CARROT CAKE KARMA

Today was one of those days where things just sort of worked out. I went to the local food co-op to grab some lunch and groceries, and when I was paying for my stuff at the checkout counter I was told that my co-op member number wasn't showing up in the system. This also happened to me yesterday, and the checker said her machine had done that to someone else, so I just figured it was a computer issue.

But today the girl who was my checker happens to be a friend of mine, and she told me the real issue, which was that my membership must have expired. She asked me if I was on the payment plan for my membership (it's $100 to be a member, and they let you make $20 installments every six months, interest free, so of course I did that rather than shell out the full hundred all at once). I told her that yes, I was on the payment plan, and she said to go the customer service desk and get it straightened out.

I went to the customer service desk and was told that I'd missed a payment, and as a result would have to pay a $10 reinstatement fee. I asked the girl at the desk what the policy was to notify members of when their next payment was due, and she said I should have received a bill. I told her I'd never received a bill, and then she looked up my information and said that I'd been sent a bill last December 1st. I told her I'd never received the bill, which I didn't (I'm thinking now it must have gotten delivered to one of the mailboxes next to mine, as I often receive mail that belongs to my neighbors), and she then got the manager to come deal with me.

The manager, who was surprisingly young, came along and told me that it was simply policy and there was nothing she could do about it. "But I didn't do anything wrong, and now you're charging me", I said. She then said she had a record of the fact that the bill had been sent to me, and I told her that was great, but I never received it.

By that time I'd migrated over to a demo table where another friend of mine was giving a demo on some raw, vegan food supplement, and there were several people standing around trying the samples. One of the people standing around was a woman in her early 60s who happened to mention to someone else that she was shopping for ingredients for a carrot cake, but that she didn't have a good recipe for a carrot cake. Overhearing this, I introduced myself and told her that I happened to know of the best carrot cake recipe in the world, and that it was my mother's and was published in a cookbook which I happened to have. The woman was just in the process of giving me her phone number so that I could call her with the recipe when the manager who'd been looking into my membership billing issue came over and kind of hovered there, waiting to talk to me.

She mentioned again that my account had been officially past due as of January 1st, and that I should have received a bill, and I remembered right then that I'd just received my monthly co-op member coupons for the month of January. I asked her how it was that I was still receiving coupons if my membership was expired, and she agreed that was odd. Then the woman wanting the carrot cake recipe, who was still standing right there, said to this manager girl that she was a member, and hadn't received her January coupons. It was perfect timing, as I was then able to say, "see, the postal system isn't foolproof".

The manager finally relented and told me she'd wave the reinstatement fee if I had the money—twenty dollars— for my overdue payment, which I promptly handed her.

I got home and called the woman to give her the carrot cake recipe, and then said she might as well stop by and borrow the cookbook from me, as it was rather lengthy to tell it to her all over the phone. So, she came by, and she just left. She was here for about half an hour, looking at my art and telling me stories about her life in San Francisco, and how she was an interior decorater and a color expert and lots of other things. She came into my kitchen and started looking at stuff, and I was glad I'd just done a thorough cleaning of my house last night. She was wearing some kind of perfume, which is still lingering in my living room.