nice warm place to call home.  The 3 bird feeders right outside the back door are an all you can eat buffet for anything that flies or walks.  Because birds do not have very good manners they spill more seeds on the ground than they get into their bellies.  As a result this "Golden Coral" style buffet we have attracted 2 chipmunks, a ground squirrel, (which looks like a chipmunk but has different stripes), 4 rabbits and the 6 turkeys who will come right up onto the steps outside the sliding glass door.   

So is it any surprise that we have mice ?

The Man hates mice !!  Every summer he starts out with a plan to kill all the mice.  I personally have only seen about 2 mice since I have been coming up here the past 7 years.  To me that is not a panic situation but in The Man's head it is armageddon.  Man the life boats and batten down the hatches, there are mice in the neighborhood.  He has traps, poison, sticky paper and anything else he can think of.  He is armed and ready to go to war.  

We have seen NO mice all summer !  Not even one little one.  Nada,  None !!!!!

Until yesterday . . .    As is my routine after dinner, I went out into my favorite room, aka the parlor, aka the living room.  I am the only person who takes advantage of this large cozy room. I have my crafts out there, my books and my newspaper puzzles.  Each evening I leave The Man sitting at the kitchen table watching the news and I escape to my inner sanctum.  Last night I was reading in the big blue armchair when You Know Who popped in to say he was going to shower and then head for bed. We chatted for a few seconds when he said, "Do you have a rag? Or something??"  I had no idea why he needed a rag and I did not have one anyway.  He is now getting rather agitated and once again tells me he needs a rag.  I realize something is going on so I put down my book, get out of the chair and walk across the room to where he is standing.  By now he is practically dancing up and down but can't go further into the room because he is at the end of his oxygen hose.  He is now yelling about get a rag, get a rag !!  As he is pointing toward the far wall.  I look over and see the smallest mouse I have ever seen just sitting there. I swear this mouse was as small as a new born babies fist.  It was ADORABLE !!!  (At least I thought it was).  I turned back to The Man and asked him what he wanted me to do.  "Throw something over it" he says. I walked toward the mouse and it started to walk, not run, along the base of the wall toward a. large pile of crap that is piled in the corner.  All the The Man can say is, "Get it! Get it !!  Don't let it get away!"  As if this tiny little thing is going to go anywhere or do anything.  From the panic in The Man's voice you would think we were dealing with a 300 pound wombat !  (I'm not sure what a wombat is but I like the way it sounds.)

I carefully unload the corner and there is the little mouse curled up in the corner hoping no one will see him.   I reached down and picked him up by his tail and took him outside where I left him in some tall grass so he wouldn't become a snack for an eagle.  I honestly doubt an eagle would even be able to see the little guy, he was tiny.  When I returned into the house The Man wanted to know what I did with the mouse so I told him it was out in the woods.  

Fast forward to this morning when guess who was up on our patio steps looking for food.  Yup, Little mouse, even more adorable than he was last night.  We had to go out for the morning so mouse was put on hold and was soon forgotten by Mouse Killer.   After we returned home The Man went in for his afternoon nap and I went out into the garden to tie up some tomato plants and water everything.  I had left the hose lying on the ground so as I bent down to pick it up guess who was all curled up between the layers of hose?  Poor little thing !  He looked scared and hungry and I really just wanted to pick him up again and bring him in the house to I could take care of him.  But I know better.  So I did the next best thing.  I put a large open glass jar on the ground up against the house in back of a tomato plant.  I put some corn in the jar and left it right where little mouse had run to after being evicted from the hose.  

I have no idea if the little guy will make it but at least I know I tried.  Of course if he does make it and grow to be a big mouse The Man will only end up hunting and killing him.   Poor little mouse !!!

IT MIGHT BE A MITE

 Living in the country for the summer presents me with a lot of "free" time.  I LOVE that !   But being the type of person who always feels the need to be doing something I find myself involved in some crazy projects.  I have cleaned off the work bench in the garage, sorting tools and rearranging lots of junk. There were the 2 summers I spent "organizing" all the crap in the small garage so that The Man could have a yard sale. (That never happened).  Then there was the summer that The Man decided he wanted to sell a bunch of stuff so I took pictures and posted them on Facebook Market Place.  That was a HUGE pain in the butt thanks to all the dealings with crazy people and having to ship all the crap once it was bought. The Man finally decided that it really wasn't worth all HIS time so that project was scrapped. 

This year is the Year of The Turkey.   For the last several years I have entertained myself with collecting feathers that the wild turkeys, sand cranes and numerous small birds have dropped.  It is incredible how many feathers I collect on any given day.   The turkeys should be totally bald considering how many of their feathers I have collected over the past 3 years.  It's been a great way of getting myself out side and  wandering all over the property.  But there are only so many feathers that I can display in vases, cups and glasses before the house is over run with them.  I have taken a bunch to Florida to display down there. We had feathers in every room of the house and I still had bags and bags full of all different colors and sizes.  I couldn't just throw them out so I decided I was going to make a turkey feather wreath.  The wreath is almost done but I have NO idea where I will put it since it turned out to be MASSIVE.   I think it's pretty awesome but that's only because I made it. 

Getting back to my collecting of feathers . . .   We will be sitting in the kitchen looking out on the back of the property and Eagle Eye Man will spot a feather way out in the field.  He has the eyes of a hawk.  I can't see the field no less a feather lying on the grass.  But out I go as he directs he toward the feather.  It's a fun game.  Each day I take a long walk around to see what I can find. Some days there are no feathers, some days I need a bag to put them all in. 

 The turkeys have a set route that they take each day so I usually start there. Another good spot to find feathers is on the driveway out to the mail box.  It seems that the turkeys walk back and forth through the woods crossing the drive way in a couple of places. I usually find at least one feather along there.

The other day I was walking out to the mail box late in the afternoon when I say a big feather right on the driveway.  As I picked it up I noticed a beautiful white feather in the woods, just a few feet from where I was.  I don't normally go into the woods because of ticks and snakes and bears but this feather was too good to pass up. I walked the couple of feet into the woods, picked up the feather and then continued on to the mail box.  When I returned to the house with the mail and my 2 prize feathers I put everything on the. kitchen table where The Man was sitting.  I sat down opposite him as we went through the mail. Seconds later my arm started to itch, then my neck, then my head and back. I looked down at the table and saw a bunch of teeny tiny dots moving around on the table surface.  I told the man we had bugs on the table and he of course told me I was wrong.  I started trying to squish the little buggers but they wouldn't die no mater how hard I pressed on them.  That made me start thinking maybe they were fleas.  But where would fleas come from?  I finally got old Eagle Eye to see the bugs and he pronounced that they were fruit flies.  The facts that they were tan and fruit flies are black,  these bugs had NO wings so they could not fly, and there was NO fruit anywhere that they would have come in on, Sherlock Holmes still insisted that the bugs were fruit flies.  All this transpired while I continued to itch and scratch. I got some rubbing alcohol and tried killing them with that.  No luck !  So I went for the big guns and got the can of insect spray. As I was spraying the table and chair The Man said, "Maybe they came in on one of the feathers."   DUH !!!!!   Sure enough, the. beautiful white feather was teaming with little bugs.  I grabbed the feather and threw it out the door and then sprayed the hell out of it and the rest of the kitchen.  Next I went into the shower and got all the bugs off me while The Man took my clothes and washed them in a HOT water wash in the washing machine.  

Thankfully we seem to have killed every last one of the little buggers but I couldn't stop thinking about what they were.  I went on line and googled Bird Feather Mites and sure enough there they were looking exactly like what was crawling all over the feather.   How I ever thought of the word "mite" is beyond me.  Thankfully out of the 3 types of bird mites these were the least problematic.  They are harmless to humans and were easy to kill.   Why this one particular feather was crawling with them I don't know.  Maybe because it was in the woods ?  Who knows !  But now every time I pick up a feather I look at it VERY closely to make sure it doesn't have any hitch hikers on it.  

As for the lovely white feather . . . I burned it in the fire pit !

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER ?

 Today is August 20th and I am freezing.  If it is supposed to be summer then the dog is a St. Bernard and I want him to show up with his cask of Brandy to help warm me up and cheer me up.  

As is typical of the UP the weather is insane.  It has been a VERY strange spring and summer and I'm quite tired of it.  Good thing I have my winter wardrobe up here because I have gotten a lot of use out of my jeans and sweat shirts.  Don't tell me it is because of climate change because the climate up here has apparently ALWAYS been like this.  Boiling one day, freezing the next. All that this has done for me is that I just want to stay in bed with a good book and nap. 

We started out our "summer" in Michigan with days and days of pouring rain.  May here was mud month. It was too cold and wet to even think about a garden. I was anxious to get my tomato and pepper plants started but the weather just wasn't cooperating.  I finally decided it was now or never so I got 2 tomato plants and 2 pepper plants at Home Depot.  Last year I bought my veggie plants at Home Depot and they went bananas !  I had more peppers and tomatoes than I could ever use.  I shared as many as possible with neighbors but we were still over run.  Even with the bunny nibbling on them I still had way more than I needed or wanted.  So this year I had high hopes of another bumper crop.    NOT !!!!  I planted my veggies in pots of new potting soil outside in the sun. I put some plant food in the soil and sat back to wait for my vast harvest.    The tomato plants grew but only had a few tomatoes on them.  The pepper plants never increased in size more than an inch or two and only produced ONE pepper on one plant and  whopping TWO peppers on the second plant.  The peppers are just hanging there, not getting bigger or turning yellow like they were supposed to.  My " garden" was a total flop ! With the exception of the tomato plants that are growing out of the foundation.  Last years bountiful crop reseeded itself along the foundation of the house and those plants are producing more tomatoes than the ones that I have nurtured all summer.  

So much for gardening this summer.   I think we had too much rain, not enough sun and it was too cold at night for the plants to flourish.  Even June and July were grey, chilly and windy.  Every so often God would give us a wonderful sunny day just to give us hope.  I have worn more flannel and sweats this summer than I did for the entire winter in Florida for the past 10 years.  

And then it was August and my son and his 3 kids flew up to MI from their home in south Florida.  It was such a brutally hot summer in Florida I thought they would really enjoy some cool weather.  Funny joke ! The 3 days that they were here at the farm the temperatures were in the high 80's and it was sunny and humid.  Me and my plants were burning to death.  It was so uncomfortably hot that we had all the air conditioners in the house cranking full speed.  Then on the day my family left the temperatures dropped and the clouds rolled in again.  Since then we have had days of clouds that tease us with a peek at the sun every so often.  The sun pops out and I think, "Hooray ! I'm going outside!"  Then just as I walk out the door the clouds gather and I find myself in a rain shower.  Just enough to make me wet and cold but not enough to water my plants.

All of this crazy weather has only added to my desire to crawl into bed and read and sleep.  I have ZERO ambition to do anything.  Because I am feeling so washed out I have read about ten books so far this summer.  I have my favorite spots to read and I have given equal time to each of them.  My one favorite reading spot is outside under the huge Maple tree. Sad to say that I have only sat there about 3 times this summer.  It is either too cold, too hot or too wet to want to sit out there.  Also all the rain has increased the mosquito population so even when I get a few hours of sunshine the mosquitoes are too much to want to put up with.  

The dog days of summer this year are pretty mangy.  Think of the old, scruffy mutt that is lying in the gutter of a city slum.   That's what this summer looks like.  I'm ready for summer to be over. 

CAPPUCCINO CHAOS

 I am tired today.  I have been getting lazier and lazier by the day. I am blaming it on the weather.  One day it's 80 degrees and the next day it is 63.  I get up in the morning and have no idea what to wear because no one knows what the weather will decide to do each day.  Forget the local news station. The weather guy has charts and graphs and all sorts of illustrations. He talks a million miles an hour so that by the end of the weather report we are even more confused than before.  It makes for interesting times.  Luckily we have very little to do that requires us to be dependent on the weather.  If it's raining hard we just stay home. If it's too hot we stay home. If it's too cold we stay home.  We stay home A LOT !!!

But today was a pulmonary therapy day for The Man. I have to set my alarm on Tuesdays and Thursdays so that we can leave the house by 9:30 AM to drive 40 minutes for an 11:00 AM appointment. (Do the math) I get up at 8:15, The Man's alarm goes off at 7:00.  We drive the 40 miles to the PT class but since we are ALWAYS 45 minutes early we stop at the beach to check out the lake and The Man stops to pee somewhere along the way.  Hurry, Hurry Hurry and Wait.  Whatever !!!  It's only twice a week so most days I can talk. myself into getting up and going out.

This morning was an exception.  I spent a good part of last night doing battle with my C Pap mask.  I HATE the damn thing. It drives me NUTS !!!  Every time I move the mask shifts and the air starts to leak. That causes the machine to blow even harder so I wake up being slapped in the face with twenty mile and hour winds.  Of course it is dark in the bedroom so I can't see what the hell I am doing so I just rip off the mask. Get out of bed, walk into the bathroom and turn on the light so I can figure out where the problem is.  By then I'm half awake so it takes me a half hour to get back to sleep.  Only to have the mask do the same thing about an hour later.  As a result of this ongoing battle I was TIRED when my alarm went off at 8:15.  I never hit the snooze button but today was an exception.  That snooze button is a cruel joke.  You think, "Ahhhhh, I've got ten more minutes to sleep" when in reality it takes you 5 minutes to fall back to sleep because you keep thinking about that alarm going off again.  As a result that 5 minutes of sleep is just a tease and you feel worse when the damn thing goes off again.  

This morning, as a result of all this, I turned into the creature from the Dark Lagoon.  Washing my face didn't help. Eating some breakfast didn't help, sitting in the car for an hour didn't help. In fact the car ride this morning made me just want to tip the seat back and take a long snooze.  But that doesn't happen because The Man is chatting away about what ever is aggravating him today or he has the radio turned on to the country music station and is singing along.  Yeeeeee Haaaaaaa .   

By the time we got to PT I was ready to park the car and crawl into the back seat for a little nap.  But then I got thinking that I really should go to the beach and walk, except it really wasn't that great a day for beach walking.  Second choice is to go to Jacks Grocery store just down the road and walk around the store.  There is always something I need to pick up so the time won't be wasted.   Next to the bakery at Jacks I love their French Vanilla Cappuccino. I had been treating myself to one every time I went to Jacks but for the past month I just wasn't in the mood.   TODAY I NEEDED a Cappuccino !!!  That will wake me up for sure !   I bought a large cappuccino and was feeling pretty good walking around the store taking small sips as I  picked up a few items. When I checked the time I realized I hand better get back to PT to pick up The Man.  The store was unusually crowded today so I went to the cigarette counter check out.  I only had 6 items which they were happy to ring up for me.  I had gotten one of the small shopping carts so as I went to move my cappuccino out of the cart for the packing boy to put in my groceries I picked up the foam cup and the cap came off in my hand and the LARGE, almost full cup of hot, sweet, sticky Cappuccino started to fall. I naturally tried to catch it which resulted in me being covered in hot, sweet, sticky liquid as it fell to the floor and spread across the aisle. My purse was soaked, my shirt and pants were soaked, my phone was dripping and my credit card that was in my hand would no longer work in the machine because it too was covered in hot, wet, sweet, sticky cappuccino !!!    A good time was had by all who witnessed my acrobatic act. I got a standing ovation and won a gold medal.   There was nothing I could do but apologize over and over as the cashier handed me a roll of paper towels.  The packing boy was super sweet and kept telling me not to worry as he was on his hands and knees wiping up the floor.  I refused to make eye contact with any of the people on line in back of me.  I paid for my stuff, grabbed it all and headed for the ladies room to take a bath in the sink. After that I went back to the deli and ordered myself another cappuccino. It was delicious and worth every penny. And it woke me up for sure!

Once I got home I had to really wash up and change. My sneakers are still squishy and stick to the floor as I walk.  But I do smell good . . .   if you like cappuccino.