Thursday, December 15, 2011

One of them days

A quick run to the grocery store, that's all it was meant to be.

I grabbed my down coat, scarf and gloves, and headed down to the basement to retrieve my e-bike that was being charged in the storage room.

I zoomed over to the nice new grocery store in my neighborhood, which is in the underground floor of a sparkling new mall. And even though it is not common in America for malls to have grocery stores, it is quite the norm here.

The eight-story mall is decorated for Christmas, has Christmas music playing, and is just lovely!

To get from my place to the mall I had to maneuver through the road construction that I've mentioned previously.

I decided to get lots of groceries. After all, I could carry them back home on my e-bike, so it was no trouble. I got big heavy items, like liquid laundry detergent. I put everything into two big recyclable cloth bags, which I estimate to have weighed about 25 pounds each.

After shopping, I went to the other end of the underground floor of the mall to enjoy coffee at the new coffee shop. Ah, it was so relaxing! There's nothing quite like an infusion of hot caffeine on a cold day.

Then I started back to my place on e-bike. I got to the construction part of the road when my e-bike died. I tried to re-start it. The scent of burnt wires wafted through the air. I pushed my e-bike to the side of the road. Fortunately, half a block away was a repair place. After an hour, they had repaired my bike. The repair lasted for about ten feet. I pushed the bike back. They fixed it again. That repair lasted about 20 feet. I pushed the bike back. They couldn't fix it. And I couldn't stay there forever.

There are no buses in this area, and no empty taxi is cruising for passengers in a construction zone. So I had to leave my e-bike there and walk home. I walked about a mile back to my place, carrying about 50 pounds of groceries (it could have even been more, quite seriously).

And I was wearing heels.

Furthermore,  I am not 20 years old anymore and I have a chronic muscle ailment anyway. I'll be better in a day or two, but right now I can't walk or otherwise move without pain.

Oh, and I had an important work document that was due, and since I had hung out at the repair shop all day, I had to stay up half the night to finish my work document.

We all have days like this, huh? It's just one of them days. At least it wasn't raining.

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