Good Friday, Easter Monday, and Okay Wednesday.

Companies not affiliated with Jesus or eggs should not be allowed to hold Easter sales.

If you’ve come here for financial advice (I know… I know…): ignore sales, specials, blowouts, or two-for-ones. Sales don’t exist to save you money: they exist to make the company more money. If you buy something only when it goes on sale, then you don’t need it.

My neighbour did not need this:

As long as they did not buy the inflatable bunny because it was on sale, I won’t yuck their yum.

For a deaf lady, I sure give sound financial advice! The biggest purchase I’ve made since my last post was this:

I had to share my carrot with some friends via WhatsApp, a few of whom asked, “You grew that?”

I am flattered that my friends think I was planting carrots in March. But, no. I bought it from the supermarket, which I feel is more shocking because I assume carrots are typically harvested on schedule rather than being left to grow as large as possible. Could this have been planned for Easter?

Do carrot sales go up during Easter? I could Google the answer, but some questions are best left to speculation.

Other than being questioned on my carrot sources, I’ve been asked whether I’ve lucked out with an ascot–wearing dreamboat yet.

Well…

Here is what did not happen: I was planting some off-season vegetables in my landlords’ garden when I noticed someone waving for my attention. I looked up and immediately noticed a gentleman with a blurple ascot poking out of his windbreaker. I was rapt. The guy didn’t look like either Gore or Wolfgang, but he looked like Dangerholm, who was my third choice anyway. (Sure, I don’t find just dead guys from another era attractive.)

“Good day, my lady,” he begins. (I love being called a lady, even when done condescendingly.) He then tells me that he is not Brian and that he is a psychic artist who had something to give me. He pulls out a rolled-up sheet of paper from his pannier, causing a chalk ball to pop out and roll by my feet. “Sorry about that,” he says as he retrieves the chalk ball, “I was thinking about heading to Mt. Wells to do some climbing today but felt compelled to meet you.”

As he unfurls the paper, I tensed my body in fear that it’s going to be the Jehovah’s Witness manifesto. Instead, it’s an exquisitely illustrated scene showing me at the age of eleven in a blazer atop a white gelding. This ascot-wearing psychic artist/cyclist/climber knew that Kai from my horse girl days was a white gelding! I swooned so hard that I fell backwards, hitting my head on the electric meter by my door.

Upon regaining consciousness, I find myself in my bed. Right then, not Brian comes into my room holding a plate of tiny fruit. “Good to see you up, my lady. You were out cold for a while. I made you a snack.” He then reveals that in his spare time, he’s a marzipan sculptor! I glance at the light fixture above my bed and note that there’s no longer a dark outline of dead silverfish in the middle. My appetite still intact, I taste one of not Brian’s marzipan pears, and it is sublime.

I sit up and go, “Thanks for the marzipan fruit, they’re adorable, and of course, I love the drawing. I’d also like to say that I think your ascot is beautiful. I know you’re not Brian, but I’d like to know your name.”

“Oh! I am Randy,” he answers.

“…so am I.”

That leads to some canoodling. Then medium petting. Then heavy petting. At one point, things get so intense that we knock the plate of marzipan fruit onto the carpet. When this happened, I thought, “Shit, it’s going to be a bitch getting almond paste out of the carpet.”

…And it was all worth it.

So, yeah, I’m certainly not used to spending this much time alone. Much like mutant supermarket carrots, my imagination is starting to get out of hand.

Pre-pandemic, I was encountering enough weirdness in my life to keep my imagination at bay. Although, yesterday, Yann overheard a customer tell me that I couldn’t hear them because I was wearing a headset. When one says the word “headset” in the bike shop, they usually mean this:

I assume this is what the customer had in mind:

That is… not why I couldn’t hear them.

Usually, I am prepared to interact with customers in writing, but at that moment, I was standing before an alcohol-soaked workbench, about to set it ablaze (as a way to decontaminate a rotor) and therefore didn’t have paper nearby. Yann took over the interaction and later told me how the customer responded when I gestured that I couldn’t hear them.

Perhaps I’m not the one whose imagination is the problem.