Patience: Working on It

I sometimes admittedly let the little things drive me up the wall. And when two of the identical, irksome thing happen in one day: AAARRRGH. Why do I do it? Why allow myself, a big adult girl, get stuck on something like less than $5 worth of groceries.

$1.79 of a plastic ice scraper and $2.20 in smoked salmon to be specific.

We made two trips to the grocery store on Saturday. It must have been an impulse like the squirrels have to bury their nuts for wintertime nourishment. The first very bitter cold day of the year inspired me to look at our staples and discover that unless we were planning on riding out a snowstorm on 5 different kinds of mustard, I needed to go to the grocery store. (The second trip was prompted by Jason's judgment that I did not buy enough snacks. Not a single new addition to his snack cabinet.)

We discovered that the ice scraper that we'd bought must have been left at the end of the conveyor belt after checkout when we needed it to (obviously) scrape off the windshield that night. It was not a disaster, we have another one, but it's perhaps the newly-married spirit that has left me feeling useless when I sit inside the warming up car as Jason scrapes by himself. Two people should have two ice scrapers! And I kind of destroyed by Banana Republic card in my attempt to help last week.

Then Sunday morning I woke up ready for my poppy-seed bagel, chive cream cheese, tomato and smoked salmon breakfast bagel. I hungrily piled my supplies on the kitchen counter...but could not find the salmon. Not in any of the drawers of the refrigerator, not even accidentally placed in the freezer! It also must have been overlooked at the end of the conveyor belt.

Seriously, two shopping trips and each one had an item left behind by the baggers!
I am not proud of the immediate thought that comes to mind: how hard is it to put things in bags!!? (This is not a fair criticism, since some of the baggers are mentally challenged and they probably try. And the rest of them are high school kids who maybe aren't trying because they are bored to death. The only half decent one is this guy who looks like Mo Rocco and Jason insists he's courting me, after he struck up a conversation about Supreme Court Judges while I waited for Jason to pay. He later found me in the UPS store and inquired if he knew me from somewhere else besides the grocery store. After I explained where I worked, he queried my ability to lobby on his behalf as he's submitted a few patent applications to my company, because he's really an inventor!)

I thought I could change myself, learn to let go, it's only like $4. People make mistakes; I make mistakes. But I am immensely more satisfied tonight after stopping by the grocery store, presenting my receipts and being invited to pick up another of each of the missing items.

Now if only they'd let me return that chive cream cheese. It was a big disappointment. It was one of those products where you wish they'd used artificial coloring to make the chive pieces green, instead of the twiggy brown bits that made it onto my bagel this Sunday.
It occurs to me that maybe it's not "patience" I'm talking about here. Maybe forbearance? Please use the comments as a thesaurus to help me. Whatever it is, I likely need more of it.