You know how, when you go shopping, you know you forgot to buy something?

[howeird]

farmount calls is Surgical Strike Shopping. Today's assignment was to buy the non-perishable items which I'd run out of since my trip. In my hand was the short shopping list:

• Kleenex


• Almonds (roasted)


• Peanuts


• Walnuts


• Enteric Aspirin


• Peanut butter (chunky)


• Jam (sugar-free)


• and something I had hastily scrawled as I went out the door.

Of course I had left the list in the car.

I remembered everything except the last item. Couldn't have been too important. And the shopping had to be done in the half hour before my doctor's appointment, and I was right on time for that. Got to the car and looked at the list, and could not make out the last item. Whatever it was, I didn't get one.

After the doctor, I tried to puzzle it out. Looked like it began with a "w". wulini? wahini? Come to think of it, I really could use a Wahini, but that's one kind of Hawaiian produce they don't stock at Safeway.

Got home, made some lime-ade (just pour seltzer into a tall glass, plop in some ice cubes, squeeze in half a fresh lime), sat in my recliner, and was instantly rewarded with a 20-lb. orange furball on my lap. Pumpkin flounced over to my left arm, sprawled out on it and gazed at the fish tank.

Zucchini! I had forgotten zucchini for the algae-eaters. Zucchini is perishable, it would not have done well sitting in the hot car while I was at the doctor's, I had not forgotten it, I had left it out on purpose. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.