The Ugly Truth

The charming 3-year-old celebrated in my last post ruined my sleep last night. I'm not sure exactly what happened except that she was completely wakeful until - 4:30 a.m.! She had a new "dream" about every half hour that caused her to loudly beckon me to her room so she could share it with me. By about 2:00 a.m. I wasn't feeling particularly friendly or conversational anymore, but there was NO reasoning with her.

All that to say, I woke up sleep deprived and needing BIG coffee. Have you ever started your day looking for an opportunity to yell at someone? If not, then me neither, and please stop reading this post.

If you have, then I invite you to continue reading. I actually felt pretty good most of the day; really, I was rather proud of my self-control under the circumstances. My big goal for the day was, ahem: to get through it. No way, no how was I going to let Grace take a nap, so we went to the park this morning, the swimming pool this afternoon, shopping at Newton's "Discounts in the Dark" tonight, and currently she is sleeping like a log. Mission accomplished so far.

The trouble occurred today when I had to grab about 4 items at our little grocery store. We have a REALLY little grocery store, but it is conveniently located actually within our little town. I save up shopping for the big grocery store in Newton whenever I can, but sometimes you just need something immediately, like provolone cheese. I walked into my little grocery store straight back to dairy to grab a gallon of milk and saw the discount sticker lady (who is very nice and was completely unaware of the state in which I awoke this morning).

"O, half and half is marked down, GREAT," I said. We're getting a little low; it's very important for coffee. So, I looked through the whole crate of half and half marked 5o cents off and found every one with a date of yesterday or today.

"Isn't this the use by date?" I asked.

"O, I'm not sure if it's the use by or sell by date," she began and said something about being sure it would be fine for a few more days.

I began to feel a bit unstable emotionally all of a sudden. I read the carton, "Um, it says right here to use by date on carton. I think I'll pass since this is half and half after all."

Irrational anger began to sway my thinking. I hastily grabbed my remaining items and with much inner-grumbling drove home to make lunch. I began to unwrap the provolone cheese I had just picked out with care trying to find the best deal I could. My dimmed powers of observation kept me from seeing the 4 large, very dark green globs of mold now glaring at me right through the clear wrapping. This was bad timing.

Those poor employees. I actually worked myself into tears driving back to the store to take it back. This was it, the moment I had been waiting for since I woke up. I walked right up to the sweet, unsuspecting employees.

"Look," (it was all I could say at the moment) "mold!" Assuring me I could have a refund or more cheese, I walked past them to the back saying, "I need more cheese."

Now it was time for the poor guys behind the meat and cheese counter to have to be exposed to me. "Um, you probably want to know that I just bought provolone cheese right here that had lots of mold globs all over it." The aforementioned employees had just rushed back to show them the evidence.

"I need more, but look, and here's another, O, and this one too..." I began handing them all their moldy provolone cheese chunks as if I was doing them a great favor. These poor guys came running out, explaining that provolone is always the first to go bad, and they were so sorry.

"Well, do you have any good ones in the back?" I asked.

"I'm afraid this is all we have, Ma'am; but we do have the pre-sliced right here, unless of course you were planning on grating it," he looked really embarrassed and uncomfortable.

"No, I need it sliced, but this is twice the price per ounce, see; so I was just going to slice it myself." Now they both looked and compared provolone cheese prices.

"O, yeah, you're right. Well you can have it for the same price," they offered.

"I think I will do that," I replied and carried it up to the aforementioned employees to whom I explained the peace offering. They had to call the same two guys in the back to figure out what to do now.

"You can just take it," they said.
So I did.
I'm hoping to sleep better tonight.