Forecast: snow and wind, then more snow. With wind.

I don't know who made this "AccuWeather" map, but whoever it was is my personal hero. Not only for being funny, but also for making sure my area of the country is designated as part of the group that needs to hit the liquor store. Because I found out last year when the snow lay on the ground like a big fleece blanket with a deceptive three inch layer of ice underneath, you can get through the winter without the whiskey to make a hot toddy, but why would you want to?

12 things I always buy at Dollar Tree

Dollar Tree is, like, one of my favorite stores ever. Barnes & Noble is a strong contender; Ulta Beauty is definitely in the running. I deeply enjoy Hobby Lobby and Bed, Bath and Beyond. And I can always find time to go in Kohl's or Macy's. But Dollar Tree has a different vibe from any of those other places. It is homey, low-market (well, obviously, since everything costs a dollar), and the place where I will ONLY buy a number of commonly used household items, as follows:

1. Dish towels - If it's your thing, you can buy dish towels at Dollar Tree that are printed with wine bottles or latte cups or Santa: those things are at Dollar Tree in abundance. But they also have a large selection of neutral cotton dish towels in blues, greens and taupes that will go with anyone's kitchen and I just dare you to prove that you didn't spend $5 per towel on them at Williams-Sonoma. The towels do the job you bought them to do, and the moment they start looking ugly, you can either toss them in the wastebasket or delegate them to dusting duty.

2. Tea lights - We seem to have a number of ornamental candle-y arrangements around the place that require tea lights, which are those teeny candles that come in their own little aluminum holder. I find these little candles to be much more easy to deal with than votive candles, which, while bigger, have that annoying habit of leaking wax all over, say, the china cabinet in the dining room or the fireplace mantel. At Dollar Tree, you can get a plastic bag of sixteen tea lights for $1, each of which burns for about 2-3 hours. A total steal, especially when you compare that price to Hobby Lobby's, which is significantly more.

3. Tooth flossers - In this house, none of us like just plain old dental floss. We like those plastic doohickeys with the little piece of floss stretched on them. I don't want to get into a big (gross) thing about how all of us enjoy sparkling dental health due to the daily flossing our pearly teeth receive, but I will tell you that you can get a big bag of these handy flossers for $1 at the Dollar Tree. Compare that to the $2.89 you'd be spending on these very same things at Kroger, and even a math-impaired dork like me can figure out that you can get twice the flossing power at your friendly neighborhood DT.

4. Gift bags and tissue paper - Okay, some of the gift bags are ugly. But not all of them are. In fact, there are a good many cute ones available for any holiday you'd care to name. Well, except maybe ones like Arbor Day. And Columbus Day; I don't recall seeing any gift bags printed with the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria last month. But, okay: Christmas, birthdays, weddings, graduations, Easter and Valentine's Day, the Dollar Tree has them. Plus, they have a wide assortment of tissue paper, a really generous amount, and you can even buy brights and pastels along with the typical white. You will never be able to spend $4.95 on a gift bag from Wal-Mart again.

5. Movie candy - Going to the cinema? Need Milk Duds, Junior Mints, Charleston Chews, Raisinets, Starbursts, M&Ms, Goobers, Mike & Ikes, Laffy Taffy, Gummi Bears or any of a dozen other candies you can find behind the glass at the Loew's concession stand? Go to the Dollar Tree before your show and stuff your purse and pockets with $1 candy to avoid spending $5 per box on the very same candy. That'll leave you enough money left over to buy some popcorn, which the Dollar Tree also sells, but only in un-popped form. The ushers will give you the stink eye if you try to find an outlet to plug in a microwave.

6. Basic OTC medicines - Pain killers like ibuprofen, acetaminophen and plain ol' aspirin can be found at the Dollar Tree, along with their store brand of meds like cold tablets, decongestants, cough syrup, anti-diarrheal medication, allergy tablets, triple anti-biotic ointment, you name it. I keep a first aid kit in my car stocked with items from the Dollar Tree, as well as the medicine cabinets in the house. I also use Dollar Tree medications to stock a little kit for my husband to keep in his desk at work. You can also buy stick-on bandages, peroxide, isopropyl alcohol and other little items of that nature.

7. Little Debbie snack cakes - My husband has a terrible weakness for Little Debbie cakes, a fondness that is not shared by anyone else in our home except for the dogs. Dollar Tree has a wide selection of snack cakes at $1 per box, all the regular kinds: Sonic Brownies, Swiss Rolls, Oatmeal Pies, Zebra Cakes, Fancy Cakes, Honey Buns, Fudge Rounds and Nutty Bars are yours for the purchasing. They even have seasonal cakes like Christmas trees and those cute (but inedible) little heart-shaped ones for Valentine's Day. After paying $1 a box, I can't bring myself to spend the $1.89-$2.09 per box elsewhere. And no, these aren't old, stale, nasty cakes. They're just as fresh as the ones you'd buy at the grocery, just like the candy.

8. Paper product staples - Paper napkins, paper plates, paper towels, tissues, coffee filters and, if you're in a pinch, toilet paper. Just your basic white stuff, but it works great and it's cheap.

9. Party balloons - Dollar Tree has a big selection of both Mylar and latex balloons for a number of celebrations. Some of their balloons are pre-filled with helium, but if you want something special, a clerk will fill them for you, free. That'll make you think twice before going to Balloons, Etc. and paying $1.50-$3.00 per balloon. Dollar Tree also has a bunch of those cute little balloon weights to hold down your bouquet and keep it from taking off for the moon.

10. Wine glasses - I have to admit, my false pride makes it a bit hard to say, "Yes, I buy all my wine glasses at the Dollar Tree," but that's only because I'm an awful snob and need to be brought down a peg or two. But. But, but, but. Dollar Tree's wine glasses are virtually indistinguishable from a wine glass bought anywhere else, and I have to say that the time I've spent serving wine to my guests, I've never once had one smash their glass to the floor and say, "That does it! I am never coming here again and drinking your cheap wine out of your cheap glasses." So I buy the glasses and they're pretty and they're big -- *hiccup!* -- and if you serve enough wine and some nice little crackers with some cheese and olives and a bowl of smoked almonds, who the heck is going to care where the wine glass came from? All that matters is that it stays filled, right?

11. Disposable cooking containers - You know how nice it is to take food to people, right? A lasagna, a pie or cake, some cookies on a platter, a loaf of banana bread - gifts like that are always welcome for hostesses or the ailing or whoever you know who needs some home cooking. But I don't have to tell you what a pain it is for the recipient to make sure you get your Pyrex baking dish back, right? Especially if the person you're taking food to is a new mother or a post-op patient: those folks don't have the time to wash your casserole dish or your platter and make sure it's returned to you. So go to the Dollar Tree and spend one hundred pennies on a disposable aluminum baking pan and don't even think of going to the grocery store and spending FIVE DOLLARS -- no, I am not kidding -- on the very same pan. The only difference is that some of the grocery store aluminum-ware come with those "lifter" contraptions that don't really work anyway, so why bother? The giftee will be so happy to not have to wash and return your container, and you won't have to spend months afterwards thinking to yourself, I know I have a nine-inch Anchor pie plate around here somewhere before remembering that you used it to take an apple pie to your child's piano teacher. True story.

12. Christmas cookie tins - Speaking of containers, if you are a Christmas-cookie-baker, you can find adorable little festive tins in about three or four different sizes at the Dollar Tree. Line them with some of that above-mentioned tissue paper and you've got the sweetest and cheapest little vehicle ever for gifting someone with your homemade goodies. We stock up every year.

Because I'm weak

I don't think it speaks well for my character that I blow right past the dry cleaning establishment that's four blocks from my house, but where you have to park in their lot and haul your sweaters and your dressy wool coat and your husband's autumn sport coat, while on my way to a rival dry cleaning establishment that has a drive-thru window. Where, you know, everything can just be bundled through the hatch while sitting in the comfort of your car and listening to the radio.

The Creature from the Madge Lagoon

You just knew it wasn't all over with Madge, didn't you?

I scared her off the other day with my Teacher Look, but she must have been feeling under the weather, not quite her usual hideous self. Maybe she had a sniffle, a headache, or a sudden smiting with fire and brimstone from above. Who knows? Anyway, we had another encounter in the pool today and the old bat was in rare form.

So I was in the pool, naturally, doing my usual routine. I'd been there for about twenty-five minutes and was deep into cardio and feeling good, which was, incidentally, a feeling that was going to be leaving me shortly.

Madge came in - she's recognizable because she always comes in wearing a yellow bathrobe with a duck on the back - and I didn't worry about her because there were three open lanes. I was in my usual "step lane," the lane I always use because the lap swimmers don't like to use it: the set of steps that the handicapped use to get into the pool descends into the lane and shortens it by about six feet. So imagine my surprise when Madge came down the steps into the pool and hollered at me, "I'm swimming in this lane now, so MOVE."

The aquatics director happened to be walking by on the pool deck just about then and her head whipped around, her mouth and eyes open in astonishment. Me, I wasn't really much surprised. So I was ready for her.

I looked her square in the eye. "Can you say 'please'?" I asked with a tight smile.

"No," she said shortly. "This is lap swim time and you're not swimming laps, so move."

"I'm not moving because you are so incredibly rude. You can't come in here and demand that people move," I said determinedly. Because, listen: I don't want to start things with people. I don't. I'm not that kind of person. However, I'm no stranger to the fact that some people don't respond to either niceness or reason, which leaves standing up for yourself in a dignified yet rock-solid manner. I'd never scream curse words at anyone, especially an ancient old lady who looks like a manatee. But I'll be squizzled if I'm going to let some pushy old harridan order me around like she's Catherine-the-Freakin-Great, either.

The aquatic director spoke up: "Madge, this is not just lap swim time. This is lap swim and water jog time and you can't tell people to move."

"THIS HAS ALWAYS BEEN LAP SWIM TIME," Madge trumpeted, whirling about in the water like a hippopotamus preparing to charge.

"Well, it isn't anymore," said the director, frowning and putting her hands on her hips.

"I'VE BEEN SWIMMING HERE FOR SEVEN YEARS AND I AM SWIMMING IN THIS LANE," Madge shouted.

I drew a deep breath and looked her straight in the eye, feeling like I was getting ready to draw my revolver to fire the first shot at the OK corral. "No, you're not, you big bully."

Madge recoiled in shock. "You," she spluttered, "are MEAN." Which seemed a bit of the pot calling the kettle dirty bottom, but Madge is obviously one of those old folks who is more than willing to use her advanced age into manipulating people into doing her bidding.

"MADGE," bellowed the aquatics director, looking like she was fixin' to jump into the pool and drag Madge out by her hair, "either move to another lane or GET OUT OF THE POOL."

"You're not really swimming," Madge said bitterly, looking at me hatefully. "What you're doing doesn't count." (Like that floating-on-the-back and using her hands as paddles maneuver she does is equal to a 500 meter freestyle at the Olympic trials.)

"Maybe not," I said evenly. "But whatever it is or isn't, I'm doing it in this lane."

Because Wonder Woman is for realz, and she is me

Today I got home from Fishers at ten minutes 'til noon. I had exactly one hour before I had to be in yoga class at the YMCA, making my body bend and stretch in ways it doesn't necessarily want to. Unless, of course, I'm stretching to remove a bag of Hershey's Kisses from the top shelf of the cabinet where I hid them from myself last week, and then drop them on the floor, necessitating a bend-over to pick them up. Wait. Where was I?

Okay, anyway, I had an hour. And in that hour, I changed my clothes, ate some lunch, fussed at Aisling for leaving her crap lying around all over the house, made a meatloaf, stirred up some honey-oatmeal dough for the bread machine to bake, took a load of clean towels out of the washer and put them in the dryer, started a second load of towels in the washer, collected a stack of library books that are coming due, packed up my gym back and hopped into the van at 12:58 to make the six-block drive to the Y. Add to all that the fact that I'd put in a good, solid two hours of prep work for the Brit Lit final I am administering to a happy group of students on Thursday, and I'd say, "So who do you know who is a busy little Amazon and has two thumbs?"

The answer is "Me!"

And you were supposed to picture me pointing at myself with my thumbs.

Oh, never mind.

Reprise and Reprisals: Madge-at-the-swimming-pool

I'm kind of proud of that title. I flatter myself that it sounds like something Jane Austen might have come up with. Er, something with which Jane Austen might have come up. Up with something Jane Austen might have come?

Shut up.

Anyhoo, Madge, the elderly woman I encountered at the YMCA pool a few weeks ago, the one who told me, obnoxiously, that she was going to swim in my lane? I met her again today in the clear, chlorinated waters of the shallow end. All the lanes were in use by lap-swimmers; I myself was moving into my fortieth minute of high-cardio aqua aerobics and was feeling particularly sassy.

So when Madge came down the steps into the pool, she didn't look in my direction. But she did start moving toward me with a purposeful stride and it was pretty obvious that she was going to come up to me and attempt to commandeer my lane in her imperious way. I was all, like, grimly, "Hells to the no!" and was ready to square off with her, if I needed to. Because remember, I am both a mother and a teacher, which means that I am possibly one of the bossiest people alive, except for maybe Hugo Chavez. And one of the mores of a peaceful and prosperous planet is that people need to learn to wait their turns. Old or young, poor or wealthy, people need to stop being so freaking pushy and acting like the axis of the world runs through the middle of their ridiculous heads. For heaven's sake, just BE POLITE.

So I left her approach me, and when she got within six feet, I turned the ol' laser eye on her, that look which clearly says Do Not Frigging Mess With Me. It's not so much an entire facial expression as it is a dangerous glint in the eye, that same one Mel Gibson had in the Franco Zeffirelli-directed Hamlet, when he put some manners on Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. It's the same look I give to whisperers, note-passers, eye-rollers and sigh-heavers. And it works.

Madge stopped short and looked around, nonplussed, probably searching for someone else to persecute. Seeing that there was no option, she turned and went back to the steps, climbing out to sit on the bench, just like everyone else does when they're waiting for a lane to open. And while her head was turned away, the lifeguard caught my eye across the splashing of four swimmers and gave me a double thumbs-up.

Victory!

Lies your friends will tell you

I have a confession to make.

I have been known to speak in encouraging tones of bright confidence to my friends who have small chirren, telling them how someday, the little buggers will sleep past the crack of dawn; indeed, they'll sleep so long, you won't be required to feed them either breakfast or lunch. They'll just stagger, grumbling, down to the kitchen in flannel pajama bottoms and big, lumpy sweatshirts and raid the cupboards and the fridge, eating up several key ingredients you bought to use in making various recipes through the week.

I've also told my friends, the mothers of young kids and desperate for sleep and the desire to pee without an audience, that things are just so much easier when all the little ones are all out of diapers and able to pour themselves a drink without flooding the floor in a sticky sea of cran-apple juice.

Oh, these things are true, they really are. But I've been shamefully negligent in sharing the other side of the story, which is that somehow, you'll find you're busier with your teenagers than you ever were with your babies. Looking back on it, I fondly recall the days I spent at home with Meelyn-the-toddler and Aisling-the-infant. I was babysitting back then for my longtime friend Beth's toddler, Allison, and another little girl as well, the daughter of one of my brother's high school friends. The five of us were a jolly little fivesome: we finger-painted and sang songs along with the Raffi cassettes and read stories (especially Madeline stories) and swung on the swings; I cooked carefully balanced lunches and set up a little Montessori preschool in our playroom. It was utterly lovely, all four of them in diapers at one point, and everyone went down for a nap at precisely 12:30. They were all champion sleepers and I got a blessed two hours to myself every single day.

When I think about "bad days" back then, the only thing I can remember with eye-bugging clarity is the time when I found a crate of eighty-five library books in the trunk of my car, books I'd meant to return, every single one of them overdue by two weeks. The money I paid for that fine financed the complete renovation of the New Castle-Henry County Public Library, including furniture and computers.

But now we're at these days, the days when Meelyn and Aisling can pretty much fend for themselves in the closet, the bathroom and the kitchen - although Aisling frequently claims that she can't boil water and needs me to make her a grilled cheese sandwich immediately, if not sooner. But somehow, we're busier. Both girls have jobs; I have several part-time teaching jobs. My husband has a different job that is thankfully closer to home and demands less hours of him. But it's still retail and there is still a lot of time involved. We're busy, busier than we've been before, yet somehow clutching every moment to us as precious as we get ready to set our little chicks free from the comfortable and comforting nest.

All this is to say that there are reasons why I haven't updated my blog in almost three weeks.

It wouldn't be because I'm, like, lazy or anything. Or playing a really addictive online backgammon. No, no, nothing to do with anything like that.

What's that you're cooking?

When I find recipes I like on the internet, I generally scrawl them down on a piece of scrap paper, using whatever writing tool comes to hand: an ink pen, a stubby pencil, a highlighter marker. The other day, I was looking for a recipe for a potato crust (using instant potato flakes) for the tilapia filets we're having for dinner tonight, and I scribbled down this list on a Post-It, using a purple highlighter:

1/2 cup flour

1 egg, beaten

1 cup pot flakes

seasonings

I was going over that recipe just now to get ready to do some cooking when I gave it a second glance and realized that, for anyone who doesn't know what a strait-laced little goody-two-shoes I am, that "1 cup pot flakes" might seem a bit, I don't know, naughty.

And expensive.

Respect thy elders, and I mean NOW

I swim five or six days a week at our local YMCA, appearing poolside in bathing suit and flip flops, toting a towel, a water bottle and some four pound Styrofoam water weights, searching for an open lane. I get there anywhere between six o'clock in the morning and six o'clock in the evening, depending on the day. Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays are the busiest days, the ones in which the hard-core lap swimmers come and shame me with their flip turns and their butterflies and, apparently, their fully functioning gills.

I combine my laps with water aerobics because there's just no way I can swim laps for an entire hour like some of them do. Because the pool schedule designates the hours I'm there as LAP SWIM, I made sure to check with the aquatics director before just blithely taking up an entire lane so that I can occupy one small part of it with my Aquacise; I don't want to annoy anyone who comes in to swim laps, being one of those people who is hopeful of getting along nicely with others, although sometimes I wonder why I bother.

Today, for instance. Today, I got to the pool at 7:30, which is usually a good time to find an open lane. Unfortunately, every lane was full -- and this pool is enormous -- and some of the lanes had two swimmers. On days like this, there's nothing to do but just take a seat on the bench outside the ladies' locker room door and wait. Which I did. Patiently. Although I have to admit, I wish the YMCA, which has wi-fi, would set up some desks so that people could get some work done while they're waiting. I found myself thinking longingly of my laptop and all I could be getting accomplished instead of staring alternately at the clock and the pool, back and forth, again and again.

It took about fifteen minutes for one of the lanes to open. The lifeguard, who'd come over to sit beside me and chat, said, "Looks like you can go ahead and jump on in. Have a good workout!" The man who was climbing out gave me a nod and said, "Good morning! Feels great in there!" and I swam my first couple of laps with a light heart and a feeling of goodwill for everyone, embarking on my aerobics program with vigor about fifteen minutes later.

Thirty minutes later, I was still flailing away like a little trooper, having moved over to what we all call the "step lane," which, quite simply, is the lane that is shorter than the others because of the set of steps with two handrails that descends into the water to a distance of about four feet from the wall. The lap swimmers don't like to swim in that lane, obviously because it's painful to glide headlong into a set of steps. That kind of thing can really mess with your stroke. I use that lane a lot and have grown to feel that it's my special place in the pool, not only right there by those steps (which I need to get in and out of the pool due to my handicap) but also in easy view of both clocks, the one that marks the hours, and the one that marks the seconds.

So I'm doing my thing, right? And I've been there doing it for about forty-five minutes, having a pretty good workout. Heart rate up, burning fat, taking in air IN through my nose and OUT through my mouth and moving that water, when....

...what? What?

Ladies were starting to gather in the water at the other side of the pool for the nine o'clock water aerobics class and both dedicated lap lanes still had swimmers in them, so there were people around. But out of nowhere, someone's finger tapped me on the shoulder, and not in that "Hey, hi! Remember me from the bank/grocery/post office?" kind of way. It was more of a stabby kind of thing. Startled, I turned my head as I was jogging and saw an elderly lady standing there, far enough away that I wasn't going to nail her with an elbow, but still pretty darned close, considering we had an entire giant pool at our disposal.

I gave her an inquiring look, bemused at the fact that she was scowling at me under her white swim cap like she'd just found out I was a secret pool-pee-er.

"I'M GOING TO SWIM HERE NOW," she shouted at me, indicating the lane I was exercising in.

"Oh?" I replied politely, bringing my jog down to a light bounce.

"THERE AREN'T ANY OTHER LANES OPEN," she trumpeted.

"This lane isn't open," I pointed out.

"WELL, I HAVE TO HAVE SOMEPLACE TO SWIM," she yelled and grimly began to paddle toward the deep end, doing some kind of weird back stroke that involved using her hands like flippers. She lifted her head out of the water and gave me one last glare before making a "Hmmmph!" sound and putting her head defiantly back in the water. She looked like a great big old grouchy manatee.

So what was I supposed to do? She was an elderly lady, and I was brought up to respect my elders, to treat them with courtesy and gentleness, not to shout, "BRING IT ON, MAMAW!" and hold them under water. I mean, I could do that because I was at least thirty years younger than her, plus I was armed with those Styrofoam weights and I could have clocked her right in the side of her old grey head. But I didn't.

I did, however, do the next best thing: I ratted her out to the lifeguard. So ha, ha, HA.

"Oh, that's Madge," sighed Tara, the guard. "She's nasty like that to everyone. Just ignore her."

So we'll see how that goes, won't we? I seriously do not want to start anything with anyone, particularly an elderly woman. On the other hand, I don't think that either the elderly or the very young should be encouraged in their bad behavior because no one is brave enough to confront them. Like the three-year-old whom I observed throwing a huge fit in a restaurant the other day while his hapless mother dithered around saying, "Brandon, stop that. Stop that, honey! Get up off that dirty floor, sweetie, and Mommy will give you a piece of gum," I don't think Madge should be allowed to bully her way into other people's swimming lanes because people, namely me, will allow themselves to be run off from the lane they had to wait fifteen minutes to claim.

It remains to be seen if Madge will allow herself to be ignored.

Creepy old perv or innocent grandpa?

I was at the grocery store with Meelyn on Friday and we'd filled our cart and finally made our way to the check-out. We had to wait just a little bit, but when it was our turn to start unloading all our food onto the conveyor belt, we did so with great dexterity, having practiced this maneuver many, many times before.

I was unloading the small part, the part where a child can sit, so my back was to the people in line behind me. Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem at all -- I am not noted for my paranoia -- but there was a problem. With "but" being the operative word, only add another "t" to the end of it.

As I was removing items from the cart and placing them on the belt, I couldn't help but feel something? someone? touch my bottom. I sort of froze for a split second, evaluating the situation. I mean, I've been to Italy before and I don't know if things have changed over there in the past thirty years, but my bottom got touched, like, all the time. It was great. I'm kidding. Sort of. Anyway, I was only fifteen at the time and my bottom was, well....different than it is now. I glanced quickly back over my shoulder and noticed that the old gent who was behind us in the line was actually BEHIND us. It was his behind touching my bottom.

I murmured, "Excuse me," and pushed our cart a little bit forward so that I'd be out of his way and continued piling groceries on the belt. A few seconds later, there it was again: a gentle but insistent pressure on my backside. Another quick glance confirmed that it was that man again, standing back to back with me, pressing his rear against mine.

Flustered, I moved the cart a bit forward again, deciding not to say "excuse me" again because it was just kind of embarrassing, you know? I mean, the dude was old, right? And because he was so old, it just didn't right to imply that he was engaged in some kind of pervy shenanigans that might have gotten his face slapped if he'd done such a thing forty years previously.

Because old men don't think nasty thoughts, do they?

So, back to the groceries. Back to the unloading. We were almost finished, and Meelyn, oblivious to my plight, was standing in such a manner that I couldn't push the cart forward any further without mowing her down. Which is why, when the elderly man pushed his keister into my derriere for the THIRD TIME and just left it there, touching me, I had no good way to escape.

Let me just go off on a rabbit trail here. American women, for all our Virginia Slims and equality and freedom and such, are often just too freaking nice. We are so nice that we let people get away with doing stuff that they shouldn't ought to be doing because we don't want to make a fuss, don't want to cause a commotion, don't want to embarrass anyone or draw undue attention to ourselves or whatever. So we let people carry on doing something that is clearly wrong - or perhaps maybe....not so clear? When you're in a situation that's hard to define, what exactly can you do to define it?

For instance, should I have turned around and said to the old codger, "Sir, I can't help but notice that you've pressed your backside rather firmly against mine three different times now and I'd like to know just what you're doing? I mean, are you just in a hurry and needing to get your groceries unloaded quickly and are therefore being heedless of my personal space? Or do you have some other intent? I need to know so that I can decide whether I should hit you with my purse, or threaten to have my husband hunt you down or just give you the Miss Manners patented glacial stare-and-thin-lipped-smile combo."

Instead, I just turned all the way around so that I was facing him. He must have sensed my breath on the back of his neck, because all of a sudden, he pulled his bum in and, casting a furtive look over his shoulder, suddenly busied himself with re-arranging all the boxes and cans in his own cart.

He wouldn't look me in the face, wouldn't meet my eyes.

I didn't say anything. How could I? I mean, maybe he was mortified that he'd run into me three different times. Sadly, my bottom does stick out a good bit. On the other hand, if you were an elderly clandestine bottom-rubber, mine does make an easy and visible target. It's just all RIGHT THERE, hard to miss.

I didn't want to hurt his feelings. I didn't want to call him out in front of all those people. I was second-guessing myself like crazy by that point, anyway. Surely it was just my imagination that led me to think that my rear end was not only being touched, but pressed against?

No. It wasn't my imagination. I felt all weird and twitchy about that incident for the rest of the afternoon, wondering what I would have done and how I would have felt if it had been Meelyn's bottom he'd touched. Because I was willing to give him the benefit of the doubt when it came to my hiney, but discovered that I was totally and completely unable to summon any feelings of "Aw, the poor old thing...he probably didn't even realize," when it came to Meelyn's hiney.

I would have jumped over the cart full of groceries and gone all Matrix on him.

Later that evening, when my husband and I were at dinner, I recounted my touchy tale to him. When I explained the first incident, he just nodded his head to acknowledge his agreement that it was probably nothing, but raised his eyebrows when I got to the second episode. By the time I was getting to the third moment of the old man pressing against me, my husband laid down his fork.

"Did you say something to him?" my husband asked.

I shrugged and swallowed a bite of salad. "What could I say that wouldn't make me look like some freakishly high-strung individual?"

My husband gave me a long look and then replied, "A lot of the time, that's probably what people like him count on. That no woman is going to want to accuse some nice old fart in a Mister Rogers cardigan of touching her for fear that she's going to seem hysterical and bizarre. Because what could be more harmless-looking than a guy who looks like he could be your granddad? That just gives men like that a green light to go ahead and touch a few more ladies. Never in a way that seems on purpose, like just reaching out and grabbing. But in a more subtle way, pressing against a butt in a grocery check-out line, 'accidentally' getting some side-boob action with his elbow when he reaches across you as we pass the collection plate at church...."

I gulped and glanced around nervously, doing a quick Spot-the-Pervert check amongst my fellow diners. "You're freaking me out. Like there's this whole world of dirty old men out there, prowling around trying to cop a feel."

It was his turn to shrug. "Well, that stereotype got started somehow. We can't blame it all on Benny Hill." He picked his fork back up and speared some lettuce on it.

"So, if this sort of thing should happen again? I should?...."

My husband smiled his lop-sided smile, the same one that melted my heart when we first met. "You look at him and say, in a very quiet voice, 'If you don't stop touching me, I am going to break you in half, motherfu.....'"

"Okay. Gotcha," I interrupted hastily.

Next time....

Observations (admittedly mundane)

I think it's a real shame, here in my city, that none of the plumbing companies -- and I just Googled eight of them -- saw fit to locate their businesses on John Street. That seems like a regrettable oversight.

If you're at the doctor's office and you're sitting there in an exam room waiting, bored, and decide to sneak your book out of your handbag to read a bit and then the doctor comes in right afterwards and says, "Oh! What are you reading?" why is it always some book like a Sookie Stackhouse novel instead of, say, A History of Western Philosophy?

Life would be so much easier if butter tasted like castor oil.

A dog who just came in from the rain is exponentially more likely to want to sit on your lap than a dog who just got home from a good, long spell at the groomer's.

Because I have That Kind of Face

Do you have that kind of face, a face like mine? A face that beckons every weirdo in a thirty mile radius and says, without your lips even moving, "Tell me something about your scary life. GIVE ME DETAILS." A face that convinces people that you should be the recipient of their most personal information which they will tell you and tell you and tell you, even though you're actively backing away while looking at your watch and saying, "OH LOOK AT THE TIME! I'M LATE FOR MY LOBOTOMY APPOINTMENT."

Listen, I am a nice person. Fairly nice. Say, not nearly as nice as my grandmothers (they both had That Face too) or as nice as my mother, but one heck of a lot nicer than Kim Jong Il. I'm not insensible to the needs of others to unburden themselves of painful experiences, or find a shoulder to cry on. I understand that, I really do. And I'm not actively opposed to being the person who holds the burden or offers the shoulder. At least until last Monday, I wasn't.

People have told me stuff ever since I was sentient enough to sit up straight and say, "What happened next?" (Note: It is ALWAYS a mistake to ask this question. A better question to ask might be, "Do you hear that tornado siren?") One time I remember in particular was when I was a Ball State student and a fellow co-ed from a class on modern poetry followed me to the student center, talking. And talking. I bought a Tab, she bought a Tab. I went to sit in a booth, she accompanied me. And while we were sitting in the booth drinking our Tabs, she confided in me, "When I was in high school, my acne got so bad, I tried to dry out my skin by soaking cotton balls in lighter fluid and using it on my face."

Yeah.

I told the world's record for the fastest speed at which one can exit a booth while babbling, ""I'msosorrybutIhavetogo.IjustrememberedIhavetocatchaplanetoMadrid.BecauseIjustdecidedto

bea foreignexchangestudent."

Episodes like this have continued to happen over the years since I received my diploma, which was for English literature, but maybe should have been for psychology. But one of the worst in recent memory happened last Monday.

I was at the YMCA, in the swimming pool, getting ready to start the hour-long water aerobics class I attend. It's a pretty big class, about twenty-five people, so we're all crowded into the water like a school of little fishies. It makes it easy - FAR too easy - to strike up a conversation with people nearby. Now, listen, when I go to the gym, I don't mind trading pleasantries with people, but I go there to work, and my feeling is that if I'm in the pool conversing with my fellow splashers, I'm not really giving my all to the cardio, know what I mean? So I try not to get involved with the talkers.

Try as one might not to get involved, sometimes the talkers will just HAVE YOU. As I was warming up for the workout, one of them made her way over to me and said, innocuously, "So how are you this morning?"

I smiled at her, swishing my arms back and forth through the water, warming up those muscles. "I'm great! How are you?"

MISTAKE! MISTAKE! BAD MISTAKE!

If you get the vibe that someone might tell you a bunch of personal stuff about themselves you definitely do not want to hear, it is a very, very bad idea to ask them, even out of social politeness (the kind where you don't really care how they are, but ask anyway because that's just what we DO) how they're doing. You know why?

THEY'LL TELL YOU.

The water aerobics instructor, Becca, waded through all the people in the pool and started the class, saying, "Let's start with a jog. Move those arms and get your knees up high!"

"Well," my pool friend said confidingly over the splashy noises going on around us and the sound of Bachman-Turner Overdrive singing "Takin' Care of Business" in the background, "You might have wondered why I don't have any teeth."

Honestly, what do you say when someone says something like this to you? I mean, you have to be nice to people. Yes, you do. Don't argue with me. The world is bad enough as it is without people like you and me responding with something like, "No, I can truly say to you that I have never even once wondered why you have no teeth and I don't want to think about it right now, so move on, sister."

Becca yelled out, "Jumping jacks! Arms UP! MOVE that water, ladies!"

I said, "Uhhhhh.....welll....err......"

"I don't have any teeth because I used to do crack," my pool friend said at high volume.

"Oh, I'm sorry," I said, hoping that was the right thing to say. It hardly seemed appropriate to say something reassuring like, "That's okay. I know a lot of people wholost their teeth because they did crack" because I don't. Thank goodness.

"Yeah, me too," she bellowed. Becca looked inquiringly over her shoulder and then said to the class, "Back to a JOG, high knees! PUMP those arms!"

"Yeah, the guy I live with did too, but we quit."

"Oh, good!" I offered plaintively, wishing that Becca would tell us to do the remaining forty-five minutes of the class under water.

"It was bad," my friend hollered, shaking her head dismally. "I have four kids, and they had to go live with my mother."

"I'm so sorry!" I yelled back, splashing. I tried to put a little distance between us by craftily moving back in the water, but she caught on to me right away and followed.

"Boy, you really move around in the water!" she observed. "Well, anyway, where was I?"

"I have no idea," I said firmly, but she'd already recalled that she'd left off at the part where her kids were with her mom because she and her live-in boyfriend were both doing crack.

"So anyway, they're pretty much grown up now and I wanted to get some teeth, but now I have TMJ and osteo-arthritis in my jaw, so it isn't going to work out," she said, confusing me with her slightly garbled story.

"Oh, I'm sorry...."

"So my son? The one that's twenty-one? He came over to our place the other night and he stole about eighty vicodin pills out of our bathroom medicine cabinet."

At that point, I nearly just stopped in defeat and drowned myself. I mean, what the heck? Who was this woman? The other ladies in the class are retired teachers. Retired nurses. Current nurses who work non-day shifts. Ladies who serve Meals-on-Wheels and volunteer at St. Vincent de Paul. Ladies who finish the water aerobics class and shower and go to bridge club together. I'm familiar with and comfortable with all those people, and most definitely out of my sheltered league when dealing with former crack addicts and the toothless mothers of pill-stealers. Not that I don't totally applaud her for being able to beat the crack thing, and not that I'm not sorry that her life took such a bad turn that she couldn't even raise her own children - that's a tragedy no matter what. But....but...why can't I just do my exercise? WHY?

"Cross-country SKIS, ladies! Get those arms and legs MOVING!" shouted Becca. The other members of the class obediently began thrashing around in the manner of skiers on an open field of snow. I felt like I'd just been hit in the side of the head with one of their poles.

"He's probably gonna sell them," she predicted gloomily. "And my arthritis is going to be kicking my butt tonight."

"I'm...so sorry," I offered inadequately. "Listen, I need to get out of the pool. I have to pee." It was a frantic bid for escape and a total lie. But at this point, WHATEVER it took to get away, anywhere.

"Oh, me too!" she exclaimed brightly. "I'll go with you!"

A dentist's office rant and poll

I just went to the dentist's office for my regular six-month check-up, filled out some paperwork that needed to updated, read a copy of Redbook from cover to cover, played around on the internet on my phone, counted the ceiling tiles, mentally rearranged the furniture and added a couple of plants and more side tables, rehearsed every swear word I've ever heard, invented some new ones and finally, after forty-five minutes, got up, walked back over to the reception desk with steam coming out of my ears and nostrils, and informed the receptionist that there were places I had to be, things I needed to be doing and a LIFE I NEEDED TO BE LIVING, and re-scheduled for next Thursday at 1:00.

I'm tempted to show up at 1:45 and innocently say, "What? You mean I'm late? Like you were last week? Oh, sorry. It sucks when people frack around with your schedule, doesn't it?"

I understand that doctors and dentists and optometrists in all their many permutations have emergencies that throw off their schedules. Don't we all? Sometimes something as mundane as a slow freight train can make you ten minutes late for an appointment and send you screeching into the parking lot with your hair on fire. I understand those things.

But if a doctor's office is running more than fifteen minutes behind schedule, the front desk people need to start making some calls (that's one of the reasons we have to give them our home and mobile phone numbers, right?) instead of just casually allowing hapless patients to trail in and then sit there, cooling their heels. It's just bad form. It says, "I am a doctor and my time is more important than your time because, well, I am a doctor and I care nothing for you and your substandard master's degree from an inferior university or the child you have to pick up at school or the fact that you were due back at work for a meeting - SIT STILL AND KEEP QUIET, humble peasant. I will see you when I see you."

It also says that, emergencies barred, patients are being scheduled too close together. And that the office is run inefficiently. And it makes me really mad.

What do you do when you're kept waiting? Comment here on on Facebook, either one. Answer any or all. No fair telling me that I'm a grouchy old bat: I already know.

1. How long a wait do you feel is too long?

2. Do you sit there fuming in silence or do you inform the receptionist that you can't wait?

3. Have you ever considered biting your dentist on the thumb to revenge yourself?

4. If your doctor's office is one of the ones with the sign that reads "Appointments canceled less than 24 hours in advance will be billed our regular fee," have you ever considered billing them for your time for making you wait longer than fifteen minutes?

This just in...

Remember these? I don't think I've seen pantyhose packaged in the actual L'eggs egg form since....the night of my high school graduation? Anyway, I was just browsing through the Femail section of the U.K. Daily Mail, and I have just discovered that panty hose are OUT, a total fashion no-no. Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge (the former Kate Middleton and new bride of Prince William) was excoriated with vigor in the Mail for wearing "nude tights," which the features editor severely claimed made her look "middle-aged and dated."

A couple of weeks ago, People online had an article with the breathless title "Is Kate Bringing Back Sheer Pantyhose?" which makes it sound as if she's hauling them in on a cargo ship and then driving around on a forklift in a warehouse, stacking pallets of hosiery.

I make no claims on being a fashionista, but I wasn't aware that tights, er....hose, ever went out of style. Are you telling me that businesswomen going to meetings and teachers in classrooms and female lawyers arguing cases in court, not to mention all the people going to church and funeral homes and fancy-dress dances are going to these places with bare legs? I know that our culture dresses down a lot and also that women don't wear skirts and dresses as often as they used to, but still. Still. I mean, not everyone has a perfect pair of pins that are ready to show off to the critical public eye.

What are you supposed to do with that scar you got from a bike wreck when you were fifteen? Or those veins on the backs of your knees? Or your pallid skin with variable hues that range from salt white to marble white to snow white? Well, I'll tell you: you're supposed to be smearing self-tanner on them, according to a How-To article I read on Yahoo. That way your undressed legs can go from Crayola orange to Sharpie orange to traffic cone orange, and won't that be a big improvement?

Nobody wants to wear those horrible "sun-tan" pantyhose from the seventies, but I thought the entire point of nude hosiery was to make your legs look, well, NUDE. As in, the color of your skin, with all the minor imperfections in texture and hue nicely covered up.

Why is that considered middle-aged?

If it is, then put me on the list with the duchess. When I wear skirts and dresses, I like that "nude tights" look.

My personal idea of hell on earth

I was at our local YMCA this morning, dragging myself out of the pool after an hour of water aerobics (don't be too impressed - I'm a member of the Silver Splash class where the lady closest to me in age graduated from high school with Calvin Coolidge) and one lady said, as she slipped on her flip-flops and picked up her towel and swim cap, "I'm going camping with my son and daughter-in-law and grandkids this weekend, so I'm going home to take a shower."

We all made that "ahhhhhh!!!" noise associated with grannies getting to spend time with the grandkids and she continued, "I just feel like I never really get my best shower here, and since we're going to be gone until Sunday evening and I won't get a bath or a shower until then, I want to make it a good one."

"You won't get to take a shower until Sunday evening?" another lady asked dubiously. "You must be camping rough."

"Yes, with a tent and everything," said camping lady, "but it's worth it to be able to spend time with the kids!"

My heart sank down to my bare toes. Honestly, I managed to find one of the few men in this area who, due to experiences in the Army with camping outdoors during the winter, refuses to camp, fish, hike or shoot animals with gun or arrow, thus extracting myself from the possibility of close association with the great outdoors. I have brought Meelyn and Aisling up to fervently believe that Nature is best viewed through windows, behind which we can enjoy either the central air conditioning or the central heating, whichever is appropriate. But I'd never really considered until that moment that someday, they meet men who actually want to go outside and stay there, and those men may influence my sweet girls into thinking that spending all weekend out in this terrible 90 degree summer heat and sweltering in an airless tent and cooking on a teeny little Coleman stove (or worse yet, a campfire) and going showerless for days on end is a fun way to bond.

And they may drag my innocent grandchildren into that mess.

And! I, as a doting grandma, might have to GO WITH THEM and live in outdoorsy squalor in order to prove my devotion.

As I drove home from the YMCA, I pondered whether or not I actually love anyone in this world enough to voluntarily spend the weekend in a tent, unbathed. I don't think I do. I will pack them up the most awesome picnic basket ever, and even tuck in some citronella candles and an Aim-n-Flame. I will stand on my front porch to wave goodbye and shout, "I love you! Have a great time! See you on Sunday!"

But I don't think I can actually go along. Unless maybe my husband and I can somehow obtain one of them camper-truck things like in the picture above. It looks like that vehicle is big enough to at least have a sink where I can splash my face, brush my teeth and take a sponge bath. I could probably do that for a weekend, for the sake of my daughters and grandchildren.

But I'm telling you, I already don't like those sons-in-law.

Things that make you go "eeeewwwww...."

So today for lunch I was scavenging around in the fridge looking for something to eat and I came across half a baked potato, left over from dinner the other night when the first half was enough and the second half too much.

"Tasty!" I thought, and pulled it off the shelf and popped it in the microwave.

While I was waiting for it to nuke, I got a package of shredded cheese out of that same fridge, and then happily remembered one of those little packets of Oscar Mayer bacon bits that was in the cupboard. A cheese and bacon potato (accompanied by a number of sliced jalapeno peppers, of course) sounded like a perfect lunch.

When the microwave timer dinged, I took out the potato and threw some shredded cheese and the bacon bits on it, added my hot peppers and a little salt and popped the top on a Diet Coke. It was really, really good.

Until I finished.

Getting up from the table, I picked up the packet of bacon bits, preparatory to putting them back in the cabinet. In doing so, my eye happened to fall on a sentence in red letters printed on the little zip-seal bag: BEST IF EATEN WITHIN FOURTEEN DAYS AFTER OPENING.

Oh dear, I thought. I know those things have been in there for at least three months. Maybe longer. I can't even remember when I bought them.

Which is when my eyes fell on the sentence directly below that one:

REFRIGERATE AFTER OPENING.

All of a sudden, my baked potato didn't seem so tasty. I've been waiting all afternoon with a sense of impending doom for the throwing up to start, but so far so good. Unless they make their way through my digestive tract and instead of throwy-uppy, I....

Oh, it just doesn't bear thinking about. Is it too late to get my stomach pumped?

It's been a longish kind of week...

It's been one of those weeks -- a seven-day period in which I have been called, several times, to exercise a love for the human race that I do not feel. Mostly by not killing someone, because I hear that kind of decisive action is frowned upon by 1) God; and 2) society, at least the kind of society I have been participating in during my forty-something years. And wish to keep enjoying, unless I get a better offer to move to a desert and become a hermit. I would like to think I'm not alone in this and not just wandering in a MURKY HAZE OF MENOPAUSAL ANGST, but sometimes I feel terribly alone. Everyone else seems so....nice. Except for the people I'd like to kill, who are idiots, every last one of them. Ain't that always the way?

Human nature [mine specifically]

If I were, say, in a parking lot. And there was someone backing out of a parking space who did so in a manner that struck me as being boneheaded -- just shooting straight back with only a minimal fuss regarding mirrors, pedestrians, stray shopping carts and, incidentally, MY CAR -- I would say something like, "Geez, you ridiculous turd! SLOW DOWN and take a look around, how's about?"

But if there was another person who, while I was waiting to park in the space his or her car was currently occupying, s-l-o-w-l-y unloaded the groceries, climbed carefully into the car, laboriously fastened the seat belt, turned on the car and then checked every mirror twice," I would respond by muttering, "Yes, I've got ALL DAY to sit here waiting for you. Please take your time. Check your phone messages! Find another radio station! Take a look at your teeth in the vanity mirror! I've nothing urgent going on and it's SO MUCH FUN sitting here in this parking lot waiting on you to LEAVE, I'm just nearly beside myself with excitement."

I simply cannot be pleased. I don't think this speaks well for my character.

The unbearable brightness of seeing

I've been invited, on Facebook, to participate in something called "Earth Hour," an event of which I was previously unaware. And it's a good thing, as it turns out, because there's nothing like happenings like Earth Hour to exasperate the living [deleted to spare my mother's feelings] out of me and undo all the good that's being done in me by the application of greater amounts of prayer during Lent and some pre-menopause vitamins my husband picked up for me at GNC.

Earth Hour, which will happen tomorrow, March 26 at 8:30 p.m., is the time when we are all to shut off the lights in our houses to "take a stand against climate change." (See the Earth Hour website by clicking here.) According to the website, this is more than just fumbling around in the dark for sixty minutes and whacking your ankle against the coffee table, it is "all about giving people a voice and working together to create a better future for our planet."

I am not sure how shutting off the lights in the house for an hour is supposed to give people a voice, although I can see that there might be a bunch of voices lifted up yelling, "Oh, $#&@!" as they hurt themselves in the dark. Apparently, this is about "sustainability issues," and stopping "the degradation of the Earth's natural environment" and also, loftily, "building a future where people live in harmony with nature."

What a load of crap.

People do not live in harmony with nature because nature, my Earth Hour friends, is the boss. Ask the people of Japan. Their country ran right up against nature in that earthquake and the following tsunami and there is nothing harmonious AT ALL about that mess. Their lights have been turned off for them and it is absolutely nothing that they wanted to happen.

Our pioneer ancestors here in the United States lived much closer to nature than we do. Here in Indiana, my forebears and their neighbors didn't have electricity. They didn't have running water. They didn't have indoor plumbing. And you know what? Their entire EXISTENCE was about keeping nature at bay, conquering it. Can you imagine what a relief and a joy it was to those people to spend years clearing their land, eventually building barns and replacing their log cabins with real houses? Can you imagine how exciting it was to have "the electric," as my great-grandparents called it, run to those houses? How amazing it was to have water, both cold and hot, running in sinks in the kitchen and the bathroom? How amazing it was to have a coal furnace that kept everyone warm?

We are soft, now. We've lived so long with those amenities that we've forgotten how lucky we are to have them. We've lived so long with them that we -- or at least some of us -- have the gall to scorn them. I think the biggest irony is that this Earth Hour palaver has been spread largely through the internet. Which operates ON ELECTRICITY, with desk top models that are plugged into wall outlets and laptop batteries that are charged and why does this fact seem to have escaped so many?

And why don't those same people understand that the constant drive of civilization has been to be in harmony with nature by protecting ourselves from it? Nature is red in tooth in claw not only in wildlife; it's also pretty down and dirty environmentally, as in the aforementioned Japan. I wonder if any of these folks who plan to turn their lights off at 8:30 tomorrow suffered through Katrina, when the whole push was to put as much of a halt to Mother Nature's gallop as they could after the terrible flooding. People needed food to eat that was unspoiled. They needed potable water. They needed toilets and beds and places to wash themselves and their clothes.

Three of those things I mentioned depend largely on electricity. Efficient cooking, bathing and washing can be accomplished through solar power, I suppose, but when the need is urgent, there's nothing like a big old generator to get things done. You can drink warm water out of bottles. And unless you have one of those adjustable beds or an electric blanket, the place where you sleep is electricity-free.

But then you have to think about the people who are served by electricity in ways beyond the normal scope of most people's lives. What about the people who are on dialysis machines? Ventilors? What about babies in NICU in their incubators? What about the people who need radiation treatments and MRIs and CAT scans and surgery? Do you want a surgeon to take out your gall bladder by candlelight? No? Can't blame you. Neither do I. Thank goodness we have all this EVIL electricity to keep all those things going so that people don't have to die at birth, like they did in generations past because we didn't have the technology to hook a baby up to an electric heart monitor. Thank goodness our life expectancy isn't 40 years old, which was the average life span for a man in 1900. You can get treatments for your cancer or your failing kidneys and any number of other ailments that used to kill people by the dozens. Thanks to electricity.

The last thing that strikes me as being so bogus about Earth Hour is this: We're all being called to turn off our lights at 8:30 tomorrow evening. Just the lights. No one is being asked to unplug the computer or the television, the washer and dryer, the refrigerator. Please tell me - what good does this do? Yes, yes, "raise awareness," blah blah blah. Big flippin' deal. This serves no purpose whatsoever, unless it might actually wake some people up so that they can see how fortunate we are to live now, in this time and place. With electricity and the technology that's been brought into being through it. And Nature, kept at bay, so that we can enjoy this easy life we've been given in civilization.

Please feel free to call me honey

I went to Aldi today to do the weekly food shopping and I went alone for once. I usually take at least one of the girls with me because Aldi is one of those bag-and-tote-it-yerself places and it's always nice to have an extra set of hands when you're sacking it all up and stowing it away in the car. But today I was on my own, which means I am free to enter into conversations with total strangers, a character trait which the girls discourage, my mother completely understands and my brother finds utterly reprehensible.

"I suppose you're one of those people who talks to people in line at Disney World and the movie theater and in the waiting area of the Outback," he said superciliously.

"Oh, yes," I replied. "I am particularly friendly at the Outback because I'm usually working on a Foster's draft."

I wasn't drinking a beer at Aldi when I was standing in line with my shopping cart full of groceries, but I struck up a little conversation with the elderly man behind me who was holding a gallon of milk in each hand.

"Why don't you go in line ahead of me?" I asked. "Your hands are going to get really cold standing there holding that milk and I've got an awful lot of stuff in this cart."

"Why thanks!" he said, smiling and nodding his head affably. "My hands were already kind of cold and I'd just got to the line."

He went up ahead of me and we chatted about the deliciousness of the Aldi brand green tea as compared to the way more expensive Bigelow and Lipton brands. When he was ready to leave, he turned and called out, "Thanks again, ma'am!"

It was kind of odd being called "ma'am" by someone who was clearly old enough to be my grandpa, but I smiled and said, "You're welcome."

Evidently it struck him the same way because he went toward the automatic doors, but paused and turned back around. "Ordinarily, I would have called you honey," he said apologetically, "but my granddaughters tell me I'm not supposed to do that anymore."

The cashier and I both giggled. "You can call me honey anytime you want to, honey," I said generously.

"Me, too," offered the cashier.

"Aw, it's just a good old world, isn't it?" he asked engagingly, and left with his milk.