Allergy Anniversaries and Grocery Snafus

Allergy Anniversaries and Grocery Snafus
Wednesday, April 9, 2025 by Susan Lyttek

I had planned to write this week’s post about our 45th anniversary of our first date (April 4, 1980) and Gary’s birthday tomorrow (which this year makes him fully retirement eligible). In my head it was sweet and retrospective.

You would think that by now I’d learn to expect glitches when I make plans. I can still wax poetically about the two things I’d planned to write about, but a couple of other things happened that cannot skip these pages.

Sunday, I went to church. Normal, right? I had a mild headache, but as time passed, it got worse. By three p.m., I was huddled under a blanket and groaning. It felt mostly like allergies, but at the same time, I felt awful.

Monday, we had our monthly chiropractor appointment. I was tempted to call in that I was sick and skip it, but my back really needed the attention after the cruise and a fair amount of driving and lugging things. So, I donned a mask and went. In the midst of explaining how I felt, Gary said to the chiropractor, “Her allergies always act up around my birthday.” And once he said it, I remembered it was true. There’s some tree pollen or mold in Virginia that I’ve never identified (the two times I was tested for allergies didn’t reveal anything), that comes into its strength the first week of April.

Therefore, happy allergy anniversary!

Give me a couple more days and I’ll feel okay again.

Moving onto yesterday’s fun. Still, not feeling great. But needed a few things and wanted to stock up on some others because of the sale prices. Since I usually do a store pickup order, I figured I could handle that. Do all the shopping from the comfort of my chair and then spend ten to fifteen minutes in the car waiting for the clerk to put the order in the trunk. Easy. Low-stress. I’ve done it a bunch of times.

Ha. Ha-ha.

My pick-up time was scheduled for 1 PM. Usually, I get some kind of notification no later than a half hour before pick-up. Nothing. At 12:45, I called the store. The young woman who answered said she was working on my order, but I ordered too many things, and she was having a hard time finding many of them. After saying it would be at least a half hour, she hung up. Not rudely or anything, so it was hard to get mad at her. She sounded overwhelmed.

By 1:30, half hour after my scheduled time, and still having heard nothing in terms of updates by app, email, or text, I decided to head to the store. I parked in the pickup spot, but instead of hanging out there, I walked into the store, planning to go to customer service. There, right in front of customer service was obviously the person picking my groceries. She looked frazzled.

“I think that’s my order. Can I help?”

She asked me to approve a couple of substitutions, which I did. Then I followed her over to the pick up office where she logged the items she had bagged into the computer.

“Is this it?”

“I just have to do your freezer items and then everything will be done.” She tapped at the device on her wrist. “Ten, fifteen minutes tops.”

At this time, it was already 2:00 PM.

She directed one of the stockers to load my car with the completed portion. He did. I walked back into the store and stood near the front for ten minutes while the stocker complained about my situation to one of the clerks at customer service. The clerk smiled at me ruefully and said, “The manager’s at a regional meeting and we’re short-staffed today.” In other words, nothing top down would be incentivizing my packer.

Tired of waiting, I headed off to the freezer section. “Can I help?” I asked again.

She looked at my list.

“If you could tell me which yogurt you’d ordered and find your cheese?”

For the next twenty minutes, she gave me item names and I found them. Basically, I picked a good share of my own groceries. And, I spent more time at the store than I would have if I had just gone shopping.

By 2:45, an hour and forty-five minutes after my pick-up time, I was finally home with my groceries. After a coughing-sneezing fit*, I put everything away and got dinner started just in time to teach online.

And yes, tomorrow is my darling’s birthday. And yes, 45 years ago I agreed to go on a date with Gary (we went horseback riding) and my fate was sealed.

But sometimes the snafus are just too crazy for fiction and they have to be told.

Now, excuse me while I go get all fancy. I have the honor and the privilege of being the unofficial official photographer at one of Gary’s speaking events tonight!**

*Amazed I didn’t cough or sneeze through that whole mess. **Praying I don’t cough or sneeze while I’m trying to unobtrusively get the best shots!

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