Little mercies

Oh Thursday, please deliver me from this week!

It's been a real bear. Exhausting and deliberately challenging. I just want it to go away.

After a series of four days of bad health, bad timing and bad juju, the final indignation occurred this afternoon at the grocery store, crowded with the after-work set grabbing necessities on the way home. I stopped in to grab something quick for dinner, as I'm just too tired to go home and cook. I was standing in line at the deli, when suddenly ...

POP!

My right bra strap sprung like a slingshot pulled taut and let go. One second, it was on my shoulder and then the next, it ... wasn't.

Such was the force of the pop, I'm pretty sure that had I not been wearing a cardigan, the strap would have slapped me in the ear and sent my earring flying. Startled, I jumped a little in my high heels and audibly gasped, garnering some odd looks from the other deli patrons and the young lady behind the counter weighing my coleslaw. I tried to be cool, casually reaching for my shoulder just to be sure that ... yep, it was gone. I could feel the strap hanging loose on my back, dangling toward my hip.

Then came the worst feeling: the front - the cup - started to unfurl like a banana peel.

Things were about to get very real, folks.

I discreetly buttoned my cardi - because, of course, I was wearing a cardigan sweater! - and silently prayed for the deli worker to put my chicken meal together a little faster.

One potato wedge.

Two potato wedge.

Three potato wedge.

When she finally hit the half-pound mark, I called it good enough and hit the checkout line. I was in such a tizzy, I tried to pay for the order by swiping my health insurance card. 

No, it didn't take.

When I got to the car, I realized I still had one more stop to make before I could get home: my son's school.  So no one would blame me for doing the wiggle - you know, how we girls can tuck both arms in our shirts and wrestle our bras off without exposing ourselves - so I could re-appoint the offending strap and discreetly secure it back on the shoulder in the privacy of my car.

... No one ... except the elderly lady in the passenger seat of the car next to me.

She? Not amused. And neither was her lap dog. Stupid, judgmental Yorkie.

Note to self: next time you partially disrobe in your car in a public place in the daytime, check for an audience.

Some days are like that: it's one thing after another. And some days like that come at you a week at a time. I try to roll with it as best I can and look for the little mercies: kind gestures from friends, a well-timed compliment, the guy who lets you turn left in front of him in the carpool line, a sturdy underwire, old ladies who have probably been blinded by flashes of your pasty middle-aged flesh and thus can't ID you ...

... and mediocre fashion sensibilities that leave you covered in every situation.

God bless the cardigan sweater.