Yer Out

I stumbled into the bathroom this morning, still rubbing dreams out of the corners of my eyes, and pulled the last few sheets of toilet paper off the roll. When I tried to replace it, the holder broke in my hand. This was not a life-changing event but it was neither a great way to start the day. Strike one.

Morning cardio done. Breakfast done. Into the car to hit the farmers’ market. I wanted to buy some gourmet balsamic vinegar. This stuff is top flight–the Cartier of vinegars, golden drops of exotica that transform an ordinary vinaigrette into a full orchestration of the palette. But their usual stand stood empty, forlorn and abandoned. The information lady said they’d been gone for some time. Strike two.

Crestfallen, we headed for our favorite fruit and veggie stand and I discovered that I didn’t have my wallet. Credit cards! Driver’s license! Health insurance cards! A $5 gas coupon! (If you’ve noticed local gas prices sail off into the stratosphere lately, you’ll understand why this is significant.) The mature adult in me knew that the wallet had to be at home somewhere and, if not, all its contents were replaceable, except the gas coupon, but the child in me threw herself onto the bare earth of the market and shrieked at the top of her lungs. Strike three.

Just because it had been that kind of day, once we got home, I stepped on what I thought was a stray bit of lettuce but turned out to be a piece of dead lizard. Irrelevant. We’d already struck out so let’s just call the lizard guts smeared on the bottom of my foot analogous to grass stains on the knees of the uniform of life.

All nausea aside, we had a week’s worth of (mostly) locally grown delights as well as a replacement TP roll holder courtesy of Ace Hardware. And I found my wallet, safe and sound, inside the antique schoolteacher’s desk in the living room.

All in all things worked out for the best. And to be honest, all of this was a somewhat welcome distraction from the larger worries that I try to keep swept into a tidy pile in the corner of my mind. Only occasionally does a breeze sail through the window, sending the bits of cat hair and lava dust and dried up lizard parts swirling through the air. I can handle occasionally.

So allow me to take this opportunity, gentle reader, to wish you an uneventful day, free of strikes of any form, a day that you know where your wallet is, a day free from lizard detritus, a day of belief that the sun will rise tomorrow and the worries of today will grow smaller with each hour that passes, or at least that those worries will stay neatly swept into a manageable pile. May your strikes be few and your piles be small.

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