tuesday on the greenway

Yesterday Pam and I walked on the Greenway from New Street to Sands Blvd. That was about two-three blocks further than I planned. She is recovering nicely from her surgery and we think we might try a gravel path next week. Toss away the paved surfaces. It might be almost time to continue our walk on the D&L.

The Greenway was not horrible busy but there were people out there walking, running and on bikes. I stopped at the Little Free Library and deposited some books. It was very empty so I did not withdraw any. It's probably a good thing. Your hands get sweaty carrying them.

Then I spent the afternoon at David's church packing food for the food ministry. 150 quarts of a chicken gnocchi cream soup, that when chilled resembles wallpaper paste. Think about what it looks like when you open a can of Campbell's Cream of _____. That's what this looked like.

Then we did about 130 quarts of a ham and bean soup before running out of containers. We still had the vegetarian entree and the pulled pork to do. I guess they did that today.

Today was the first day I took Pat out since she hurt her knee last week. We went to Giant and she walked around the whole store. I ran up and down the aisles to actually get what we needed. Of course had I known I was going to the store I would have made a much more comprehensive list.

Yesterday, my brother had told me that Costco was having a sale on memberships -- $10 off -- and if I gave his name as the referral he'd get a $10 kick back. I needed to get a membership to move my RX there. My $200+ eye drops -- there are two of them -- are $176 there. Plus I'll probably need new glasses. His at the eye doctor were $800. He got them at Costco for $26 WITH "Transitions" lenses.

So today was the day. It was raining and what's better than a warehouse store for an indoor place to walk. This place is bigger than BJs. I have a BJs membership and I get my moneys worth on gas, and Sharon using it as a drug store. Every 8-9 months I have to buy paper products. I'm still using the bottle of laundry soap from 2 years ago. It was massive.  When I walk in there I just have this feeling of unchecked consumerism. Not only are the carts overflowing with packaged and prepared foods, but lots of other useless crap. And cases and cases of single serve beverage. The environmental impact of these stores make me want to throw up.

Now multiply all these feeling 10-fold at Costco. I wanted to run out screaming.

Economics forced me to stay.  I cannot afford nearly $500 a month for eye drops. It will be bad enough at about $375. The staff member that was doing my new membership told me I should go l "look around". I had no giant cart. I told her I already did. She looked puzzled. Then the computer went down and I had to wait 10 minutes for it to reboot. So I walked around again. Up and down every aisle. (There was one aisle only with K-cups! Talk about environmental nightmares.) I was tempted to buy a four pack of soda, but soda in plastic bottles, shrink wrapped in plastic was too much for me to bear. I just couldn't. No matter how cheap it was. I returned to customer service, picked up my card, and left. I went right past the cart checker ... empty handed.