It Can't Be Beet

I grocery shop online every 16 days and have it delivered; today's delivery surprised me with vanilla yogurt instead of plain; a carton of 18 eggs rather than 12; and strangest, a bunch of fresh beets in place of a radish bunch.

How'd that happen? Indeed the illustration of the radish bunch on the order form might have looked a lot like fresh beets to the Middle Eastern middle-aged man who shopped and delivered today. He bypassed the house and I had to trot 100 yards after him to say, "I'm the first house. It says on my note, it's the first house you see." "Ho, sorry," he said, while I fled indoors; he wasn't masked like the other delivery people, and was long gone before I unpacked the groceries. The packaging and bags stank of cigarette smoke, and I thought: This time I ought to call the bosses and complain. His unusual name -- I looked it up -- is Arabic for "generous."

Annoyed, I washed and cooked the beets, which bled all over, meanwhile wondering who was this man, and where from? Syria? I happen to love beet greens and beet roots; radishes are the spartan, bloodless version, not so tasty but easier to clean up. Complain because there were 18 eggs and not 12? Divine, have you yourself ever made a mistake? (Yes.) Were folks tolerant and kind when you messed up on the job? (Mostly, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.) Divine, you smoked for years; did people complain about the cloud of reek hanging about you? (Only once.) Could you go into a Middle Eastern supermarket with a list made of pictures and get everything just right? (No.) His job is one no one wants unless they really, really need the money. I wondered whom he is supporting. Like everybody, he's doing the best he can. I didn't call.

Some People Have Faithful Dogs. . .

I test-drove some shiny new Toyotas--a new-car showroom feels like prom night--but with big ugly grilles instead of solid-metal front ends, and despite their backup cameras and  four-wheel drives I found I had to yank and redirect their transmission levers--just as hard in the Corolla as in the RAV4--like I was Speed Racer or something, and these were automatics. MPG stunk and that's just how it is with four-wheel drive: nice to have in the country, but less so if country living means driving a lot of miles.


The young salesman said he'd managed a restaurant for 10 years and it was a relief for him to sell cars. I asked him about the big ugly grilles and he called it  "more aggressive styling." Yeah, right, aggressive Toyotas. . . what were those people smoking. . .I hated to tell him no sale because I had been ready to deal. "Is pricing an issue for you?" he asked. I said if a vehicle was perfect for me I'd pay whatever, but these were nowhere near.

I drove home in my '07 Corolla with 150K miles ("she'll go double that, easy," my mechanic drawled) and was stunned and humbled by how quietly and well it handled by comparison. The first brand-new car I ever bought, I called her "The Bride," and we have been through camping, weeping, poverty and riches, driving over a boulder, skidding off the road, encased in ice, and many wonderful faraway places and carrying fascinating passengers, faithfully and reliably, and I apologized for even thinking of cheating on her. This is Divine Post #1000, by the way. I haven't changed a bit.

Luck of the Coffee Drinker

Used to be, Mom bought our clothes at Robert Hall and food at the A & P supermarket, home of lost or now rare enchantments such as the Spanish Bar Cake and red tins of Eight o' Clock Coffee, alongside the foreign and fascinating adults-only object (pictured) resembling a nautical speed control but engraved with weird, haunting, perhaps mystical words; Mom never used it. Today I stock only 2 brands of ground coffee: Eight o' Clock, and Chock Full o' Nuts. These passions are old, deeply set, and based solely on the names and packaging. At eight a.m., all things are possible; I still believe that. Out east, the franchise "Chock Full o' Nuts," so named because it started as a chain of roasted-nut shops in Manhattan, has sold coffee and pastries since 1932. In New England I became addicted to Chock Full coffee, rare and expensive in Missouri, consistently available at only one classy St. Louis grocery at $6-$8 for a small can. I remedied this by ordering a case of the regular coffee direct from Chock Full; the green-lidded decaf was harder to find.

I drink more of the decaf now, when I can get it. The last tin I bought is tagged $6.49. So last week in a supermarket in House Springs I'm stunned to see the "marked down" shelf holding 5 cans of Chock Full decaf at $2.99 each. Ecstatically I bought them all. It was the best luck I had all day.

Selling it here isn't easy because the Chock Full franchise, still active, never extended west of Chicago and the name causes folks to believe the coffee contains nuts. It does not.

It might be the "o"s in the middle of Eight o' Clock and Chock Full o' Nuts  that have so entangled my coffee-drinkin' heart.

Walmart: Always Prepared

I shop at the local Walmart because I can find everything there except plain yogurt, which is not an Ozark foothills food, and fresh fish. That's because everyone who shops there catches their own. I saw the above, and it's new, a real eye-catcher, in its Customer Service area. I assume it's needed on the occasions when a disgruntled customer is returning things and might be armed. Didn't used to have that at the Kresge's, Goldblatt's, and other department stores of yore. Nor at Woolworth's, where I was a teenage cashier.

Did you know that the first 5 to 15 feet inside a store's front door is its "decompression zone" where you forget what happened in the parking lot and prepare mentally to shop? Walmart doesn't put merchandise in the decompression zone -- it puts a greeter there! -- but just beyond the zone they pile up seasonal or faddish (such as "Duck Dynasty") merchandise on both sides of ya. Ninety-five percent of shoppers will next turn to the right, so the wall to their right after they turn is, in the retail business, called "the power wall," and my Walmart has its pharmacy and over-the-counter drugs there, with cosmetics nearby.

I Hire a Wardrobe Consultant

I followed a sudden, unprecedented impulse to hire Dacy of MindfulCloset to re-dress me and yesterday bagged up clothing that no longer fit: 44, count 'em, 44 pieces of business clothing: pants, skirts, suits unworn since the workdays of 1997-2010 or that I wore with safety pins and grieved in because their waistlines measured 26" and mine didn't anymore. This seems trivial, but in business it matters very much. I'm a professional editor and when I go out I have to look well-edited.

I told Dacy, a girlish 36, that although those mostly black and funereal clothes didn't fit, I felt bad leaving them (and thus those days) behind. She told me to picture the future wearing new stuff I'd look awesome in and absolutely love.

Our free consultation was right here. We did a questionnaire and paged through some fashion books seeking looks I liked (Coco Chanel!) and what else I favored (solid colors, fur or mohair or cashmere, comfort, durability, linings, pants pockets, necklines with space for jewelry). I showed her my closet, what I wore, didn't or couldn't wear. She measured me and gave me a choice of shopping with her or she'd shop for me, bring the clothes over, let me try them on, and return those I didn't want. I chose the latter (I hate shopping for clothes, or rather, I suffer: they never have my size; I don't know who sells classic clothes; I'm hustled or ignored by salespeople; I don't have hours to crawl the malls, and pricetags scare me. I bought almost all my clothes on eBay and paid a tailor to fit them to my then-body). Consultant to many, Dacy  (pictured) knows where to shop and she came over with several armsful (with her own rolling clothes rack) for me to choose from.

I could just weep for joy, imagining the confidence I will have when clothes fit, are pretty colors, hide my figure flaw (yes, I've got only one), and make people say "You look stunning" -- because I am!

MindfulCloset service costs $45 an hour, but my services cost rather more and I know when I'm more confident I'll surely draw more business. I told her I'd pay for quality, durability and versatility. I will take it out of my savings because this is what savings are for. It's also a business expense.

What's left in my closet after the Great Purge: One dress (black). One suit (black). One pair of pants (black). One skirt (brown). One summer dress. One beloved too-tight suit (navy) to take to the tailor to see if she can "let it out" and make it wearable again.

On Trader Joe's and Karl

You know how you eat so much fiber that your gut makes sounds like dial-up? Ever get tired of always consciously feeding yourself fresh raw alkaline organic locally-grown vitamin-packed calcium- and iron-rich fair-trade fibrous foods, and recycling the packaging? I've got a friend whose stomach growls constantly. His kids named this phenomenon "Karl" and when "Karrrrlllll" grumbles it's all I can do to stay in the room because it's impolite to laugh. I shop Trader Joe's grocery because it is cheap and most of it organic. There's some controversy about unions or imports or whatnot, but with my responsibilities I can't fix everyone else's problems until I catch up a bit on eating fresh raw alkaline organic locally-grown vitamin-packed and fibrous foods, and recycling the packaging (the recycling center is seven miles away). Organic carrots, lettuce, potatoes, pepitas, apples and broccoli slaw mix are in this healthy haul, plus cave-ripened bleu cheese. Now that I'm politically and nutritionally correct, let me go have a marshmallow.

The Last Day of Save-A-Lot

Farewell to the Save-A-Lot grocery at 225 Thresher Drive, Eureka. The store started up in the late 1960s and the sign probably is 1970s. I began shopping there in 1998, when it wasn't as nice as it is now; on my first visit people were smoking in the store. Then they spiffed it up and it was fine for canned goods and whatever I had to buy quickly and cheaply. Not very well trafficked -- there's a Schnucks grocery store half a mile away and a Wal-Mart superstore within 4 miles -- Save-A-Lot shopping peaked during the hard times in '08 when gasoline came near $4/gallon and the people of Eureka went for groceries and back on foot.

This is probably the last photo ever to be taken of the sign; I was the lone mourner in the parking lot, going in there to get day-old bananas, two cans of Great Northern beans, and a box of cornflakes. (It MUST be Kellogg's with the rooster. I am fond of that rooster and will never give it up.) But change has come. Already there's a new spiffy "Eureka Market" sign, and they've changed the house brand to "Always Save." Although that is objectively very good advice, I don't want to be seen eating out of those cans. P.S. It closes TWO HOURS EARLIER now, too, 7 p.m. instead of 9 p.m.