After work yesterday, Girlfriend wanted to stop by a local sweet shop to order balloons for The Kid's birthday party. She says she'll only be a few minutes, so I park out front and wait in the car.

And wait.

And wait some more.

Fortunately I pretty much always have my PDA with me, so reading an eBook passed the time pretty quickly. When Girlfriend finally gets back to the car, she explains the delay.

It was The Crying Woman. The nickname isn't relevant to the story, so perhaps I'll explain it another time. I'll just say that she's one of my clients. The most important thing to know about this woman is that she's exceedingly indecisive.

She was at the sweet shop picking out some bulk candy. ONE PIECE AT A TIME. This sweet shop orders some candies but they make most of their own chocolates. They have probably 60 varieties of by-the-pound treats. The Crying Woman was basically picking out one of each.

She'd ask for ONE raspberry almond turtle. The poor twenty-something behind the counter would get a sanitary plastic glove and some small tongs, retrieve one turtle, weigh it, wrap it, tag it, and set it near the cash register. Then The Crying Woman would ask for ONE cherry almond turtle, and the process would begin all over again.

Girlfriend told me there were about forty tiny little baggies waiting by the cash register. If another clerk hadn't noticed that Girlfriend hadn't been attended, she'd probably still be waiting behind The Crying Woman.

But at least I've caught up on my reading.

There's this girl at my bank, let's call her Keeks. Keeks is supposed to set me up with a home-made (homemade? home made?) CD containing some very entertaining and slightly embarassing stuff. If she ever does come through, I'll be certain to post something or other about it.

But anyway, she still hasn't given me the disk. When I last walked into the bank, her first words to me were something like "sorry, I don't have the CD yet."

My response, with a touch of mock indignation, was "if you don't get me that disk, I'm gonna blog those camera phone pictures I took of your cleavage."

Shocked and bug-eyed, she says "what?!?"

I tell her "I'm only kidding!" She relaxes. I continue "I posted those last week."

"WHAT?!?"

I just laughed, but I didn't deny anything. She then assumed I was kidding, but she just doesn't know, now does she? heh, heh

I went to the gym tonight. Will someone remind me why I insist on demolishing my muscles like that? (It's because you're a bit of a masochist, remember?) Oh, yes, that's right. Thank you, Inner Voice. (Anytime.)

After the workout, I decided the give the sauna a try. It's still really hot. And it's still really unpleasant. And I still don't understand why people enjoy that.

Shortly before leaving, I had the most disturbing locker room experience I've had since 8th grade.

[Incidentally, the 8th grade disturbance was ongoing, a problem that plagued me all through middle school. My stepfather had the same size feet as me, and we both wore similar socks. To make sure we each got the proper socks back from the laundry, Mother insisted on markering my first initial on the toe of all my socks. I was the most popular kid in that locker room every day for two straight years.]

So back to tonight. Freshly showered, I was standing in front of my locker naked as the day I was born when a boy comes up to me with a shoe and says "Mister, can you get this knot out?"

I was more that a little stunned by this. I gave the kid a blank look for a moment, then I undid his laces for him. While naked. And dripping water. To his credit, he didn't seem to think there was anything unusual about a naked stranger helping him with his shoe. But I'm pretty sure it's an experience I never want to repeat.

My club is family-friendly, so there are always kids running around. While I was getting dressed a small gang came in from the pool. They're on the other side of a row of lockers so I could hear them but not see them. The last thing I heard before entering into full-on denial mode was "look, dude, I've got racing stripes!" A large quantity of ten year old laughter followed me out the door as I tried to repress everything I'd just heard.