The happy thing that happened

One had no choice but to station the cart near the fence and hope that one could secure a spot in the lane near where the cart was. Because of this, I prefer to shop in the suburbs whenever I can. You see, grocery carts run free in exotic locales like Rockville and Annandale.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that our local Safeway has removed the fence, so it is not possible to take your groceries to your car. This just made me so happy, I'm almost embarrassed to admit it. I'm sure I said "woohoo!" as I pulled the cart to my trunk. Freedom is a beautiful thing.

My local Safeway still sucks, and I don't think I'll be shopping there all that often, but when I do, I no longer feel like I'm shopping in a police state.

~~~~~

I often say that the real news is what you see on the CNN crawl while some stiff is talking to Wolf Blitzer about Iraq, or shark attacks, or whatever leg the news business is humping this week. Today I learned from the crawl that roughly 220,000 women in the US had breast augmentation surgery in 2001.

I don't know whether that number counts reconstruction after a mastectomy, or just the ones who had a run-of-the-mill boob job. I suspect it's the latter, and I really wonder about this country I call home. Fake boobs look fake, that's all there is to it. There's such a bad history of problems with the various kinds of implants that I can't see why any woman would choose to have them. Is it that self esteem is wrapped that tightly in one's cup size?

It just doesn't make sense to me, not when there are highly decent padded bras available. Unless you are hoping for a career as a porn star, I just don't know how much good having oversized breasts will do you. If you are hoping for a career as a porn star... well, I guess you probably do want them super-sized.

I can see myself having cosmetic surgery, believe it or not. I wouldn't mind seeing what a doctor could do about the scars on my neck and chest, and the surgeon who could reconstruct my belly button would be my hero. (It's all messed up from being sliced open more times than it should.) I have also wondered if I wouldn't be happier with a slightly different nose, but I can't say that I've ever even thought of breast augmentation, despite being average sized.

Maybe I'm just a freak, but in this case, I don't think so.

before - after