Edge of sanity

What’s worse than driving precariously to the grocery store in bumper to bumper traffic on the iciest of ice-covered roads? Arriving at the grocery store and finding the place filled to the brim with a mob of zombified shoppers, that’s what.

Apparently the wintery weather causes a good majority of the area’s residents to take on the collective intelligence of a single cow. And they all decide to go to the grocery store and stare at cans of soup for two hours, blocking my way to the checkout lane so I can’t pay for my damned paper towels. What gall.

So what’s a reasonable person to do if  he goes and gets his paper towels, heads back to the checkout counter, and a squinting lady dressed in approximately three overcoats and her cart full of dried cat food is blocking the way while she debates the advantages of Italian wedding over cream of mushroom? Why a reasonable person would politely move this lady’s cart out of his way, maybe saying, “excuse me”, giving a little cough, and getting on his way.

And as a reasonable person, that’s what I did. And what does this gopher-lady do but spin around and yell, “you don’t touch other people’s things!”, glaring at me through her five-inch-thick glasses with the wrath of a thousand hells. For what felt like an eternity, she glared and steamed, breathing heavily and rattling her yellow teeth. I backed away slowly — her cart of cat food was aimed directly at my midsection, and with a hearty push, she could have pinned me against the Febreze display. And there I would drop my paper towels and be stuck, conscious but gravely injured, contorted in such a way so that when they removed the cart I would die. And my family and friends would come with a priest for the last rites, and by then gopher-lady would have refilled another cart and been on her way home to watch Ugly Betty and eat prunes.

Luckily none of that happened. Gopher-lady let out a spitting sneeze and turned back around to contemplate the soup with all her energy.  And I took my paper towels to the self-checkout where the damn things wouldn’t scan and I had to call over the attendant, who was oh-so-pissed that I was inconveniencing him in such a way, like it was my fault that the laser couldn’t read the barcode through the inch-thick filth that had accumulated on the counter.

Seriously, they should make a grocery store only for normal people like me.

Seventy and sunny

Lost was truly excellent last night. A few more episodes down the road and I’ll write a rockin’ review detailing my thoughts on this new season. I reveled in the bliss of watching the premiere in high-def with the surround sound turned up, having pulled (just for the occasion of the premiere) my speakers from the boxes in which they’ve been packed away since I moved. I undertook a sweeping and vacuuming session to get my living room ready for the return of The Best Show in the World, lit up some candles to set the mood, and plopped down on the couch to soak up the awesomeness.

Then I got up this morning to go to work and the world was white, draped in copious amounts of snow. They should rename this town Chisnowgo. Yesterday evening, when the flakes were starting to tumble from the heavens, I lost control of my poor car in the middle of a left turn. I didn’t hit anything, just spun perpendicular to the road. I was able to get myself straightened out okay but drove the rest of the way home at like two miles an hour with my trembling little fingers digging into the steering wheel and my heart beating 300 times a second. This morning, with memories of yesterday’s commute fishtailing in my head, I decided to walk.