I think this might have been my worst non-holiday shopping day ever. First of all, I forgot my list. I used to never need a list; now a list doesn’t even help all that much. (UPDATE: I need a shopping list app for my phone, except, my phone doesn’t do apps. It’s so old it doesn’t do anything except phone calls.)

Wal-mart was more crowded than usual, probably because I waited until 10:00 to go but at first I wasn’t all that bothered by it. But then there was the lady in the fabric department. I needed fabric for the border on the quilt top that I’m working on now and I found something nice right away. The lady working back there today didn’t work in the fabric department regularly; she was “just helping out.” That’s fine. I get it – new, don’t know the job very well, a little slow. But this woman’s level of incompetence was way beyond what could be explained by inexperience. She slowly measured the fabric, measured it correctly, smoothed it out, measured it again, correctly again, rolled it back onto the bolt, unrolled it, smoothed it some more, measured again, got it right again, rearranged it, measured it again, and so on for around 15 minutes. She finally cut it and then she measured the cut piece and discovered that it was about an inch too long, spent more time trying to figure out how to price that extra inch then had to go looking for someone to tell her it was okay to give me that little bit extra. I have rarely had such a difficult time quietly waiting and pretending to be patient while desperately wanting to tell her to quit fiddling with the fabric and just cut it already!

After that every little thing annoyed me and believe me there were a lot of “little things.” Every single aisle was blocked by people who were mostly just standing around chatting with each other. Surprisingly few were talking on cell phones. A very few actually seemed to be there to shop but, of those people, some were taking time to read every word on every single label and the rest were staring at the stuff on the shelves as if they had no idea what it was or what they were supposed to do.

I managed to get out of there without going postal. I don’t have a concealed carry permit myself but it occurs to me that in a state where it is legal to carry concealed weapons you would think people would be more courteous. You never know when someone might go off just because you are the 17th rude and/or oblivious person they’ve had to deal with.

But anyway… On the way home the radio station I listen to played The Emperor Waltz. It was so delightful. It was like the universe understood and was saying, “There, there. It’ll be okay. Relax. Here, this will help.” But when I got home and checked the list that I had forgotten to take with me I discovered that I had forgotten the three most important items on the list. Two of them were for my husband and one of those he has been reminding me of for something like six weeks. Normally I would just say “screw it” and try to remember next time but I felt so bad that I had forgotten again, I went back to town – but not to Wal-mart again. Reasor’s was also busy and not fun but maybe slightly less annoying.

For some reason things like this make me lazy, make me want to waste the rest of the day because I feel like I’ve earned “time off.” I’m going to resist the temptation though and try not to be completely worthless this afternoon. I deserve some kind of compensation though so I have decided to make this a Mozart day. I’m listening to nothing but Mozart for the rest of the afternoon – light, fluffy early Mozart, nothing later than K200 or so.