I didn't expect to be in such a good mood 90 minutes ago as I watched the bagboy sling my groceries into their bags. Is it just me, or are baggers quite possibly the employees LEAST able to perform their assigned duties? Do they sleep thru "Bagging for Dummies, aka How to put the light fragiles on top," but take notes during "The customer is a bourgeois capitalist pig--rise up, good comrade, and smash these instruments of oppression!" Because after tonight, I'm thinking they went a little heavy on that latter class. And as I'm watching in sickening horror with half of Lakeview behind me in an impatient line, I can't be that one woman who goes postal because they smashed her totilla chips and now she wants it entirely repacked *now*.
Seriously.
You might think I'm a take-no-prisoners ball-buster, but it's entirely in my head. In real life: quiet make-no-waves pushover. Hence the bread, now conveniently in a two-inch cube. Or my salad greens (bought in an attempt to intentionally eat better) that visibly popped and expelled all its cushiony air as a metric ton of breakfast foods bounced on them. Well, not so much bounced as flopped. HOW HARD IS IT? Big, heavy, squar/retangular, basic items on the bottom. Work you way thru to the damn organic eggs that were removed from the chicken with satin gloves, hand-polished and packed, and now cost me MORE THAN MY BREAKFAST. For 10 days. (It's a thing. Organic eggs and milk. Leave me alone.) Those, my friend, nestle next to the salad greens and wee zesty lemon at the top of the pile, not somewhere in the middle of my grostesque gastronomic Tower of Pisa, rapidly shifting into a horizontal position with every crack in the pavement. I walked home, hauling my over-laden cart behind/beside me, realizing I would not make a good barge captain. I'm not meant to maneuver anything with less than 2 swivel-wheels. And why do these laundry/grocery carts have no swivel wheels? They're beasts of burden. They haul our stuff, why can't it be a little easier and ergonomical? Sombody invent one, and then put a motor on it. You'll sell millions.

I came home to find my new almost-roomie dropping some stuff off in his 6-week move-in plan, and he gallantly offers to haul the cart up the stairs for me.

He's officially the favored roommate. (the cast of characters increases by one: meet Favored. Names witheld to protect the innocent, namely me.)

Doofus had overripe bananas, so out came the mixer (oh, sweet Mixmaster, how I love you. I feel quite grown up when I use you...) and I start the bread. All of a sudden, I'm doing laundry and cleaning the kitchen and listening to late-night NPR jazz while I'm doing the dishes and have a smile on my face and I realize that I love today. I might have had to work a full day--I've been sick! I've been taking it easy!, we lost our softball game (and that was the end of our championship dreams), the bagboy found a way to smush everything NOT in protective casings, Doofus refuses to grasp the goodness of the ceiling fan, but it's a good day. And I must be pretty content, because it's 1:10a and I'm finishing up a lemon pound cake with a lemon drizzle and am considering cookies for work tomorrow.

It's good to be alive.

~~~~~

On a sadder note: a rally late in the game is always an exciting thing, tapping into all that is good and right with 16-inch softball. Unfortunately, when you're being rallied *against* it's not quite the same fun. In fact, it's agony. Sheer, utter agony.

We lost 4-2 to Candlelight in the semis. FOUR to TWO.

It's a wee galling.

Oh well...softball's over, sailing's over, sporty-MM is done for the season and will happily retreat to her other favorite pasttime: throwing money at the theaters in an attempt to single-handedly support the film industry. Or, y'know, watch free previews and snark her way thru 'em.

Now THAT is a sport.

Speaking of sports: check this wacky idea out. I'm not competing, but I am entirely entranced by the idea. See you there.