My experience in NYC today!!
 

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

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

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:)

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

Next time take a larger bag, eh?

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Aarcyn:

Oh you mean at the supermarket?? where they have the colored panels overhead??

That's a very good question.

This store is so big that they have these panels on each side of the store. So you are talking about 200 registers here.

Lots of shoppers, lots of various people speaking different languages and many who don't speak english. So the color thing and the number thing (which is universal), well it's a great idea.

It's only when you first go in the store and you don't know what the heck is going on, and you think they are calling out Bingo numbers, well, believe me, that was a hoot.

The guy who was helping me couldn't get over that I had never heard of this shopping process.

I said to him; "Are you serious? I live in Brooklyn, where they have exactly 4 registers at my local supermarket. Everybody knows each other and if I show up and I thought I brought $20.00 to go shopping and my bill comes out to $25.00, the assistant manager walks over to me and goes "Melody, here's $5.00, pay me back when you next come in".

I've only had to do this twice, but believe me, I walked home, got the money, and returned immediately. With my memory, I don't want any problems.

One day, the manager Heidi told me to pick out brownie mix and all other ingredients and go home and make a batch of brownies for the people in the store. So I did. I live exactly one block from the store.

I went home, made the brownies and cut them into pieces, and brought them to the store, and everybody had a good time.

So you can imagine my face when I walk into a gigantic supermarket and they are playing BINGO!!!! lol

Melody

Well, I would rather have a ladybug ANYTIME, than any other kind of bugs.

I think SOME bugs may have a purpose on this earth, (I guess).

But to me, ants, waterbugs, roaches, well too bad they outlived the dinosaurs.

lol

P.S. I have a funny story to tell you guys.
Years and Years ago, when I was 24 years old, I had just moved to another apartment and my friend Loretta stayed over.

Well, somehow, SOME THING, got into my house. Ever see two 24 year old females screaming at the top of their lungs, clinging to each other because THIS THING IS FLYING AROUND MY KITCHEN???

And believe me IT WAS A THING!!!!

Well, my neighbor must have thought someone broke in because he comes running and we let him in and we both go running into the bathroom. Now he has no idea why we are screaming. Honestly I couldn't even breathe I was so petrified.

He finally understood that there was SOMETHING in the kitchen.

So he went hunting and we heard a WHOMP!! and he goes, "okay, I got it, you can come out now".

Well, let me tell you, there was this DRAGONFLY thing on the floor next to the refridgerator. The guy said "you know, I have never seen one this size before". "I don't blame you".

He didn't blame us???? Are you kidding? He was lucky we came out of the bathroom to see this thing on the floor.

He got rid of it.

I know me, I could never live in the country where some of my friends live. They have racoons, and things and nothing bothers them.

If I had all the money in the world, I'd live in a penthouse apartment on top of a large building, and the whole thing would be hermetically sealed and I'd have my own hydroponic garden where i could grow everything under water, and there wouldn't be a bug alive in that place.

But that's not going to happen. So until it does, there's always RAID!!!! lol

Oh, here's another funny one.

Ten years ago, all my neighbors and I were across the street like we do every summer night. Some of them were drinking their mimosas and margueritas, and I'd be having my spring water, and we'd be chilling, WHEN ALL OF A SUDDEN, we saw two eyes staring back at us from the curb.

The thing started to hop. Now I live in the outskirts of NYC. There are no things that hop. I do not live in the country.

THERE ARE NO THINGS THAT HOP in my neck of the woods, trust me on this.

So there were were, about 15 of us females, it was 7:30 p.m. and this giant frog (what do you call these giant frogs??). Well, he was resting quite comfortably in front of my friend's house. We all sat suddenly still afraid to move. I said "oh my god, what do we do"???

My friend Esther said "go up and get Joe, he'll know what to do".

Why would Joe know what to do? Because Joe has three 10 gallon aquariums filled with salamanders and lizards so OBVIOUSLY JOE IS NOT SCARED OF ANY HOPPING THINGS, RIGHT??

So we go and yell for Joe and he comes down laughing and we point to the thing with two eyes blinking back at us.

Joe is 6 feet 3 inches talll. Ever see 15 females behind a guy who is 6 feet 3 inches tall??? We must have looked ridiculous.

So Joe is quietly moving toward it and the thing hops. Well, guess who hopped on Joe's back??? ME!!!

We were 15 sreaming females and one crazy girl who hopped on Joe's back.

I mean, it was so ridiculous it was funny!!!

He says "Melody, if you want me to get this giant Bullfrog (oh, yeah, I think that's what he called it), he said "you have to get off of me".

I ran up to the top of the stairs and Joe went to catch the Bullfrog.

He caught it and he went two blocks away and released it.

Good god, now we had Bullfrogs in Brooklyn.

So from then on, I was on Bullfrog patrol, ant patrol and whatever other patrol I might be on.

I COULD NEVER LIVE IN THE COUNTRY, you can bet on that!!!! lol

:ROTFLMAO::ROTFLMAO::ROTFLMAO:

You are too funny!

When I worked in the factory, I saw a bug that scared me - otherwise, i'm only scared of spiders.

This thing, we all thought it was a bat, it was that big. It was night and it flew in and the way it moved, you'd swear it was a bat. Even the guys were creeped out. So it lands - it's a giant moth!

:eek:

Okay, that is not the worst of it. One of the guys grabs a 2 x 4 and wacks it - hard. hits it again, just to be sure it's dead. He walks away and the thing just flies off like nothing happened!


ALL of us just went " OMG!!!! Did you SEE that?"

:eek:

Speaking of bullfrogs, same factory... one of the guys went to get a crate and a bullfrog hops out at him - big as my dog, LOL.

This guy jumped over the crate and ran away screaming like a little girl. He was out the door. I never saw him move so fast.

Alrighty....speaking of things that girls hate, dislike, totally freak out about, how about mice??? :eek:

Now I don't live in the city. Used to be able to see the NYC skyline til my parents thought it would be a great idea to move to the country. Well, I guess to be fair there are mice and other nasty rodents in the city as well. Anyway, I had a mouse in my house and like any self respecting woman, jump on anything higher than the mouse and scream REALLY LOUD!!!

We couldn't catch the little critter. So next trip to home depot I decided to buy a 'sticky' mouse trap because it was suppose to be kind to the mouse. So here I am supposing that the mouse....whom I am hating at this moment, would get his little feet stuck and my husband, being the good man that he is, would check under the sink faithfully every day, to be sure the mouse was not there......Did he???? NOOOOOO! I assumed he had, but we all know what happens when we assume.

So, I would NOT look under my sink fearing I would see the little mouse that scared me s--tless.....until the odor came. :eek: Of course my husband was NOT home, and now I faced the day knowing the dead mouse or something was under my sink, smelling. What to do?

My dad had had the flu for the past week, but I knew he was invincible. Dare I call him, and ask how he was?

First I needed to check under the sink. I cracked the door of the cabinet. :eek: There was that poor mouse, that I hated with all my heart rolled over on his body and had ripped his skin off. He wasn't dead...just skinless. Who the heck said these stupid traps were humane?

I called my dad and asked how he was feeling. He said how kind it was for me to call. Yeah, alright dad but I need you to be my hero and come and get the half live mouse from under my sink and do something with it!!!! I am flipping out over it!

He came to my rescue...flu and all. I love my dad! :hug: