Camping Trip. InapPoem #2

Camping Trip.

By Lara

Sophia Johnson’s flying out to Fiji in two weeks.

She’s so excited she gets loud and spittles when she speaks.

For their vacation Nate and Jess are off to see their ‘gran.

And as their luck would have it, that old broad lives in Japan.

The neighbors packed and left and flew to Paris late last week.

But we got stuck with Nature Dad, a crazy outdoor-geek.

My friend Alyssa’s family is going to Orlando.

But I’ll be sitting in a tent with dad who’s gone commando.

Last trip, it took a hundred hours to drive the whole way there.

And when I stepped out of the car, a bird crapped in my hair

Dad couldn’t set the tent up right, and we got bugs inside.

And when it rained my bed got wet and smelled like something died.

Dad burnt all of our hot dogs and we had to eat just beans.

So I found out what “rustic camping bathrooms” really means.

We were “getting back to nature”, and were ‘sposed to be alone.

But I could hear dad swearing about “bars” and his “smart phone”.

My dad insisted that we take a swim around the lake.

And that was just an awful, slimy, nasty big mistake.

My brother wandered onto shore, refreshed after his dip,

And he had a giant blood-smeared leech affixed to his right hip.

We went back to the camp to eat some more of dad’s canned beans.

And all that I could think was: “Ben Monroe’s in New Orleans…”

The peaceful wilderness was pierced with screams of “holy Jesus!”

My sister had a tick-- they drink your blood and cause diseases.

I couldn’t sleep at night because the nature’s really loud.

Mosquitos swarmed around my ears in tiny, buzzing clouds.

My brother told ghost stories and he terrified me good,

claiming lots of Unabomber-types are living in the woods.

I woke up soaking, dad was “cooking”, but the wood was pretty wet.

So I got a runny egg, and dad said, “this is all you get”.

Then we heard my sister crying-- she was tired of it all.

A mosquito bit her eye and it was swollen like a ball.

A bee attacked me. Turns out dad is bad at pulling stingers.

I got a nasty splinter in the webbing of my fingers.

My sister missed and wet her pants when we were in the woods.

My brother stole my driest pants and kicked me in the goods.

The trip was awful, yet I see it’s on the list this summer.

I can’t discern a way to use our break time that is dumber.

I’d rather go to Mexico, heck, I’d go to Pakistan!

But this year “our vacation” means I’m sleeping in the van.

A long overdue post. Since I'm starting a project.

So my job has been keeping me busy, but in the interest of doing some fun writing, I've decided to start a summer project. I'm working on a compilation I call "Inapproems", or inappropriate children's poems (intended for adults). I'm going to post some of them to keep me motivated. My goal is to do one at least every other day.

So here's the first one:

Tooth Fairy.
By Lara.

So that tooth that was wiggling inside of your jaw

busted loose from your face with a hem and a haw.

Now your mama has placed a beneath-pillow stash

with that tooth swaddled up, and she says you’ll get cash.

It’s the fairy, mom says, that arrives in the nights

to swap crisp dollar bills for enameled delights.

The fairy collects them, and saves them for luck.

Says your mom, with a grin and a spirited cluck.

But your dear mama told you a lie sweet as Splenda

‘cause mom has a secret, kid-fooling agenda.

Have you ever thought, “Why does she want my old tooth?”

Well, I’m here, little friend, to deliver the truth.

See the fairy was once a sweet, kindly young sprite.

Who practiced her magic skills all day and night.

She was honing her talent at fairy-kid school

so she’d float to the top of the hiring pool

But then came semester one, high school year three,

And a horrible nightmare the kids called “P.E.”

Our poor fairy was forced to wear thigh-hugging shorts

And to run back and forth across basketball courts.

She knew if she couldn’t do burpees and squats,

Little fairy would suffer- her g.p.a. shot.

Though she tried very hard, fairy just couldn’t master

the pickle ball cross-serve. It was a disaster.

And so at the end of her fairy-school days,

Fairy had some big “F’s” and a few less of “A’s”

With a record so blemished, no job was in sight.

And the fairy subsisted on ramen and Sprite.

‘Til an ad in the Fairy Times caught her wee eye:
“Fail P.E? Need a job? Come on in and apply!”

So she answered the call, but the job was so bad.

Still, she couldn’t move back in with her mom and dad.

With the rent overdue and her landlord a jerk,

She sighed and enlisted in horrible work.

She became a tooth fairy, the lowest of sprites.

Now she works long, long hours- she is always on nights.

She sneaks into our houses, to reach under our heads

While we sleep uber-deep in the soft of our beds.

With her breath on the cheek of your one-tooth-less face,

she slips thin dollar bills in the tooth-hiding place.

Then she scurries away, taking flight off your deck

to deliver the teeth and collect her paycheck.

Pearly-whites are brought in, in gigantic red buckets.

They use ground up old teeth to bread chicken mcnuggets.

It’s a sad life, a hard one for that poor Tooth Fairy.

So reach for those dollars, but don’t get too merry.

The Twelve Abominations of Christmas.

Have you purchased your partridge in a pear tree, yet? No? Well good luck, because between Black Friday and Cyber Monday, you'll be lucky to find a crow in a cedar shrub.

The Twelve Days of Christmas is the ultimate holiday shopping song, full of gratuitous spending, overconsumption, and joyous gluttony. It's an apt representation of the Christmas season, a time when we come together to celebrate the birth of the baby Jesus and logs of Hickory Farms summer sausage large enough to beat a horse to death with.

In deviant fashion, I have compiled the following list, a mini retrospective of my own Twelve Abominations of Christmas. To be honest, I had a hard time stopping at twelve- the holidays really are a time of excess everything. Including snark.

Lara's The Twelve Abominations of Christmas

1. Tinsel.
What is it with holidays and obnoxious, messy, shredded crap? Tinsel is exactly like Easter grass, only metallic. It comes in packs of about 500,000 strands for a buck, and if you get one single, solitary piece wrapped in the brush of your vacuum cleaner, you can expect to invest half of the burgeoning new year trying to wrastle it out. No one has ever used tinsel effectively except Merv Griffin and he is dead. We should have buried tinsel with him.

2. Blinking icicle lights.
Driving home last week, I was stuck at an intersection directly opposite a house covered in a net of blinking icicle lights. I came about five seconds from having a seizure. I couldn't entirely look away, because I had to watch the traffic, but when I eventually turned my vehicle onto the road, I was extremely disoriented and totally could have run over a pedestrian. Every day thousands of people are confused by icicle lights, resulting in deadly car accidents that kill, foremost, young, attractive white women. That is a completely unfounded speculation, or as Fox News would call it "a fact".

3. Gift wrap.
There is nothing more maddening than attempting to swathe gifts of manifold size and shape in paper that inevitably rips or is too small for the object you just measured it to fit around. I don't know who invented this means of disguising items, but this year I am going with the towel-and-hot glue gift wrapping method, and I suggest you do as well.

4. Similarly, tape and scissors.
Another fascinating and enraging aspect of the gift wrapping process involves the fact that even if you have six pairs of scissors and a dozen rolls of tape arranged in a wide, circular perimeter around you, when you need to cut a piece of paper, or tape a querulously- folded edge, you will be utterly unable to locate either tool. It's part of the magic of X-Mas that the rules of science and physics bend at will to inconvenience you.

5. Giant Santa hats on phallic-looking trees.
This is a new one for me, but I was downright disturbed one day to drive past a yard with a tall, narrow arbor vitae tree topped by a long Santa hat that resembled a giant, festive condom. I'm not certain what the message is supposed to be with that, but it was disorienting in a different way than the icicle lights.

6. Carolers. You don't want the Jehovah's Witnesses at your house pushing a religious agenda, so what's so great about a bunch of Christmas carolers doing it? Because they're singing? Don't be easily fooled, fool! Put that wassail bowl away.

7. Mall Santas.
Not only do you have to wonder about their professional motivations, they're probably giant jolly bowls of H1N1. If you want to spend your holidays downing Tamiflu instead of eggnog, go for it. But don't say you weren't warned.

8. Christmas trees.
You can't win no matter what route you go with the traditional Christmas or Solstice tree. Plastic trees are tacky, probably don't biodegrade in a landfill, and

may require dusting. Real trees smell awesome and look cool, but pose the likelihood that at some point you and each member of your family will experience pine needle foot impalement. This will almost inevitably happen while you're trying to get everyone to sit-still-for-one-God-damn-second-and-smile for the family holiday card picture.

9. Window cling decorations.
Kids love them. They don't stick, they curl up, and they obstruct the view from your window, rendering you unable to determine if you need to dodge your crazy, perennially shirtless neighbor when you go out the door. Some people abuse them to the extent that they appear to be using them in lieu of curtains. That's even worse than Blues Clues bed sheets.

10. Old Men get more Old Spice.
Because there is nothing else the grandkids can think of to buy ol' gramps, and he's been a fan since long before his olfactories started to fail. It's the end of the year. He HAS to be running out, for how much he bathes in every day. Kids, for the love of baby Jesus, just draw grandpa some pictures this year and spare the general public another 12 months of old man smell.

11. Drunk uncles.
Everyone has one, and you know you're going to see him at Christmas. He could be intoxicated any of the other 364 days of the year, but he has to choose this one to get utterly bombed. Remove any mistletoe that's hanging at the family Christmas venue; it's a family Christmas, after all, but drunk uncle will forget what that implies.

12. The whole "virgin birth" scenario.
I'm surprised, frankly, that this excuse isn't used more often among teenage mothers. It worked once, to profound effect. Additionally, I don't see what the big deal is regarding the whole "born in a manger" situation. I had a baby at St. Cloud "hospital" and I seriously doubt a manger could have been worse. They tried to feed me hospital cauliflower that was so mushy you could practically spread it with a knife.

Sickos, Psychos, and Tentacle Ailments.

I can't blame the hubby for being a little nervous- in about the space of a year he suffered a stroke and enjoyed two unrelated and unexpected surgeries. Ever since the ominous specter of his 28th year slid past, he's become paranoid about health-related issues. Every headache is an aneurysm; every chest cold, the onset of lung cancer; every gas pain in the chest region is a certain sign of heart attack. Yet somehow, he's still walking around, dropping clothes next to the hamper and failing to recycle his beverage cans.

Being his requisite shoulder, I tend to hear a lot about what ails my dear spouse. But the kids have ears, as well. And brains like sponges. And bottomless needs for attention. It's a recipe for a household of one-upping hypochondriacs.

We spent a bit of time at the doctor with Jack this last week as he's had some minor, albeit unpleasant, issues going on. Perhaps all the discussion of Jack's medical concerns piqued the interest of the older two, because in the course of the three-day weekend I just enjoyed with the kids, I was posed with an unrelenting and dramatic series of ailments, as indicated by Noel and Sophie.

Noel injured one of his "boys" on Friday (or as Sophie pronounced, his "right tentacle").
It was a subtle injury, the sore tentacle, which Noel initially thought was "gas pains in [my] leg", and later decided was the result of the position in which he had been sitting. We continued to hear about this issue non-stop for the remainder of the weekend-- through the Christmas City of the North Parade (during which he also shared the details with other of our adult friends), in the car, while making dinner, cleaning house, doing laundry, and pretty much any other instance in which Noel felt he had a captive audience. I believe that cumulatively, I heard the tentacle injury detailed for no less than 3-1/2 hours. Who knew there was so much to say about the trials and tribulations of one right tentacle?

Sophie had to work a little harder, as she had no obvious bruises, swellings, or imperfections, so she brought up the scratch Jack had given her when he inadvertently "sliced [her] wif' his toenail" earlier last week. Soph also related that she was suffering numerous forms of visual impairments. "If I stare a light and close my eyes, I can still see spotty lights," she whimpered, "and when I'm looking at something, if I stare at it, it looks like it's getting closer, even though it's not moving." Noel jumped in to describe his challenges with "floaters". Both kids simpered about the fact that I hadn't made their routine eye appointments for them, yet. These maladies paled in dramatic comparison, though, to the incident in which Sophie was suddenly struck by the realization that she was ill and it was almost certainly because she "[didn't] have enough blood sugar!"

When the flu hit the adults in our household a few weeks ago, every day was ushered in with choruses of "I think I have a fever, too!" and "It feels like my whole body hurts!", despite the fact that none of the kids ever actually seemed to get the flu. I try to find a mid-ground response between gushing hysterically and fawning over the wee ones at every complaint, and being one of those parents whose response to ailment or injury is to tell their kid to "suck it up" or "walk it off"-- two phrases that never made much literal sense to me.

So I got up for work this morning, put on my plum mini-dress, sleek black knee boots, and trendy chunky beads. I sat at the dining room table writing a note to Mr. Novak, Noel's gym teacher, and trying to find the most tactful and sophisticated way to say: "Please don't make Noel run, because his ball is swollen, and it really hurts when it smacks against his leg."

Tactful and sophisticated... I'm a writer, but I'm not a miracle worker.

The Good Wife's Guide: Revised.

No one teaches you how to be a married person. I distinctly remember a unit in high school Resources for Living class that covered forms of birth control and their proper usage (which clearly, I failed to pay sufficient attention to.) While we learned how to balance a checkbook, we learned little about how to balance a life.

What we ladies need is an updated version of the 1950's Good Wife's Guide. A primer on how to treat your hubby well and have a happy and fulfilling marriage.

So yeah, I'm going to take a stab at it.

I bring to the table eleven solid years of marriage, none of which have involved police intervention, public shamings, or flaming piles of clothing on the lawn.

Check out this list of Good Wife guidelines, abridged for the modern, sassy woman of the 21st century.

• Have dinner ready. Plan ahead, even the night before, to have a delicious meal ready on time for his return. This is a way of letting him know that you have be thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. Most men are hungry when they get home and the prospect of a good meal is part of the warm welcome needed.
  
  Make sure to call him BEFORE he leaves work to ensure that he stops by the pizza place on his drive home. This is a way of letting him know that you have been thinking about him and are concerned about his needs. It's rude to send him back out to get dinner when he walks in the door. Don't neglect to remind him to pick up dipping sauce; it's a real bummer if he has to go back to the 'Hut again.
  
  
• Prepare yourself. Take 15 minutes to rest so you'll be refreshed when he arrives. Touch up your make-up, put a ribbon in your hair and be fresh-looking. He has just been with a lot of work-weary people.
  
  Try to remember to use your own toothbrush and deodorant, not his. Or at least put them back so he can't tell that you did use them. If your top is extremely dirty, turn it inside out before he sees you, and if he notes that you are wearing the same pants you slept in, feign profound insult until he comes to believe that you are, in fact, wearing different pants that merely look similar to your pj's. Lots of people own more than one pair of reindeer sleep pants.
  
  
• Clear away the clutter. Make one last trip through the main part of the house just before your husband arrives. Run a dustcloth over the tables.
  
  Stop scrapbooking and eating saltines in bed. It may be a practice that's tough to curtail, but if a die-cut scrap slices his retina for the third time, your husband will have some grounds for discontent. Try to stem your hoarding impulses. No one is more put-off by finding cat feces in his slippers than your prince. Especially if you don't own any cats.
  
  
• During the cooler months of the year you should prepare and light a fire for him to unwind by. Your husband will feel he has reached a haven of rest and order, and it will give you a lift too. After all, catering to his comfort will provide you with immense personal satisfaction.
  
  You can't compensate for the lack of a fireplace by placing your large metal popcorn bowl on the floor and burning stuff in it. It isn't romantic, and it isn't acceptable as a cost effective means of heating a small room. He will get mad.
  
  
• Minimize all noise. At the time of his arrival, eliminate all noise of the washer, dryer or vacuum. Encourage the children to be quiet.
  
  Here's the genius angle on this one– if he doesn't have full hearing capabilities, he will never be disturbed or distracted by excessive or irritating noises, right? There are a number of ways to induce hearing loss. I will leave you to your own creative devices.
  
  
• Be happy to see him.
  
  Don't immediately say, "Did you eat ALL the rest of the frickin' mini Twix? Why are we paying for Lipitor?!" or "Hey! You know what I want for my birthday?" when he walks in the front door.
  
  
• Greet him with a warm smile and show sincerity in your desire to please him.
  
  If you down a bottle of pinot before he gets home, you can smile at anyone. If he suggests that you're only happy to see him because you're drunk, reassure him that alcohol is the great truth-serum. Let the romance begin...
  
  
• Listen to him. You may have a dozen important things to tell him, but the moment of his arrival is not the time. Let him talk first - remember, his topics of conversation are more important than yours.
  
  Stare in his general direction while he is talking, and nod your head rhythmically. After a while, it becomes automatic and you can continue the charade of interest while thinking about things you actually care about like the G4 summit, alternative fuel sources, and scrapbooking.
  
  
• Don't greet him with complaints and problems.
  
  Don't tell him that you horrendously plugged the toilet. He'll eventually figure that out all on his own. Why be the messenger?
  
  
• Make him comfortable. Have him lean back in a comfortable chair or lie him down in the bedroom. Have a cool or warm drink ready for him.
  
  Make him comfortable before you tell him that you drove into the garage door again. If he's lying down, you can run out of the room before he lurches back into a seated position to address your misstep.
  
  
• Arrange his pillow and offer to take off his shoes. Speak in a low, soothing and pleasant voice.
  
  Don't bother to tell him that you rubbed the baby's butt on his pillow when he left this morning without helping you get the older kids on the bus. You may feel apprehensive about being mean, but rest assured, he still deserves it for something.
  
  
• Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Remember, he is the master of the house and as such will always exercise his will with fairness and truthfulness. You have no right to question him.
  
  Don't ask him questions about his actions or question his judgment or integrity. Carefully log all his indiscretions in a journal, including any photo or video evidence. The next time you want to do a girls' weekend in Vegas, he will heartily agree. Or else.
  
  
• A good wife always knows her place.
  
  You bet she does.
  
  
  

BumpinIt.

I'll admit it. I'm a bit of a sucker for those as-seen-on-tv products. I wanted the Steam Shark, I wanted Debbie Meyer Green Bags, at one point I even lusted after the D.R. Field Trimmer Mower, despite the fact that I don't exactly have a field- just a 100-something by 50-something-foot lot in the middle of town. Most recently, I was captivated by the extreme-volume-inducing Bumpit for hair. I just couldn't rationalize dropping twenty bucks plus s&h on something that might make me look like a baby with a head recently squeezed through the birth canal. I wanted to try it, though...

Sophie decided that this was the year she wanted her ears pierced, so last weekend we shuttled off to the mall to get her tiny lobes punctured. She was a real trooper and now has some sparkly green studs in her ears that she twists fanatically, continually asking me, "Should I turn my earrings, mom? Do I need to clean my ears with that stuff again, mom?"

So I was wandering around Icing, the ear piercing shop, admiring various girly accessories, when I spotted them-- three rows of BUMPITS in different colors! They were ten dollars! I immediately grabbed the one designed for brown hair. I was more than a little bit excited.
My pulse was racing.

I'm known for many things, but my ability to exercise patience in the wearing of new clothing or accessories would probably not make the list. As such, I can easily change a full outfit in a car. I can switch out my tops while operating a motor vehicle. I figured that since my husband was driving, I could easily arrange my hair with the Bumpit while we drove to the next destination.

Bad idea.

I first noted that the Bumpit packaging and instructions seemed to neglect examples of curly-headed models, and I started to wonder if there was a reason. The Bumpit is basically a banana-shaped item with small teeth that bite into your hair. To use it, you make a part across your head, settle the Bumpit in against your scalp, and flip your hair back over it. Voila! Instant volume!

I've got curly hair. Long curly hair. I got to step one: make a part in your hair, and the trouble started. My hair wasn't really inclined to part "the wrong way" across my head. I couldn't even see the top of my head, because I was working with the aid of a very small visor mirror. I was tugging and it hurt, so I just sort of haphazardly bunched up some hair from the general top-area of my head and draped it forward.

Next: align the Bumpit. That part seemed easy. Once pressed against my scalp and wiggled a bit, the Bumpit really stuck. I looked in the mirror and realized I'd placed the apparatus way too far back. No problem- I'd just lift and re-adjust it. Except it was stuck. With a few yelps of pain, I had wrangled the Bumpit loose and resituated it.

My Bumpit now expertly positioned, I flopped the mass of hair I'd pulled forward, back over the plastic arc to create the signature "bump" of flowing hair. I then positioned the mirror and tipped my head to admire my lofty coif, which I assumed was now cascading like a waterfall of glossy curls.

*A critical aside: This is where I should probably mention that I've been cutting my own hair (including my layers) for the last year. I only trust about one person in the whole world to cut it. The last time I went in to the salon, my stylist yelled at me and told me to "stop trimming your own bangs and heat-styling your hair!" I felt a little dirty after the chastising, but subsequent to his warning, I not only continued trimming my own bangs and incessantly heat-styling my hair, I also stupidly decided to put in my own (abhorrent) highlights. I basically killed my hair. Now I am faced with an odd conundrum wherein I cannot go get my hair cut, because I so desperately need my hair cut, and I can't stomach the hellfire that will rain down when my stylist sees what I did to it.

So the Bumpit doesn't look so good if you slap it to a head of curly, self-cut wonky-layered hair. Even in the visor mirror I could see that. It had to come out before we reached Kohl's and I was forced to walk into the store looking like I had a nest of ratty hair giving birth to a banana clip.

Unfortunately, the Bumpit was in there pretty tight. Hair was lying under, over, and wrapped around it like a coccoon of tangled threads. I tried prying the hair away from the Bumpit, but I couldn't tell which direction would pull the clumps and strands loose, and tugging with any force HURT.

I felt my chest tighten and I became panicky. I shoved my head between the front seats and shouted for Noel, slouched in the backseat, to "get this thing out of my hair!" I abruptly felt violent yanking and hollered, "Ouch! Not like that! Stop!" Nathaniel shouted from the driver's seat, "It's not Noel- it's Jack!" I attempted to contort my body without moving my head, in order to wrest my hair from Jack's tiny, excited hands.

There I was, writhing backward in between the seats, howling and flailing my arms, my hair a ratty, tangled disaster. All three children in the backseat looked terrified and I realized that if I didn't calm down fast I was probably going to flail us right off the road. I gathered my wits, pulled my body back into the passenger seat, and spent the rest of the trip to Kohl's pulling strands of hair loose from the grasp of the Bumpit, while trying not to cry. By the time we got to the store, my scalp was stinging and sore, and the top layer of hair was an unkempt halo of tangle and frizz. It had a lot of volume, though; a lot of really ugly volume.

When we got home, Noel decided to give the Bumpit a try in his hair. It worked perfectly.
I'm going to go trim my ripped up hair. Shut up.

Meditations on the Grocery Store.

There's a woman in front of me and I'm annoyed.

She's parked her largely empty cart in the middle of the canned fruit aisle, in front of the peaches and pears, and she's blocking the flow of traffic.

She's older, but not ancient. Her back is hunched a little and she's turning a can of Dole pineapple in her hands as if it's a piece of airblown glass that's thin as vellum. She's reading it and studying it. She's contemplating it, and near as I can tell, she's mystified by it. She's going to be standing in this place, marveling at this can for a very long time, I can tell.

I have one child hanging off my cart, another grudgingly trudging along behind it, and a third in the cart's seat-- his fragile temperament held in check only by the near-continuous movement of the cart through the store.
If I can't resume the motion of this metal vehicle in short order, I'll have a tiny brown-maned nightmare ripping items off shelves, unfastening his belt, and grasping for some form of destructive amusement. Guaranteed.

I raise my voice,

"Excuse me, please!" I announce loudly, but in polite and cheerful tones.

The pineapple connoisseur appears unmoved, unhearing. She's absorbed in her process.

A line of people has formed behind me. They're trying to navigate the aisle, but we're all held up.

She's the accident-gawker, the storm-felled tree spanning the avenue, the time-consuming-hypochondriac-patient-right-before-you at the doctor's office, and she has a profound decision to make: chunks or rings?

There's some dink at the deli counter. He's ordered the honey ham and decided that it isn't what he wants because

"I don't really want it if it's sweet."

What incarnation of honey ham would involve the absence of some degree of sweetness?
What incarnation of douchebag doesn't think about this before ordering a type of meat, the title of which begins with the word "honey"?

I'm walking past the Kodak photo printer. It's plastered with a giant white sign scrawled with large black letters that read: "Printer Does Not Work." A customer in floods and a camp shirt hollers to the god-forsaken employee behind the photo counter,

"Is the printer not working?"

I am tempted to swerve my cart into the shins beneath his unfortunate-length pants.

The woman ahead of me in the checkout line has four thousand coupons, and half of them are expired, but this fact is as shocking and inconceivable to her as the moment she found out JFK had been assassinated.

Out in the parking lot, a 20-something girl has just unloaded the contents of her cart into the backseat of her car, which is next to mine. She gives her empty shopping cart a little shove so that it's out of her royal way and she can pull her vehicle out of the parking spot unimpeded.

I'm about to return my cart to the old corral, so I walk between our vehicles, grab her cart, and pull it along with mine, but not before giving her the "real nice, you lazy little shit" look. She pulls out of her parking space abruptly and goes tearing off.

On my way out of the parking lot, I accidentally cut someone off. I'm reminded that I'm one of the grocery store assholes sometimes, too. It's a little bit crushing to my ego.

At least I'm decisive about my canned fruit.