[MelodyL]

Alan and I went to Beth Israel Hospital for his routine checkup and to get his feet cast for his custom made shoes.

Well, I had to go shopping, we had one hour to kill and I haven't been to 14th Street in NYC in over 40 years. Well, let me tell you, it was the experience of a lifetime.

I just went there to get my fruits for juicing and whatever else they had to offer. It's like a Costco but you don't buy in bulk unless you have to. You can buy one apple if needed.

So I take my blackberries and I go and look for the checkout. All I see is Lotto numbers on the ceiling and colored platforms.

I thought I had landed on Mars. I had absolutely no idea how to pay for anything. Alan was nowhere to be found (he was hunting around for little samples they were giving out and walking around on his shoe boot thing.

So I'm trying to find a checkout and I see various people on various lines. ABOUT 10 LINES. And no one is fidgeting and no one is complaining but I don't see anyone moving. I again look up in the air and it's like you are playing Lotto with flashing numbers like 23, 1, 3, 11, etc.

I said to myself "what the heck is going on?" A guy starts laughing and goes 'do you need help"? and I go "do I need help?? all I want to do is pay for my fruit and he says and I quote"

"You have to follow the colors" I said "I have to what??" and he laughs and says "you've never been to this store before, right?" and I said 'I've never been to this planet before" and he gets hysterical.

I then go 'what do you mean follow the colors?" and he says "look directly up in front of you".

I did and there were 5 panels of colors. Pink, red, orange, white, yellow. (I had no clue what the heck any of this meant.)

Then right in the middle of one of the colors I see the number 23 flashing. I still have no idea what is going on.

He says "watch what happens in the yellow color line"
(WHAT THE HECK IS A YELLOW COLOR LINE?))

I finally figured out that when you stand in a particular color, you watch the panel and when a number flashes, that means Register No. 3 or whatever number is flashing, well that's the register you go to!!

Well, I got on the orange line, and you should have seen me when it was my turn (there were 3 people on the orange line in front of me. I'm standing there and I'm watching the orange panel and all of a sudden the number 23 starts blinking.

I ALMOST YELLED "BINGO"!!!!

I ran to the register laughing my head off, and the girl starts laughing and she goes "how do you like our new system".? I said "am I on another planet, where are the clones?"

She got hysterical. Now I brought my own green bag (for no other reason than to hold my hat and my sunglasses"

The girl says 'oh you brought your own bag, how wonderful, because we don't supply bags, and we give you a fifteen cents credit for being green".

So I said 'hurray for green".

So now I take my bag and I can't find Alan. Some guy comes over and says what's the matter and I say "I lost my husband". He helped me find Alan.

I finally find him and bring him downstairs to all the gluten free stuff and we buy gluten free brownies.

So now we take the Gluten Free Brownie Mix and I tell Alan, we have to find a color. He says "we have to do WHAT??" I said 'just follow me". Alan had no idea. When the next register was open, we run over and there was the guy who helped me find Alan. He was hysterical and he said "see, I helped you find your husband, how do you like our store?" I said "are you kidding, the next time we have a doctor's appointment, I'm bringing my cold keepers, and I'm buying out the place", whereupon Alan bends over and whispers "no she's not".

We had a good laugh. I had never experienced such a shopping thing in my whole life. Colored panels etc.

It was like a Bingo Game. I LOVED IT!!!!

Just pick out your stuff, pick a color, the colored number flashes, you go to the register. See how fast I learn?? lol

[weegot5kiz]

thats great melody deb and i just read this and lol through the whole note especially u saying not being sure what planet u were on, that was great

[froglady]

My goodness that sounds quite scary to me...with my brain damadge and my getting so much mixed up I would freak out. Sounds like a fun house. LOL

[Twinkletoes]

Wow, you did good woman!!! Sounds like so much fun!!!

Next time take a larger bag, eh?

[MelodyL]

We go back in about two weeks (to Beth Israel), to get his shoes.

You better believe that on that day I will take two green bags, two cold keepers (one in each bag), and I will go to town, in their fresh fish department, their fresh produce departmet and whatever department I can drag Alan into.

They even had a stand where a guy was giving out samples of some kind of lemon-lime tea that had no sugar (it was sweetened with some kind of fruit juice). It had zero carbs, zero sugar and zero everything.

Got a coupon to buy one and get one free. I didn't buy it because I then went over to the BIG FRESH PRODUCE MARKET smack in the middle of 14th Street where all the vendors (some come from Pennsylvania) and they sell all their fresh stuff.

One stand had HONEY!!! and I mean HONEY!!!! never saw so much honey (and different colors and different kinds)

Me being stupid about honey, well I ask the girl, why is this honey a different color and she went on to explain that it's all about the flowers.

I tell you, i got an education about honey yesterday. I half expected to see bees flying around (I have seen that before, very interesting, (scary but interesting).

So she had this 5 lb big jar of Honey. Guess how much??? $14.00

FOR FIVE POUNDS??? That' amazing. I can't eat honey but for Alan, well, I put little bit on everything he eats. He's crazy about it.

But I couldn't lug 5 lbs of honey along with my other goodies.

So in two weeks, HONEY LADY, HERE I COME!!!!

lol

[hollym]

Wow I'm impressed at your shopping adventure. You sound like so much fun to be around! I'm learning so much from you, too. I have learned about Steam Mops, PedEggs, new shopping systems, etc.

[MelodyL]

Well, if you think THAT was an adventure, I'd like to tell you what my husband just found floating in our bathroom toilet bowl.

I hear him exclaim: "holy cow, this is the biggest waterbug I've ever seen, and it's dead in the toilet bowl".

Now just so you know, I don't have bugs, they are NOT allowed in my home, and I haven't seen a waterbug in god knows how long.

And in the past, if we did see them, they'd be in the bathtub, they would come out of wherever waterbugs come out of but they would be ALIVE and not dead floating in the water of my toilet bowl.

So, as a precaution, for the past year, I have placed a small round heavy dish over the bathtub drain, and in my sink (when we are not using the sink, and we tape the overflow thing in the bathroom sink so we really haven't had a VISITOR in god knows how long.

So I run in there with my can of spray (I'm extremely careful not to spray in open areas, I spray down in the vents and I usually use natural stuff, and they have been working just fine. But I guess the weather is changing or whatever. I live in Brooklyn NY and today was very cold so I don't KNOW WHERE THIS CREATURE WAS HIBERNATING or wherever he was hiding from us.

So I ran in the bathroom and this thing was huge and I said 'that's not a cockroach that's a waterbug and let's see if it's really dead.

Because usually you have to spray until they can't move any more.

Well this think was dead in the water and it looked like it had BEEN DEAD FOR SOME TIME.

And I had been in the bathroom earlier, cleaning, brushing my teeth and I saw no bug because if I HAD seen a bug they would have heard me in Philadelphia, believe me.

So I'm thinking: "hm, where did this guy come from? Could he have come from inside my toilet bowl?

I mean, the water in the bowl has to go SOMEWHERE when you flush the bowl so I'm thinking maybe it came FROM somewhere, drowned, and came up into my toilet bowl.????

Is this even possible??

So any of you knowledgable bug experts out there, come and answer my dillemma okay?? Because only god knows if I see another one of these things during the night when I pee, I'll just have a heart attack. lol

[Twinkletoes]

D'ya think maybe the bug was a prank??? Eeeeeewwwww!!!

[MelodyL]

Nah, Alan knows he'd be a dead husband if he did that to me. It's not his thing.

He didn't have his glasses on at first and he thought it was some left over bowel movement thing. He put on his glasses and yelled Holy cow, and that's when I came running.

I just want to know if it's possible for a waterbug (to be that dead mind you), to come from where-ever the water comes from when, after you flush it, well, it has to go though a pipe right?

Perhaps along this pipe, or inside the pipe, this grandfather of all creatures was swept back into my bowl.

See, I don't know how waterbugs get into the house. i heard that they travel in pipes, in drains.

I've sprayed inside my bathroom cabinets and I never keep any stuff in there. I've plugged up the over flow valve, I cover the bathtub drain.

Now dont' laugh, but during the summer, I march over to the radiators at night and I take my flashlight and Alan goes "there she goes, on Ant Patrol".

I do this because we used to have an ant problem (not a load of them, but 3 are to many for me ). I went into my basement where the two 82 year old people live, and right underneath my living room radiator, in their basement, well, it's a unfinished rock wall, so I went into that room where they store their bins and stuff and I used my bug stray (with a long nozzle and I sprayed into the cracks. I also went into MY RADIATOR and sprayed downward. I figured, I'll get them coming and going and poison the whole wall.

Well, it seemed to do the trick. it worked the whole summer. Maybe one or two strays but basically my method worked.

But there isn't anything worse than seeing a waterbug (a huge one), floating dead in the toilet bowl. This was the first time.

I just wonder how it got there. And believe me it was deader than a doornail.

I told Alan, better you than me finding it because you would have hear me screaming to high heaven.

I DON'T LIKE BUGS. Obviously lol

And some of you people are bug experts. You know LOTS OF STUFF.

I like to pick your brains.

Melody

P.S. just so you know how bad I am about bugs, I used to watch an Orkin Commercial where they had the big roach crawling along the tv. I almost jumped and sprayed my tv set. And Alan was watching tv one time, not knowing what Orkin did in their commercial.

He ran into the other room shouting "there's a big roach on the tv". I knew it ws the Orkin commercial and said "Relax, it's Orkin".

Thank god, they stopped running that commercial.

mel

[Aarcyn]

I wonder what happens if you are color blind....