In the Cool of the Evening

It was a gorgeous day for a farm market run, and an even nicer day for a Craft Festival. I stepped out into a barely 80 degree morning. There were still a few clouds when I left for Collingswood, but they vanished quickly.

The farm market was bustling when I picked up peaches, cucumbers, blueberries, honey, a huge zucchini, tomatoes, an onion, garlic, mushrooms, and the first mini red apples of the season. (Large apples are now out as well. That was a surprise; we don't usually see apples until late August, sometimes well into September.) Lots of dogs out, too. I saw a sleek greyhound and a cute little fuzzy black-and-white Boston Terrier.

Getting into Collingswood was a bit of a pain. They were diverting traffic from Haddon and Collings Avenues for the annual Arts and Crafts Festival in Collingswood's downtown area. Unlike the May Fair, the Arts and Crafts Festival is a more elaborate version of the craft shows that used to run on the Cape May Promenade and Wildwood Boardwalk in the summer. Along with the usual booths selling home-made jewelry, furniture, pottery, handbags, clothes, toys, frames, and pictures, there's food booths and booths for various local services, like the PATCO and Verizon. I didn't buy anything, but it was fun to walk around.

I had a nice ride home via Newton River Park. Spent the rest of the morning at the apartment. It was so nice, I baked Molasses Spice Cookies from a Prevention Magazine recipe, and the apartment didn't get the least bit hot. After the cookies were out of the oven, I had lunch and updated my finances (such as they are).

Had a very pleasant ride to work. Work...was not so pleasant. In fact, it was a real pain in the rear end. First of all, there was a call-out. I ended up staying until 9:30. I would have said "no," but I really, really need the extra hours.

Second, people were just annoying. One lady with a passel of loud, obnoxious, unruly children was an unorganized twit. First, she insisted her small order had to be broken up into three even smaller ones. Second, she held up the line for 15 minutes while she searched frantically for her Food Stamp card. Her children screamed, raced around the front of the store, and snuck a box of Batman fruit snacks out of a bag and gobbled them as fast as they could. I finally cashed her out.

She paid for the fruit snacks, and we thought that was that...until she came back with the card. We'd already put away the rest of her order because we thought she wasn't coming back! And then she complained that she'd put her boxes of mashed potato mix in the wrong order. She wanted a certain coupon, and she could only get it if certain things were paired with certain other things. Lady, if you want those darn coupons, organize your order better in the first place...and for the love of Pete, discipline your children! We later discovered they'd stomped fruit snacks into the floor. The managers had to scrub the floor with bleach to get the sticky stuff off.

There were also several demanding older ladies, and several old men who thought they were being funny but were just jerks. All in all, I was very glad when it finally died around 8, and I could spend the rest of the evening putting candy away.

My schedule next week, BTW, is much better. With a quarter of the Acme employees on vacation, I have some great hours, including 3-7 tomorrow. I don't even mind only having one day off next week. I had no really huge plans for next week anyway. I'm broke, and I just got off my vacation.