A Mundane Affair

This morning I woke up naturally, which is the right way to do it. I recently learned from the most credible source, a random article on the internet, that your body starts the wake up process an hour before you actually come to. I was up shortly after six today so the juices started to flow before the sun peeked out, or actually just the light of the sun cut through the din. It rained all night, signalling a break in the action of the field.  But I was up early and decided to go get groceries, as I am wont to do on Sunday morning at seven. I donned some clothing, a sweater and some casual shorts, slipped on my infamous camo crocks and saddled up for the short ride to the grocer. I got there and started my tour of the store. I usually walk down about twice as many aisles as required just to get some steps in. Sunday can be a very productive day for steps in my world. So I am touring the store and I make my way down to the food, the purpose of my excursion after all. I am slowing walking the aisles straining to remember if I need a product or not. I stopped making lists years ago, instead trying to rely on memory, which reminds me, I once again forgot tinfoil and oven cleaner for the third month in a row. Does it count that I remembered now? So I have a handful of items in my cart, mostly dairy and that memory kicks in late again. You don't have a back pocket on these shorts, thus you don't have a wallet. Huh, this is a quandary. How is the Tugboat going to get out of this predicament? Isn't it obvious, gotta go home and get that wallet. But it's weird now, do I leave the cart? It has dairy in it, can that just sit. If I leave it out what will become of it? Do I put it back, what kind of person takes a partially full cart and starts putting it back on the shelves? What does that look like to anyone nearby? "Um, no sorry, I was just practicing this week, next week is for real." I knew it was a short drive home and I could return and complete shopping in the time it would normally take me to finish since I didn't need a full haul today. So I walked into an aisle I knew wouldn't have many people and sort of just pushed the cart aside and without breaking stride just walked away from it like Keyser Soze. I walked through the rain in the parking lot like so much pathetic fallacy and hurried home. I was a in mad rush, I forgot the house key in the truck, I dropped the truck key on the stairs, I was fumbling away like 2002 Daunte Culpepper. A growing frustration and anger was starting to mount, nothing was going my way. It was way too early for this type of rage. I thought about just crawling back in bed and quitting the adventure altogether. But the dairy, it would be ruined! So I drove back and found my cart, untouched from where I left it. I continued on my journey. I was still amped up when I got home, I was carrying everything in like always and just before I put the bags down a large can of sauce fell out and landed edge first on my big toe. After some screaming and dread of a broken toe at this point in the year I grabbed some frozen potatoes and elevated, iced and compressed my sore toe. I turned on the TV and just sat. I don't know how much time passed. I was feeling pitiful. I put everything away and took two hour to recover from that. It appeared as if a hole simply opened in the bag, like the universe was evening a score. So the moral of the story is that I forgot my wallet and hurt my toe. It was a bigger deal than that. In the end I am chalking up my emotional discomfort to stress. Since recognizing the source I'm taking measures to cope with it. I guess it's that time of year.