Abundance

The busiest shopping day of the year at Oliver's will be tomorrow, the day before Thanksgiving and also discount day for seniors, so we decided to go today and brave the produce department. Just as I was patting myself on the back for going early and finding the space relatively free of the restocking carts which take up a lot of space in the crowded aisles, they advanced upon me from the back room in a phalanx, spread themselves around and parked. Clerks started unloading what looked like fullly stocked bins of persimmons, peppers and leeks and replacing them with new ones that looked exactly the same.

 The obstacle course is further complicated by an automatic, and frequent spray of water designed to keep the lettuce well hydrated dripping wet. I stepped to the side of the vast bin of Brussels sprouts to make my selections in order to give access to a woman who then lunged in, grabbed a couple of heads of dripping lettuce and shook them vigorously in my face. I decided, to forgive her since she was probably seized with the same pre feast shopping madness as the rest of us.  I'm pretty sure she never looked back to see me wiping my face with a paper towel, thoughtfully provided by the management.

In the meantime OilMan hunted for pomegranate seeds, dinner rolls, prosciutto and parmesan. He has little patience for dithery ladies staring at loaded shelves of five kinds of dinner rolls, or clueless men absently walking off with our laden shopping cart. He also never does an impulse purchase. If it's not on the list, he doesn't buy it....He's going back at 7am tomorrow to pick up the Turkey.

We took it all home, cleared the fridge of wilted parsley, rancid sesame oil, and open jars of jam and chutney of dubious provenance in order to make room for turkey, brussels sprouts, potatoes, salad greens, butter and cream. Oh, and numerous bottles of wine, beer and cider. It's a good thing others are making the dessert and the appetizers because we have no place to put them. 

We were still in the red zone  airwise this morning after twelve days, but the weather report is for up to five inches of rain starting tomorrow, which will help put out the fires and scrub the atmosphere, but certainly won't do anything for the plight of the thousands of people who have lost everything and can't find shelter. 

The despicable man in the White House visited Paradise, called the decimated town by the wrong name several times, and blamed the fires on 'poor forest management' and 'crazy environmentalists'. He doesn't seem to be getting the message that somewhere between 45 and 60% of forest lands in California belong to the Federal government....He could also call out troops to build temporary shelter for people instead of standing at the Mexican border and telling people they must turn around and go back to the countries they walked 2,000 miles to get away from.
It gets more like a third world country every day here....