The Cherry Juice Peddler

The small town I grew up in is now my current place of residence again.  I never imagined I would revert back to my small town of Canon (said like 'Canyon' because there should be a tilde (sp?) over that middle n).  Oh well, life has a funny way of taking us places we never expected to arrive again to, right?  Now that I am back to my humble beginnings, I get the opportunity to run errands for my parents.  I do errands, they get me a subscription to the New York Times.  It's my only taste of the liberal world here where Rush Limbaugh is god.  My parents subscribe to two local newspapers.  The Daily Record (I've nicknamed it the 'Daily Disappointment'), which is the daily paper for my home town and another pathetic excuse for news, the Pueblo Chieftain.  In order to maintain what my dad lovingly refers to as $40,000 a year for me to become a flaming liberal, I have struck a deal with the devil and now I do errands.  It's a decent trade, I guess.

That brings me to the title of my blog today, "The Cherry Juice Peddler."  The other evening my mom diagnosed herself with gout.  Now, I didn't know what gout was until I Googled it today.  It sounds like some sort of disease my mother contracted from a goat, right?  Well, apparently, gout is caused by the build-up of uric acid (I don't know what it is) but it's like getting arthritis in your feet.  My mom is a nurse, so I guess she has some room to come up with a diagnosis for the reason she can't wear her 20 different pairs of different colored Danskos.  Her friend said the best cure for gout is pure cherry juice.  And of course, who better to go fetch it for her than me.  There is only one place in town that creates and sells pure cherry juice.  It's this sketchy little store called Dinardos.  

I have never been to this place until now because it looks so dirty and creepy.  From the outside, the store has a lot of glass windows which look like they are covered in about 2 inches of dust.  There is all sorts of nick-knackary on the outside.  You know, chain-saw bears, crappy looking furniture for your patio, and black, wooden cut-outs of cowboys that you can put in your yard to add a little touch of pizazz.  When I entered the store (I think there were only three lanes) a small old man came up behind me and put his arm around me, welcoming me to his shop.  There are two types of cherry juice that he peddles -- cherry cider and pure cherry juice delight.  I asked which was best for gout.  The man hugged me and told me the cherry delight would be best and then tried to sell me some patron saint that would cure me in a moment.  I tried to tell him I didn't have gout but he was so hard of hearing he couldn't hear me argue with him.  I asked him 8 times if he took debit cards and by the time I finally brought out the plastic, he realized what I was asking for and said he took it.  As I left the store, he told me to come back and gave me a sweet little love tap on my bum.  Is that sexual harassment?

Well, I survived the peddler and Coop and I decided to have an adventure up at our cabin.  I have posted the photos of the fun times.  I had to shovel a drift of 3 feet of snow to get to our cabin (I have a blister on my hand to prove it) and then Coop and I went snow shoeing.  On our travels, we stole a sled from an unsuspecting house and went sledding.  Cooper is having more success in making friends than I am.  He met a new dog friend, Jessy, and they played for an hour while I shoveled.  The pictures are from my family's cabin, the bridge my parents got married on, and some other fun ones!