Let’s talk a bit about why I should stay inside and not venture out into the world without adult supervision.
All I wanted to do was get some coffee and maybe treat myself to breakfast. It was one of Devoted Spouse’s volunteer days and I felt like going out and maybe even getting some shopping done.
I should have known better. It was extremely cold, there had been a light dusting of snow the night before resulting in a slippery driveway (shades of the Ice Incident of 2009) but I really needed some coffee.
Now the coffee at that highly rated restaurant Le Bob Evans isn’t the best, but the place is close to home and I figured I would just order twice as much coffee. So I pull into the parking lot, park my car, and immediately upon exiting my car what do I do? I slip on the ice — okay fortunately I was still holding onto the car door so I remained upright. I did, however, have severe heart palpitations and visions of emergency rooms.
I’m inside the chic breakfast place and have been seated at one of their booths — the kind that has a booth on the other side but is separated by this weird type of glass partition. So actually the tables themselves are connected but the people sitting in the booths are not because connected people would simply be bizarre. (I’m not sure I even understood that sentence.)
Anyway, I’m sitting there reading the paper and trying to eat eggs and drink my coffee and the guy in the quasi-attached booth next to me keeps making his point to his breakfast buddy by slamming his hands on the table, thereby making MY side of the table shake. After about 10 minutes of this, I calmly get up from my breakfast and walk ALL the way around to HIS side of the booth, politely interrupt his conversation and gently ask him to stop banging on the table because it is making my side of the table move and is actually quite irritating. He looks up at me and blinks. And blinks. And blinks. Like I’m a nutcase. Then he looks at his breakfast buddy and goes back to discussing whatever they were discussing. I say, “Thank you so much and enjoy your breakfast.” There was no snark in my voice – honestly. I even smiled.
I go back to my now getting cold breakfast and open up my paper when the man next to me AGAIN slams the table for emphasis. Oh for the love of… I got up on my knees in my booth seat so I could look over the partition at him and I said to him, “Didn’t I ask you nicely not to bang on the table?” Guess what? It worked. They even left. I got to finish my breakfast in peace. Of course my eggs were cold but the table stopped shaking. A few people were looking in my direction but I figured it was because I was wearing such a stunning outfit, not possibly due to my etiquette busting booth behavior.
As I finished up my breakfast, I remembered a tweet I had sent to the Twitterverse earlier and it dawned on me that I had mixed up the names of some politician’s wife I was tweeting about. I felt so stoooopid I whipped out my SmartPhone and decided to rectify the situation. To my surprise my SmartPhone wouldn’t let me tweet. Really. It flat out refused to let me send anything to Twitter. Oh it was all ready to allow me to update my FaceBook page, but I couldn’t send out a tweet. SmartPhone my butt… then I realized I was making all these comments outloud. I looked up and realized the older couple at the booth in front of me were staring at me, and the women at the table on my other side were also watching me. It was time to leave. Leaving a generous tip on the formica table, I sheepishly made my way out of the premises and into the relative safety of my car, SmartPhone in hand.
After a little retail therapy at that famous establishment Target, (and a little more ice skating), it was time to get back to the peace and quiet of my own home. I arrived safely and thought — I’ll back the car into the garage (which is still a little too full of “stuff” to actually park my car there) so I can unload all my goodies from the trunk without having to walk across a slippery driveway. Good idea. Until the sun got in my eyes as I was backing into the garage and I accidentally backed into Devoted Spouse’s tool cabinet. Yikes. I also grazed the snow blower. Yikes squared. The good news? I totally missed the motorcycle…but not by much.
All I wanted to do was get out of the house for a little while…not wreak total havoc on the world. Next time I get this bright idea maybe I should just stay home and clean up the craft crap room.
