I haven’t written anything in a while, and I don’t plan to “catch up” with everything that’s been going on, but I feel the need to vent every once in a while, and this is a great way for me to do it.

We bought a place in Florida this past September, and we’ve been busy getting things the way we want them. We’re not there yet, but well on our way. We’re settling into Florida life quite well, but every once in a while, I repeat, I feel the need to vent. The other day I was shopping…don’t panic, I was actually buying. Women shop. They go into a store, and their speed goes from “I can hardly keep up with you”, to “Walk any slower and you’d be going backwards”. Men go into a store, walk right to what they want, buy it, and leave as fast as they came in.

But, I digress. After leaving the mall, I stopped at a produce stand in the mall parking lot. There was a woman standing at the check out area, buying a few things, and another woman picking some things out and piling them on the counter. I wandered around looking at the produce while the clerk finished up with the woman checking out. The entire time the clerk was ranting on about same sex marriage (against, not for). She never stopped long enough to take a breath, and continued as I walked up to the counter. I grabbed a tomato and placed it on the counter. Still talking, she picked up the tomato, rang it up, and started ringing up things in the other womans pile (she wasn’t at the counter yet). I said, “Wait, we’re not together”. She paused her rant long enough to say, sorry. I handed her a dollar bill which she placed under the other woman’s banana, then put the tomato in a plastic bag.

She continued talking, and started ringing up the other woman’s things, again. I stood there listening for a while, then calmly said, “So, do you think I could get my tomato and change so I can leave?”. She stopped talking just long enough to laugh at herself, handed me my change and, as she started her monologue again, away I went. The old Jack would have vented right then and there, but I’m sure whatever I said would have been lost in her soapbox speech.

Today, I knew I needed to go for a walk. It was nice out (70 and mostly sunny, unlike the rest of the country), and I had walked about four of the four and a third miles on my route. I was walking in the street at the end on the ninth hole of the South Course (there are no sidewalks), when two couples finished playing golf. One of the couples headed for the clubhouse, and the other couple said they were going home for a minute, but would be right back. They pulled out in front of me and passed by quite close. The other couple said something, so they turned around in the middle of the street with their golf cart. Their “circle” came very close to me, close enough that I had to step into the grass on the side of the road to keep from getting hit. The woman said “Hello”, and I said nothing. The guy then said, quite loudly,”We said hello.” Again I said nothing.

The old Jack would have said something like, “You saw me walking down the street, and you pull out in front of me anyway. Then you do a circle in the middle of the road, forcing me to step into the grass so I won’t get hit, and you have the balls to try and make me feel guilty for not saying hello? You’re not only an idiot, but a self-centered, arrogant idiot as well.” I’m proud of myself for not saying it, but I’m not completely cured until I don’t think it either.

Just (Serenity Now..Serenity Now…Serenity Now) Jack