Sunday, May 19, 2019

I am a wimp driver, or the saga of my groceries




Maybe I was not destined to get groceries from Central Market this week, or at least not easily. I called Friday to place an order and requested five o’clock pick-up. Never got a notice that my groceries were ready, so I checked. Seems I forgot to finish submitting it. So I submitted, with noon pickup Saturday to avoid the storms. But noon Saturday the storms were not gone—instead we had a tornado watch. So I called to ask if they could keep my groceries until Sunday. I’ve got to say every time I call, they are polite, cheerful, and agreeable. So I said 10:30 Sunday morning

Come Sunday I remembered our Texas blue laws and called. No, they could not let me have wine until noon. So just before noon I headed down the zoo road, my usual back way to half the world. Wrong move! It was impassable—they weren’t even letting cars turn onto that road but were ushering them on a back road behind the zoo. After waiting forever at a stop sign behind a monster truck, I came to a place where I could scoot into a driveway and turn around,

I went the long way, headed this time for the road behind the Log Cabin Village and through the park. But the Colonial golf tournament, which has another name these days, begins tomorrow, and all roads were blocked off. I knew that University would be a mess between the zoo and golf people. I contemplated my options, the best of which was not appealing—to turn left onto University and go to Vickery.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a good driver. I learned to drive in Chicago and spent one summer commuting from the south side to Evanston via the crowded Outer Drive. But anxiety came with age. When I returned to driving, after a two-year absence due to health, I put anxiety behind me and was fairly fearless. But lately I’ve reverted to my back-road ways—I don’t do freeways and heavy traffics bothers me. I like to know where I’m going and have my route planned out.

Suddenly, I anticipated getting disoriented. That old panicky feeling came back. I cut to the right, turned right on University, made a left onto Park Hill and came home. Jordan, Christian, and Jacob were headed to lunch, and I asked them to get my groceries after their lunch, which they did. So after five missed tries, I got two bags of groceries and three bottles of wine.

Tonight, lamb meatballs, tzatziki sauce, corn salad, and green salad, as we head into a long and busy week.

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