When people get on my nerves, I try to do something intentionally nice to make up for my general grumpiness.

Case in point:

I wandered out for a little dinner this afternoon and ended up at Laughing Planet, a few blocks from my house. It’s kinda a nice treat for myself. Super flavorful but healthy food.

Right across the hall from Hot Lips Pizza – well, more a gauntlet than a hallway for yours, fatly – so getting there was a victory in and of itself.

I’d been to coffee with the Silver Fox, where he spent some time on my favorite topic to not bitch about: e-scooters. Everyone else has the topic covered for me, so I can just effortlessly absorb the outrage.

So I’m standing between the two doors at Laughing Planet waiting to order when I realize there’s a woman at the other door. Since I’m only pretty sure that I was first, I let her go first, after asking if she was ready.

“I think so! Thank you!”, she says, bouncing her toddler on her hip. Her hubby and other child had just taken off for Hot Lips after making their plans to order and regroup.

This lady gets to the counter and then pulls a menu out of the holder, contrary to all things “ready“. In case I missed that maneuver, she then proceeds to ask multiple questions about substitutions, complete her order, add an entire second entree – with additional questions so extra that the associate has to go ask a co-worker for an answer, interrupting his lunch break – to her order, then tell the counter person to wait while she runs across the hallway to get a coupon from her husband’s phone.

This fucking bitch.

I’m getting hangry at this point, so I don’t step aside as she tries to pass by me in the doorway.

Her husband comes back with her to show the coupon and I kind of feel bad for her, this mother of two with the husband that won’t allow her unsupervised access to his phone.

But that’s just my defective brain.

Once they’re finally settled up, the woman turns around and mouths “Sorry!” at me, dramatically.

I keep mentally repeating my order to myself and give her this face:

While thinking this:

In my defense, in addition to the aforementioned hangry, it’s been a taxing weekend of people.

The e-scooters.

Art in the Park is happening as it does every Labor Day weekend, the park being my front yard. Art being an excuse for Stupid Americans to aimlessly mill around and ruin my grass.

Seriously, I haven’t seen this many straight men tagging along behind their female counterparts since my last Indigo Girls concert. My thoughts are the same: the women are nesting and creating a sense of relationship; the men are putting in their time, hoping this somehow leads to sex.

In addition to hoping to spread their genetics, these people are here capriciously spreading their excessive bridge and tunnel-ness. On my way to Laughing Planet, I watched a large group of people jaywalk against a walk signal. I’ve no problem with jaywalking, I simply prefer to do so mid block and on the diagonal. It’s convenient and prevents what I witnessed from happening: this large group paraded onto the far corner just as the pedestrian with the right of way arrived, but instead of altering their pace or trajectory, meandered carelessly onto the curb while the legit pedestrian stood in a traffic lane.

Nice.

After all of this within a 20 minute timeframe, I leave Laughing Planet with my to-go bowl. Just as I walk out into the hallway, my eyes run into the table across the hall. There are three people eating pizza and I see one of their heads split completely in half, Pac Man style as he tries to chew and simultaneously tell his story.

That takes care of my appetite.

Fortunately, as I arrived home, I was greeted by the sight of artists packing up their damn tents and getting out of the park. Tomorrow morning, life returns to its tolerable normalcy.

Thank gawd.

But I’m left with the feeling that I need to make a point of doing something nice for someone…