random thoughts – Day 1,740 – (Saturday) – driving, shopping, styling

Bunny tracks and bigfoot.

Last Saturday’s car service resulted in bumping my hair salon appointment to this afternoon. It was booked for late enough in the day that I didn’t have to bolt out of bed and immediately hit the road. I ventured out through the light coating of Friday’s snow dotted with bunny tracks that crisscrossed my own big prints from when I arrived home from work. The plan was to visit the magical plaza on Lincoln Street in Worcester with my shopping trifecta – Aldi, Kohl’s, and Savers. 

I didn’t get far before I realized that for whatever mysterious and still undetermined reason, Waze was not providing voice directions. At a red light the speaker volume was checked and it was on maximum volume, but no voice came out. I don’t always rely on the app for the navigation, but more for the traffic, accident, and police alerts.

On Rte 495, there was a lot of radio station hopping. With the exception of Christmas Wrapping by the Waitresses, any time a Christmas song came on, I changed the station. In addition to rejecting an entire genre of music that slipped into every station on the airwaves, I was tied up in my head. There was a lot of thinking (and talking aloud to myself) about work and Christmas and life and 10,000 other things.

Between the strangely mute navigation app and the freakishly loud monkey brain, I missed the exit to Rte. 290 and Worcester. For a nanosecond I noticed the road seemed wide and spacious and thought, “Dang, 290 has changed a lot since my last time through here.” When I saw a sign for Hopkinton, it registered that I wasn't on 290, I was still on 495 and in the wrong lane to take the next exit to backtrack. 

When I was finally able to correct, I was 15 miles off course.  What in the actual hell? Apparently I do need navigational guidance. The little extra excursion added a half-hour to the journey, which cut into the shopping plaza time planned for before the salon.

At Aldi, the store was reasonably full with far too many shoppers wandering in a stupor. 'Tis the season. One woman at the egg cooler was complaining out loud to nobody in particular about the cost. I waited for her to move so I could get near enough to see the price. She finally moved and caught my eye and said, “Oh well, what are we supposed to do?” as she put her eggs into her cart. I almost blurted, “Well, you could always not buy any,” but chose to not engage. She probably didn’t want an answer anyway. And there is nothing I can do about the avian flu outbreak that is wiping out the egg layers. Fewer layers means fewer eggs means higher cost. Basic supply and demand. And bitching about it at the Aldi egg cooler won’t change it.

Fresh hair.

I went to Aldi for butter, because earlier in the week I read somewhere it was $2.99. That information was not correct and butter was the usual price of $3.49. I bought some anyway, because dammit, that is why I was there. And a pineapple, because those were only $1.69 and since the trip to Mexico in October, I’ve been wanting fresh pineapple with Tajin seasoning like we had on an excursion, but never bothered to buy one. 

Somehow, despite not really needing anything, $49 worth of stuff found its way into my cart. While in the 20-minute checkout line, I had time to be eyeballing other people’s groceries and saw several things I should have gotten for Christmas Eve dinner. Oops. 

The salon was great. It always is. My stylist gives an amazing scalp massage with the shampoo and since high school, I’ve found having my hair blow dried to be relaxing. The ends are now trimmed and tided and the blowout looks too good to just sit home alone in front of the TV, but that is exactly where my pretty, professionally styled hair went. At least I didn’t get lost going home.