Given my natural inclination to write about the things on my mind at the moment, I should be writing about how I only have one more day until Kim gets home tomorrow, but I’ve already sung my lonely hearts club song this week. I actually had one friend tell me that he always suspected that I had father issues…so I think I’ve had enough therapy for the moment. It’s the Saturday of Labor Day weekend and I have a list of chores to take care of. I decided that today would be tax day since I will be away most of September and I simply do not want that hanging over my head with a looming October 15th deadline. So I spent several hours in the office uploading all the normal tax documents into the Intuit system that my accountant uses. It’s a pretty convenient system that walks you through all the necessary issues and prompts you to upload the necessary documents, schedules or evidence to give the accountant (or her system…who knows how much AI is involved). What used to take a few days to do is now a two hour job, though I admit that using an accountant to do your taxes always feels a little like a cheat to someone like me who has an MBA in Finance and used to do his own taxes for many years.
Once I finished my taxes (only one K-1 still needed), I decided I needed to get out and do some overdue gardening since Kim is bringing back a house guest with her. I’m not sure why that would motivate me, but it does. I guess its my way of acknowledging that I am proud of my gardens and want them to show well. Today is a mid-90s day here on the hilltop, but the dryness still makes it pleasant so long as you don’t exert yourself too much. And, since I will be heading off for most of next month, it seemed necessary to get out there and clean up what I could. So I did just that over in what we call the Cecil Garden and then on the patio with its zen gardens. I blew the gardens clear of debris and then I raked the small pea gravel to create a pattern of ridges with my “kumade” rake. There is something about the wave patterns in the pea gravel that I find peaceful. I must not be the only one who feels that way since the Japanese have been doing this for 800 years.
My next task was to go out to the supermarket to buy burgers, sausages and buns for Monday’s Labor Day gathering. I don’t have the stamina to suffer through a Saturday trip to CostCo, so I decided to go to the Von’s near us. I also needed to go to the Chase bank to reload my carry-around cash. It so happens there is a Chase Bank in the same mall as the Von’s. Naturally, the drive-up was out of order, so I parked in between the Von’s and the Chase Bank. Normally I am lazy enough that I would have parked by the bank, gone to the ATM, and then driven across the parking lot to the Von’s in order to minimizing the walking, but today I was feeling more vigorous, so I parked in betweeen instead. After walking to the bank, I walked into the Von’s and did my shopping. I am not a frequent supermarket shopper, so I always find it an adventure to go food shopping. I had a set list of things to find and buy and managed to get all of that done in reasonable time. I checked out and even remembered to give them Kim’s phone number so that she would get the points to help reduce the cost of Von’s gas the next time she fills up. I was feeling on top of my game on this penultimate day of my bachelorhood…and I even only bought one thing I wasn’t supposed to…
Then, as I was blissfully wheeling the cart through the sunny parking lot, my shopping cart seized up. I immediately thought one of the wheels had gone wonky, as they do. Then, when it didn’t clear, I thought maybe I had run over some debris and it had jammed around the wheel. So I stopped to examine the cart wheels, but there was nothing that looked to be interfering with the wheels…and yet it would still not budge. My Plan B was a typical guy thing, I tried to muscle the cart towards my truck and found that even when trying to drag it (pushing it was a non-starter), it was almost impossible. I even tried hefting it, but those damn things are pretty heavy, especially when loaded down with groceries. It suddenly dawned on me, there must be some sort of shopping cart anti-theft device imbedded in the back wheels, Sure enough, when I more closely examined the wheels, they were different and probably had such a feature. Indeed they do. These systems are, it seems, now quite common, especially at larger retail stores. They are mostly a Magnetic/Electronic Systems, complete with installed underground cables or sensors around the store perimeter. Most electronic shopping cart wheels listen for a 7.8 kHz signal from an underground wire to know when to lock and unlock. When I called my daughter, she was surprised I didn’t know about this since in the NYC metro area where she grew up and still lives, its been around a long time. The basic concept is over 55 years old, but the electronic wheel locks you see today are primarily a product of the last 20-30 years.
I luged the groceries to the truck and left the cart where it had seized, not knowing what else to do. I view there as being three morals to this story. First, never offer to do the shopping for your wife. Second, don’t get too vigorous with exercise…the world seems to want you to be lazy and park close to the store. And third is that the old “shopping cart test” – the idea that returning a cart to the corral was the ultimate measure of moral character since there was no enforcement – is meaningless now. Abandoned shopping carts in mid-parking lot are simply part of the new reality. It suddenly made me realize that the new Trumpian morality is permeating our whole lives. Then I read the following from Heather Cox Richardson;
“Congress could have ended Trump’s power over tariffs by cancelling the national emergency, a step Democrats were willing to take. But Republicans in the House used a procedural rule to make sure that Democrats could not cancel that emergency. A challenge to the president’s declaration of a national emergency must come to the floor for a vote within 18 days of the challenge. The House defanged that rule by declaring that each day for the rest of the congressional session will not “constitute a day for purposes…of the National Emergencies Act””. And so goes our moral fabric altogether. What a difference a day makes, right?