Age is not always a factor

So, this morning, in preparation for day number two of The Week of Getting Things Done, I headed down the street to my favorite local breakfast spot, Mozart's. This trip was very necessary, for a couple of reasons. First, I was hungry, and my fridge looked like this:

As you can see, the main contents were beer, pop, dog food, and leftover carryout containers, all of which contained stuff that should have been thrown out days ago, because I am a wasteful person. (Or, more kindly, because it's difficult to eat leftovers when your microwave doesn't work. Plus, leftover sushi isn't really a good idea anyway, is it?)

So, besides being hungry, I was facing the first task on my list, which, for obvious reasons, was to go to the grocery store, and as we all know, you should never go to the grocery store hungry. A quick stop at Mozart's on the way was definitely in order. 

So I get there, sit down, place my order, get some coffee. The place is almost deserted, with only about three other customers. Perfect. I get out my book and start to read while waiting for my food.

Then, THEY come in. A woman and her son, who looks to be about five. 

Crap.

Please understand, I'm not against the idea of bringing children to restaurants--SOME restaurants. If I had been in Denny's or Bob Evans, I would have had no right to cringe, flinch, or start up my internal bitchy dialogue. But Mozart's is NOT a place for children. The tables and chairs are wrought iron and set close together, like a sidewalk cafe but indoors. There are small, breakable knickknacks around. The food is fancy, and they serve alcohol. Classical music plays in the background. (See: the name of the restaurant.) If I was a kid, I would wrinkle my nose in disgust at this place. Being who I am, of course (older, with a discerning palette, inclined to read through a meal, not adverse to the occasional glass of wine with brunch), it's heaven . . . as long as there are no kids around. 

But wait, I thought. This place is also a pastry shop. Maybe they're just getting something to go. That would be all right. I watched them as the mother asked her son if he wanted a cookie or something. Good sign. There ensued a discussion about what gingerbread was, and would he instead like a gingerbread man? Yes, he would. The mother hands him the gingerbread man and then--oh no--tells him to go sit down. Where? How about there? Here? No, that table, the one by the Christmas tree.

The one RIGHT BY ME. 

Keep in mind, the place is deserted and has about 20 tables. And she instructs her son to sit at the ONE that is literally two feet away from me. 

My internal bitchy muttering turns to internal bitchy fuming. Of course, I can no longer concentrate on my book. 

So the kid sits down, and . . . nothing. He sits quietly in his chair with his gingerbread man and his glass of water and starts silently munching on the cookie--rather thoughtfully, I might add. He takes a quiet sip of water. I'm watching him, and he looks at me, and then he gives me a huge, adorable, and very sweet grin, and continues to quietly eat his cookie. 

And I feel like an asshole. A selfish, presumptuous asshole with no holiday spirit. Here I am assuming this kid is going to be a total brat like many kids in restaurants are wont to do, while he just wants to sit quietly by the Christmas tree and eat his holiday cookie.

His mother is still at the counter, talking about something with one of the servers. The kid doesn't make a peep.

Hmm, I think. OK. I smile back at the kid and pick up my book again. This is no problem. 

But then, a couple of minutes later, the mother returns, with coffee that is unfortunately in a real mug rather than a takeout cup. And THAT'S when it all goes south. Because this woman will not leave this sweet, quiet kid alone. Immediately, she starts grilling him, something about a loose tooth. Wouldn't he like it if the tooth came out? Weren't all the other kids at school losing their teeth, and didn't he want to be like them? Didn't he want to be a big boy? Didn't he want the tooth fairy to come? What would he buy with the money the tooth fairy left? Wouldn't he like to have blah blah blah?

The irony of this particular conversation was that it was, in fact, like pulling teeth to try to get this kid to talk. But the mother was relentless.

Keep in mind that she was sitting, literally, close enough for me to reach out and touch her if I'd wanted. (Within strangling distance, that is.) She was, in fact, physically touching my coat, which was hanging on the back of the chair across from me, with her sleeve for most of the time. Never once did she glance at me or give any indication that it occurred to her that her loud drilling of her son so close to me might be the slightest bit rude or irritating. 

At one point, she actually tried to explain to the kid what reverse psychology was, and suggested he might try using it on his brother. 

Luckily, they didn't stay very long. The kid finished his cookie, and they got up to leave. He looked up at me one last time and smiled again, and I might be mistaken, but I thought I saw a slight hint of apology in his grin. And I thought, you know what? This kid is going to turn out OK in spite of her. And my irritation just kind of dissolved as I grinned back at the kid and picked up my book once again. 

And that's when the Grinch's tiny heart grew three sizes . . . just kidding. But I did feel pretty cheerful for the rest of my brunch. And I did make it to the grocery store afterward, so that's something else off my list. Although it is rather disheartening that after throwing away the carryout containers and spending $90 at the grocery, my fridge now looks like this:

Not much difference, huh? Sigh. Baby steps, people.

[Note to burb: I am SO proud of myself! I couldn't get the second fridge pic to show up in the right spot, so I taught myself how to edit the HTML code and moved it that way. And it didn't take me all day, either. I think I'm finally getting the hang of this shit!]

Buckling Down

So, I'm off work this week for the holiday, and for once, I'm not traveling anywhere. There are many reasons for this. For one thing, even though I'm not going to physically go into the office, I should really do some work at some point, and doing work work at someone else's house just never seems to pan out. Then there's the question of what to do with my pets . . . trying to find someone to take care of them at this time of year can be a challenge. And then, of course, there's the fact that it's like negative 20 friggin' degrees outside, not exactly pleasant traveling weather. So, in lieu of traveling, I instead developed an ambitious plan of getting a bunch of stuff done around the house. You know, a bunch of stuff I've been putting off for . . . oh, about three years, since I moved in here. My plan, in fact, is eerily similar to this guy's. Only, I was bound and determined (and still am, in fact) NOT to wind up like him, although the description of his Monday and my Sunday are almost identical (except that I was reading The Prisoner of Azkaban, and for the first time--thanks, burb!). 

And so far, so good. True, I didn't get much done over the weekend, unless you count managing to NOT shoot myself in the head after an excruciatingly boring date. Yesterday, though was a different story, in which I managed the following:

*Doing almost all of my holiday shopping. (Notice I said "doing," not "finishing." Yes, I am a last-minute shopper, and I don't apologize for it. I simply refuse to start stressing and planning for this one day a month ahead of time--there's just too much else going on in life.)

*Figuring out how to reload my iPod with playlists I select myself instead of just letting the iPod chose a selection for me (which I used to do and which really gives the iPod way too much power, don't you think?).

*Mopping all of the hardwood floor downstairs, including moving all of the furniture and washing all of the baseboards.

Pretty impressive, huh? And, more significant than what I actually accomplished, I feel I have momentum . . . I've got a whole new list of things to do today, and I have a great deal of confidence that I will actually do them rather than simply plopping down on the couch with a book and/or a stack of Netflix. I'm feeling good.

Of course, it maybe doesn't bode so well that I've already wasted 45 minutes this morning tracking down that Onion article. . . . 

The Wedding Band Situation

No, this is not about what I should do with my wedding band, or more importantly, my engagement ring, both of which have been sitting uselessly in a drawer since my split with S. Although, come to think of it, this is an issue I've struggled with. What to do with them? The wedding band I'm not so concerned about--it's a tiny thing, not worth much. The engagement ring isn't worth a whole lot either, relatively speaking, but it does have a diamond in it, and it does have some worth--it seems a shame to just leave it sitting in a drawer. But what are my options? I tried taking it back to the place where we bought it from--of course, they weren't interested in buying it back. Some people have suggested I should have the diamond made into something else, a necklace or something, and I have considered this . . . but something about that rubs me the wrong way. I'm not a superstitious or even very spiritual person, but taking an engagement ring diamond and repurposing it just screams of bad karma to me. I could try selling it on eBay . . . but in reality, that sounds like something I would be too lazy to actually follow through on. And the karma thing comes into play there again--I mean, who buys an engagement ring on eBay? That just seems so . . . wrong.

Anyway, as I mentioned, that's not what this is about. This is about current wedding bands, and about people, specifically men, either wearing or not wearing them. And what inspired this particular topic? Well, let me tell ya. . . .

A few weeks ago, I took a trip to Houston, and I had a layover in Charlotte, NC. I was on my way to a wedding/family reunion-type deal, by the way, but that's not relevant to the story. The story is this.

While sitting in the boarding lounge in Columbus, I noticed this certain guy. That's not unusual--I'm a big people-watcher, and airports are, of course, prime venues for this particular activity. (Also, EVERYONE is a people-watcher at airports, right?) Anyway, I watch a lot of people, in a general sense, but when I see a decent-looking or good-looking guy, I tend to hone in. Come on, it's natural. So I'm sitting in the boarding lounge, and I notice this decent-looking guy. He's sitting right across from me, reading. I'm reading myself, but every now and then I look up, check out what he's up to. Every now and then, we make eye contact, and he sort of smiles, looks back down. This goes on for a while, until it can't be categorized as anything other than silent flirting. And I can tell you one thing for certain--this guy was NOT wearing a wedding ring.

You have to believe me on this. This is something many single women tend to notice immediately, whether we're interested in a guy or not--checking out the ring finger is almost an involuntary action, an impulse you don't even think about. This guy? No ring. Also, no visible tan lines around where a ring might have been. We notice these things as well.

So, fast-forward to the Charlotte airport. I get off the plane, wander around the terminal. Stop in to a snack shop. Find my gate. Sit in the lounge, start reading again. Look up, and there's Mr. Decent-Looking, sitting across from me again. (Coincidence, by the way? Stalking me? I have no idea.) And guess what? Suddenly, he's wearing a ring.

So, the wife lives in Houston, I guess. He takes the ring off often enough to have a tan going on underneath it. He didn't feel the need to put it back on until the last leg of his flight.

Seriously? I know I'm overly sensitive right now, still experiencing fallout from the RWBF situation, but I've felt recently that I just want to go live on a women's-only island for several months. Men suck.

(Apologies to my many decent male friends. I'm not talking about you guys.)

What is it they say is the first thing to go?

So, we all sometimes forget to get things at the store, yes? This happens to me all the time. It's guaranteed to happen if all I have to go on is one of those infamous "lists in my head." Maybe I only need a few things, and I run over the list of these very few things in my head as I'm stopping at the store on my way home from work. I might repeat the items several times, until they become a chant. I will keep repeating them as I enter the store. Doesn't matter. By the time I navigate my way through the after-work-crowd-thronged aisles, one or more of those items will have dropped off of my mental list.

Things generally work out better if I have a written-down list, which I usually do these days. I will even sometimes try to arrange things on the list in the order in which they can be found in the store, although that's setting the bar pretty high as far as grocery store listmaking goes. Still, even with a list, things can go awry. The most common problem is that I fail to put a key item or two on the list in the first place. And then sometimes, my eyes will just . . . sort of skip over an item or two. Then I'll be in line at the checkout, scan over my list once more, and realize I forgot something . . . and at that point, it's usually, like, fuck it, I'll get it next time.

The point of all of this is that I rarely leave a store with everything I actually need. But yesterday, I reached a whole new level of forgetfulness. This was no amateur stunt of forgetting the bread or the milk or the dog food. No, this was a varsity move, at a level of ineptitude that not just anyone can reach.

I forgot to get a microwave.

The thing is, procurement of a microwave was the whole point of going to the store (which was, naturally, Target) in the first place. In fact, it was the whole point of leaving my house at all on a day I would have rather spent reading and/or watching "House"* reruns. My ancient, tired microwave, a cast-off from a helpful friend after my divorce, finally emitted its last feeble waves a few weeks ago. And it's been a 5-star pain in the ass, going without this useful household appliance. So, I set out yesterday, into the bleak, freezing rain, with this specific mission in mind.

It just so happens, though, that the Target I go to is located very near my own personal church, Barnes & Noble. So, I stopped in there first, and spent a couple pleasant hours browsing, reading, and of course, buying a few books. Then I headed over to Target, list in hand. For you see, as long as I was going to Target anyway, I was going to pick up a few other items--laundry detergent, lint brushes, cat litter . . . the usual Target fare.

The one thing I didn't actually put on the list? "Microwave."

Yeah, I didn't think it was necessary to put the actual reason for my entire shopping trip on my list, but apparently, I was wrong. I was so preoccupied, in fact, thinking about the books I'd bought, what I was going to do the rest of the day, various and sundry other life issues, etc. etc., that I didn't even think about the microwave until I was driving home. At which point, I had one of those moments--a moment of shock followed by a flash of recognition, understanding, and empathy for old people who forget where they live, their grandchildren's names, what year it is, etc. I briefly considered turning around and going back to Target.

And then I thought, fuck it, I'll get it next time.

(*House = the new Law & Order)