Granny Day at the grocery store.

Normally after a weekend of work, I spend Monday doing as little as humanly possible. After 2 back to back days of 12 hours on my feet, taking care of patients, I'm wiped, and about all I have the energy for is getting Wyatt dressed, fed, packing his lunch,and sending him out the door. After that I'm pretty much spent until about 3, just in time for him to get off the bus.

But today, for some inexplicable reason, I decided to be an overachiever.

After Wyatt's bus picked him up I toyed around with the idea of going back to bed, but because his bus was 20 min late due to the cold weather, I'd already had 3 cups of coffee, and if I went back to bed all I'd do is lay there and twitch.

So I went through the kitchen, figured out what I was low on, and decided to hit the grocery store. Since it's so cold today (in the 20's-30's, yeah, go ahead and laugh all my up north friends and family, I've been down here for 7 years now, my blood's thinned out!), I decided to make a pot of beef stew for dinner.

Since I was in a really overachieving mood, I figured I'd run by my office first, then the bank, and then the grocery store. I even took a shower and put on makeup. (Actually, I always put on makeup, since the site of me strolling through the aisles at Lowes, with my naked as the day I was born face is just frightening, and I'm sure, in violation of at least 3 of the Geneva Conventions statutes on torture and cruel and unusual punishment.)

I hit the office, hit the bank, and headed over to Lowes. At this point I was on auto pilot, because if I wasn't I'm sure I would have noticed the HUGE bus with the retirement village logo parked out front of the store.

And I would have ran.

But, I missed it completely.

Into the store I went, list in hand, cart at the ready, all set to run in, get what I needed and run home. Ahh, the best laid plans....

The store was packed to the rafters with septo and octogenarians, all moving at that incredibly slow rate that if you or I tried to move at would cause us to fall over from loss of balance. I think someone had hung a sign on my back saying "If you can't reach what you want, ask me to get it!", because I was stopped every 6 feet by little blue hairs who barely came to my shoulder asking me to get things for them. I'm not that tall, really, I'm 5'4", but in the land of the old apparently I'm an Amazon.

Between reaching for boxes of prunes and Wheatabix, and trying to sidestep people moving at a pace that would make snails honk their horns, my quick little trip turned into the better part of the morning.

By the time I got to the register it was after 11, and there were only 2 cashiers on duty to tend to this mass influx of the Depends Nation. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a cashier waving to me, saying "I can help you down here" Great, I thought, I can at least check out quicly.

No, the bitch waved me to the "You Scan It" aisle.

I fucking HATE those things, they NEVER work right and it always ends up taking me twice as long to check out. I ended up having to call her over 3 times, because I had produce and beer, and the stupid thing wouldn't believe me when I screamed "I'm 44, just ring up the goddamned beer!!!" at it.

But, eventually, I managed to squeeze my way through the tangle of walkers and hover rounds at the exit door, got home, made the stew, and have spent the better part of the day recovering from the exercise in frustration that was my morning. The stew smells fantastic, probably in part to the addition of about a pint of Stout to the broth, Wyatt should be home soon (hopefully not too loaded down with homework), and I'm looking forward to a nice relaxing evening.