We were supposed to be in New York for the weekend. Seeing old friends. Doing stuff with the college radio station where Garry and I met. Instead, we got weathered. Tropical storm Andrea, or her remnants, are meandering up the coast dropping tons of rain. We couldn’t face the 500 mile round trip drive in heavy rain.
So the day didn’t get off to a very good start. I expected to be on vacation, but find myself at home. It makes me grumpy.
This was not one of my best days. A stupid day. I had a snippy fight with the bagger kid in the grocery store and the dogs did things in the house they should have done outside because they don’t like rain. Through all this, my body kept reminding me that like the dogs, it doesn’t much it like the rain. The argument with the dogs and ongoing disagreements with my body were both pretty much one-sided, but the kid in the supermarket actually mumbled in what I believe was English.
The issue was pizza. I wanted my frozen pizza laid flat, not shoved into the bag sideways so all the toppings fall off. The young bagger was baffled. I suggested — perhaps a bit testily — if he would lay the bag on its side and insert the pizza, voilà, you get a flat pizza. Then I could transport the pizza and it would be ever so much more attractive when it became a future dinner.
He said I didn’t need to give him so much attitude. And me, a white-haired senior citizen.
I prefer to think the lad was giving me an unintended backhanded compliment. He finally worked out what I mean about putting pizza into the bag, but then he put another 5 pounds of groceries in the bag on top of the pizza, including a half-gallon of milk, totally defeating the entire point. Some days you really can’t win. I shudder to think what that pizza will look like when we want to eat it, but I could not argue any further. My head was beginning to hurt. I wanted to go home and sulk.
Putting the groceries away reminded me how much prices have gone up without an equivalent rise in our so-called income. It is hard to believe how little stuff $100 buys these days.
My current goal is to restore my sense of humor. I think I’m about ready to forgive the bagger and the rain has eased off enough so the dogs are going back outside. It’s going to rain tomorrow and Sunday too, or so the weather gurus are saying. These long drenching rainy periods puts all our systems to the test.
We don’t get out much any more. So many friends are gone. Many have moved far away and more are planning moves to the left coast or someplace in the southwest. It’s entirely possible I will never see many of them again. If they move to the other coast, there will be no more spontaneous gatherings. Probably ever. It’s tough to deal with. The world is supposedly getting smaller and indeed, our personal world is shrinking, but the distances between people seems to be ever-widening.
I’ll feel better when the sun comes out.
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Categories: Family, Friendship, Health, Humor, Life, Shopping
Bah humbug!
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But … the sun is out. It’s supposed to be teeming.
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We close the distance every day. Look how many years we lived 90 minutes apart and never saw each other — or, really even gave much thought to where the other might be. Then, thanks to the internet, here we are, renewed, as if no time had passed and distance meant nothing at all. Yes, our world is smaller too — and we fight the Great Pizza Fight every time we go shopping unless I say, “Please pass the pizza, I’d like to lay them flat” and stick them on the underside of the cart — but at the same time, bigger. Vastly so. We marvel, daily, at the simultaneous expansion and contraction of our universe.
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True, but sometimes … you know … I just want to hang out. Sit around, drink coffee, chat without typing or wires. That’s all. Some live human contact. I miss it.
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