Murderous Holiday Cheer

NUM NUM NUM

This is “no update Monday,” I’m thinking.

Except I’m posting. Which isn’t REALLY updating, but there you go. There’s new content, and that should make you content.

No?

Cripes, y’all.

OK – I was almost killed for a parking spot at Michael’s crafts yesterday afternoon. A Sunday afternoon, on which all the good Christian ladies of the Triangle should be in their speical clothes and spooning brown gravy over Smithfield hams for their famished and pious families, and NOT battling me for plastic wreaths and decorative ribbon in the Isles of Mike.

Holee cats. I was in the left-most of two left-hand turn lanes, and the yellow light caught me in plenty of time to stop. The female behind me was rather irked by my decision to drive safely and to not endanger the lives of other folks who thronged Capitol Boulevard at 3 in the afternoon on that gray Sunday. Why, she was so very irked that she POUNDED the steering wheel with both hands, then threw them up in the air like she did most certainly care, then ran BOTH hands through her hair at how unfair I dared to be to no endanger the lives of me, her, the school bus full of children from the crippled orhpan's home that was a-turning in front of where it was I WOULD have been if I’d driven like the total maniac she wanted me to be, and the pod of baby harp seal that had fallen from the sky right in that spot, right at that moment.

OK, the seals and crippled children? Not so much. The rest of it? Totally true.

I watched the madwoman in the car behind me shout “Oh for God’s sake!” at me while the ends of her flippy little rich-girl coif bobbed in self-indulgent indignation. She grabbed her comically oversized bottle of water and took a few pulls at it like she’d not had hydration in days, then flipped open her wee pink cell phone with more force that was strictly necessary, hands waving all the time.

Oh, she was HOT at me.

And I laughed. I laughed partly because it was ridiculous to think that ANYTHING short of being in labor could be so important that you’d want someone to break the law just to save yourself a few minutes sittign in traffic, and partly because I’ve BEEN that woman. Highly embarrassing to admit. PMS does weird freaky schtuff, y’all.

I allowed myself to be amused by her, then when it was safe to do so completed the U-turn that would take me towards Michaels.

As did she.

I pulled inot the right-turn lane. As did she.

I had a quick “oh shit” moment, thinking she was bout to leap out of her car and brain me with the comcially oversized water bottle, and so took a circuitous path to an OK parking spot. She turned the other way, DARING anyone to beat her to the most plum spot she could find.

My circuitous route landed me a spot three closer to the store than hers.

And, inside, I laughed again.

This poor woman got all lathered up over getting to freaking MICHAEL’S CRAFTS a few minutes earlier! Holy carp! What the heck could have been so important? Was there a run on twig trees? Did someone announce over the super-secret Michaelphone that the last of the tinsel was about to be sold at half off? Did she somehow KNOW that the “right” size plastic wreaths were just about cleaned out and she NEEDED THEM WREATHS, dagnabbit!! Needed ‘em NOW!

Who knows? Certainly not me. I assiduously avoided making eye contact with ANYONE in the store for the half hour I was there.

Well, anyone except the cashier. She needed to see my lips to understand what I was saying. She must have been the happiest person in that place, because she, at least, couldn’t hear the horrifically bad psychoholiday music that was being blared out of many a “hidden tree speaker” thing. Lord, ya’ll. What ever happened to Silent Night?

So, anyhow, there will be no update today.

Except, of course, for THAT one.

Hope your day is going well.