I wanna' win the grocery store receipt contest.

Just once, is all I ask.

Yes, I would love to win $250 worth of BI-LO free groceries. Walgreens always receives a fair and honest survey from me, because it enters me in the drawing for $1000 to spend at said establishment. I will spend free money at whatever store lets me win. Yeesh, I'm not even asking to win the lottery. Just a few free bucks at the pharmacy or the supermarket.

After student loans, bills, and rent, groceries are probably my biggest purchase. (At least that's what the pie chart from my free 'Finance Works' tells me. Thanks, SC Federal Credit Union. You're a peach.)

Is it too much to ask this?

Am I getting too specific with my prayers?

"Oh, Lord. You are good and great and I sure would appreciate some freebies at the store because my private student loan interest rate has again increased. But please feed the starving people first. And help Haiti. And The Gulf. And people in all the war torn countries. And our troops. And...ugh...ahem...Amen."

oh.

(It looks so different in print than when it's in my head!)

Today's Run with Spilly

God I love my dog.

We ran by some older ladies who were walking in the neighborhood across the main road from ours. I said "good morning" and they said, "heeeylooo..."
Then I heard one biddie say to the other, "That must be a new one." (The "one" being me, that is.) What that means, I am not sure. One what? Dog owner? Good lookin' chick? Shiftless lookin' hooligan?

After we finished running, Spilly had to take a leak, so she squatted in a side yard. As she was finishing, I heard a woman's voice yell, "You better peeek that up!!" I turned around to see a woman shake a finger at me and walk back in her front door. I tried to shake my head and yell," She's only peeing!" but Senora couldn't hear me.

Well.

I walked up to her front door where we were greeted by no less than five dogs of varying size. I knocked on the door until she came back and I said (very politely), "This is my dog, Spilly, and she is a girl. She was not pooping; she was tinkling."
In her smoker's voice the lady immediately apologized up and down and explained that she had been trying to catch the person who had been leaving THEIR big dog's daily flops on everyone's lawns.

"Dios mio! I once step in eet and seenk in up to my ankeels!"

"I know how you feel; if I didn't know better, I would think someone was letting loose a bear in MY neighborhood."

She went on to explain that the same mistake had been made about her boxer, which was also a female. Then she again apologized and I now have a new best friend in a nearby neighborhood.

Another 5 AM Friday at work.

I don't need a newspaper to tell me that the Blue Angels are in town; yesterday they were zooming over the city and would shake the house. Then, at work, they screamed over the building again and again and...again.

That lady smelled like gasoline...did she bicycle here, through the exhaust of cars? (Exhausted by exhaust?)

I worked until close last night; it feels as if I never left this building, since I am here so early. Amy is nuts; she told me to call her when I clocked in this morning so I wouldn't be on my own.

{That girl has very well-developed thigh mucsles. She must be a cyclist...or a regular in the spin classes.}

Yesterday I started reading George Harrison's biography I, Me, Mine. It is quite fascinating; he is now even more my favorite Beatle. I am probably the only person who picked up a book about one of the Beatles because of the introduction. "This book is dedicated to gardeners everywhere." George was a very good and enthusiastic gardener, and he sort of made Ravi Shankar known to the world. Also, it sounds like he had a similar sense of humor to my own; he was a producer for Life of Brian and a very close friend of Eric Idle.

{Whoa! That dude looks just like Fred Willard!}

They must have turned on the heat in here; it smells like burnt hair.

We are what we eat?

Something is wrong with me.  I have become very obsessed with food.  I do not know if it has something to do with the fact that I work at a health food grocery or if it has something to do with not having money to buy what I want, when I want.

Either way, I hate that I keep spinning my mental wheels on something so trivial and ordinary and... unenlightening.  Can I not think of something more important?  

It has gotten so bad that I find myself getting excited about the grocery mailers that come in the mail.  (I know that they arrive every Tuesday.)  I pour over them and make imaginary lists, then compare between stores.  Then I throw it all in the recycling bin, because the lists are always so expansive that I could never afford them.  They also seem wasteful some how.  I get frustrated when I am working the checkout and someone (usually mothers, I'll wager) come through and get seven to ten bags of food.  Does anyone really NEED all of that?  I have never been a mother, so I don't know.  My dog only eats one thing.  (Dog food)

I also hate that I do this because I finally got back down to my driver's license weight, kind of without trying.  It was at a time when money was extremely tight and I had to ration what I had.  Sometimes I made the free samples at the store into a meal.  At that time though, I drank tons of water, took vitamins, and rarely thought about food.  I even cut out dinner some, and it was great.  I felt wonderful.  Now all of a sudden, I have this obsession, and I have no idea from whence it came.

Is there such a thing as online therapy?  I would like to get back to thinking of more important things, like spirituality, inner peace, writing snailmail letters to people, or horses.

Criminy, I need help.