More Shopping

In honor of approaching Really Cold Weather, we went out foraging for essentials of life today. First stop, naturally, was the library. Since we hardly have any books of our own around here (ha ha!), we checked out three bags full, reducing our tiny library's stock substantially. Our library, while unimpressive in the size of its collection, is staffed by lovely, helpful women -- the sort who will drop what they are doing to help a goofy eight year old who wants to know, "Where are your Sponge Bob books?" (The answer, thankfully, is that they don't have any, but they did look!) They are also quite happy to do interlibrary loans, and always make nice comments about the books I request (and I nicely refrain from saying, "And I hope that you are planning to purchase it for our library now!"). What really amazes me is that they have no limit on the number of books patrons can borrow. And no fines! This is great for me, since I don't like to have to put back interesting books because I've hit my limit (which I had to do at our Very large library in Florida), and also I never return books on time, but I don't understand how it is that they have any books on their shelves at all. Either everyone else in town exercises restraint and only checks out the number of books they can reasonably expect to read in three weeks, or hardly anyone around here reads. Either way, we are doing pretty well with our library.

After the library, we hit the General Store (fig preserves & semolina flour, which I'm going to try in my pasta dough), Lowes (bird seed, hose, lumber, very interesting new light fixture for over kitchen table, which Ed picked), and Walmart. We went to Walmart to top off the toilet paper supply, and for things like eggs and coffee, which just disappear around here. T. was thrilled beyond belief to find a new Zelda game for his Gamecube, which he has been waiting for for Years (the release was delayed several times, and I think he is exaggerating a bit about the "years") and which has been out of stock at Amazon since it was finally released, and K. threw up in the middle of an aisle. Because of the throwing up, we forgot the dog food (not critical, but getting there), but we did hang around long enough for the very slow and unfriendly saleswoman in Electronics to unlock the cabinet and sell T. his game. While I understand that she probably doesn't find vomiting children endearing (I was going to get towels & take care of it, but Ed insisted on telling the saleswoman so she could request a "clean-up" in Aisle Whatever.), I would think that a sensible person would want to get our revolting family out of the store as quickly as possible, not prolong our transaction by moving at a snail's pace while glaring at us malignantly. Each to his own, though.

K. is feeling better after a dinner of Ritz crackers on the couch while watching Miss Frizzle (only sick kids get to eat in the living room), so I think this has been a very fine day.