Not Exactly Having a Good Week

First, I ordered this really cute little frog for a Halloween decoration. He's a ceramic box - I could put peppermints in him, if only I liked peppermints. Ordered from the company's webpage, used my VISA directly instead of PayPal.

Day before yesterday the mailwoman brought me a box that said GLOW in bright pink letters. I had no idea what it was, so of course I opened it. Hmm, $90 acne treatment, for which I was only billed $10 shipping but would be billed the full amount if I didn't cancel my *membership* by 10/23.

I called the 800 number on the receipt and spoke to the nice young man who said that this must be a fraud order and I could send it back and he would get the $10 refunded and I should call my bank. (No kidding.) He says often these people get cc info and start by making a few small random orders to your address and then if all goes well they place big orders to *their* addresses. I would think that having unordered weird merchandise arrive would alert most people (as it did me) and defeat the purpose of having stolen the cc info, but what do I know?

As I was working my way through the phone tree for Wells Fargo I pulled up my account online and found a total of six bogus charges. Most of them were small but one was $60 for a colon cleanse kit. I guess I could keep that one (it arrived today) and give it as a white elephant Christmas gift, but I think we'll just mail it back like all the others that arrived yesterday.

So I'm getting my VISA changed for the second time (the last time was about ten years ago when someone in NY ordered a lot of bike shorts on my tab). And I have reason to hope Wells will see fit to restore the money, but that remains to be seen. They're conducting a very high level investigation at this very moment, they have, of course, assured me.

And then today I go out to do all the grocery shopping all by myself in the big congested city because hey, I really don't mind, and David hates shopping. This frees up some time on the weekend, too. First I go to Rainbow and that's fine, got produce and biscotti and some organic tomato sauce, and then I went to Safeway. That was also apparently going well, some nice buy one/get one offers and some stuffed salmon and a lot of frozen veggies and some seasoned bread crumbs. And cat food. Let us not forget the cat food.

Safeway's parking lot is competitive. David used to talk about how much ROOM we had in Colorado, how wide the roads were and how amazing it was to just decide to go somewhere, drive there, and park. You know, somewhere within walking distance. And I used to think, "Well, of COURSE we can drive somewhere and then park. ???" Of course, now I get it, and I live in this really pretty interesting city and just about never leave the house because going anywhere is such a hassle. For instance, a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks were making a sand mandala at Grace Cathedral yesterday and I would have loved to see that, but it involved driving deep into the city and then parking. And then driving home. Even knowing there's a parking garage in the basement of the Masonic building across the street ... no, I'll just stay here, thanks.

Anyway, here's Safeway on a little angular corner lot with traffic whirling all around it and the parking lot's lanes are tight and the parking slots are small. Do not bring your pick-up. And you have to prowl around the lot, slowly, until you spot someone headed toward their car with a cart full of shopping bags and then follow them and wait with your turn signal on, and even then it's pretty likely someone in an itty bitty Zip Car will, yes, zip right past you at the important moment and take the place. Today I waited it out and successfully got a spot, even found a cart without having to chase someone down in the parking lot to snag theirs the second they removed the last bag. Did our shopping, came back to the car (which was still there), loaded my groceries into the trunk, and took note of the small Toyota truck waiting for my spot. I pulled out, and whee! there were three cars lined up from the other direction, headed the wrong way down the lane - in other words, they were on the left side of the traffic aisle. This made it a little tight for me, but I got out and started down the row, and about halfway to the end someone starts to back into me. I have nowhere to run, so I honk, and he hesitates and then begins to back up again. I'm now past two of the three other cars, I'm almost to the end of the aisle, and here's someone trying to turn *in* right on top of me. Because, you know, I shouldn't be there, I should be on the other side of the lane. There's some quick braking and I swear to God I thought I had gotten past that third car sitting over on my right where she did not belong. I went for the space between her and this new car trying to drive over me and I felt a small bump on my right and thought I had hit the curb.

Um, no.

Next we have this hysterical screaming young woman racing toward me shouting, "You hit my car, you stupid Word I Probably Shouldn't Repeat Here!" I was stunned. I did? There was a lot of confusion involved with getting both of our cars out of the way of everyone else and thank heaven there was a little rent-a-cop patrolling the lot, and he came over with papers to fill out. There are three scratches on the side of this Piece of PooPoo grey Celica and one scratch on my car. Scratches. No dents, scratches. Small things in the overall scheme of life. She was totally ballistic. I must have apologized 10 times while giving her all my insurance info, and she said I should just shut up because now her car is EFFED and I really wanted to assure her that it was EFFED years ago, from the looks of it, and that assuming she's going for the repairs, this little incident (which I really do regret) can do nothing but improve its appearance and she should be thanking me. In fact, now that I think about it, I think maybe what I regret most here is that she's going to get a paint job and she doesn't deserve one. Not with her attitude.

Oh, she was not a nice young woman at all. I had a whole lot of sarcastic things I wanted to say to her, but she looked like a street fighter so I just got in my car and cried all the way home instead.

David says these things happen and she's evidently got problems to act like that. I'm glad he was working from home today so he could tell me this right away. I knew it, but it's nice to hear someone else say it.

Still, I'm glad this week is almost over.

NEXT week we're going to Denver. I'm hoping for brightly colored leaves and a little nip in the air. Huzzah! See some of you there.