10/31

i'm thankful that the pharmacy at the kroger down the road toward the country opens at 8am, which is earlier than my usual cvs, and that i left the house this morning when it was still dark and there was a 50% chance of rain for the next hour and i had decided to take that chance so i could get a run in before it would rain non-stop for several days and also pick up the anxiety medication i was about to run out of and on the unlit trail i was  moving fast through the quiet and using my phone for light and it did not provide much light, just enough not to get hit by a car hopefully and then as i accomplished the first fifth of the journey the rain started and the trees have started to lose a lot of leaves and so already their canopy provided less cover than it had even a few weeks ago i had taken a picture the other day of the yellow leaves and for a while there was a sense it might dissipate, recede, but then i went up the curving hill that if you go far enough south leads to the old highway out of town, roughly the halfway point of the misshapen loop of the run, and it came down all of a sudden like it was being thrown and i was soaked all the way through, the kind of wet where in a summer rain (of which this was maybe the last remnant) you get resigned to it, like, i can't get that much wetter than i already am and so in a way it's a relief, but so depressing at the exact same time, and i thought about waiting under the lip of a strip mall and having d come get me but at the same time it was like i've come this far and i've gotten this wet and then, most of the way down the highway to the kroger, i thought about how awkward it was going to be to step into the kroger soaking wet and yet i was also inexorably moving toward that location and then i was in the parking lot and approaching the smaller entrance near the pharmacy, since i thought if i went in through that door i would track less water through the store, though as i approached it didn't have a floor mat or anything, which i felt embarrassed about,and there were two employees sitting by the door on their break, but i was going there, and then i got there and pulled on the door handle and nothing happened because it wasn't an entrance, the two employees didn't look at me partly because i'm sure they didn't care but i also experienced it as them giving me my space respectfully to be embarrassed and so i went to the main entrance and futilely wiped my feet on the gray industrial rug and then walked back across the inside of the pharmacy, clean and will lit and starting to awaken, and when i got to the pharmacy on the far side of the store, having left definite wet footprints behind me the whole way but not dripping as badly as i feared i would and there was a woman in line in front of me who had a relationship with the pharmacist like i have with the pharmacist at cvs who seemed to feel so bad that they couldn't get my medicine in even though i didn't hold that against her at all and knew she had done whatever she could and anyway they have a long conversation as i stand on the carpeted floor dripping and finally the woman leaves and turns to apologize to me for taking so long and i told her it was no problem and i hadn't been sure my prescription would even be ready because my doctor didn't give me the prescription number and so i couldn't use the automated system but she had it all ready and she brought it over to check me out and then said "oh no, it looks like you don't have your insurance set up with us" and i was like, internally, "FUCK," i had brought my credit card and my driver's license but of course i had not remembered to bring my insurance card and i asked her, after a beat, how much it would be without insurance, since i had come so far and so wet and was like there is a certain amount of money i will pay to have this be a success and as i stood there trying to decide what that amount would be she said it was a hundred and eighty seven dollars and i decided that was above the line and i would come back "later" and i walked out of the store into the darkness and ran the rest of the way home, where i took miso out since i was already wet anyway and when i came back d greeted each of us with our own towel.