Tuesday, my one trip to town, get gas, groceries, cigarettes, catch up with friends. A proper blizzard, roads covered in slush, first off the bat - Stormy.
Now, Stormy should never be first off the bat, but I wasn't thinking. The hill that he's on, it's slippery in the fresh snow, the jeep stops - barely, and I'm loathe to hang out for too long, but Stormy, his scooter, the charger's off to get repaired, he's been housebound these past few days and maybe I can help him run a few errands...
The first, of course, to the bank. Where he gives me his debit card and instructs me to withdraw $200, only he doesn't have $200, so $100 it is, nice try. From here down to buy him some cigarettes, then over to Extra-Foods where I have to buy him some candles, then for breakfast. He eats, I just have a coffee, he's spotted in the hallway a painting for sale - terrible, but he wants it, and as it's by donation the waitress goes out and just grabs it for him, I pop out to use the washroom, by the time I'm back he's packed up his food, painting, is ready to go - he's tipped the waitress $35 on a $15 breakfast.
From here - some more errands - past the antique shop - not open, past the coffee-wagon - closed, to the bike shop to check on his charger, to the deli where he instructs me to honk and the cute Quebecois proprietor brings him out $5.00 worth of cheese and takes his breakfast leftovers (to presumably throw away because I'm pretty sure I'm the only human being to eat anything he's offered), back to his house to drop off his treasures, then back down to Wal-Mart to drop him off, he's been riding me like one of those demons in folk tales that get on your shoulders and never get off, gouge you with their spurs...
I leave, and am only shortly into my own errands when I discover that he's forgotten his house keys in my jeep - I return to the mall, find him, return them, and now he's waiting for a ride home ...
He's gotten some new mittens, shows me, he went to the lost and found and protested that he'd lost his, then chose the best set they showed him as being the ones that he lost, he knows, he knows...
This, it fucks up my day entirely, the blizzard is now fully underway and my need for human company has completely expired, I check my odometer - 15 KM on his errands, 15 KM in a town that's 1 KM wide.