Whine country

Sunday night would be a good time to write something thoughtful and inspirational, but right now I don't have anything like that in me. I waited until the last Diet Coke was gone and the last dogfood was in the dish, then I waited another two hours for the rain to stop, and then I couldn't wait any longer. I had no choice but to go to Wal-Mart.

I'd been in the store about ten minutes when I turned down one of the main aisles and heard a tiny voice calling, "Daddy!" A few steps farther on I spotted the source. A small boy, no more than two years old, was sitting in the child seat of an otherwise empty grocery cart parked between two display tables. He wasn't crying yet, but he was sounding more distressed each time he called for his daddy.

I looked around and didn't see anyone near him, so I stayed beside him for a minute. Finally, a man two aisles down stuck his head out and looked our way, then turned away and disappeared again. I kept my eye on the child as I moved down far enough to see into the aisle where the man had been. That's when I saw him laughing with an older boy, a teenager, as they looked at what appeared to be ammunition. When they saw me watching them, the man sent the boy to check on the baby.

Has this man never seen the news? Or was it just too much trouble to push the cart 12-15 feet farther to keep the baby with him? There were a lot of people in Wal-Mart tonight, but not so many in that particular area of the store. If someone had been inclined to snatch that baby, it wouldn't have been too difficult to do. What an idiot!

Now that I think about it, that whole end of the store was practically empty. I'd just been to the pet food aisle, and nobody was there either, except two teenaged employees. I heard one boy say to the other, "You'll like it back here; it's hard to get in trouble when you work back here." Isn't that at the top of everyone's job criteria list? A place where it's "hard to get in trouble"? Fool!

Later, in a crowded checkout line, a lady whirled around and screamed right into my ear, "GET BACK HERE!" Her daughter, who appeared to be a middle-schooler, wasn't more than three feet away and immediately returned to stand next to her mother. It didn't matter. The mother had plenty more to berate her about, and the rest of us in line got to listen to every word. Shrew!

When I got outside, it was raining again. As I stood in the rain and loaded groceries into my trunk, a huge pickup truck pulled up and waited behind me. I can't blame the driver for wanting my good parking spot (thank you, Mama-Too), but it irritated the heck out of me that he felt it necessary to rev his engine over and over. It was kinda scary, too, as if I were stuck somewhere in the pages of Stephen King's Christine. Jackass!

I drove home and pulled under the carport, then realized I wouldn't be able to put Butch and Kadi outside while I brought the groceries in. They don't do rain unless it's their idea. That meant I had to leave the indoor gate locked, the gate between my living room and kitchen. Which meant I'd first have to bring all the bags of groceries into the living room, so I could shut the front door, and then I could open the gate and pick up all the bags again (including two huge bags of dogfood) to move them to the kitchen. Butch and Kadi barked the entire time. Ungrateful little jerks!

I missed "The Amazing Race," and I'm so tired I've lost my appetite. I'll probably wake up hungry in the middle of the night, which means I'll be tired all day tomorrow. On Monday, the worst workday of the week.

Aren't you glad I spewed out all this venom? I wanted to post something tonight, and by golly, I did it. Now I need to stop writing and go spend some time making peace with the woman in the mirror. She's being a real bitch!