I'm tired and grouchy

Today was another stressful day following a restless night. I didn’t sleep well, so I was not in the best of moods anyway, and I needed to take a trip into town, which meant facing the two areas of life guaranteed to cause me the maximum amount of stress – driving and shopping.

The stress started when I stopped at a junction joining a busy road in town. I didn’t actually need to join the busy lane of traffic but needed to pass through it to get to the lane on the other side. Someone waved me out, so raising my hand to say “thanks” I pulled out, but after waving me out he made absolutely no attempt to slow down whatsoever and nearly ran into the side of me. I was a bit shaken by this, and confused. If he was just waving his arms about while talking to his passenger he needs to be a bit more careful about using hand gestures while driving.

I went into that well known shop again that sells magazines and books, to buy a couple of magazines for Mr Man. As usual one of the magazines was missing the DVD on the front and as usual it was the last issue on the shelf, so I wasn’t very impressed with that. The girl behind the counter suggested that maybe it didn’t come with a DVD until I pointed out that the cover of the magazine states that it does. They're absolutely hopeless in that shop, but unfortunately it's the only one like it in our town. Amazingly they had the November issue of the other magazine, which I was expecting to be “out of date” by now. Maybe it’s for November next year; I’ll have to check the date.

The town centre was unbelievably busy, but I expect every weekend will be busy now in the run up to Christmas. Shopping at Christmas time is a whole other experience entirely, which I’m sure I will blog about in greater detail nearer the time, but already I’m finding the shops that usually sell sensible and useful items are now stocking their shelves with isle upon isle of Christmas decorations and wrapping paper. All I wanted was one lousy plant pot. How many variations of Santa could a person possibly need?

Going back to the crowds, how Mr Man coped yesterday I have no idea because everyone was really stressing me today. When I came out of a lift I was faced by a wall of people moving in towards me; I thought they would at least have the brains to let the lift empty out before trying to squeeze even more people inside. Everything about my whole shopping experience was irritating and stressful with noise and people walking straight across me. I made a point of not apologising to people today, not that I want to be deliberately rude or impolite, but I’m fed up with always being the one to apologise when people walk into me. I even got poked in the bum with the corner of this lads calendar while I was waiting in a queue. The only person that didn’t get on my nerves today was the friendly bloke who sells the Big Issue.

I just really hope I get a good nights sleep tonight. I’m so tired. I don’t want to be woken up tomorrow unless the house is on fire (unlikely - see previous post) or someone has died (and then they won't care or even know if I choose to ignore their death and stay in bed).