Quartermaster Note:
Tally Whoa!
2 August 2018

¶ The hot humidity was so oppressive that I almost turned around at the front door and went back upstairs to the apartment. Ageing has altered the unpleasantness of such weather. It used to make me sweat. Now it gives me a hard time breathing. 

I managed to get to Fairway for a somewhat overdue comprehensive shop. Was it that — the overdue part — or the weather that made me spend 75% more than I usually do? Unloading the shopping basket at check-out, I set out all the produce first. I was alarmed when the tally jumped over $50, before I’d set down the meat or the peanut oil. Among the produce, I saw, I’d placed a wedge of Parmesan, a slice of Roquefort, and a rather pricey dried salami. Organic pears and table grapes were pretty expensive, too, relative to lettuce, and I also bought a lot of lemons, for Kathleen’s Arnold Palmers. By the way, I didn’t clarify the other day that I now stock orange pekoe tea — Lipton’s would be fine, but I don’t do teabags — because Earl Grey is too insistently flavored to blend with lemonade. I ought to have known better, but Kathleen made the discovery herself on one of her travels.

Consulting the receipt, I see that the high total owes mostly to the replacement of a lot of items that were neither expensive nor inexpensive. Nickel and dime stuff. Ain’t it always.

¶ When the shopping was delivered, I was able to put everything where it belonged. Everything! No cramming things into dark or unreachable corners. 

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