A Great Way to Spend an Afternoon

First things first: the guy in the photo is the guy I gave my last cash to about half an hour ago, so he could buy himself a Starbucks coffee. It wasn't for free; his job was to bring home (to my house) the gallon of milk I had just bought at Walgreen's which I had been carrying long enough to feel like it was too heavy to haul the rest of the way. Well, apparently Ian thought I was giving him the gallon of milk. Why in God's name would he think such a thing??? Anyway, neither milk nor Ian have shown up.

What bugs me about it is, I went out walking with my friend mainly to get milk, and now I'm here but there is no milk.

I passed up an opportunity to go hear Sallie Bingham read from her latest book. That was a great choice, because now I can sit here at home and fume about the blasted milk, which is far more edifying to everyone concerned than hearing a good reading.

If you go through life pissed off, always on the edge of a temper tantrum, it can seem like nothing ever works out right. I'm convinced Murphy's Law rings true for those who think the world is a crappy place. Believe it or not, I'm not a Murphy's Law person. I'm even calmer about the milk which was not actually stolen, because surely Ian simply misunderstood and thought
the milk was a kind and generous gift from someone who loves him dearly.

Never mind how I actually feel. It's clear life is not something a person (and I belong to this category) can control, and sometimes it feels a lot like the Universe is laughing--or God, if you're comfortable thinking something called God could do something like laugh, which I am but which
the person I live with is not, so I don't get to talk about God all the time like he/she's in the room. I mean just when I thought I was being fabulously clever, killing several birds with one tiny pebble (providing the cup of coffee Ian had been wanting, getting the milk home, not straining my abdomen, giving Ian a task to do for his few dollars, rather than just handing it to him), instead, I made Ian feel, I think, like he won the lottery. This was not something I would have done on purpose.

At least I didn't strain my stomach or my back.

It seems entirely appropriate that God ( insert life or the universe) would put a monkeywrench in my plans when I'm being judgmental, superior, and patronizing a person who has, from all appearances, more severe mental illness than I have. Just as Mary Tyler Moore at some point in her life met the gaze of a cow and realized she was not one bit more important (and she became a vegetarian on the spot)--oh now, wait, this is good, I'm comparing myself (obviously) to the human and Ian (one would assume) to the cow--but if you really do have a deep appreciation for all sentient beings, it is not insulting to be compared to a cow. The cow could be the superior being, probably is, in fact. Ian is like the Beatles' "Fool On the Hill." To appreciate such a person takes imagination. I am not imaginative, I am impatient and easily frustrated, and it doesn't take much for me to blow up at Ian. He would get very little out of reading this blog.
Not that he can't read, but for instance, when he read a European history book it began a fixation with "East German women who drink gin all the time." I'm being picky, but in the days of the German Democratic Republic, it was next to impossible to find gin. Vodka, brandy, sometimes whiskey, yes, but gin, no. And I possess the type of impatient mind that thinks: how f---ing annoyingly absurd, to speak of East German women drinking gin when East German women simply don't, or didn't, drink gin.

The happy ending to the story is that my housemate brought home a gallon of milk--not the same gallon, of course, but real live two percent milk a couple of ounces of which are now in the mug by my elbow making the couple of ounces of coffee that are in the mug less threatening to
my circulation. You see, I'm so frail I can't carry a gallon of milk home or drink black coffee.
And of course that's all tied up with the moral of the story:

don't ever become so frail you can't carry a gallon of milk home or drink black coffee.

---Harriet