Next Time, I'll Probably Get Arrested

I would absolutely love to report that I didn't just almost have a psychotic break of some sort at the Grocery Store but unfortunately, I cannot.

Honestly, I guess it was time for a complete meltdown --I've been on this awfully even keel for months now. But it still surprised me because I had a migraine and I had taken my Imitrex which normally mellows me out to the point of coma.

I was on my way home from Jane's soccer game. (See the cute Janie. Enjoy it. Because, for most of the time, she looked like THIS. Oh, look, she's crying AND pouting. I think it's amazing that she can multi-task that way.)

So, I was on my way home from her game and I needed to go to the grocery store because Monday is my housekeeper's daughter's 14th birthday and that meant we all had an excuse to eat horrible store-bought cake with that unbelievably awful and addictive frosting, right? But unfortunately, I hadn't eaten so maybe that was a contributing factor. At any rate, I pulled up behind some dear sweet old thing in a red SUV --does anyone actually drive CARS in our neighborhood? --and I was waiting patiently behind her because she was waiting for someone to pull out of a handicapped space.

"It's okay," I think, "because the spot NEXT to the handicapped space is opening up and I'll just pull in there. Look how my patience is being rewarded. See, it's a good world."

Then a blue minivan pulls around both of us and snipes that parking space.

"That's okay. That's okay. Some people were clearly raised by wolves, right? I am fine because I am adjusting my Karma so completely by waiting for this poor old woman to get her parking space, which she will pull into about the time Ana graduates from high school, I guess. Nothing can ruffle me and look, my reward, the space next to the handicapped space on the OTHER side, is opening up. Dude, is it amazing how things like this happen and the Universe sends us messages about how if we are patient and play the game nicely, we are rewarded? What a good world this is. And you know, that woman in the mini van? May she find that nothing she wants to buy is on sale.

No, no, no. I am not going to lower myself to wish ill on that parking place slut thief. Because I know how Karma works and that will come right back to bite me. Okay, is this woman ever going to pull into her parking place. I mean, ever while I'm living?"

The red SUV finally gets its parking spot(kiss kiss to you, nice old woman. No, really.) and just as I am about to zoom into my just reward, this sneaky Volvo cuts me off and steals my parking space.

I saw red. Seriously, I felt something snap somewhere behind my eyes.

Honestly, I haven't been that mad since 1998 when I was extremely post-partum-ish and Sydney dug up my newly potted plants.

All the unfairness of the entire world--having to spend time cajoling Jane into playing soccer after she begged us to pay three million dollars to let her play, my migraines, and the senseless war, and the cancer that is killing my friends and the on-going endless recovery from my foot surgery, the stress my husband is under from work and the fact that I had argued with Ana that morning about keeping the wrapper of a book we no longer even own--all of that came crashing down and settled in a red haze on the silver Volvo that stole my parking spot.

I rolled down my window, and I laid on the horn! By God, I would give her a piece of my mind. "Did you not see me waiting for that space?" I said, with such rage in my voice that she said, "Um, I guess I could back out."

I was filled with incoherent and apparently MUTE rage because I drove and parked in an aisle and hobbled into the store, my heart racing and my mind filled with INCREDIBLY cutting things I could have said to that woman. I shopped WITH A VENGEANCE.

And almost everything I bought was on sale.

Still, you know, it's a bit unsettling to be that angry. I was seriously thinking that I could have done that woman HARM.

For stealing my parking place.

I think we have to move.

I did finish my socks, though, finally. The first picture is taken up against my stocked-but-seeing-very-little-action wine fridge. Total in the wine fund: $99



And then my husband took these pictures. I got all weak-kneed when he suggested he also photograph the sock from the side so people could see the heel.