The Sunday paper comes with a lot of junk: ads for everthing from apples to zucchini, with cars, laundry soap, and fast food tucked in between. Anyway, I just happened to check the KMart pages (seldom do that), and I found something that said BUY ME! NOW! It was a backyard swimming pool, pretty good sized one at a VERY decent price.

However, since it was to go in my daughter's back yard, I thought maybe I ought to check with her first, because, after all, it's her yard, and she will do most of the labor of setting up the pool. So I shower and get dressed real quick, and take the ad with me to her place of business.

I'm thinking that my granddaughter will have less reason to pine for the swimming pool here at the apartment while she's at home with a pool-less back yard.

Hey, yeah! Go for it. But since I haven't had breakfast, I decide to get a bagel mit schmeer before I go trekking to the store, and we visit for awhile. There are two stores about equidistant from where Megan works, but she thought probably the store in Folsom was closer, so I headed off in that direction. When I got to the location, aaarrrgggh! wouldn't you know. The store had been closed, but for how long I don't know. Probably months.

So I retrace my route, go back to the other store I passed on the way to Megan's workplace, and get the pool along with some purifying tablets to keep the water alga-free. Dang! that box was heavy. I couldn't lift it to the shopping cart. Another customer obligingly hefted it to the cart (thank you, kind lady!). Then when I went through the checkout stand, the cashier asked if I wanted help getting the pool to the car. Yes, that would be very helpful. So the customer service person who helped was another woman. I feel like such a weenie!

Anyway, to continue. Got the package in the trunk of my car, headed back for Megan's workplace to transfer the pool to her car. I make a circuit of the mall three times and CAN'T FIND HER. Finally, I pass by--again--where she parks her car, and there she is. She said she had tried to wave me down three times, and don't I ever check my mirrors. Well, yes, I did. The rearview, and both side mirrors, and trying to keep from smashing into pedestrians walking from stores to the parking lot, and other cars approaching from the opposite direction.

OK, we finally get done arguing, and she transfers the pool from my car to hers. Now this is an amazingly small (but HEAVY) package for a pool that's advertized as being 30 inches deep and ten feet across, circulating pump included. We exchange a few more pleasantries before I decide it's time to head back home.

What with wandering hither and yon with a goal in mind, but no practical procedure devised, I figure I put 75 miles on the odometer, when with a little forethought, I could have put on maybe half that mileage.

See what happens when you think you know what you're doing, but you really don't? Story of my life.

Shalom.

PS: I'm actually writing this Monday afternoon, but DD's time frame apparently goes from 4:00pm to 4:00pm PDT. Confusing, ain't it.