So this starts from last night. Without being graphic or at the risk of oversharing, Ron and I decided to put Tupac on the far out side with me in the middle. Tupac prefers to be in the middle, which I understand but it interferes with Ron and me being able to show eachother intamaticy and touch / hold each other during the night. It has been a frustration since Tupac moved in because before that even though we have a king size bed we were always touching and entwined during the night.
Move to monday morning. I have a standing order for 4 cases (24 individual 2-liter bottles of soda) of Publix caffeine-free diet soda. Because I couldn’t walk Ron has been going to pick them up along with all the rest of our groceries. But it was taking a lot of time out of his day to do the remodeling we needed to get done.
So today I went for the soda and a few groceries. Now I go to the nearest Publix store but it wouldn’t matter they all have super happy employees who are eager to help anyone who asks them. I often remark if you ask a person in a different store where such item might be they will tell you what aisle and leave it at that. In every Publix I have ever been that I asked the employee, they stoped what they were doing and took me to where they thought the item might be. If it was not there they did not just walk away they kept looking with me.
So remember I just got back to walking, and I have fallen twice. So I go in with a cart and tell the person at the service desk who I am and what my standing order is. She makes the calls and then remarks she has not seen me in a while. I explained that my spouse was coming in to get the sodas. I always wear my pride hat and it is clear that my spouse is male. Again never a problem.
A young man who he later told me he was 22 yrs old came with my order in a cart so I asked him if I could switch my empty cart with his full one. He was sure. Then he noticed me taking my cane from the cart before he took it. He took my cart to the cart area and then stood by while I paid for my soda and then offered to take them to my car for me. I was grateful and explained that I just got the ability to walk again and was worried about lifting these heavy cases.
This young energetic happy so very young person who is to me very cute as all young people are to me at 63 years old and disabled. He pushed my cart out to the car and put them in it while talking a steady stream about things. I have often told Ron that my pride hat is a magnet for the young Publix boys. One of them told me he was in in the dinner theater scene and loved acting. So if anyone mentions to you that the Publix stores are / were founded by Christian people who wanted the stores to show a Christian application in the world, they are correct. They are the most progressive pro LGBTQ+ and helping the poor while taking care of the immigrant or minority store chain I have ever seen.
As the young man and I talked I told him I needed to go back into the store and get some groceries. He walked me all the way back into the store and offered to help me do my shopping. I declined while thanking him.
I had 18 items on my list and I admit I added Cheez-It snacks to it. By the time I was done I was limping and very tired out. This was the first time grocery shopping alone since I got the epidural on my spine dealing with my right leg that let me walk and the right foot was cramping.
I do not know how decrepit an old man I looked but when I pulled into the open checkout lane, the young woman at the end of the counter who would normally do the bagging walked up to the end of the aisle in front of my cart. I appoligised to her for blocking her way and said I would move my cart for her to get by. She smiled and said no I just wanted to help you unload your cart. She loaded everything on the converbelt and then I limped up to the pay pad device.
Again I don’t know how disabled I seem but as we chatted the bagging young woman kept asking me if things were going to be too heavy. When I paid she offered to take my stuff out to the car and load it in the back as the other young man had done. I demured, I guess I can manage, I said I don’t want to take you from your duties. Nonsense said the older woman chassier and the younger woman said it is what I want to do and she offered to push the cart.
The young woman took my cart out to the car and loaded the stuff into the car. I admit I was grateful, as I was pretty beat and dragging as I walked with her. I had offered the young man a tip and he refused, I did the same with this young woman and she also refused telling me she was very happy to help me. Ron tells me he finds the store’s prices slightly higher but I remind him the aisles are wide enough for people to pass and all I wrote above, far different from the walmart he thinks is saving us so much money.
So I got home and Ron carried the heavy things into the house while I carried the small stuff. Then after putting stuff away Ron showed me the current “kitchen / livingroom A/C unit” he had pulled apart to clean. Yesterday all day he cleaned the one in our bedroom and gods how full of dirt and crap it was. Ron had started the laundry of cat pee towels and then the dark load. So I took care of all that.
But it soon became noon and lunch time. I made him a large sandwich of the meats, lettuce, and the condiments he wanted. I had four cheese stuffed hot dogs … Sorry the steroids that got me walking also increased my eating and sadly my weight a lot. I went from 168 to now 182. It is a catch 22 situation. Do I want to walk or be thin? Right now I struggle to control the hunger beast which two months ago I had no hunger at all and would go days without eating.
So to end this. Ron is sleeping and I will finish this and work on getting tomorrow’s cartoons/ memes / news post scheduled. I took out a porkloin for supper and will serve it with mashed potatoes, brown gravy, and a vegetable. If Ron is still working on the house stuff I will stop everything I am doing and do the best I can to make supper. If he gives up for the day I will save taking the extra pain medications and he will make supper as I do blog stuff.
It is 2:45 PM my time. If I remember my military training it is 14:45 for the rest of the world. Here again is an issue I want or hope everyone remembers. With my pain and my medications I get about 12 hours up time during the day. Right now that time is shrinking for me. It would be like most people coming home from work at 5 or 6 pm. They have about 4 hours left to do everything. I hope everyone understands my day is very compressed and at this point I have about 4 or 5 hours left in my uptime.
Please don’t feel bad about that. I am super lucky; I have limitations I can’t break. But I have a home to be in, a bed to go to, food when I am hungry, and pain medication to help me deal with my life. I feel bad for Ron my husband for 36 years who has to do the things I can’t, who heard me fall the other night and rushed to the room to help me up. But the truth is my life is constrained and limited. I got up at 5 am after a wonderful quality time with my husband. He can sleep in the afternoon; I can’t. If I try I am down for the day. So now I am back to putting tomorrow’s post together. I just wanted to share this part of my day with you. Hugs
Scottie's Playtime 
you are so sweet that I can’t imagine anyone treating you less than wonderfully. Interesting about Publix. we don’t have them here in Los Angeles
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Hello da-AL. Thank you and that is wonderful of you. But I do live in a country that is in some places very anti-LGBTQ+. But I have loved Publix because they don’t care about social stuff; if they see a customer needing help they will do everything they can to help. I once needed a loaf of bread on a shelf that was being blocked by a large cart used to stock the shelves. Once the person stocking saw I needed something they stopped their putting stuff on the shelves and started to move their cart. I stopped them and asked if they could just give me a loaf of bread that was behind their cart. They were so willing and happy I did not want them to totally move.
They are mostly a Florida company but they have moved into several close states. I admit I was worried about being openly gay and in a same sex relationship when we first came to Florida and started using the company in 1994, but only one person ever questioned it. He was a recent immigrant, and his issue was he simply did not know that same sex marriage was a thing in the US. When he started to get confused and question me about how my spouse could be a male four other staffers I knew moved in to explain it to him and also support me. My point is that people who say that if a store or such has a “Christian” origin, it doesn’t mean they are haters. I wear my pride stuff in every Publix store and I have never had a negative reaction. And as I said it seems to be a magnet for the young male workers. Hugs
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You have one advantage over me, but I doubt you will think it is an advantage. I am 76 with many health problems, but they are invisible to the naked eye. Even though I can barely walk at this point, I look younger than I am, and I look healthy. No one can see inside me. So when I walk very slowly in the grocery store, people bitch and tell me to speed up. And when I ask for help, most people look at me thinking “You don’t need help. Why are you asking?” My partner gets asked all the time if she needs help, but not me. I sometimes think it is better to look weak than be weak. Weird!
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Hi Rawgod. I am so happy to be responding to you, to read your comment. I admit I miss that I can’t get to your content because you are spot on with social issues and abuse to the native people.
You are correct in that I do seem to have advantages you do not enjoy even though you are or maybe much worse off than I am. I can only think that it is both due to racism and to how you look and I do. I am sorry but I do have an unstated white privilege. For example several months ago I was not paying attention and needed to pull into to traffic for my upcoming turn. I was going well over the speed limit to do so. Then just before my turn a police officer pulled me over.
Because I was an old white man with a full white old age beard I got treated to far more respect than an other person in my area would have been. The officer actually apologized for pulling me over saying it seemed I was being aggressive. Needless to say I was let go with nothing else being done.
So when I walk very slowly in the grocery store, people bitch and tell me to speed up. And when I ask for help, most people look at me thinking “You don’t need help. Why are you asking?” My most regrets for this Rawgod. I don’t care how you present or if your skin color to be treated that way or ignored when you need assistance; it is horrific to me.
You ask if it is better to look weak to get assistance. Rawgod I think some thing much more nefarious is the issue. If I remember correctly, you are of the Native People. I hate that your people face such discrimination. But still no one should be able to complain about how you move in a store. I dislike the local Walmart stores Ron likes because the aisles are narrow and people are impatient, rude, and judgmental. I really hope you are treated better in the future. Please keep writing in to let me know about this. Hugs
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I do have a good dose of First Nations blood in me, but I also have a lot of European blood too, mainly French and Polish/German. When my mother was born in 1907, Germany owned the area she was raised in so she called herself German. On today’s map that area is now in Poland, so I say Polish.
Either way, my skin tone is getting whiter with age, and my hair is still mostly dark brown, so I don’t think race is a factor anymore. But who knows. And it isn’t everyone who treats me that way. The problem is your “president.” When he was elected in 2016 he said it was OK to hate, and haters came out of the cracks, even up here in Canada. Racial tensions, religious tensions, and sexism tensions etc are higher today than at any other time in my life. But mostly I just ignore people like that.
I’ve never been able to grow a beard though what facial hair I have is white. I could colour it, but that would take another 10 years off my appearance, and then I would never get help no matter how much I need it. There are people who offer to help when I use my walker or cane, but I seldom take my walker out of the house, and too often I forget my cane until it is too late to go back and get it.
How old is your Walmart. Most of them in Canada are fairly modern, wide aisles. Make a suggestion to make the aisles wider. Most store managers are willing to make changes as soon as the word “disabled” is used. But you live in Florida, with a dildo for governor. Maybe suggestions cannot be made.
For the most part I am not posting on my blog right now, probably not for a year now. There is too much shit going on in the world, and I say my piece in the comments on other’s blogs. I came to Word Press more for the spiritual blogs than the political blogs, but I got connected to you and Nan and Jill and everyone, and I feel at home here. Still, I don’t read every post anymore, and do not comment as often either. (But my need to write does make for longer comments.)
Thank you for your kind words.
Peace.
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