keep the customer satisfied

RLS- do you lay in bed at night with an urgent need to move your legs about? does your need to move your legs keep you awake? you may be suffering from restless leg syndrome.
i heard this on the radio today and kept waiting for it to be a joke, but it wasn't. there's a clinic. oh my god, people can suffer any affliction.

winter squash. we're going to make signs at work that say "these squash are not gourds" because everyone keeps looking at our beautiful galeux d'eysines and blue hubbard squash and saying "oooo, look at those gourds." by the way- galeux d'eysines means "embroidered with pebbles from eysines" or, if you're not feeling figurative, "scabious sqaush". we're also going to make a sign that says "please refrain from telling ashley the same story every time you come in to buy peaches". one woman ALWAYS reminds me that she has a bad wrist. which i can relate to- i myself have some wrist problem- not restless wrist syndrom or anything, but definately something wrong, perhaps the beginnings of arthritis or something. lame wrist. another woman hangs around for fucking ever when she comes in and tells us all about how she works as a food sampler at sam's club. today she asked me the date so she could write a check (um, it's september 11, didn't you KNOW that?) and she says, "oh, this is that day, that day that they.... now what did they do with the planes and the buildings?" i wasn't quite sure how to respond to this woman not knowing exactly what happened on sept. 11- i mean, do i fill her in?? or do i realize that she's probably got some mental problem and let her work it out for herself. yes, i did the latter. through talking to herself she managed to remember what happened with the planes and the buildings and i got to go back to my peaceful world of peach-eating without having to give her a history lesson. which people generally don't like hearing from a farm stand employee- sometimes i get stuck at the cash register for long periods and, after getting annoyed that people aren't absorbing my 'lessons on organic farming' spiels with rapt attention, i resort to entertaining myself by asking people if they know what significant event happened on the date that is the total of their bill. $10.66- come on, people. $18.61- anyone?? $14.53 is a little harder. i also have to refrain from treating people like 3 and 5 year old english charges by saying "yes, please" when they forget their fucking manners.

tomatoes. at times they can be very gratifying to pick. like today- i went out for an hour and a half to get some tomatoes for the farm stand and was absolutely loving my picking experience. it's like hunting for tomato gold- only two rows (out of something like 15) are trellised, so this makes for a lot of crawling around on the ground to find the hidden ripe treasures underneath the brush. perhaps the novelty will someday wear off, but now i'm still excited to find the
perfect tomato every ten minutes or so. maybe five. there are a lot of perfect tomatoes. there are also a lot of tomatoes with "black ass" or "bottom rot", so they look perfect on top but when you go to grab it you get a handful of tomato guts. it was made known to me today that i have the habit of making sound effects for picking said rotten tomatoes. my excuse is this: i'm often wearing headphones while tomato picking cause it takes so long and, since i can't hear the tomato exploding when i pick it, i feel the need to provide the possible noise myself and make squishy sounds with my mouth. cause i'm a weirdo.

other times tomatoes are downright annoying to pick, which is why there are mexicans working at the farm, cause they'll pick the hell out of anything with no need for an ipod. except when it rains. then they're outta there like a mexican in the rain.



luggage. my dad brought my old suitcase (with god knows what inside) to me from springfield today. this suitcase was trustworthy for a number of years until last february when it exploded on the train platform at southeast station in new york. i had some zipper failure for about a year but managed to get the thing open and shut with a pair of pliers and well-executed swearing, but it finally burst open while getting off the train and the most embarassing stuff spilled onto the platform. no, not my undergarments- my bright pink book on chocolate, my "wedding slinger" toy (which works like a mini-catapult that launches little bride and groom miniatures- apparently this is something someone thought i needed), and... i don't know- just not the kind of stuff that normally pops out of luggage. anyway, i feel like i should've taken my luggage failure as a sign way back in februrary, and yet i ignored it and bought new luggage instead, which turned out to be a piece of crap. the material possessions in my life are trying to tell me something.

i guess that's enough rambling for one night.