Leaving 69 Behind: A Birthday Story

 
 My daughter, her husband, and their one-year old baby were going to arrive on the 27th., their first visit "uphome" since Covid intruded upon all our lives. My wife went on a tear to sanitize the house for the baby three days previous, working feverishly to wrap things up just before they arrived. The carpet was washed; floors were scrubbed as were walls and doors. Unnecessary books were put away. Stacks of magazines were gone through, filed or recycled. It was an amazing effort. I had done my part as directed, and my last role on the 26th, was to do some errands around town and go grocery shopping, then mow and trim around our one acre yard.
 
No big deal; been there done that. Knowing I had to go to DQ after a couple ice cream birthday cakes, I knew to bring the big ice chest — and fill it with lots of ice, as my 70th birthday was going to be another unusually warm day. My wife had made a long grocery list of items to purchase, having queried the daughter about their particular food stuffs for her family. The baby's specific needs were: “No sugar added applesauce, plain Cherrios, and a gallon of whole milk.”
 

“I need my prescription and some Florajen probiotic at the pharmacy, " the wife said, as she wrote it down. "And do the bank deposit, and get a plastic tote smaller than 14-inches by 20-inches to put toys in . . ."

 She and I went over the grocery list again, including what she had finally compiled and what I wrote down in order of their location I'd encounter at the store. The list started with 3 different juices: carrot, greens, and berry/check; small carrots/check; bananas/check; Ranch dressing/check; good beef roast/check, items going through the store all the way to 'frozen vegetables.'

 So, as I rewrote the list I added, at the top of the list in big letters, DEPOSIT, PHARMACY, RLS (Roseau liquor Store), SUPER ONE, and in the biggest letters: DQ, adding 'Toy tote', right at the end. 

Arriving at the bank in Roseau, in a hot little 1998 Subaru that had working AC just a day earlier but didn't have it now, I crossed off Deposit/check. Crossing the street to the pharmacy, I learned I would have to wait a few minutes because of a snafu with the wife’s prescription. The lady at the prescription counter gave me the box of Florajen, so I held it while I waited, reading various labels of stuff around me that I found interesting like anti-itch cream etc, that anyone visiting us could use, should situations arise; so I chose a small squeeze bottle of something for poison ivy/oak/sumac and insect bites.
 

There was one remedy called an 'oatmeal bath,’ so setting the box of Florajen aside, I read the whole outside of the box, its tiny font making me wish I had brought my reading glasses with me; then I found some Band aids next to it that were just the right size. "I hate assorted sizes," I remembered thinking, finding a box of one hundred. 

 Her prescription ready, I got into line at the cash register, and paid for my three items of stuff. Easy peasy. Then it was on to the liquor store for wine; and then Super One for groceries. "Not many cars in the parking lot; it's perfect time to shop."

 I checked off the first six items lickety split: 1-carrot juice, 1-green juice, 1-blue juice, bananas, small carrots, Ranch dressing. Looking at the assortment of roasts offered, I went to talk to a meat cutter about the best one, leaving my cart nearby. Walking out with me, the meat cutter pointed out a good roast for me, and went back to his work through the doors.
 

Next, I needed chicken breasts, lunch meat, and the rest of the list to frozen foods. I picked out a box of lasagna, and put it in my cart. Moving a distance down the aisle, I saw it served eleven people! “Don’t need one that big!” I said to myself. So, just wanting to wrap things up, and not backtrack, I put the big box of lasagna into an empty refrigerator shelf at the end of the aisle, and went straight to ‘frozen vegetables.’

With grocery shopping done, next was DQ. I got the two cakes; one for me, and one for two earlier birthday 'kids': one being seventy, and the other eighty-two. As it was soon my birthday and all, I decided I deserved a strawberry malt too. The cakes went directly into the pre-cooled ice chest and the malt, into me.

 I unloaded the groceries; sanitized them, and handed some off to the wife. I put other things into the freezer in our basement. At some point near the end of our unloading, I heard her say, “Where’s the Florajen?”
 

"Should've been right there with your prescription," I said, knowing the grass in the yard was growing taller by the second. I looked for the Florajen; that I just knew I had. Couldn't find it. I went back out to the car and tore it apart. No Florajen. By the time I called the pharmacy, they were closed. The wife looked at the receipt and saw they hadn’t charged me for it. "WHAT? I said, with a good degree of incredulity. "I got it from the woman behind the counter!" The wife could not find it.

 Later on, she hollered down from the kitchen, “Did you get the lasagna?" I started to recognize a pattern building. "Yeah, I had it, but I just remembered now I didn't think we needed a box that served eleven people. I put it back."

 Wrong answer. "That lasagna is an important meal!" she exclaimed. "I have to have it!”  That’s when I called/texted Chairman Joe to ask a favor of him when he went to town next. Things just got worse after that.

 “Didn’t you get bananas? And No-Sugar applesauce?” the wife said, with a good degree of impatience in her voice by that time.

“Yes, of course I got bananas! And it was Motts-brand No Sugar-Added Applesauce!” I answered just as impatiently. “You found all your juices, didn’t you?”

 “No, and no Ranch dressing! And no carrots either! YOU HAD A LIST! WHAT HAPPENED? DID YOU LEAVE A COUPLE BAGS AT THE STORE?"

 I called the grocery store to look for a forgotten bag of groceries I couldn't imagine was there -- just after I found a package of ‘pork cutlets,’ that I never buy, among the two packages of sliced lunch meat which I do -- before I looked at the grocery receipt. I had not been charged for the juices, etc — but I had been charged with the pork cutlets . . . ARGH. I have lost my mind.

I started to feel like my late Aunt Irene, when after she turned ninety, she thought she was misplacing/losing her car keys. (They learned a next-door neighbor kid had been watching her and going into her house when she left; changing/hiding her keys.) I would have no such lucky break of an excuse.

“Well, I'm sorry, but you’ll have to go back … Maybe you can get a tote?”

  “I didn’t get a tote because Lee’s Store was closed went I went by, and I had all this cold stuff in the car. Oh, yeah, I didn't tell you, the AC in my car quit working too . . .”

 That’s when I texted Joe again: “Forget it. Thanks anyway. I'll explain later.”

 On the 40 mile round trip, I figured it out what had happened at the pharmacy. I laid the Florajen aside when I began reading about the oatmeal bath and didn’t have it with me when I went to the cash register, never thinking a thing about it. Someone must have found it on the shelf by now. (I think I read somewhere, Florajen can be non-refrigerated up to two weeks without loss of potency.)

At the grocery store, I picked up all six of the produce items we didn’t have when I got home, including the ranch dressing. Then, because I had left my cart someplace when I went to talk to the meat cutter, I must have grabbed someone else’s cart — or someone took mine. Either way, after I put the roast into a cart containing just one package of pork cutlets that I didn't put in it, I went on to get everything else on the list never realizing I was short anything in my cart. 

I plainly blanked out on the lasagna after setting it aside for a smaller serving box, seeing frozen vegetables in the immediate vicinity to check that item. Worse, two days later, during supper, my astute daughter realized the lasagna I bought, the second time around, had no meat in it: I had bought a cheese-only lasagna in my haste. Double argh! I had left my sixties behind, to start out my seventies like this!

 And so they begin . . .