Grump Bucket

Normally, Target will do it for me. The red, the circle, the smell of Starbucks, the scarves even though I’m tired of scarves, feeling like I am, myself, jumping the shark when I wear one, the thick socks, the napkins tied with cloth ribbon, the perfect apples in black mesh, not one of them blemished in any way. I love Target. I love everything about it. I even love that Target employees wear red and khaki. It is a perfect combination. I appreciate Target’s style sense. Its uniformity. I see their older employees wearing red and khaki and I think, for just a quick second, that they must be glad to be part of such a cheerfully attired crew. It’s so cracked. All of it.

I pulled out a big red cart and started. My mission was to buy $50 worth of tampons and pads, spending the money a friend sent me from out East. In case you’re wondering because maybe you read an earlier post about a feminine hygiene drive for homeless women, there is, at this very moment, nearly 10,000 tampons and pads in my house, like within sight. They’re everywhere which is yet another thing that is cracked. I’m not complaining. People have been so incredibly generous, organizing drives in their offices, strangers handing me big bags and boxes of tampons and pads, others dropping them off on my front porch. It goes to show – if you ask people to be generous and give them a way to do it that isn’t complicated or super expensive, they’ll come through. I love that. People who go to Target (there are a lot of Target boxes among the 10,000) or Walgreen’s or CVS or wherever and load up on tampons and pads are the absolute salt and gold of the earth.

So as happy as I am about this incredible bounty of tampons and pads – it’s neck and neck, if you’re wondering, with a slight edge to pads which really amazed me – I have had an unrelentingly aggravating day. Now is where I should detail how and why I became aggravated but nothing I say would impress. One thing after another, professional, personal, situational, adding up to thinking that it would be best if I didn’t drive anywhere so as not to fall victim to the urge to drive my car up on a crowded sidewalk.

Admit it. You’ve felt this way. Dangerous. Lethal. Done with, fed up, unreasonably annoyed at everyone. Relatives, strangers, the perfectly coiffed, thin people, people who scold, the mute, the apologetic, the ineffective, seasonal friends, insurance agents, and the couple with five children having their portrait taken on the bridge in the park that made me worry my dogs would jump on them and make them imperfect.

When I started all this – not this post but life in general – I intended for it to be perfect. The best intentions.

I have spent the day in a constant state of irked. Beginning with first thing this morning with one topic and then morphing into another topic and another. In the afternoon, I decided that a long vigorous walk would help, maybe dissipate the coiled ready to attack feeling I had all day so I took off with my dogs, tearing down the street, jerking them from every lamp post they stopped to sniff until I remembered that they are old dogs who are entitled to their sniffing. Still, my impatience almost choked me to death.

God forbid someone new happens on my blog tonight and sees the Target cart full of boas for children (I don’t know what they are but I didn’t buy one) and reads this post and rolls their eyes.

As if I care. As if I could be bothered. As if I don’t have other fish to fry.

Whatever.