Saturday, December 10, 2016

Santa Ana 12/09

I couldn't bring myself to drive further than home after having a sneezing/farting fit in my car at the Santa Ana Main Place Mall after dropping off my last pax.

As I was leaving the mall after relieving myself, I felt like my holiday sensibilities were assaulted. Too many different Christmas songs were playing and blending into each other as I walked through the southend. Too many sales signs, too much fake snow in the windows advertising cold weather gear in style for the next two minutes. All this marketing for 20-30 somethings with their kids. After all, Christmas is a commercial holiday for kids first and foremost.

Orange Julius is gone. Whatever restaurant I wrote about that used to be next to the restroom hall was gone. the FYE is now a Chico's. Change is good, right? If it's for the better, but change for change's sake may not be. We'll see.

I drove myself home and put myself to bed, but not after noting that I'm out of canned cat food and having some throat thing to the degree that my son was in my room asking how he could help. I drank the last of the lemonade I made earlier by the glass and fell fast asleep.

It's 2 AM and the cat is stirring. I watched the end of whatever Carson Daily show music something Bare Hand - shocked I even recognize who is playing but it's only due to the fact that one of the three XM Satellite radio stations I play frequently throughout my travels is an alternative station that plays this same band.

It's 3AM and now I'm stirring. Trying to find fresh meat and vegetables on sale in the digital ad that I clicked on from Grocery Outlet. And I can't. Not to the degree that I'm accustomed to in a full service supermarket. I look, again, and the two products that are most attractive in this ad are Pacific Natural Food Beef Broth and Amy's Chunky Vegetable soup with a runner up of maybe the Del Monte Whole Kernel Corn, but at $.69, that seems high. This Pacific brand I've seen for sale at my local Sprouts. I already bought two cans of the soup from my run there prior to Thanksgiving. That was 20 some-odd days ago?

It's 4AM and now the cat is giving me all of the tell tail signals that she is hungry and wants me to feel her canned cat food and we're out. The signal is the tongue to the upper lip. We trained her to do that and respond to the term numnums. And the stores around here don't open until 6AM. So I'm searching the internet trying to figure out where is the closest store to be that's open at this ungodly hour that would actually have the one and only variety of canned cat food she eats. I was sorely disappointed at the Walmart on Technology the other day because: 1) no canned car food she eats, and 2) I had to wait to go to the one restroom they have in the front. So I drove away feeling lighter, but with no cat food which was the day I should have bought it.

By 5AM, it's still darks but I'm resolved to obtain canned cat food before I turn into can food myself in the eyes of my cat. I have decided that the Anaheim Walmart that's open 24 hours is more attractive than anything else right now so I get ready and go. And I locate the pet aisle and the variety of canned cat food she eats and I purchase every can they have on the shelf. I am certainly not the cat lady of Tustin as my son likes to tease me about, because I only have one cat, but I feel like it buying all of these cans all at once. Screw what other people think.

There are very few times in your life where what other people think really matter. When you're tested, when you screw up, when someone is paying you to do something and maybe your parents to verify they've produced a compassionate, relatively happy, productive human being. I'm wearing denim jeans, sneakers, a grey v-neck t shirt and my big winter coat because that's what I feel a 5AM store run is supposed to look like from my perspective. And I drive in silence and I get home, grab the mail from the week and go feed the cat and them make me some tea to start my day.

I have to somehow make up for a shitty Friday night's pay for getting ill at around 6PM.