My weekly airing out

I went grocery shopping this morning, my weekly airing out. I'm not fond of expeditions into town, and in this case "town" is one stop light and a few people. Never mind going to a real town, Athens, with so many stimuli coming at me from every direction that my brain flops just thinking about it.

So my mini-jaunt yielded the usual humble joys, viewing farmland that was green from recent rain. Singing along with the radio. Working air conditioning on a 98 degree day. As I pulled into the store for some reason I thought of a person I had not thought of for three years. I mused about her Fourth of July plans, wondered how she was feeling, and trundled my cart (buggy, sorry!) into the store. From around the corner she walked into me. I love coincidences like that!

A side trip to the trusty fruit stand was a particular joy. HUGE mounds of plump blackberries and enormous trays of juicy peaches were arrayed enticingly, and I sure was enticed. They were in my bag in moments.

I was sad to see that the downward spiral of groceries in general is accelerating. Since last week milk went up 50 cents along with many other items, though not all of them went up in price as drastically as milk. In addition to prices going up, sizes are going down. The bagels that I look at each week, longing for but sadly decline to buy at a prohibitive cost of $3.59, suddenly were 1/3 smaller this week. Size of items are getting smaller and package sizes are getting smaller. 13 oz powdered creamer is now 11 ounces. And so on.

It's been really hot. The summer heat started very early. The 90 plus degree days began in mid-May and those don't usually start until July. Of course, after having successive 90-plus degree days for over a month there was no place to go but up. Sunday's actual temp is supposed to be 10o. You know it's going to be hot when the graphic on the weather page goes from a bare sun on Saturday to this:

The red hot thermometer with wavy lines cracks me up!

I've been enjoying Larry McMurtry's "Dead Man's Walk" the prequel to Lonesome Dove. I laughed when Gus and Call ran into Charlie Goodnight, and Oliver loving and Bose, those are the real men in history that Gus and Call and Deets are modeled after. So the character met the men inside the novelization of the real mens' lived. Time warp!

Tomorrow marks the halfway point in my summer vacation from work. Time flies.