And the Branch Comes Tumbling Down

Woke up late and had a late breakfast. It was still cloudy, cool, and humid when I went around to the side path to pick up sticks. Once again, I was bitten alive by mosquitoes, but I did get it done. It never takes me very long to do the path anyway. It's not like it's long or wide. I tossed the sticks in the backyard (which is all trees and leaves) and swept the path itself.

Spent the rest of the morning and early afternoon working on editing this month's Monkees Role Play, which Lauren and I finished yesterday. Look for it hopefully sometime in the next two weeks!

I finished editing with enough time to have a nice lunch of Garden State Turkey Meatball Soup (defrosted home-made chicken stock with cut-up turkey meatballs and summer vegetables from the farm market) and tomatoes with light mayonnaise. As I did the dishes, I heard the sound of footsteps coming upstairs. I saw two men with a chainsaw. Miss Ellie had finally hired someone to cut that rotted branch down. The branch was so thick and heavy, they had to do it three segments, but it's now laying on the pile of sticks in the backyard.

Work wasn't nearly as productive. It was surprisingly busy for a Wednesday, right up until about 7PM, and a real pain and a half. Once again, there were a lot of cranky, annoying, or even plain crazy customers. One woman dressed like a bag lady in heavy layers of clothing and a thick winter hat despite the relative warmth came around at least two times to me and once to another customer. The first one, she bought a small order and had to take off the hot dogs because she couldn't afford them and hadn't bought the ones that were on sale...and then gave 15,000 orders on how to bag without being much of a help herself, including all but stifling a potted flower she was apparently going to give to someone. (One bag would have sufficed, not three plastic bags and a paper one.) She returned an hour later, apparently in an attempt to bring back an item. I directed her to customer service, which handles returns. I saw her a few hours after that, annoying another cashier, this time with a sullen-looking young girl in tow. She also rambled on about how she saw some suspicious-looking men sitting outside talking on their cell phones, and oh, we'd better watch out, because they seemed to be getting ready to rob us! (No one tried to rob us while I was there, as far as I know.)

It remained cloudy when I rode to work this afternoon. I saw a woman buying an umbrella earlier this evening and asked her if it had rained yet. She said no, it hadn't. It must have come down sometime between when I talked to her and when I finished, because by the time I got out around 8:30, the streets and the ground were wet. It looks like it may have rained lightly.