Given yesterday's activity, today was, well, a quieter day. Alas the good night's sleep I had hope for did not materialize. Instead I experienced a flu-like delirium all night, with the same recurring pointless dream. Probably it was the sunstroke. I didn't get out of bed until almost six a.m., which is scandalously late for me. Already it was light outside.
At least I was no longer having super painful cramps in my legs in bed. I had to pick up my legs and put them on the floor beside he bed. I hobbled around the apartment. I took a long nap later in the morning.
Later we went to Costco. As I often do I let Jessica take the cart and do her quick shopping while I wandered off to look at the big ticket items like television sets and refrigerators. I don't want or need any of those things, but I'm fascinated at what is available and how much it costs, especially the appliances. I am still amazed that one can buy a box freezer for two hundred dollars. I pretend I'm comparison shopping for a new house. What features do I want in a fridge?
Then I lapsed into playing the game of looking for the most expensive item for sale inside the warehouse. It is invariably a piece of jewelry in the locked case near the front. I have seen items up to thirty two thousand dollars---a men's diamond-studded watch. Today the highest priced items is a diamond bracelet for just under twenty grand.
Just to make sure I go look in the other place where one finds high ticket items with the locked liquor diplay. It is not unusual to a bottle of whiskey for upwards of twenty grand. Today the most expensive was nine thousand dollars---a bottle of single-malt scotch, forty years old. That would make it 1985, one of my favorite years. If you want to settle for 21-year-old of the same brand, you can knock it down to less than a grand, and twelve-year-old will only set you back a couple hundred dollars. I think about all the money in Scottsdale and wander who will buy these things. Here, someone will.
Today there are many food sample carts and they seem to be well stocked. By the time I run into Jessica again, I have filled my stomach with samples. Among them are a Popsicle-brand (!) drink of powdered electrolytes. I drink it down, remembering my answered prayer yesterday on the trail. I feel the jolt of a bit of energy. Maybe it's my body remembering the trauma. I consider buying a package, but it's almost thirty bucks and decide I can do without it.
Our haul today is bigger than usual, because we let our supplies dwindle. The total comes to over five hundred dollars, which is about as high as we go, even filling the cart. I tap my card on the screen and it makes the chiming noise. I have that the chiming noise at Costco is patterned exactly on the ones of the slot machines in Las Vegas, because people find it pleasing and signals to them a desire to hear it again. Everything in Costco is down to science---a beautiful science of human behavior. A cynic will say it is just to maimize profits, and of course it is, but it gives people things they want and need for their lives and what feels like a good and fair price in most cases. I used to be much more judgmental about "consumerism" that way. Now I just see the beauty of a system that lets people feed and provide for the their families.
Afterwards we get hot dogs because of course I want to get a Costco hotdog. But there is no strawberry lemonade. I settle for the fountain drink of regular sugar water lemonade instead and still it tastes very good. As this will be our dinner for the day---including the samples I have eaten---I decide I am still hungry and go back for a chicken bake, which is ok but not as good as a hot dog.
As I finish my meal, I look around at all the people in the checkouts and at the other tables in the dining area. I feel somewhat ashamed that it took me so long to enter the mode of loving my neighbor. Here is an awesome chance to see all of them and feel love for them. To be fair, and I do that almost instinctively with the folks who staff the sample carts. I always try to make human contact with them in a way that shows my appreciation for what they did. Somehow it is easier to love them, than the other shoppers---or "members" as the Costco employees must call them.
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