It Was Great! It Was Weird

I woke up this morning and thought to myself that if I did not get out of my house, out of my yard today, I was going to probably die. 
 I haven't left the yard since last Wednesday except to go to the dump. 
That's pathetic. 

But Jessie saved my life, as my children so often have, texting to see if I wanted to go to Monticello today. We'd been talking about taking a little jaunt over there for awhile and she'd found an outdoor table and chairs on FB Marketplace not far from my house and on the way to Monticello which she wanted to buy. The funny thing was, was that I'd seen the same listing and thought, "I should buy those. I need an outdoor table." And then I reminded myself I have too much shit already so I didn't. But Jessie did!

She picked me up in Vergil's truck and off we went to buy a table and chairs and the road we went down to get to the house is a road I've passed gozillion times, both in the last twenty years I've lived here and the five or six years (I think), I lived in Lloyd with my first husband and Hank and May, and never once turned on to it. What I discovered is that there is still a whole lot of undeveloped land in that area, just woods and more woods. It was sort of reassuring. 
We found the house where the table and chairs were waiting for us and a very nice man and woman were waiting too. The guy helped Jessie get the table in the truck and tied down and Jessie put the stacked chairs in the back seat of the truck. And then off we went to Monticello. I asked her if she'd mind driving down the little road my house had been on when I lived in Lloyd before and she said she would.
That was interesting. Someone has done a lot of work on the house and yard but again, the woods behind the house are still...woods.
A lot of memories, I tell you. 

We knew most things are closed in Monticello on Mondays but we found two places open that we stopped in. One was called Faith Full Refillery and one was The Monticello Soap Company. 
It too, is a sort of refillery where you can buy or bring your own containers to fill with their laundry detergents and housecleaning liquids and body washes and shampoo and so on. You know. 

Is "refillery" a name now? A real word? I guess so. 
The first shop we went to, the Faith Full Refillery, has jars and jars of spices and herbs and teas, etc., along with a few olive oils and some local honeys. They have a refrigerated section with somehow-legal unpasteurized milk and sour cream and so forth. They also sell sourdough starter and give classes on bread making. The shop is as clean as it could possibly be and everything is incredibly neat and tidy, as is the soap shop. 
What in the name of holy, hippie hell is going on in Monticello? And need I mention that the Faith Full Refillery's business model is based on the owners' Christianity? 
I swear. I don't get it. The woman is a nurse. Has been forever. She's still working. And yet, here we are. 
The soap lady didn't seem to have have any obvious religious proclivities but was rather jolly and I discovered that she lives about half a mile away from me. 
I just find it so hard to believe that shops like these can survive in Monticello, Florida. I think there may be a growing tourist situation going on there for day shoppers who want to buy antiques and vintage stuff and get delicious coffee and pastries and so more and more businesses are opening up. 
Still. It's just so hard to fathom. There are wellness places that offer massages and who the hell knows what, clothing boutiques, knick-knack purveyors, a store that sells plants (not to be confused with a nursery), all mixed in with Wag the Dog and the barber shop which makes no pretensions at all about being anything more than a place to sit down and get your ears lowered. As they say around here. 

So it was interesting and we went to the Mexican restaurant. That was excellent, as always. And I had to take a picture of the ladies' room. As always. 

You just can't beat that for decor. 
And I am being serious. 

So. Refilleries, lunch, a little stroll around, and then, to round out the experience, we hit the new Aldi's. 
Now some of you may know and some of you no doubt do NOT know because, why should you? that Aldi's has bought out Winn Dixie which was the only large grocery store in Monticello. Winn Dixie is a well-known chain of grocery stores but for whatever reason (probably Publix and Walmart), they are closing store after store and many are being reopened as Aldi's. 
There is at least one Aldi's in Tallahassee and I have been there exactly once. So this was going to be a big adventure for me but it turned out to be the best and the worst of going out in public. 
First of all, the store was empty. I mean- flat-out empty. 

Except for us and maybe three other people and one of those people grabbed on to us (she literally held on to my arm) and kept us in an aisle for at least twenty minutes, maybe more. 
She was one of those people who simply cannot not talk. They talk so much that there's no break in it long enough for you to say, "Oh my. Look at the time. I think I need an emergency appendectomy. Must run!" 
She may have been Chinese. I really don't know but she did tell us she was Mongolian and Hungarian, I think. Her English was pretty darn good and just about the first thing she said to us, after she'd grabbed my arm and determined that I was Jessie's mother, was, "Oh, you're so beautiful!" And to Jessie, "Your mother is so beautiful!" 
Well, who doesn't want to hear THAT? 
However. After about the thirteenth time she'd said it, I was growing weary of hearing how beautiful I was. She did ask questions about us and probably knows more about us and our families now than most of our pottery friends, but we know things about her that I wouldn't even repeat here because they are so private. But she was so happy to share! And she would say, right before she gave us another tidbit of her life, "You are cool. Like my family is! I can tell you this!"
So not only were we beautiful (she'd told Jessie she was too), we were cool! I think she's been in Florida for a very long time. She's married to an American and she works at a nursery and her one daughter lives in Alaska (I wonder why). She has no grandchildren and wanted them so much and now her daughter is too old (she's thirty-seven, I think) although she's getting married a year from this November.
As she talked, I grew more and more anxious. I broke out in a sweat. She held onto my arm and she stood very close to me and I am sure that's a cultural thing and that's fine but after awhile, my American culture-brain started saying things like, "Warning, Warning, Will Robinson." And finally, I felt a drop of liquid running down my leg and it was neither pee or amniotic fluid. It was sweat. 
I have never experienced anything quite like that before. 
I kept looking at Jessie for some way out of this but she was so calm and so patient and answered all of the woman's questions so graciously and I tried to do so as well. 
I've known one other person in my life who had whatever this inability to understand that conversations need to come to an end after a certain amount of time is and I kept thinking about her. You had to simply walk away while she was talking because there was going to be no end. 
Finally, finally, I said something like, "Well, we need to get on with our shopping so Jessie can get back to town to pick up her children," and although I had to repeat it twice, she finally got it and I pulled away from her and felt as if I was just this side of madness. 

The thing is, I liked her. She was darling. She showed interest in our lives. Obviously she is lonely. She didn't talk about religion. And we did not want to be rude to such a darling person and yet, if I hadn't said what I said, we'd still be there in that aisle in Aldi's. I can guarantee that. 

So I got out of the house today. I got out of Lloyd. I got to hang out with Jessie. I had fajitas. I bought a little tiny bit of organic nutmeg. 
On the other hand...Lord have mercy and save me from encounters like that in the future. I do not have the mental fortitude to handle them. 

When I got home I picked up my t-shirt embroidery project, realized what I needed to do which was to use a feather stitch as a hem border, ripped out everything I'd already done, and got started on that. The feather stitch is forgiving and does not require exact spacing. I could quite possibly finish up with it tomorrow. 
And I can tell you right now that I do not plan on going anywhere tomorrow. Jessie probably saved my life and my mental health by getting me out of the house today but I need a whole day to recover. And Wednesday is pottery. 

We're having our daily fake-promise of rain and I am growing weary of this. I'm going to have to water the fruit trees again tomorrow. For the first time, the crows did now show up at all to eat their mealworms. Mr. Moon fed them because I was in Monticello and he claims they don't come and eat if he feeds them. 
I hope they're okay and haven't decided to take off for south America or something. But if they have, they have and I think will eventually return. 

Remember to establish boundaries with family, friends, AND strangers. Weird things can happen in the bare aisles of Aldi if you don't. 

Is there a refillery in your neck of the woods? I'd like to hear about it if there is. 

Love...Ms. Moon