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the place she puts such bags
Saturday, June 24 2006
I was babysitting a huge Labrador retriver again today, a subcontract of a dogsitting gig our neighbor Andrea had taken on; she had to spend the day snapping pictures at somebody's rained-out wedding.
The day gave every indication of being a rainy one, but actually it only rained in the morning. That wedding was spared, as was the annual shindig at the Catskill Animal Sanctuary. Gretchen wanted me to go there and bid on some silent auction things, but my duties as dog sitter complicated things. I rolled into the sanctuary with a car full of squirming black canine cuteness and could see from the look on the faces of the people taking money at the gate that, whoops, "you're not supposed to" be bringing dogs. I knew the rules; I just needed to park for five minutes and bid on some items to please the wife. It was a narrow mission I was on, not one to be interrupted by obligatory hugs, though I ended up hugging two ladies and shaking one gentleman's hand (because we're not homos, see). And then I was out of there, pricing artificial pond liners at Lowes and then buying oversized planter pots at Home Depot. Despite my think-global-act-local credentials, I still likes me some megastores.
I also went grocery shopping at the A&P next door to Home Depot. I'm fond of decribing that place as "ghetto," though it isn't nearly as seedy as either of the two Hannafords. Unlike the Hannafords, though, this A&P does hire a lot of young black women to work the cash registers. I was unexpectedly delighted by the cool charisma my cashier demonstrated as she bantered with her colleague next door. "It never fails!" she sighed as she placed a bag a customer had forgotten to take in the place where she puts such bags. She had dyed-pink hair and slightly nerdy glasses and though she was built a little like a phone booth I couldn't help but flirt with her, something I almost never do when buying groceries. It was only for an instant, but we both knew. That's flirting in its highest form. A sober white woman that size would never have flirted with me but thankfully a black woman obeys different rules. I must have been looking good today or else my hair had me looking like a NASCAR celebrity because an unusual number of women (most of them young, white, and trashy) were doing double takes, something I rarely observe.
I took the dogs down to the Secret Spot and encouraged them to get wet even though the day wasn't especially hot. It just felt hot because of that enormous Labrador heating up the car with his kibble-powered British Thermal Units and ceaseless panting.
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