Category: Everyday

When I was in high school and college I worked as a grocery store check-out clerk. I was friendly. I would chat with my customers. I had regulars. In fact, for as much as I fear talking to strangers, I became a different person when working in customer service. It’s almost like I put on my Sassy Bad alter-ego, Viv, when I worked with customers. Someone would come through my line with tortillas, cheese, and tomatoes in their cart and I would say, “Hmmm, someone’s making burritos tonight!”

It’s that Midwestern, Marge Pearson, charm deep within me.

Anyhow, there were times when I couldn’t make any sense what so ever of the context of someone’s purchases – especially the late night crowd when people were more likely to be picking up ‘just a few things,’ and the items in any given basket were more eclectic.

Like the time one guy bought toilet paper, a bottle of mustard, and some dental floss.

Doesn’t that just make you laugh? Not even a little? The complete randomness of it? Okay, so maybe I have a strange sense of grocery store humor from working in the industry.

At any rate, in my childish paranoia that other people are just like me, I was glad to be able to take my random assortment of purchases through the ‘self-check’ line at my local grocery store last night. Because, well, wouldn’t YOU wonder what was going on at my house?

Okay, again, maybe I’m just a little strange.

(Oh, and if you’re paying attention, the test came out negative.)

After this post, I decided to get out of dodge. I got my hair cut, then had a couple glasses of wine at the wine bar across the street from my house. Did I mention that I live in a dream neighborhood?

I don’t think I’ve left the house without my children for over a week. We were snowed in for three days, my babysitter couldn’t make it for my afternoon of writing and sipping wine, and now my kids are sick.

I am bored and my kids are turning into wild caged animals.

During the present suspension of play dates, preschool, and childless grocery shopping, I am pining away for a vacation from my children.

The solitude, the thinking, the conversation that rises above preschool level. Decadence!

I know I’m complaining – even if you can’t read ALL my thoughts, know that every single one of them is currently complaining about something. And I know right now, at this very moment, I have a bad attitude. And I’m also aware that given a little perspective, I could realize that someone else out there is having a really bad day, or a bad month, or a bad year – one that would put my circumstances and complaining heart to shame.

I know. I know! I KNOW!

Part of me wants to say, ‘Hey, just give me one day to be bitchy. I deserve it! If I’m still complaining tomorrow, you can tell me to shut up.’

I know that’s lame. I may not be able to stop myself from still act like a complaining bitch today, but please know that I know it’s lame.

Because it’s Thanksgiving, and because I have several Australian readers (go figure!), I thought I would tell a story that involved both!

Years ago I had an American co-worker who had spent much of her childhood living in Australia where her father’s job was located. Every year, in an attempt to keep some of their family’s American traditions, her mom would make an entire Thanksgiving meal – turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, and the whole works – in the dead heat of the Australian summer. She claimed the neighbor kids thought it was so strange that they peered through the windows, spying on this odd tradition of cooking such a meal in the sweltering heat.

Then one day my friend’s dad asked her who George Washington was. She cringed a little and said, sheepishly, “I’m sorry, dad. Did he call and I forgot to leave you the message?”

And thus began that family’s transition BACK to American soil.

The End.

Wearing these soft contact lenses is what I imagine a starfish might feel like clinging to my eyeball – they cling with suction cups and don’t move until I pry them off. When I dig my fingers into my eye sockets each night and pinch my fingers together, I pray I come out with only the flimsy contact and NOT my entire eyeball.

They are dry, they don’t float on my eye at all, and when I take them off at night my eyeballs take a good long stretch with a big yawn and an ass scratch.

I’m EXTREEMLY grateful that my optometrist just happened to have a pair of lenses in my prescription at his office so I didn’t have to endure my thick glasses all weekend at BlogHer, but I’m ready to get back into my trusty rigid gas permeables again. They float, they breathe, they pop out easily without any prodding – they are the playful dolphins of the contact world.

I can always count on Dave to keep me informed of George’s mishaps.

How do you torture a recovering rage-er who is simultaneously addicted to and completely frustrated by technology? Who is obsessed with checking for emails that never come? Who relies on Instant Message technology to converse with her husband when he takes an airplane to work?

YOU MESS WITH HER INTERNET CONNECTION, THAT’S WHAT YOU DO!

Holy mother of Pete, I have been pulling my hair out all day. The internet, she toys with my mind, she is a fickle creature. One minute she beckons, and the next she pulls away.

Finally, now that it’s 9:30pm and I’m tired, I have internet. And the depressing thing is that after an entire day of not having internet I still only have, like, two emails in my in box. THAT’S popularity.

Oh, but here’s the clincher: now my phone isn’t working either. I can’t get a dial tone. The display says ‘line in use,’ but I checked all the phones and they’re all hung up. So either some Swiper is swiping my telephone connection, or there’s an axe murderer outside my house. Waiting patiently. Anticipating the thrill of me not being able to call 911. (Why do I even go there?)

And while we’re on the subject of perplexation, here’s another thing I don’t get: my friend came over tonight, and she drove probably half an hour to get here, was in my house for about two hours, then I would guess she drove about a half hour back home again, and while she was here she had two cups of coffee.

Yet I never once saw her use my bathroom.

And aside from this observation being a little creepy, all I want to know is how can I speak to my bladder to make her act this way? Between my lack of kegels and the bottles of water I drink all day, I’m a flowing river of urine. In fact, I can’t recall a single moment in my day when I’m not thinking about peeing, because I ALWAYS FEEL LIKE PEEING. And sometimes when I say to her, No! You shall not release your pee! I would like a moment of peace! She giggles and snorts back at me and I tinkle just a little bit. She punishes.

The NBC affiliate’s weekend weatherman’s name is Sven Sungaard. Anyone for lutefisk?