Far From The Madding Crowd

Yesterday I woke up late after having gone to bed relatively early, netting myself a little over 9 hours of sleep.
Of course, I had to pay for that, so by the time I went to bed last night I was completely incapable of getting to sleep and ended up being awake until nearly 3 am. Once I did get to sleep I woke up a bit after 6, then again a bit after 8, and again after 9.
Eventually I decided to stop fighting it and just get up, as I had to go to go to the dentist for my check up.
While I was sitting in the rather packed waiting room, there was a lady sitting to my left with two kids, one of whom – despite his mother’s repeated orders not to – kept getting up from his chair and walking over to me as though preparing to climb up on my lap. Not sure what was up with that, but I was relieved to be called back before suddenly finding myself with a strange child’s possibly soaking wet bottom suddenly parking itself on my lap.
This time around I had a different hygienist from the usual chatty Iranian lady, and somehow a different hygienist meant different results, as last time my gums were “beautiful,” and this time they were “terrible.”
I’m not sure what happened there, as in the course of the past six months I haven’t really been doing anything different from the prior six months that led up to the “beautiful” results.
Oh well.
After the dentist I stopped to have lunch at Wendy’s in Ashburn, across from where I used to live.
It seems that just as with the development I’m living in, the complex I lived in there that had converted from renting apartments to selling condos has gone back to renting. They’ve even put their old sign back up.
At Wendy’s I ordered a combo meal. When she asked me what I wanted to drink, I said, “Sprite,” to which she responded, “Coke? Okay.”
I was going to correct her, but, suppressing a yawn, I decided that I could use some caffeine.
Then she gave me the total, which seemed rather excessive, so it was with some trepidation that I gave her the money and got my change. Once she grabbed two cups to fill up, I realized that she’d thought I’d ordered two meals, which explained the overcharge, so I said, “I only ordered one.”
She looked at me confused, and I said, “I ordered one number two.”
After saying, “Ohhhhh,” she conferred with her manager and gave me the rest of my change, and soon I had my one meal and was sitting down to eat.
There were a couple of people in there with their very young children, and as I sat there trying to tune out all of the random screaming, I thought about how, at times like these, anyone could wonder why I try to avoid going out into the world.
Barking dog notwithstanding, life is just so much more quiet and peaceful in my little cave. Every time I venture out into the world, pretty much all of my senses are assaulted by something unpleasant, from crying babies and shitty muzak to fat smelly guys whose pants are falling down, and it just seems less and less worth it to go there.
With that in mind, I decided to head straight home after eating rather than doing any grocery shopping, as I have enough food to get by for a few days. Of course that, means having to venture out into the world again tomorrow or Wednesday, but I just really needed to get away from the noise.
I’m going to wait until I get my bags and boards to buy boxes for my comics and to make a decision about buying that database software, but I suppose I could at least finish the process of de-bagging them, so I guess I’ll spent the rest of the afternoon doing that.