This red mulch is rubber and is made from recycled tires. I don’t think it looks too bad, and actually since it is a purpose for old tires that are usually in landfills, I think it is very lovely.

It started out okay with the old barn I love in the background of Wal-Mart’s spring outdoor stuff; $5 films: 20 Alfred Hitchcock, included a couple of silent films and A River Runs Through It – great book, great movie. Then we hit the check-out line. Yes, line and oh, my gosh, only two lights were on for people who had more than 11 items and couldn’t use a Fast Lane because they don’t want full cart people to do that. We waited such a long time.

When I got up to the cashier, for whom I have great sympathy, I noted that they have two automated questions on the touch screen for payment: Was the store clean? or Did your cashier greet you? There is no question that asks “Were enough lines open?” We got to talking and she confirmed they 1) have to call Arkansas if they are sick and can’t make it in and 2) have to pass a customer to another associate if it’s time for their shift to end. That’s really fun when you are asking questions about a product and then have to ask them all over again of another person.

But it’s sunny today, so that is good.

I am not pleased with my granddaughter’s attitude about Grover. She says he is stupid. What a jerk . . . she is. She found a copy of The Monster at the End of This Book on th bookshelf and was joking around with it in front of her dad. I told her that wasn’t the original book – that we had gone through perhaps four copies when her dad was somewhere around one year old. I would sit on the little cherry rocker that had belonged to me grandfather, the one that I had been rocked in, and read TMTETB over and over again. The cover, back and front – fell off of the first one; one copy split in half. They were all stained and wrinkled and dogeared. I didn’t need the book to remember the words, but I appreciated it for Grover’s picture. My memory could never do justice to his little face and gestures and the true-blueness of his fur.

Now, this twerp girl mocks him. Never you mind her, Grover. You are so very dear to so many of us here. I love you.