Navigating

So today I had to go downtown to get my hair done. I usually go for the first appointment of the day, so I head downtown to get breakfast at what a friend calls the hippie diner. Well, today was the early St. Patrick's Day Parade that runs down the street my hairdresser is on. I had hoped they would cancel it since it was raining.

Yes, I can hear you all now: "Yankee Librarian, you live in the Pacific Northwest where it always rains." See, here in the PacNW, we don't get Real Rain. We get misty rain. It's basically fog. When I first moved here I was told no one ever carried an umbrella. I thought that was ridiculous... until I realized an umbrella does nothing against fog and drizzle. So this morning we had a constant and hard downpour--not what we usually have. Even with a raincoat, I was soaked to the bone.

So, I parked halfway between my stylist and the hippie diner and walked in the rain. The breakfast was great as was the stylist. I had my color touched up, the ratty ends cut off my hair, and a hand massage. It doesn't take much to make me happy.

Breakfast! (Tofu with awesome salsa and avocado, combo of home fries and black beans, and tortillas)

After my haircut and the purchasing of a new pair of Danskos and the ordering of another pair (their vegan clogs are half the cost of normal ones, and Dansko sent me some coupons after I wore a hole in the sole of my black clogs), I had to navigate the random downtown one-way streets around the various closed downtown streets (due to the early St. Patrick's Day Parade) to get to Trader Joe's.

Yes, I went to Trader Joe's on a Saturday afternoon. For those of you who have never been to a Trader Joe's, they are usually in strip malls and they are notorious for their small parking lots. And our Trader Joe's serves our town and surrounding areas plus all of the southern Vancouver, BC suburbs. Seriously, I think there are more Canadians at our Trader Joe's than Americans. I know I hear a lot of French whenever I am there (it always make me wish Frenchie were here so she could tell me what they're saying). Anyway, the Trader Joe's parking lot will test even the calmest person's nerves. So when it's someone like me, a person will little tolerance for what I think is stupidity, it pretty much makes my head explode. And then on the way home I had to deal with more traffic than normal due to the closed roads and parade. People were turning left from the right-hand lanes, stopping for no reason, turning in front of me... so on and so forth.

At some point I started keeping a mental list of things I said/gestures made and how many I said/made them:

• Number of times I said, "How fucking stupid are you?": 3, at least
• Number of times I said, "Jesus Fucking Christ": Too many to count
• Number of times I called someone a jackass: Too many to count
• Number of people I flipped off in Trader Joe's parking lot: 3
• Number of people I flipped off not in Trader Joe's parking lot: 2
• Number of times I said, "Goddamn Canadians": 1
• Number of times I honked: 2