Don't Leave Home Without It

Even though it's Saturday I stoically set out for Rona to have our locks re keyed (nope - didn't find them yet and taking the locks in will save me about $80 over having a locksmith come out to the house) and to get some driveway salt and a light bulb for the fridge. I knew that traffic/parking would be hellish but I was mentally prepared, knitting prepared and I went alone. Somehow, listening to a child's running commentary on the traffic, the searching, the waiting and the inevitable starving does not, in any way make any of the above faster or easier.

This is the light bulb aisle. All I wanted was a simple refrigerator light bulb and it took me nearly 15 minutes to find them. I asked - no one has ever actually had a stroke from merely having to pick out a light bulb. My ability to speak coherently was briefly affected though, I could only muster a few weak moans.

I wandered up and down, back and forth across the vast acreage that is Rona finding a few other items that I had the foresight to write down, then I went to get the locks re-keyed. All the blue-vested employees had suddenly disappeared and it didn't even occur to me to go looking for someone. Not when they leave phones with labels on the buttons just sitting around. Nope, no impulse control whatsoever!! Fortunately I had called before I left home to make sure that there would be someone who knew how to re-key the locks and I knew who to page. "John to Key Cutting please. John to Key Cutting. Thank you." Of course John doesn't come, it's Rick who doesn't know how to re-key a lock. But he takes me over to the hardware desk where John is and John starts in on it. And I make myself comfortable on a stack of wood flooring and start knitting.
Not too far into it John just fucks right off has to go help someone else do something, so I just keep knitting. Eventually Louis arrives, Rick brings him up to speed on the pile of metal bits on the desk and Louis dives right in.
Customers and staff pass by expressing varying degrees of interest and amusement. Louis makes progress and so do I.
I really don't know how long I was there - I didn't look at my watch. I'm sure that Charlie Eppes could work out an algorithm to calculate the passage of time based on knitting speed, compensating for temperature variances and the current phase of the moon. But it was awhile - long enough to get this much sock knitting done. If I had known that it was going to be so long I'd have brought in Patrick - he was in the car - and set up the chart and worked on him!

The entire experience was made all that much more torturous by the karaoke that was going on. Now karaoke is a wonderful concept and I'm all for it - in the right place. The right place being a bar with a lot of background noise and copious amounts of alcohol so that the audience can hear the singer the way that the singer imagines themselves being heard.
Rona is a big echo-ey building that does nothing to enhance or dampen the sounds coming from the amplifier. They also don't serve alcohol and wouldn't turn on a loud power tool for me. I could hear every painful note. I have never wished for traditional Muzak and/or deafness so fervently in my life!!

But all's well that ends well and I'm safely at home with nice TV sounds and Patrick on my lap. Yes, a drink too but that should just go without saying. Kerwyn put the locks back on the door & I have a new key that I will try not to lose.