Queen of Rambles

When I lived in Sweden, I always called Mondays “Me Monday.” I would refuse to make social plans with Annica, I’d refuse to do laundry, and I’d refuse to do grocery shopping. I’d head over to the pool for a swim (oh how I miss having a really nice swimming facility across the street), spend a little time with Tim McGraw or Toby Keith in the tanning bed, wander around all five little shops in Kiruna, and basically enjoy my time alone.

Looking back I laugh at the utter ridiculousness of thinking I needed a “Me Monday.” I didn’t have a job (though I did occasional play guest speaker or sub in the local school system) and didn’t have kids so what, exactly, was I isolating myself from?

These days I desperately need a “Me Monday” and today I sort of got one, though it’s impossible to be totally selfish when a small human-type creature relies on your body for sustenance and comfort.

I pumped a bottle, then went out to see Rumor Has It. If I was a lesbian I would be in love with Jennifer Aniston, so I knew I would enjoy the movie. It was hilarious and wonderful and I loved it, as I knew I would. Enjoyable non-kid-type movies are hard to come by these days, so it was nice to unwind.

The first part of the movie has Jennifer and her boyfriend in an airplane bathroom, trying to join the mile-high club. No clothes are removed–it is more about visual innuendo than anything else. Suddenly an older woman in the theatre starts yelling “Sleazy! Sleazy! Slut! Sleazy!” Then she was quiet. I don’t know if she left or was kicked out, but if she thought that was bad she was clearly at the wrong movie. The whole plot is based on sex, though there’s very little sex in the movie itself. All the commercials for the movie indicate it’s going to involve sex. What was the woman thinking?

Then it was off to the grocery store, a task that most certainly would not have been a part of “Me Monday” a few years ago, but which is now almost a treat. Almost.

Everything was fine until I got in the checkout line. As soon as I saw the woman with a fancy, fancy party jacket covered in greasy spots I knew it wouldn’t be good. She and her male companion were obviously either drunk or stoned, I’m not sure which. I’ll go with stoned. They had a cart overflowing with mainly organic items, which contrasted nicely with the prescription pill bottles and cigarettes that literally kept falling out of their pockets. The woman was worse off than the man and kept begging for items that they hadn’t purchased. She particularly wanted Asian Chicken Soup, but he put his foot down. When she couldn’t have that, she decided she wanted cherry tomatoes. MY cherry tomatoes. She picked them up from my section of the conveyor belt and put them in with her things. I used to be so shy, but I’m so over that in situations involving stupid people. I thought we were going to have a brawl in the store when I demanded she give me my tomatoes back. She didn’t want to, but in the end she did. Then she saw that her companion had bought salted butter and started SCREAMING at him that she was making rice crispy treats and could only use sweet cream butter. Anything else would ruin her rice crispy treats. I didn’t realize they were such a gourmet item. When the cashier rang up a tray of steaks, the man became angry and started yelling at the woman that he was not going to pay for shit like that, so she pulled out her food stamp card and said she’d pay for them. They were a class act. At the end, the cashier told them the balance due and they looked at her like she’d lost her marbles and informed her that they had no money to pay their $204.78 bill. At this point I called Mike on my cell phone and loudly proclaimed that I was never going to get home to feed my poor sweet baby because the people in front of me were insane drug addicts. Finally the man pulled out a wad of twenties and paid cash. Did they think if they told the lady they had no money she would just let them have it for free? No telling what they were thinking, actually.

I finally got home and applied myself to the directions SAJ gave me for making a slide show, and now I have it figured out! I made a practice slide show and did a little dance when it finally worked! I would show you, but it’s pictures you have already seen. Never fear, though. One of these days I will have new pictures and they will be in slideshow form and you can ooh and awww and be impressed at my ability to press buttons in photoshop (it’s really simple to do once you realize what you are doing).

This entry was posted on Monday, December 26th, 2005 at 5:36 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.