Tuesday morning, I watched my neighbor drive by my house and less than two minutes later drive back again.

He and his wife run our little county newspaper and Tuesdays are their publication day.

In a few minutes, he came back again with his white newspaper van (which we jokingly call the kidnapper van). I’m not sure if he forgot it was the day to pick up and distribute the newspapers or what, but it was somewhat funny to watch.

Their little newspaper, by the way, is not who my husband works for. Their paper is more like a community announcement paper, with little to no hard-hitting news and not even names on most of the stories. It is a beloved staple in the community because of its simple presentation and has been around for probably 100 years. My neighbor’s dad and mom owned the paper before him.  His dad, Tom “Doc” Shoemaker was also the local vet and a wonderful man, as far as I know. I based a side character in my latest book on him.

In the book I share how the vet checks over Gladwynn and Lucinda’s cat and I drew on an actual experience we had with Doc Shoemaker when I was a child. My dad and I had taken one of our cats to see Doc Shoemaker because we had noticed blood in the snow when he went to the bathroom (I think that was the incident anyhow) and Doc wasn’t exactly rough, but he wasn’t exactly soothing either. He did speak to our cat — Zorro — in a fairly soothing tone but then he abruptly and quickly yanked Zorro’s tail up and inserted an old-fashioned thermometer right where the sun don’t shine.

Another time we took our pet dog to him, and he had to pull needles from a porcupine out of her snout. Poor, pup.

I have book here that Doc’s family self published and I really want to sit down and read it this spring. I think it will be a nice follow up the James Herriot book I am currently reading.

Poor cat. It was necessary though because it helped to determine that he had a UTI and needed antibiotics. Poor Zorro had bladder problems for the rest of his life, but lived until he was around 20-years-old. Longevity must be something which occurs with black cats because The Husband and I also had a black cat and she lived until she was 19.

She was so old that when we took her in at 17 the vet (not Doc Shoemaker because we were living an hour from where he had once practiced and because he was retired) asked if we had named another cat Squeek.

 Squeek was my husband’s cat and I said, ‘no’ that this was the cat he’d brought in some 15 years before after rescuing her on the street. The vet tech was shocked. Even more shocked, I’m sure, when we had to bring her in two years later to have her put to sleep after she had a stroke and could no longer walk.

As I write this I have a cat and a dog staring at me from my bed.

They are not staring at me because they want me to go to bed. They are staring at me because they want me to give them a sample of coconut oil. I don’t know why but they both love coconut oil. The only coconut oil brand they seem to like though is Better Body Foods.

One time I picked up some organic coconut oil from Aldi and they wouldn’t even look at it. They literally walked away. This makes me wonder what the difference between the two coconut oils is.

So yesterday we went grocery shopping in the store for the first time in probably a year. We did this because I had tried to place an order with Instacart to Aldi for pick up but was told I could not have my order at the time I had chosen. Instead, I could have it at some point but they had no idea when. That didn’t work for me since I had other things I wanted to accomplish today and didn’t want to simply wait at home for them to tell me when I could come get my order. I have to drive 30-minutes to get to an Aldi, or any large store, so I needed an actual time.

This was all even more irritating because something similar happened last week when we were supposed to pick up our groceries at 5 on Friday, but two hours before they sent me an email and said my pickup time had been moved to the next day.

That wasn’t convenient for us at all but there was no way to contact anyone and even Instacart didn’t help because when I did a chat with them via text on their app, they said they would move the time and did. It was changed right back, however, by the staff at our local Aldi (I guess) so we had to get it on Saturday.

The reason we do pickup is because I have a couple of weird health issues where some days I feel well and other days I deal with a lightheaded and weak feeling when I do something like shop at a grocery store. No idea what it is, other than being overweight, having hypothyroidism, and getting a bit old. A friend would like me to be checked for POTS, as I do have some symptoms of that, but I have not yet asked a doctor about it. Hopefully in March.

Plus, pick up keeps us from buying extra things we don’t need and it is simply faster. I did find today, though, that there seemed to be more options available in the store than on the Instacart app.

I am not sure what we will do about pickup next week now that we’ve had two weeks of Instacart issues.

The nice thing about yesterday, though, was that The Boy, my 18-year-old son, offered to do the shopping for me. In addition to my weird health issue, I’ve also been dealing with a very sore knee (or muscle by the knee really). Luckily it is so much better but a lot of walking isn’t yet in the cards. In The Boy and Little Miss did the shopping and I helped some by walking around the store some, but not all the way around.

Little Miss has always loved helping to shop and has been very disappointed that we haven’t been able to do it lately.  She even likes riding with me to get the pickup. It’s our mother-daughter time and we listen to audiobooks on the way. The Husband or my dad have been picking up our orders lately because we are currently down to one vehicle. I’m grateful we’ve been able to do the pickup as long as we have and hope that we can continue to do so.

Today we are supposed to get a freezing rain/snow mix, so we don’t have plans to go anywhere. I am sipping a cup of peppermint tea with honey and hope to spend most of the day reading.

Tomorrow we will be visiting my parents for a late Valentine’s Day lunch.

The upcoming week is going to be very, very cold so we probably won’t be going out much but I would really love to get to the local library at least one day. I am hoping that maybe Dad will need to take a trip out here to our tiny town for something and can give us a ride. I would love to be able to walk downtown to the library but…the aforementioned knee issue and right now absolutely freezing cold.

How was your week this past week? Did you do anything exciting? Or did you simply have a nice, relaxing week?