paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- fast salad freak It is such a simple thing for a Friday night. Yet so perfectly wonderful. On the way home from work, we stopped at the grocery store for big salads and a big bottle of wine. To make exactly the salad you want to make at that moment, no chopping, no washing. It�s all there and they sell it by the pound. Frugal people work on the biggest, yet lightest salad. I work on just the salad because it is the Friday night treat for a hot, hot day. And with the asbestos removal project, I was incredibly hot all day with all of the plastic sheeting around. Have you ever noticed how in humid climates, plastic makes you feel like you are suffocating. Even if there is a enough air to suffocate, the plastic adds that edge already established by the humidity and the heat. I felt like I was getting moldy, in there, which is not a professional feeling. I�ll leave at that and return to my big salad. Our grocery store has a great salad bar with several types of lettuce and every ingredient commonly found in a salad. The grocery store salad bar is not an uncommon salad bar, because in KC uncommon things are not sold by the pound. We live in the most densely populated part of the city and we have only one grocery store. And seven liquor stores within walking distance. So it is a busy place and many different people�s worlds intersect at this store. I always want to take visitors from out of town to the market because it is one of the few places that comes close to being cosmopolitan. I see evidence that I am not alone, even though I don�t know any of these people. The evidence is enough. And as I walk around with my basket, I wonder about who they are and where they go when they are not at the market. And then the general population is here at this store also, although I can�t imagine that they live anywhere around the store. But maybe it was convenient. Quinn and I are approaching the salad bar at about the same time as this other woman, who, it became clear to us, was going to beat us to the salad bar.There was not only one salad left in the entire bar. She looked regular in the most scary of ways. Her hair, probably would not move in the wind, unless it all blew off, from damaged roots or something. She had on khaki-colored pants, light-colored shirt, and yes, her feet were stuffed through some slides and she had painted toenails, a shade of red, I believe. So, our crispy contender races, elbows out, towards the salad bar, ending with a full-body fling towards the salad containers. She grabs one and looks at us with a look of sheer competition and victory. I beat you to the salad bar. I am the winner. She loaded up on iceberg lettuce, of all things, raw broccoli and cauliflower, peering back at us, chuckling and sneering. Zipping around to the other side while we were still getting our beds of lettuce settled. I knew you were salad bar slowpokes. I could just tell. I was right and I am winning. She kept peeking at us from under the cough protector. Please, don�t breathe on the food. She looks at her watch. She has a coordinated set of engagement and wedding rings and long nails. I could sense that Quinn was getting salad bar rage. Not because someone got in front of us, people are always getting in front of us because we simply do not get too excited about being first to the salad bar. It was the one-sided competition and total glee that this woman was having. This is a salad bar that usually has a slow train of people moving around it. Invariably, someone is annoying, but this can be deflected by getting into the moment. Our crispy contender would have died a thousand deaths if she had arrived at the salad bar an hour earlier. I can�t resist thinking the contender is the kind of woman who thinks she has everything, but obviously must not feel that she has everything, deep down. 12:01 p.m. - 2002-06-23 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||