Busy Buzzy Bee

Fiorella es fabulosa! Yesterday she picked up bread at the Panera drive-thru and ordered more for the next day, bought a ledger at Office Depot for herself and adhesive patches at Hobby Lobby for Husband's leathert recliner, stopped by the vacuum cleaner place for more bags and filters, grabbed a potted flower at H-E-B to present to her favorite Mazda guy when she asked him to let her retrieve her car before it was healed because Husband needed the Mercedes (hereafter referred to as The Blimp or The Queen Mary) for his multiple medical appointments this week, drove over to Mazda with said flower pot in hand and learned the car was ready but needed washing,  went back to H-E-B to fill the grocery list, headed home to put up the groceries and recruit Husband to take her back to Mazda to pick up her car, stopped at Walgreens on the way to pick up a prescription, then stopped in the driveway at home to pick up the mail and move the empty trash can back into the woods.

After a brief recovery period, Husband drove Fio back to Mazda and she was thrilled to have her baby car back bright and shiny. But when she got home, she had to call her Mazda guy back and leave a message--the key was still stuck in the ignition. Yes, Fiorella fabulosa, the nutcracker doll is still broken.

Precious LittleTime

Shock--Fio forget to post today, which is understandable with the schedule she's trying to keep. She raced out of the house this morning to meet with a friend at Starbucks--the same friend she stood up the day before because Fio was waiting at the wrong Starbucks--only to wait again because this time she was 24 hours too early. What else to do but drive off to the post office to buy Christmas stamps. The machine didn't carry them so she had to join the tail end of a l-o-n-g line. Bored to tears after finishing off all her physical therapy exercises as she waited (neck, shoulders, plies), she started talking to the people standing behind her.

The line refused to move, but Fiorella overheard a post office lady (who was moving up and down the line with a whip to keep the lions in check) tell someone that H-E-B sold Christmas stamps so Fio said good-bye to her new friends and sped on up to H-E-B, only to stand in a new line, this time at a register. Fio asked for nativity stamps, but the clerk said she only had Santa stamps, but that every register had a different stamp. Now your Fio was not about to spend her precious time standing in line at twenty registers to find out which one of them carried a stamp appropriate to her Christmas card so she walked over to the service desk and--voila!--the clerk had an acceptable batch of stamps on hand. Fio bought 100, which should put the national treasury back in good shape, then zoomed down to Hobby Lobby to buy more red ribbon for decking the halls, then drove home via Walgreens, where she picked up pildoras (pills) and a few Christmas treats.

The whole journey, Fio smiled a lot, talked to everyone, and even exchanged cards with a few other artist types. Yes, Fiorella on the roll is a sight to behold--and perhaps beware of. She is not the person her mother wanted her to be, but  Mother is long dead, and although  Fio feels her maternal love more and more every day, her strictures have faded away. Fio is Fio, and she will continue to devote every minute of her time to saving the world.

Falling Apart

Click Computer Repair, the Mazda service department, and Walgreen's Pharmacy.  Three businesses where people greet Fio by name when she comes through the door. Maybe that says a little more about her than you want to know.

Politics, Easter, Gratification

Fiorella has enjoyed watching the political scramble lately.  It's been a combination of a circus parade and a badminton match.
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Walgreen's must be observing Lent.  It's just five weeks till Easter and chocolate-covered marshmallow eggs are nowhere to be seen on their shelves.
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Fio delivered a big bag of candy kisses to the guys at Mazda yesterday afternoon when she picked up her car, and she'll deliver another bag to Click Computer on Monday.  She believes in instant gratification for good people.

For the Sake of Chocolate

Fiorella has made the most wonderful discovery, that Walgreens keeps its Christmas candy on its shelves--at reduced prices--until it's all sold out.  Last week, she went into a Walgreens in Austin and cleared out the store's remaining Russell Stover chocolate bars for twenty cents per, and a couple of days later, she bought even more in Georgetown for forty-eight cents per.  She'll buy the rest of the Georgetown load today. Her grand plan is to accumulate enough chocolate to carry her through till next Christmas, and Husband is complicit.  He's agreed to hide her stash where she won't find it and has promised to let her have no more than one bar per day.  Yes, Fio's house is the Fort Knox of chocolate, and Husband is its guardian.

In Praise of Chocolate

Ah--chocolate!

Sonia Dog awakened Fiorella much too early yesterday morning so she (Fio, not Sonia), spent most of her morning drowsing on the couch, in the bathtub, or on the bed.  But this inactivity wouldn't cut the mustard--Fio had work to do.  Besides, it was boring for her to lie around and do nothing--even though she didn't feel like doing anything. So Fio drove down the road to Walgreens and picked up a large Dove Bar for herself and a double Snickers for Husband,

Yes, Fio knows they should eaten a more healthy lunch, but what's done is done. And an hour later, Fiorella was back up to speed.  She played the piano, broomed the webs off the front porch door, and started working on her new book.

Chocolate saved the day.

Hippity-hoppity

Chocolate is Fiorella's crack, especially if it's shaped like a long-eared rabbit.  She can usually resist Hershey bars and even bypass chocolate chunks, but rabbits--chocolate rabbits!

Bunny-wise, though, it's been a bad year for Fio.  She crowed about  buying six marked-down Russell Stover chocolate rabbits at HEB, only to discover later that they had crispies in them, which means Fio could not consider them to be true Easter bunnies.  After Son had taken the crispie critters off to work with him the next day, she went out and bought another set of chocolate rabbits, at Walgreen's this time, stowing them in the trunk of her car while she spent a pleasant hour visiting with Friend Jane.  When she got home, even though the day was cold, four of the rabbits had melted.

Yesterday. she tried Walgreen's again, but all the Russell Stover chocolate rabbits were gone.

Oh, well.  She'll try Target and HEB tomorrow.  Wish her luck.  Maybe she needs a rabbit's foot.

Supermarket Scheming

There's a plot afoot and HEB is the culprit.

Two weeks ago, Fio noticed that Post Shredded Wheat wasn't on the shelves at HEB. A temporary stock outage, she thought, and bought a box of Kellogg's, which tasted sort of yucky. One week later, there was still no Post shredded wheat available. However, a new variety, HEB shredded wheat, was on proud display.

Now, Fiorella is addicted to shredded wheat. Not only does she eat it for breakfast, but she frequently snacks on it, even taking a plastic bag of it with her when she flies off to writing conferences, so she decided to give the HEB brand a try. It was okay, better than the Kelloggs, but lacked the tight compression of the Post product. Besides, she didn't like being manipulated. Obviously, HEB wanted to get its own brand started so it first switched customers to a shredded wheat that would taste radically different, then introduced its own brand which tastes more like Post.

Fio's onto ya, Charles Butt. But never mind--she's found a new supplier for her daily fix. Walgreen's carries not just medical supplies, beauty aids, and candy, but also . . . Post Shredded Wheat.