Quickie

Just a short entry this time, rolling off the fingers.

Been a year since I got my job. It's been a good year overall. We got out of pre-foreclosure and pre-bankruptcy, we can afford to live. Wife is rocking the unemployment right now, getting an insane number of interviews, each of which brings her closer to a job. Hoping like balls her interview tomorrow goes well, cause that job is on the same damn block as mine and we could move and not have to do this driving for an hour or so every day.

Went to the first Farmers market of the year for us on Saturday. Got two bags of lettuce (5 bucks for one, 3.50 for the other). It's pricey, but DAMN you notice the difference. You forget that lettuce is supposed to taste good after a winter of the stuff shipped in from wherever in the world is warm. We get by in the winter on green leaf heads, which is okay. Once wife got iceberg because it was on sale, and it was like eating tasteless garbage (if that word pairing makes any sense). So if you learn anything from this post, it is to try Farmer's Market lettuce. Trust me, it'll change the way you see salad. I also bought a 6 dollar bunch of asparagus, which was not noticeably different than the stuff at the store. But with the goat cheese and green onions I also got, I was able to make a delicious quiche.

This farmer's market was at the Mill City Museum, so it had the added atmosphere of industrial river folk with girders, old train tracks, and tin roofs. I felt like I was in that black market place in The Hunger Games. It was awesome. Will definitely return later when prices have gone down as supplies grow around here.

Until then, wife and I will continue to cram in a salad every night, which even when it tastes awesome begins to feel like a chore to finish a five dollar bag before it goes bad.

Walgreen's Gave Me the Wrong Drugs: Updated

Difference between last week and this one? Immense. The severe, wicked, horrible depression is gone thanks to a change in medicine and some perspective. I have an anecdote to share and we'll call this post good.

Went to Walgreen's two days ago to pick up a prescription for wife. When I got there, they had two. This happens often, and I don't keep good track of what she takes, so I just paid and left.

Got home, and the second medication was a refill for the new prescription the Dr. put wife on after the new year that made wife violently ill every time she tried to take it. Vomit sessions all night. So she stopped taking it and told her doctor (along with the info about the depression going south in a bad way).

So we got a mostly full bottle and entirely unopened bottle of medication that I paid for that we don't need. I had to pick up another prescription today. Here's the conversation I had with the Walgreen's person.

Me: Picking up for my wife, Mrs. Fargo Jones.

Her: OK.

Me: Can we double check what you are giving me? Two days ago you refilled the wrong prescription.

Her: (reads prescription)

Me: Yup. that's right. So, that incorrect prescription. She violently threw up all night when she took it, twice. And you refilled it and sold it to me. I was unaware of what it was. Is there any way to do a refund?

Her: Nope. We can't do returns for medication.

Me: OK. Guess I get to go do some experiments then.

Her: ...


Really, I joked about using her prescription drugs illegally, and this teller had no warnings or concerns whatsoever.

So Walgreen's, if you're listening, it was at the Eden Prairie Walgreens, at 12:42 p.m. Thanks!

UPDATE: So, it turns out if you write a blog about your wife, along with fill out the feedback form that the receipt asks you to fill, and in there leave a link to your blog, you should tell your wife about said blog. When the pharmacist calls to figure out what went wrong, things will go much more smoothly. Anyway, pharmacist called wife and made things right. She figured out that one of wife's three medical allergies was not on the list at Walgreens, and that the prescribed medicine included that allergen, hence why wife puked her guts out both times she tried taking it. The pharmacist said the doctor should have known that (cover your ass classes, always helpful for medical professionals, eh?). In any case, they credited wife the 15 bucks toward the next prescription. So, yeah, I guess we're cool now.

Wife said the pharmacist seemed to be really treating her with kid gloves. I said, yeah, well, I was very dickish in my letter and blog.

To the woman I was a complete ass to at the gas station

I feel I should explain my comment, but to do so, we have to rewind the clock.

I started the day driving the wife to work, a drive where we saw two people spin out, one car accident, and a lot of congestion during the 20 minute commute that was 50 minutes today.

The next thing of note. I went to Michael's to return a Christmas gift we received last week, since Christmas was postponed with wife's family due to the wedding. I brought the gift and receipt to the counter, mentioning that it was a gift and that I planned to get some picture frames with the return.  The guy said since it was bought more than 90 days ago, I couldn't return it. Never mind that it was a gift, that we didn't get it until recently, and so on. He said they've gotten in trouble for returning such things, even unopened with the original receipt. He said I couldn't even return it without a receipt for whatever it was selling for today. I left with the unwanted gift, and no picture frames.

Next I went to Target to get a refill on Wife's epi-pen, the emergency shot I am to give her if she ever has a horrible reaction to her allergy shots. It had two refills left, but the last time we did so was in Moorhead, since they last a year. Turns out Target doesn't carry generic epi-pens, so it was a no go. I did get two nice picture frames though.

Then I went to WalGreens to do a refill at a place we haven't filled from before.

I was having a day. Lots of crap going on, including thinking a lot about my family and how I'm going to be taking a break from them for a while for reasons I don't want to write about.

Then, I walked into the gas station to get some cigs. I walked in after you. You were a 65-year-old short woman with tinted glasses, brandishing a cellphone above your head and making a beeline for the counter, where the clerk was helping a customer.

"I've been trapped in your carwash for 15 minutes, honking. I can't get my car out. I have 911 on the phone."

The clerk chuckled a bit, I don't know why, perhaps because the way you held your phone up above your head as proof, perhaps because working at a gas station is a suckfest of drudgery, and this was something that hadn't happened before. Granted, it was insensitive. You snapped:

"It's not funny!"

The clerk got the attention of another store worker. She came over to help. You repeated your story, still holding your cellphone like it had AIDS, or you were trying to get reception. I wondered what was going on with the 911 operator on the other end while you waved the cellphone around.

"I have 911 on the phone right now!"

The second clerk chuckled at this.

"It's not funny."

Instantly, I thought how we are all tied together. Me with my shitty day. You with your shitty 15 minutes stuck in a car wash. The clerks with their shitty day trying to keep the floors clean despite the new dirty snow tracked in each second. All our lives suck today, and we all need a bit of respite from an uncaring universe to remember that none of it matters, and the most you can hope for is a Vonnegut-like post-modern perspective that the only point is to find some humor in the craziness.

"Yes it is." I said to you.

I got my cigs and left.

Horrid Torrid

Torrid is a clothing outlet for women who have difficulty finding clothes that fit in ordinary stores. Stores like Torrid and Lane Bryant meet a need that can be a savior for people like my fiance, who battle the war to find clothes that make her feel good. The prices are often higher, which is accepted because there is little alternative. 

However, the service has much to be desired.

Last winter, we first visited Torrid in the Mall of America. Fiance spent 90 minutes trying on various clothes with help from the staff. I spent 90 minutes wishing I wasn’t there, because I’m a guy, and getting me into the Mall of America in the first place is a major coup. Sitting outside the fitting room while fiance tries on clothes is about the most boring part of being a couple. I bring books, or my podcasts, to pass the time.

Fiance finally found several items that worked, and we went to the counter. However, she then discovered that she had misplaced her wallet. The clerk behind the counter went blank, an unconcerned manner that couldn’t care less about our predicament. Fiance and I searched all over the store, all the fitting rooms, anywhere it might have been. The clerks went about their business. I asked if there was some security they could call. The clerk said there was a number, but wouldn’t call it. Instead, fiance and I walked out of the store to go find an information station. The security person said that the wallet had been located and turned in at another station.

I nearly peed in relief.

We got the wallet back. A nice mother and daughter had found it on a mall chair and turned it in. They left no names. Everything in the wallet was in order. 45 minutes of panic was eased, no thanks to Torrid. We didn’t go back to purchase the items.

After 10 months, fiance had put the incident behind her enough to return. This time, however, she figured she would bypass the store and just order the clothes online. She was down to one pair of useable jeans, which would not last through the upcoming honeymoon, and Lane Bryant no longer carried her brand. We got the order in the mail. She tried on all the clothes, about $700 worth.

While a few things worked, most of it didn’t. The jeans sometimes fit around the waist, but were about a foot too long. In any case, they didn’t fit, and could never fit due to the fact that we are done growing taller.

So we returned to the Mall of America last night to return the items and give Torrid another shot. I left fiance to do her thing while I searched the Mall of America for an oil candle wick we need for the wedding. 

Candle wicks are the one thing you can’t find at the Mall of America I discovered. You need magnets? There’s a magnet store. You need oxygen? You can go to a store and pay them for the pleasure of breathing fresh air. But you can’t find a candle wick. Even at the Yankee Candle store, which only carries wax candles and accessories.

I came back to Torrid after my fruitless search. Fiance was at the counter, she beckoned me over.

Me: Hey

Fiance: You need to go outside, or you will just get mad.

Me: OK.

Later, fiance would recreate the story for me. Here’s how it went...

Clerk: Some of these clothes can’t be returned.

Fiance: What?

Clerk: Some of this is on clearance, and can’t be returned or exchanged.

Fiance: But there was nothing on the website that said that. I woudn’t have risked it had I known.

Clerk: I know. The website doesn’t let anyone know what is non-refundable.

Fiance: But you can’t return it?

Clerk: Correct.

Fiance: I bet people get really mad at you about that.

Clerk: Yes, but I am just a clerk. I can’t do anything about it.

Fiance: So how much is this stuff?

Clerk: $147

Fiance: I have to just eat that?

Clerk: What?

Fiance: So I have to just throw away $147 on clothes I can’t wear or return because your website doesn’t indicate what is clearance and what is returnable?

Clerk: Yes.

Fiance: My fiance is unemployed. We don’t really have the ability to just let that go.

Clerk: You are welcome to call customer service.

Fiance: I’ll do that.

Clerk: I hate my job.

So congratulations Torrid! You have successfully created a business to cater to larger clientele who depend on you to feel good about how they look. They pay more for this service, which is understandable. But that wasn’t enough. You had to go ahead and set up a system that allows them to buy things that can’t be returned, that can’t be exchanged, to take away more of their money. Please, take some more of our money as we try to go on a honeymoon, as we try to find me a job, as we go over budget on clothes because we’ve been wearing our old ones so long they have holes and finally had to come crawling back. Please, take our money. God knows we don’t need it for things like food and such.

Today I shit myself

So in the scheme of the engagement, registering for gifts should be one of the best parts, right? You get to pick out a bunch of stuff you wouldn’t buy otherwise, and people give that stuff to you. I’ve heard that this process can cause a lot of arguments between engaged couples, and while that might have been true with us, the real argument was between my body and Target. Let’s start at the beginning. 

I got to sleep in today, a wonderful long sleep that lasted until 10, which is pretty good for me these days. I woke up and felt that kind of sleep drunk you get when you sleep late and walking becomes tricky.

Today we were set to complete a bunch of errands. First we had to return a book to the library, return an overdue movie, mail some late bills, make a deposit at the bank, pick up more paint at lowes and make a credit card payment there and at Home Depot (also late).

We had a wonderful lunch at Samurai Asian Fusion. I had a Philly roll and a Tuna roll. I recommend the philly roll, which is salmon, cream chese and cucumber. I highly recommend the sweet potato roll, which is nicely sweet and a bit crunchy in the middle. It’s a great “dessert” roll if you are having three.

Then we went to Target. I’ve written about my aversion to shopping before in this blog, but this was a special kind of hell, since today every newly minted freshman and his or her parents were shopping for college supplies. Shelves were empty, particularly pillows. The place was crawling with emotion – kids ready to start their new independence while contrarily relying on their parents to set them up.

Fiance and I got the scanner from the service counter after a lot of hoopla with the registry machine since she had already done a few things online. We armed ourselves with large frappachinos and a sense of dread. She’s great at lists, and had already procured a list of items from Herberger’s at one of the wedding shows we went to back in February (she’s organized like that. I would have lost it long before March).

We started in the bedding. And after much debate, had decided on a few sheets, a comforter, quilts, and all that jazz.

Sidebar: guys, you must be very delicate in this whole process. There will be many things on your registry that don’t make the slightest bit of sense. Like waffle irons. I like a good waffle as much as the next person, but cleaning them, mixing batter, and the hassle of storage space for them makes me cringe at the idea of having one. Nevertheless, there will be a waffle iron on your registry. The best you can do is resign yourself to the fact that you are going to get a lot of stuff that you don’t want to deal with, but hey, relationships!

Luckily, we both do agree on a lot of things that we don’t need, particularly duvets. Neither of us knew what the hell it was or why we would want one, yet there was a whole aisle of them to choose from. We guessed it was like a summer comforter. I tried to imagine finding space for it in the house/apartment. We agreed to skip it. (Turns out a duvet is like a sleeping bag for your comforter. Yes, your blanket needs a blanket. And its this kind of thing that makes me hate people who invent things.)

We got through the rest of the bedding stuff after much discussion and moving out of the way for others to get through on their way to higher education. Gangs of college kids roamed the store and were too hip for all this.

We started looking at the bathroom stuff, trying to figure out what color scheme to go with, and finding the selection lacking. Any color we liked would inevitably have only a few items left for scanning, and not a full set of towels, hand towels, rugs, washcloths, and so on was to be found. In a store filled with a glut of choice, there was none to be found in the bath section.

Perhaps it was poetry that my body rejected Target in the bathroom section, because it was then that I shit my pants.

Literally. 

And thus, without warning, ended our first foray into registering. I was secretly happy to have a legitimate reason to leave. Fiance was secretly happy this happened, because she hates shopping about as much as I do, and this meant we didn’t have to go get groceries after. We could go home, I could shower, finish painting the basement, and she could nap. We’d work on the registry online and go back another day.

Sidenote: Naps are the best way to escape Fargo, even just for a little bit.

I don’t have much of an ending for this, but I have known about my aversion to department stores for a long time and will just end this with a prose poem I wrote once about Walmart after reading Ginsberg’s “A Supermarket in California”

Out of food, I make my way along the streets of Megaville with the defrost melting the grayish haze on the windshield.

Once at Wal-Mart, I manhandle my cart along the piles of boxes on the ground, almost hitting the pickled herring. I stop to decide what flavor of spaghetti sauce I want tonight, Garden Chunky or Garlic Overload. Florescent lights accentuate the bulbous hips of a sweatsuit-clad woman stockpiling Ramen Noodles.

               

My Viking ancestors had the well-stocked fields of England to shop through; I have tiled aisles with twenty kinds of popcorn.  I have stores that are paved over for bigger stores to give me more options.  Like twenty-one varieties of popcorn.  Low fat, buttered, natural, salted, desalted, light butter, imitation butter extract, movie theater butter, single packs, 6-packs, 12-packs, family size, salted with butter…

I try to decide between the butter and movie theater butter – under the intercom system thanking me for choosing Wal-Mart and the monotone drone of the freezers beyond the Arizona style barbecue chips – before leaving the butter on the shelf and leaving my mule-like cart. I place the movie theater butter next to the TV dinners and walk away, past the lone cashier among the row of registers, back to the frosted car and my empty stomach.

I think I saw my soul tonight

To the crazy-ass woman who stopped me on 13^th Ave.

Dear woman, 

I never met you before tonight, when I had to fully stop my car on 13^th Avenue to let you cross the street. I know you probably aren’t reading this, but I figure you can mentally collect internet traffic in the room in your head where I imagine there are shit stains on the walls spelling out your various conspiracy theories about salsas that are made in New York City. 

I was dropping off some books at the Carlson branch of the Fargo Library and took I-29 down to 13^th Ave. to stop at Cashwise to grab some non-curdled milk, the best kind of milk in my book, and some other provisions. I saw the bus at the stop in front of Kinkos from the time I got off the highway, but figured it would have enough time to get going before I needed to turn. I figured it would be a waste of energy to change lanes to turn right in front of the bus. 

Some guys with bikes got off the bus and headed down the sidewalk in the opposite direction, and as the bus pulled away, you stepped forward from behind the bus bench. You were a heavier-set woman and wearing some sort of shirt that was a loud turquoise, and your chin length frizzy mop of hair was a color of yellow not before known to man. I guesstimate you to be in your 20s, with a dark tan. 

You walked forward, past the bus bench, and hovered a foot off the curb into my lane. I wanted to turn, but was riding the brake to see what you were up to and to give you time to see me and back the fuck off. The road behind me was relatively clear, and in full sight of me you stepped off the curb into my lane as I hit my blinker. 

You waved. 

I slowed down some more. 

You waved more frantically. 

What the shit?

You were now fully in front of my car, waving to me like I saved your drowning puppy. You then started walking around the car to my window, still waving, and smiling, and I have no idea who the fuck you are. I searched my memory banks for former students you might match, but came up empty. No one, no one on earth that I know could be you. 

I was fully stopped now, and rolled down my window slightly, in retrospect I suppose this would have been the perfect opportunity for you to shove whatever weapons you might have been carrying in at my face, but you still seemed preoccupied with waving frantically at me. 

“Hi.” You said. 

“Hi.” I said. 

That was the extent of our conversation. You wheeled around and darted across 13^th before more cars could approach. 

What the hell? 

I finished my turn, parked, got some groceries, and tried to shake off the encounter. No, you are not anyone I know. Not at all. 

I am now terrified of you. And I will have trouble sleeping tonight without thinking of you crawling through the window while my fiance and I sleep and start waving again from the foot of the bed. You scare me. 

Please stop waving at cars. We are not your friends. 

Sincerely, 

Fargo Jones

Shopping trips make me hate America

Before embarking on this anecdote about a night in my life, I want to reference a graduation speech by David Foster Wallace. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122178211966454607.html  The daily grind/shopping section is particularly relevant and hits on the nose the absolute soul-sucking activity of having to go and get shit and not caring that you have turned everyone around you into an obstacle to your perfect life.

My night began by finding out our maid of honor will not be able to make it to the wedding due to what some call “ongoing operations” in Afghanistan. Fiance was devastated by the thought of losing her best and perhaps only friend besides me. After properly being there for her through the tears, we decided that I wouldn’t finish the basement last night, but would just go get some supplies. Two stops would suffice – Home Depot and the grocery store.

I pulled a piece of loose paint off the stoop and headed to Home Depot to get some outdoor paint and enough sealer to finish the basement. And since the sealer wasn’t quite matching the rest of the basement walls in whiteness even though it’s the same shit the previous owner used, I thought I would look into getting some paint to cover the sealer. The shopping trip from hell begins:

First I had to convince the paint mixer that a quart would be more than enough paint for three stoops and two other tiny spots on the house. Probably about 10 square feet all together. He wanted to sell me a gallon.

Then as the paint mixed I went off to find basement wall paint. A guy who looked sort of stonerish asked if I could use some help. He was clearly bored with his job of putting paint cans in stacks. I said I’m looking for basement wall paint. He directed me to the water sealant.

“I’ve got some of this, but is there paint to put over it?”

He looked at me confused. I continued.

“I have put two coats of this on the walls, and you can still sort of see through it. The can says you can put some paint on over the top to finish it.”

He pointed to the basement floor paint, which isn’t what I wanted. I now wanted him to stop helping me, but remained polite.

“OK. I think I’ll just look around a bit. Thank you for your help!”

He sort of ambled away. I looked at paint scrapers, trying to find a cheap plastic one that wasn’t too big.

“What you looking for?”

He was back! I explained I wanted a plastic paint scraper, but all I could see were packs of three, which was more than I needed. He pointed to the metal ones, which were 3 times the cost. I balked. He pointed to a plastic paint scraper that was the size of a Bob Ross paint pallet, but there were no happy trees swaying in the breeze in my head.

“I think I need something a bit more versatile.” I said. Fiance found this statement highly amusing when I later recounted the story.

So I got a metal scraper, picked up my mixed paint and said fuck it to looking for a latex wall paint because I simply did not want to have the dude try to help me again. I went searching at the far end of the store to figure out how much gutters would be to put up, and looked at drain spouts for 10 minutes wishing now that someone would ask to help me.

No one did.

So on to the check out.

Home Depot has a bank of four self check out counters, but I have yet to have them work right. This time I thought might be the first, since everything in the cart had a barcode. How wrong I was.

The girl that is the actual check out person said she would be over to help me as soon as the second thing I scanned didn’t work. “The mixed cans don’t work as well in these,” she said. She used her hand scanner, but it wouldn’t enter the price. She started to say things like “are you sure it isn’t up there?” until she finally figured out that she was using the wrong hand scanner.

So then I pay and am walking out to the car. I see an older woman and her cane-using mother walking the same direction and guess that they are parked next to me. I scoot to the car and practically throw the stuff in the trunk, but it’s too late and the cane woman is slowly getting into the car, which is fine. What isn’t fine is the part where the car was running, and she spent the next five minutes sitting there with her car door open so I couldn’t get into my car. Five fucking minutes of me leaning against my trunk and trying not to think horrible things about how easy it would be to grab her cane and beat her car door shut with it. I wanted to go and shut her door, but I’m an intimidating guy and didn’t want to get rape whistled or something, which is a real fear of mine from watching too many hilarious misunderstandings in sitcoms.

So I get out of there and finally get to Cashwise, where the adventure continues. I had five items to get, including some Ben and Jerry’s ice cream as requested by the Fiance to help with the Afghanistan emotions. I get to the frozen aisle and there is no one there except a woman with a shopping cart full of her groceries and young son and her husband. They are debating what ice cream to get, and her cart is sitting right in front of the Ben and Jerry’s door. Dammit! I go and get some garlic bread thinking they would be done. But I ended up standing there another five minutes as this woman looked through every fucking coupon in her fist full of coupons to find the right one. Politely waiting on the outside, but wanting to take her cart and shove it away inside.

Got the Ben and Jerrys and headed to the checkout, which was crazy busy. The self checkout counters were less so, and I got in the line with a couple who was nearly done scanning their items.

Pause here to insert how much I hate people who use the self check out when they have a cart overflowing with groceries. For some reason, I believe that self check out should be reserved for those without 100 items to scan.

I watched the next line over as three people pulled up, scanned their items, paid and left as the couple in front of me struggled to get Pert shampoo to scan, then gather up change between them to pay for the groceries – CHANGE!!!

I spent entirely too much time in lines, and even though it was nice to see a TSA agent waiting in a line at the grocery store, it wasn’t worth it. And it’s hard not to think about Fiance’s best friend going off to fight for our right to hate the miserable existence of daily life and waiting in shopping lines and dealing with overly helpful or non-existent employees while watching other people struggle to pay for food with change and have to spend 5 minutes finding a coupon to make ice cream affordable and perhaps help bring a bit of sunshine to this ridiculous world where jobs are still scarce despite recovered profits and growth in the corporate sector and you just want to take a dump on the grocery scanner as a statement but don’t want to spend a night in jail, although that’s becoming more tempting every day you don’t hear from the 30 resumes you sent out last week. And that sort of run on sentence is what goes through my head every minute I spend shopping which is why I wear headphones to keep the podcasts going and keep out the demons.