Life's little puzzles

Walking through a Supermarket. Looking for a nice leek, to use for a chicken pie.
Ye gods, $4 for one leek?? I thought leeks are winter vegetables? I thought they are now in 'season'?
I look again, & see it is an 'Organic' Leek. I find the term Organic, an absolute bloody insult. How many plants are inorganic! GrrrrPartially explains the price.

I keep searching, but it seems they just dont have any 'Inorganic' leeks. This is in the 'Fresh Food People' store too. bah!
We call into our local monster "Colds" store. Gom wants to indulge his sweet tooth. I ask him to look for a leek for me. (I am definitely more of a vegie girl!)

I go off to get my meds at the Chemist, & meet him coming down the Mall.
"I have just been to Colds for a Leek" He says loudly.
An old man does a choked snigger, on a bench. I can see his mind whirring over.

Gom gets the leek out of the bag, & brandishes it about. Old jokes about someone being 'rogered by a prize winning leek' spring to mind, & I muffle laughter. "It is a bit of a thin leek!" I say. The old man lets out a small laugh.
"Oh well, who needs a fat leek?"

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Wandering along the aisles of the freezers, just looking, to see what new wonders they have frozen, I spy a large wrapped package, obviously from the Deli Section. I look closer & see it is a fresh, whole, Trout. I begin to wonder why the person dumped it. Did they change their mind, finding frozen fish cheaper? Did they absently leave it there when they were examining something else?

I do sometimes think about that email joke of how 'old people amuse themselves'. You know the one, where they go about putting unwanted items in random trolleys, or rearranging the clothing racks, or mixing up the sauces. Or eating the nuts without paying as they idle through the shop? The Hovering Grape Gobbler, who absolutely pretends he ~I find the gobblers seem to be males, usually~ is not stealing the grapes as he makes laps around the grape displays. Or furtively ripping open a bag of chocolates, & pretending they spilt on the floor, so they hurriedly palm a few.

Or Mrs Bleating Blabber, who yaps on & on at the checkout while the harrassed young girl tries to remain polite as the queue grows longer & she grunts rather than answers, hoping Mrs BB will get the message & move along.

Why is there always one shoe lying in the gutter, or on the road? Where is the other, where is the owner? How did the shoe get there, was it thrown? Did it fall out of the window? Did it fall off the roof of the car? Did some long suffering mother or girlfriend sneak one & dump it, so she will never have to smell the beastly thing again!

But the strange thing is, quite often the lone shoe looks quite new. Quite tidy, one might say. I had a friend who said he was going to begin a collection of the lone shoes he found on highways & byways. I wonder if he ever did?

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A particularly peeving puzzle is the fact that Gom had a watch repaired,~ it had had a broken glass face~ & requested a new battery. We I collected it, it was not set to the correct time, so the lady set the time, I paid & off we went. Next day, it stopped, so Gom reset it, & it went for a while. He noticed it kept stopping, so today we took it back.
Turns out, "We are not watchmakers" & the best they could do, was offer the 'name & phone number of a watchmaker', or give a 20% discount, on a 'tradein' on a new watch. ie, they would keep the watch we had paid to have repaired. ???? Does that sound fair? It seems odd somehow. Why would they want to keep a useless obviously secondhand watch?
My daughter suggests they might want to cannibalise old watches & use the parts? It also has a very nice gold band.

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I bought $60 worth of Scholastic books for my Grandson. Six books with an average price of $10 each. I got them all for $2. Three for a Dollar! They were available at a garage sale, in almost new condition. He is thrilled with them, & his reading really is wonderful, considering he is only 6. It is a point of wonder when he begins reading aloud, from the highly 'suggestive' greeting cards, he sees displayed in our local Post Office!! at risk of seeming a prude, I feel like demanding they do not display such things at a level where children can access them! Some of them are downright crude! Which is ok, for adults, but I don't really think he needs to know about such things at his age?He has an above average understanding of numbers too, so he is doing really well at school.

He spent time here this morning, & was in the kitchen talking 'man talk' with his grandfather. "We don't need you here Nan, so run along!"
We burst out laughing!

We have had him for a couple of days, & enjoyed his company. Would have had him more, but his father has been recuperating from a broken rib, so he has been home to care for him.

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Yesterday seemed to be really cold, & the best way to keep warm seemed to be cooking in the warm kitchen. I made pies, a huge pot of vegetable soup, meals for 2 nights & kept nice & warm while everything simmered & baked. I seem to have had an awakening of my love of cooking. I wonder how long it will last!

Perhaps it is all the cooking excitement with the MasterChef TV series. We didn't watch it often, but I admit we watched the final, & I enjoyed most of what I did see.

Another puzzle is the stop/start love affair with my patchwork progress. I am continually inspired by the blogs I read, however I have a presently patchy progress pattern.



Phoebe Snow, Touch Your Soul.