This office job does have my brain going indeed.
Thinking long and hard about what a truly LONELY experience grocery shopping is. Surprisingly, taking a buddy along with you only makes the trek twice as long by necessitating consensus on each purchase, and thereby extending the terrible over-all- lonely florescent experience. I advise that next time you shop, you leave the safety of your trance or magazine study to stare at the community amongst you.. You’ll see that every one of them is incredibly depressed. I think you’ll also find that there’s probably just one piece of fruit between all of them, which leaves me to the silver lining and proof that the baby Jesus loves us. The silver lining is that since all of us only buy food that never goes bad anymore, that means we don’t have to go to the grocery store and be lonely very often anymore either. We can do more things that we love, like watch TV and order take out. As Peter says ‘It doesn’t get much better than this.”

My last visit to Kroger was just 2 days ago. There were only two human checkers, and four busy self service check-outs. The only people in human clerk lines were people that were reconstructing their entire pantries There was one guy that had a small basket and preferred to wait in the long line with the rest of us, but he had a small twitch and bulging eyes and was an obvious technophobe. He was staring at the others like I was, and eves dropping on the rather nice small talk I was making with my distressed checker. Maybe I was doing something wrong.

I jump outta bed and pile on enough clothes only to make me street worthy, and begin my morning routine with dog leash in hand. For Sailor and me, this is a new route, but eventually we end up at the old familiar neighborhood convience store for a decent cupa joe. Careful to avoid making the dog into a puddle amongst grease stains, I pick up the little fella. Only, instead of spring legging into the baby-on-hip-position we're so fond of, he starts bucking like mule; bucking me in the stomach, bucking me in the chest, and then bucking my tank top down somewhere around my waist....and not at all covering gross female anatomy. There I was hanging out in front of the neighborhood convenience store.
And so summarizes movements of the past week.

I transition from a life of cake baking and floating upon my neighborhood's happiest of events, to a life of administrative sitting down, and brushing past people patching up on their dying.
Two dozen, three dozen people every morning. Guzzling drinks from tiny styrofoam cups in the darkly lit lobby, and then absently chewing them down halfway. Usually they clutch eachother in twos, or else lean in very close. One of them has their eyes brave and alert, the other has their head down and distant. Alone or accompanied, no one talks but in whispers so as not to unsettle the big sickness before a good zap. At the end of my day, I see half a dozen sharp elbows flying to help the flopping stomachs, the dried up tounge, the aching bones, and sturdying the edges of things that bleed out into everything else. By 6, the lobby has succumb to a layer of strangled reading material and a dusty smell that doesn't let up.

Somehow, here...unlike the bakery, everyone says 'good morning.' Everyone here trys to help me learn my role, and is sentimental toward what which is new.

I jump outta bed and pile on enough clothes only to make me street worthy, and begin my morning routine with dog leash in hand. For Sailor and me, this is a new route, but eventually we end up at the old familiar neighborhood convience store for a decent cupa joe. Careful to avoid making the dog into a puddle amongst grease stains, I pick up the little fella. Only, instead of spring legging into the baby-on-hip-position we're so fond of, he starts bucking like mule; bucking me in the stomach, bucking me in the chest, and then bucking my tank top down somewhere around my waist....and not at all covering gross female anatomy typically deemed tasteless in these parts of the south.

And so summarizes movements of the past week.

I transition from a life of cake baking and floating upon my neighborhood's happiest of events, to a life of administrative sitting down, and brushing past people patching up on their dying.
Two dozen, three dozen people every morning. Guzzling drinks from tiny styrofoam cups in the darkly lit lobby, and then absently chewing them down halfway. Usually they clutch eachother in twos, or else lean in very close. One of them has their eyes brave and alert, the other has their head down and distant. Alone or accompanied, no one talks but in whispers so as not to unsettle the big sickness before a good zap. At the end of my day, I see half a dozen sharp elbows flying to help the flopping stomachs, the dried up tounge, the aching bones, and sturdying the edges of things that bleed out into everything else. By 6, the lobby has succumb to a layer of strangled reading material and a dusty smell that doesn't let up.

Somehow, here...unlike the bakery, everyone says 'good morning.' Everyone here trys to help me learn my role, and is sentimental toward what which is new.