02.27.08

Stickin’ It to the Man

Posted in Confessions, food at 09:37

(A Mini How-to)

Tomatoes

When life gives you lemons, you can make lemonade. Well…usually. But when it gives you mouldy tomatoes? I can only think of one thing rotten tomatoes are good for. Throwing!

After a long day at work, I was feeling a bit ornery, and upon being greeted by a bag of fuzzy produce, I decided to take it out on my favourite grocer. No, I didn’t *literally* throw the tomatoes at ******. Only metaphorically. Here’s how things shook down:

  1. The goods
    • 1 x bag of mouldy tomatoes
    • 1 x receipt for said tomatoes
    • 1 x $0.70 off cereal coupon
    • 1 x ********** discount card
    • 1 x canvas tote bag
  2. The plan: Get in, get a refund, get a good deal, get out.
  3. The boon:
    • 1 x $5 box of cereal
    • 1 x receipt
    • $0.15
    • 1 x plastic bag…oops
  4. The net result: a worthless bag of bad produce (original cost $1.75) traded for a $5 box of cereal and $0.15 change. Now that’s a refund. Thank you, ****!

01.02.08

Changes Revisited

Posted in Confessions at 10:41

Hmm… Well 2008 is here and I couldn’t help but go back over my post from last January (http://www.canisaureus.org/wordpress/archives/changes). I guess life isn’t quite as bad as I had feared. I don’t have a job yet and that’s a little scary. I don’t really have any better idea what to do now than I did when I worried about it a year in advance. Thus it’s proved: worrying is a waste of time.

05.19.06

Gah!

Posted in Confessions, Reflections at 08:08

I got up at 07:30 today for an appointment with the optometrist at 8:30. Couldn’t remember exactly where it was, so I got out the phone book. E 15th street. Hmm. I looked at the map in the front. Oh yeah, E 15th is right off Boise. Near the hospital. I could picture the place now. I set off with plenty of time to get there, and it was gone. The whole office complex had vanished. After wasting ten minutes trying to figure out why the addresses were in the 1700s instead of the 3500s, I finally stumbled onto the office complex. It was definitely on 18th street. The practice was gone, and something had replaced it. I couldn’t even be sure where it had been. I called them and asked where they were located (typical man thing: wait until you’ve wasted ten minutes searching and are ten minutes late to call and ask for directions.) Yes, they’ve definitely moved about fifteen blocks east and three blocks south. I thought I would double check my appointment time and let them know I would be a little late. Yep, it was definitely at 8:30—“Do you want to set up a new appointment then?” I explained that I would be there in about ten minutes. She explained in so many words that it hadn’t been a question— They have a twelve-minute grace period. I looked at my watch. I was eleven minutes late and many blocks away. “How about something next week.” “I’ll have to call back later.”

It’s so easy to blame someone else. Twelve freaking minutes? You’ve got to be kidding me. or You can’t tell me that if I hadn’t called, but had walked in twenty minutes late that they’d have turned me away. or Why didn’t they flipping tell me they had moved when I made my appointment?

My mental tape recorder answered the latter. “Now, have you been to our new office?” I had answered in the affirmative. It seems that in trying to make three doctor’s appointments at the same time I had gotten the optometrist confused with the dentist, who had moved several years ago. Of course I knew the dentist had moved! I even tried to give them my dental insurance.

I should have looked up the address before this morning. I should have Google-mapsed it (that’s my answer to the verb Mapquest) when I had trouble remembering, then I would have seen it had moved. I should have known something was really wrong when a medical office complex had vanished off the face of the earth. And when addresses were way to low.

Just like the stamps incident, I got mad at other people because I knew it was my own fault. Why are we so eager to vindicate ourselves at another’s expense?

03.19.06

A Confession:

Posted in Confessions at 20:38

After running a home for seven months, I still feel like I’m just playing house.

01.10.06

Tension

Posted in Confessions, Narratives at 19:46

Today I found something in my mailbox today that made me mad. It was the payment for the electric bill I mailed last week. A note with a smiley face was taped to it: Hello! Just a friendly reminder that the price of stamps has been raised to 39 cents as of 01/08/2006[...]

The first thing that occurred to me was that this particular bill was due yesterday. Problem. The second was that I had mailed the payment prior to 01/08/2006. Uhh…Sunday. Yes, I mailed it Friday. Before 3PM even. Isn’t it reasonable to expect mail to be picked up the day it’s mailed? Certainly the day after. If it had gone out Friday, it should’ve had no problem making it down the street by the due date. That it had been returned to me four days after I’d sent it for having insufficient postage, when clearly the postage was correct on the day I sent it, was simply inexcusable. Those Student Post Office Nazis probably saved up several days worth of mail until Monday, just so they could sell more two cent stamps! The note went on to advertise that they were selling two cent stamps. Proof! I prepared myself to explain to the window lady how unacceptable this was, though I thought accusations of stamp-scalping might best be left to speculation.

Then it hit me (it was the Holy Spirit) how ridiculous this was. The window lady couldn’t fix the fact that my payment was late. Furthermore, she probably had nothing to do with the unfortunate situation. I realised that I didn’t have any right to be angry. And yet I was. Why was I angry? Then I understood, and laughed. I was angry because in truth I knew that it was my own fault. I had debated at the time the wisdom of sending the payment by mail so close to the deadline. And acted against my own better judgement.

I think we do this more than we realise. If something is truly beyond our control, there is no reason to be defensive. When we find ourselves defensive, it’s usually because we know it’s our own fault. By feeling hurt and enraged we betray our own guilt in an attempt to hide it.