HAPPILY UNMARRIED

Saturday, January 4th 2014, Michael and I became officially unmarried. It was a small ceremony that took place in my bank office. A very nice young lady, I think her name was Gretchen or Greta or something starting with a G, was witness to signing of the necessary documents. The day was sunny and almost warm. I celebrated by using my Anthropology gift card while Michael tooled around Better Cheddar eating all the cheese. From there, our day would slowly deteriorate. We took my ring into Tiffany's to get it sized (it's too big). Michael was a bit put off by the way they may have to size the ring (something about size beads), but we won't really know anything about it until around the 17th. I spent the rest of the day rubbing the place where I had been wearing the ring and panicking that I had lost it already. We probably should have known better because as we left Tiffany's the sky started clouding up. We forged on any way to a new health food store that I was hoping would replace Whole Foods. We ended up at Whole Foods. After screaming our way out of that parking lot, we headed to Old Navy. I left Michael there arguing with someone about his Old Navy credit card and walked down to Trader Joe's to get the rest of this week's groceries. Unfortunately, Trader Joe's had been hit by a hoard of locusts because there was almost zero produce. No orange juice. What Trader Joe's did have were two old ladies taking up half of the frozen foods section. "I don't want the sweet potato tots. I want the regular ones." Then I stabbed them. I will say that our check out girl looked exhausted, but was still happy and pleasant to us. That's not how the people were at Price Chopper, our next stop. We had problems with the lady at the fish counter there and at check out. I appreciate that the check out girl cleans her conveyor belt, but that doesn't mean I want my food placed directly on her freshly sprayed toxic chemicals. When Michael asked her to leave our food in the hand cart, she snarled out a "fine" and then threw our fish at me to bag.

That Price Chopper, by far, has the worst parking lot in the country. My throat was starting to hurt. Michael's jaw was clenchy. He handed me the car keys because he was afraid he'd intentionally ram the car into someone or something. We narrowly survived our escape from that parking lot. We got home and unloaded the car. I took some cold medicine and Michael opened a bottle of wine. Then I laid down and slept the sleep of the dead for about two and half hours. I woke up to brussel sprouts and fish and all things set right. The next day after Michael shoveled the fresh layer of snow from the drive, I bought his unwedding band on ebay for $15. And that's how we got un-hitched. I figured that if we could handle a day like that Saturday without turning against each other, we'll probably do just fine.