Last night, things were just swell at the grocery store, until I tried to go down the first aisle, which was blocked by an employee stocking the shelves. She had the giant rolling cart full of boxes on one side of the aisle, her crouched body on the other, and was talking on her cell phone, so she didn't see me coming. I stopped and waited for a short while, because even though I know it's bad form for her to block the entire aisle AND talk on her cell while she's on the clock, my first instinct in public is to be polite. It seemed rude somehow to interrupt her conversation just so I could get by, but she wasn't catching on, so I shuffled my feet, and picked up a box of something to look it over, hoping to catch her attention. Silly me, I actually figured she would be embarrassed and quickly move out of the way once she realized what she was doing.

By the time she finally saw me, she was in the middle of a very serious, "Girl? PLEASE!" conversation, so instead of sheepishly moving her sizable ass to the side, she just gave me a withering look and slowly reached behind her for more items to put on the shelf. I decided to turn around and go back the way I came, and approached the back of the store from the next aisle over. I could have demanded to speak to a manager, but that would take up more of my time than I was willing to spare, so I just shrugged it off.

As I tried to get to the back wall of refrigerated items, I had to slam on the brakes and throw it into reverse because another woman was hauling ass towards the intersection and would have plowed into me. When the coast was clear, I proceeded. I headed back down another aisle, and at the front of the store as I was about to make my turn I was confronted with another giant rolling cart full of boxes being pushed by an employee. I slammed on the brakes, and threw it into reverse to avoid a collision, and waited for her to pass. She wanted to come down the aisle I was on, so she said, "Come on!" in a way that let me know I was clearly holding her up.

I headed down the next few aisles, up, down, up, down, until I found myself heading towards the back wall again. I needed to cross, but was nearly run down by the VERY SAME WOMAN who had hauled ass through the intersection the first time, and she was going in the same direction. What was she doing, power-walking in circles through the store, pushing a cart for a little extra resistance? This time, she did at least apologize as she flew by. We met up again in the Produce Section, and as I picked out tomatoes, she started talking to me.

"Can you believe how terrible these grapes are? They need to be thrown out!"

"Oh, really? That's too bad. Hope you can find some good ones in there somewhere."

"There's not any good ones! Not one! Look at this! Would you look at this?"

I looked, and saw some grapes.

"These are terrible! And so expensive! Can you believe how expensive they are? Why do they cost so much?"

I started to wonder if she thought I worked there, so I said, "I guess they figure if we want them bad enough, we'll pay for even the lousy ones."

"Exactly! It's a scam. A SCAM!!! And I'll tell you something else...on Mondays they are supposed to have a Mystery Item, and I didn't see one when I came in."

"Oh, I saw it. It's around the corner when you come in, as you head towards the cheese."

"It is? Are you sure? Because I looked, and I didn't see one. What's the item?"

Damn...I couldn't remember. I tried, but it just wasn't coming to me, probably because I didn't give even the tiniest of shits. So I told her I forgot what it was, and she started to follow me.

"Well, I don't have a coupon for it anyway, so I guess I'm going to have to BATTLE with the cashier AGAIN, just like every Monday, because I mean, come on, NOT EVERYBODY GETS THE SUNDAY PAPER, am I right? Do you get the Sunday paper? With the coupons? The Mystery Item coupons? Do you get them?"

"No, I don't."

"So you know what I'm talking about, then! Can you believe how we have to battle it out? I'm not going to pay for a whole newspaper just to get the Mystery Coupon, you know what I mean? I mean, WHY should I SHELL OUT money for the PAPER when I can get the item without the COUPON, right? So yeah, every week, I have to BATTLE these people. YOU know what I mean."

No, not really, but I refuse to say anything else, lest I encourage her. She continued to follow me into the Pharmacy area, and as I reached for tampons, she told me which ones she uses and why she uses those particular ones. As I started to head towards the checkout, I took a hard right into the magazine section, hoping to lose her. She stopped and yapped at me some more, so I pulled out my cell phone to ask Charles a magazine-related question, but she didn't seem to have plans to go anywhere, so I reminded her to check out the Mystery Item at the far side of the store. She had COMPLETELY FORGOTTEN! Can you BELIEVE THAT? OMIGOD HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! And then she took off.

I booked it to the check out, where the girl ringing up my items asked what kind of dog I had (because I was buying dog food), and then told me her friend had a Beagle, but it had been run over by a car. Awesome. Thankfully, a couple of people got in line behind me, so my new BFF wasn't able to catch up and freak me out any more. By the time I was sitting in my car, I felt exhausted, so I decided that I would declare that shopping trip as Exercise, which made me feel a little better about going home to make tacos and sit around watching "24".

(And just for the record, the Mystery Item was Publix brand saltines. It came to me later.)