A relatively new friend of mine and I had decided to hang out last night after she got off of work. We only really became friends of circumstance, having very little in common, other than that our respective significant others at the time she and I met were sleeping together in a hotel room, both thinking that neither of us had any clue what was going on. "I'm thinking food and drinks," she wrote me.
"Sounds good," I wrote back.
She called me as she was about to get off of work and told me that she would be getting home around 10:00 PM and that we ought to meet at a restaurant near her home. I agreed and waited for her to call me, letting me know she was home. At about 10:30 the phone rang.
"Kevin, will you do me the biggest favor? I swear I'll make it up to you," she asked.
"You wanna reschedule?" I asked.
"No. O my God, I'm the biggest douchebag. I'm at DSW and I lost my keys."
"You lost your keys? Where?"
"I don't know, I looked all over the parking lot and all over the store and I can't find them anywhere. Do you think you can pick me up? I'm such a douchebag." Self-deprecating remarks are an integral part of her lexicon. Once she told me that she would be able to get into her house by climbing through the window and that she had spare keys at her home I told her I'd be over to pick her up and to make sure that she waited in a well lit part of the parking lot. "I'm such an idiot."
"You're fine, dont worry about it."
I drove out to the shopping center she was at (about 15 minutes away) excited at the unexpected change of plans. I've been bored to tears lately. Too much waking up, going to work, coming home, watching tv and going to bed. I was finally getting out of the house.
When I picked her up there was more of the 'douchebag' rumination and I tried to convince her it was really no big deal, that it was just a bump in the road (if that) and that it was nice to just get out of the house. To make her feel better I told her about using up all of my AAA Locksmith benefits in the month before I left my wife. In one month I locked my keys in my car 4 times resulting in a letter of admonishment from AAA and a revoking of my privileges. It didn't matter to them that my mind was elsewhere about 98% of the time that month, wandering through bars and liquor soaked jeers looking for the woman who disappeared the weeks before I got married.
We got to her place and she climbed the fence in her backyard and through the window, changed from her work clothes and came back out and we drove on the restaurant. We had a pretty good time and for the first time we did not discuss our ex-es. Instead we were friends.
This morning I woke up and walked to the farmers market around the corner from my home. The farmers market under I-83 has been closed down for some months for the winter season and this one should have been too. There were only a few stands open, selling mostly bread boulles and jams, pestos and soaps. Only two or three tables sold herbs and vegetables and I really hadn't thought a bit about what I would have liked to buy anyways. I bought a cup of coffee for $1.75 and walked back home. The coffee was good and when I came back home I decided to look for an Indian or Asian grocery store to beef up my collection of spices (which consists of black pepper). When I looked online I found this one which appeared to be right around the corner, more or less, from where I live so I went walking in the direction I thought it was. 2 miles later and a fair amount of "Hello"'s and "How you feel?"'s later I walked in the front door of the store in the picture above. It really is just right around the corner from me and I had walked in a pretty large circle only to come back to where I had begun, across the street from the farmer's market, but the walk was nice and I had a chance to smile and greet some unusually friendly people and get a little exercise along the way. One lady I had come up behind was walking slowly through a small neighborhood with a large Catholic drug rehabilitation center which sent me an invitation to their open house last Thursday. She turned and looked at me in alarm as I tried to pass her. I smiled and said hello.
"I saw your shadow," she said.
"Yeah," I said and smiled again and walked on by.
The grocery store itself was not like what I would have expected. Very few vegetables or produce outside of yucca root, ginger and bananas. I did, however, buy a large tub of green curry paste, 5 lbs of Jasmine rice, a large jar of Hot Jamaican Curry, a can of coconut milk, a piece of ginger root, and 1/2 lb of rice noodles for $12.
A man with dreadlocks selling incense and oils on the corner gave me 20 sticks of Egyptian Musk for $2 and I walked home. I got to the door and noticed I'd locked my keys in the apartment.
yummy.
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