Former Rhino-Kicker

Good news from the orthopedic doctor today: hips look good, still not 100%, but we don't need another x-ray until JT is 2. However, his right hip is still not quite as good as the left, and the doctor did say that sometimes kids need operations when they are 4 or 5. (Pic: JT with his pavlik harness during his first week on earth.)

Other good news: he has recovered from his mouth-sore-thingee and is eating food again, although he didn't want to risk the orange juice this morning.

Bad news: they were out of freeze-dried strawberries at Trader Joe's AGAIN! This is the third time that I have struck out. That store is irksome. First of all it is owned by an enormously wealthy German family that runs Aldi (Hofer in Austria), a discount grocery store. The neat thing about Aldi back in the "olden days" was that the cashiers had all the prices of every item memorized and would type them into the cash register at lightening speed while you tried to put your things back in the cart. (They had a short counter, so you were basically using your arrms to shove things in, fumbling for your cash and trying not to hold up the line.) Nowadays, they have scanners, so the charm is gone. However, it is a wierd cult store - they sell things like computers once in a while, and people line up outside to get the good deal. The food is always cheap, but the quality is lacking. Trader Joe's, on the other hand, has quality food, a lot of it under their own label. However, you can't do all your shopping there, because it is not a regular grocery store, so you have to go to Ralph's or Kroger's or whatever you have, and therefore end up spending too much money. Now that Von's (Safeway) has come up with thier "O" Organic line of foods (the applesauce, mac&cheese, corn puffs and oatmeal are very good) and TJ's never has the strawberries that JT loves, I might go there even less. Or maybe not. They do have good simmer sauces.
P.S. (eta) The reason you have to put your purchased items into the cart after the cashier rings them up is that there are no baggers at grocery stores in Germany or Austria. I don't think they have them in France, Italy or the Netherlands either. I don't remember if England had them. In any case, you bring your own bags or buy a bag or scavange a box to haul away your groceries, and usually there is an extra counter near the door so you have room to pack things up. If you are slow and are still picking up your groceries off the cashier's counter when the next person is ready to be rung up, you may get rude looks and possibly a snide remark. And when you forget that you have to weigh your produce yourself and put a price-sticker on it and the cashier has to get up and run around the store to weigh your banana, then you will get lots of rude stares. (Many stores have a scale with pictures of the produce on it, so you put the fruit on the scale, push the appropriate button and take the sticker. This is nice and necessary, because not everyone in Germany/Austria speaks/reads German.)