Happy Cinco de Fly-O

As Southwest Airlines calls it. I guess they're entitled because they're from the Southwest.

I try to make it my business not to take anything for granted, but I guess I really had taken being able to walk as such. It's not that I can't walk at all, I just can't walk without it hurting. This has been going on for almost 3 months and it's really wearing on me.

But life goes on. I'm sitting in Starbucks waiting for my kid to come out from taking the SAT. I'm not a big fan of the SAT and I don't appreciate having to wait and extra 20 minutes simply because it takes kids 20 minutes to write a sentence in cursive. Can't they just fingerprint everyone? I am grateful that she's taking the test here rather than at a high school where there's nothing to do except hang out in the parking lot. That was sort of fun when I was actually in high school, especially if there was food or smokes available. But it isn't fun any more.

Tomorrow, or maybe later today, I need to go to Costco to buy supplies for a schoolwide barbecue. I have a limited list to shop for, they know enough not to trust me with anything perishable or that needs to be kosher, but I've been deemed competent to buy plates, napkins and soda. This makes me proud. I mean, I know that I'm competent to do that sort of thing, but it's nice that others believe me so.

Costco is a funny place to shop. There's nothing organic about Costco. It's a warehouse kind of store but most of the stuff there would not be from an actual warehouse. In real warehouses if you want to buy something you have to buy a big box or a pallet of something. Warehouse stores were places where you could take things out of the boxes or off the pallet and buy them. At Costco, instead you buy special large sizes that are clearly packaged specifically for Costco and its brethren. It's simply not natural.

Costco is also someplace you pay to shop. This is a good deal for Costco. Most of their profit comes from people paying them to shop there. They try to make it worthwhile by selling things cheaper than elsewhere because they don't need to make lots on every single item. It also sets up a weird incentive, where it's better for them on some level if you don't shop there. The other problem, of course, is that because you buy huge sizes of things that you don't end up using everything you buy, which cancels the savings pretty quickly. How many of those 600 Tylenol PM or 5 pounds of baby carrots am I going to use before they expire or rot? It's a delicate balance. And why is there even a 600 pack of Tylenol PM? Who would need that? That's a lot of times trying to go to sleep with a headache.