What was I THINKING!

Going out shopping this time of year is a clusterfuck at best. Way too many people, parking lot nightmares, crowded everything and everywhere... GAAAAH! Trying to get the simplest of errands done is made difficult. 
I made out a list of shit to get at a couple of different stores with the best of intentions. Just everyday shit... Nothing huge. No big deal... Or so I thought.
I get to the shopping center... There's no fucking parking. I drive around and around and around, Finally I get a lady pulling out of her spot WAY at the end of the parking lot. Whatever. I park. Trying to get my purse and collect my shit to go inside, I had a guy ask me if I was leaving. I said I just got there and pulled into the spot. Apparently, that made me a stupid bitch. I told him I was a "stupid bitch" with a PARKING SPOT and gave him a smile and a wave.
Get into the store and I got the shit I needed, waited in line for a day and a half with a bunch of cranky shove-y, push-y people, waited for the elevator for another half a day, opted for the stairs and got back to the car... One more stop... The grocery store... I didn't think it would be as bad. I was wrong.
The parking lot at the grocery store was much more congested than the other and there were also a couple of "old people buses" blocking a path, letting old people out for an outing to the grocery store...
I was frazzled by the time I got into the grocery store. It took me twenty minutes to find a parking spot. No. I mean LITERALLY twenty minutes! I think everyone and their mother was there at the grocery store. I opted for a basket instead of a cart thinking I would be able to maneuver my way around people better and navigate my way through the crowd to get the rest of the shit I needed. Well, let me tell you. It only works when you have a basket that isn't broken! Whatever... The list had five items... Milk, bread, toothpaste, apples and cheese. Now, normally, this would have been a quick little jaunt, ten minutes, in, out, done. Wrong!
I had to wait in line to GET to the apples... There were MAYBE three decent ones left, I had to wait in line to get away from the apples... I had to wait in line to grab cheese and milk... I did a fly-by bread grabbing because I did NOT want to be involved in the craziness happening there (the ONLY good use for Kali foot work...), elbowed my way through the crowd to grab a tube of toothpaste (which it turned out AFTER I got it back to the house, to be the wrong kind...) and tried to find a register that wasn't swarming with people.
You would think that with the name "Express Lane", things would move along quickly. 12 items or less... Does it EVER happen that way? FUCK NO! Grrr! I guess people don't know how to count or that new math shit is fucking everything up, but there were people in the line with FULL carts... WTF?
The cashier tried to explain to the first idiot that this was the express lane... idiot replies by explaining that she was the customer, and the customer is always right, ring her up NOW! And the cashier does what she's told... (Personally, I would have told the woman to fuck herself, walked away from the register and quit right there on the spot... Oh, wait... I did that once...) We get to idiot number two with another full cart... The cashier goes through the same spiel... Express lane! Well, THIS particular idiot thought she was clever... APPARENTLY, since there were only FOUR different things that she was buying multiples of, it didn't count. There were only four items... (CURSE YOU NEW MATH!!!!!)
My five items... Beep, beep, beep, beep, put apples on scale (apple code) beep... SHOULD have been the way it went. Did it? NO!!! We needed a price check on the toothpaste (the wrong kind, according to the preteen...) because the bar code wasn't registering and she took a solid five minutes to try and find the code for the apples in her produce code cheat book. FIVE ITEMS!!!!
My forehead vein is visibly throbbing at this point, the eye starts twitching, and I developed a tic somewhere along the line, but after having spent a full and solid hour in the grocery store (Five items... Did I mention that I only had FIVE items?) I'm booking out the door. I nearly got run over by a car trying to cross the crosswalk because stopping at a crosswalk apparently didn't apply to THAT guy (Oh, and I'm a stupid bitch again...) I get to my car, throw the groceries into the back, climb up into the seat and start the car. I look behind me to back out of the spot and lo and behold, look who's waiting for my spot! It's the guy who damn well near ran me over. We made eye contact and I smiled. He knew, I knew, he knew I knew, I knew he knew I knew... Yup. I put the car in park and decided it would be a great time to balance the checkbook...  Yup, my penthouse apartment in hell just got upgraded to a townhouse near the torture pits! Happy holidays, asshole!