The Ancien Regime

 Yesterday, my friend Trish and her fiance invited me to feed geese with them at White Rock Lake.  Although this came after working my day off…I should back up here.

The store had corporate visitors come from across the West Coast on Wednesday for something about kosher operations.  This was deemed important enough to have me come in on my day off to clean the backroom (which honestly was quite clean, only later to discover today they did the equivalent of shoving everything in the closet (sigh).  Well, we had some sort of audit before the visitors came by the district manager (who may or may not live at this store by this stage) and he failed us without saying why and honestly I don’t understand why he would have.  Whatever.  We used to be visited by corporate people like once every month or so, now it’s every week at least!  Are we this important now?  Or is our store is serious need of assistance (probably both).  The visitors came at 8am, which means I should have gone home at this point right?  Well, no.  I was told to help the diary manager because he came in on his day off to make his department look full.  So I did, without a jacket, which wasn’t smart because I’ve had sniffles ever since then.  I understand staying if I have something to do, but if it comes down to me just trying to find things to do, then it’s a giant waste of my time.  After finishing diary, I was now finally allowed to leave.  At 10:45.  After being awoken by sleep from Trish to meet her at her parent’s house near the lake, I told her I needed lunch (I was starving) and started reading on wikipedia things relating to the French Revolution.  

A thing to note about driving in DFW is that IT’S MURDER!!  Usually, tolerable to an extent, but at rush hour, oh goodness no!  In virtually all directions, but especially on 635.  Because of this, I actively avoid the highway in the late afternoon/early evening.  So along my journey of the side streets, my gas needle started going down a liiiitle too quicky.  Like quicker than I’ve ever seen it fall.  Why, I never knew.  Long story short, I almost ran out of gas on one of Dallas’ most jampacked roads, but Providence allowed me to get to a gas station before this could occur, and tired and frustrated (this was over an hour journey through the city, after all), I arrived at the specified address and we went to the lake.

Photos first.

OK, that last one I just noticed how cool it was.

And finally

Trish remarked that she has never seen me smile so  S big as when a goose is in front of me.  She’s known me 4 or 5 years, so that carries some weight.  Feeding geese is perhaps the closest I come to a religious experience.  It just makes me serene and forgetful of the problems I face in the world.  And perhaps that’s why I smile.  When I paint, if I wish to include myself in the painting, I paint a goose.  It represents me.  Perhaps this explains why.  The very last photo I kneeled in somewhat marshy conditions to take a photo through the grass.  Trish was taking photos with her camera so in the age of Instagram, I took a few with my phone.  The above was some of both of those.  Trish’s fiance seemed afraid of the geese and keep retreating back when they came close lol.  I loooove showing people I let and love even for the geese to get close.  Afterwards, we went to a nice little restaurant by the lake where I had a grilled chicken sandwich and this really good chocolate cake.  Trish invited me to join her on this bike ride a group of people do across Dallas partake in every month.  Like I can afford a bike right now, girl, lol.  Perhaps in time though.

This might be a really fun weekend coming up.

Tomorrow:  The fall on the ancien regime (a little more life altering stuff)