For several years, I’ve come home from grocery shopping in pain. My body aches all over. A few weeks ago, I finally figured out why: Grocery shopping has become a workout. I even work up a sweat in the store.

It started when my supermarket replaced its shallow shopping carts with deeper ones. They are now so deep that short people–like me–have to stand on tip toe and stretch to empty the contents onto the conveyor.

Then the store raised the height of its shelves. Either that, or they looked at my weekly list and moved all the products I buy either to the bottom shelf or the top. More stretching.

Then they rearranged all the aisles–twice in the past five years. This means I wander around looking for things. And they changed their groupings, too. Very bizarre.

The latest thing they’ve done is tier some of the more “exotic” fruits and vegetables in the produce aisle. I can longer reach the mangoes. At all. There is a barrel of something else in front of the barrel of mangoes. I am simply not tall enough to grocery shop anymore.

Hmmm. Maybe it’s my 6’1″ hubby’s turn to do buy the groceries.

The Saga of my attempt to get home from Las Vegas

Gate B10

I found a row of seats without arms next to the windows and claimed my territory. This was about 1:30am. Remember, my flight out didn’t depart until about 3:45pm. There were outlets for me to charge my electronics. There was a place for me to stretch out and sleep. Not that I got much sleep. I tried editing, but I was so tired the words danced on my computer screen.

Other people were sleeping there, too, including one man who had an air mattress and a sleeping bag.

About an hour or so into my vigil, I was joined by two sisters who were on their way to Florida to see a daughter/niece play in a volleyball tournament. Both women were in HR–one for the Phoenix police department and the other for a vitamin company based in Las Vegas. I lent one of them my Kindle Fire charger–her Android charger was in the suitcase she, too, had been forced to check in Las Vegas. We chatted for a while, dozed for a while. I never did get their names, but they helped pass the time. Their flight was at 7am. When I came back from a trip to the rest room they were gone.

(to be continued)

Continued from August 30 . . .

I met many wonderful people on my trip home from Las Vegas. My cranky seat mate was in a much better mood once he figured out his connections. He helped me reach the overhead air vent that I couldn’t reach, even while standing. When I suggested to him the cabin would applaud when the plane left the ground, he didn’t say anything, but he did laugh and said, “you called it!” when the other passengers did exactly that.

When we landed in Charlotte at 1:00am, I called my husband to tell him. TV Stevie asked, “And how is Charlotte?” To which I replied, “She has a big web and there’s a pig named Wilbur.” My seat mate completely cracked up.

The airline agents waiting to help us were a bit on the testy side, but they’d been dealing with irate passengers all evening. I was told my flights had been rebooked and if I wanted a hotel, they would reimburse me up to $75. But no list of hotels. No voucher. No food voucher. They did tell us the Starbucks was open. I trudged to the restaurant, grateful I ‘d been forced to check my bag in Las Vegas. I ran into other passengers. Some of them had hotel vouchers. Most of them had smart phones–and data–so they could look for hotels.

There were none with vacancies.

I purchased a sandwich and trudged back to the gate where my flight would depart at 3:45pm that afternoon. And that’s were I began my temporary career as the hostess of Gate B-10 at the Charlotte-Douglas International Airport.

to be continued.