snarkwife dot com

There are two sides to my personality - the Snarkwife side, and the Stacy side. Sometimes they struggle, because Snarkwife thinks Stacy can be a real stick-in-the-mud, and Stacy thinks Snarkwife needs to exercise a little restraint and cut stupid people some slack because really, they can’t help the way they are. Allow me to share an example.

As today is the third Thursday in November, I drove to our local World Market at lunch to buy my holiday supply of Beaujolais Nouveau. This is always a festive time, especially since she and I plan on doing a virtual wine tasting as soon as she can get her supply. So, I’m hobbling around World Market with my 6 bottles in my wine carrier and get in line to pay. There’s a woman in front of me who is buying just about every cake, cookie and salty chip-type product that could fit into her cart, and behind me is a woman with a candy bar. One candy bar.

Now, I’m used to the particular checkout woman working today, because whenever I show up with one of the 800 coupons World Market sends me, she always acts befuddled, like this is the first time anyone has brought a 40%-off coupon for her to process. Maybe she needs to get on her own company’s email newsletter list. Weird.

Anyway, the line starts to grow, so she calls for backup. No one responds to her intercom plea for help, and she leaves and goes to the back - I assume, to kick someone’s ass for leaving her alone with the impatient, toe-tapping lunchtime crowd. While she’s gone, Ms. Low-Carb in front of me attempts small talk by looking at me and saying, “That’s a lot of wine.”

Hrmph. It is always at this point that I say to myself, “What Would Snarkwife Do?” Stacy would give this woman an odd, crooked half-smile and a scrunched-forehead glare…kind of like she doesn’t understand English. Snarkwife would gesture at the woman’s cart and snap, “You know, food can’t cure whatever emotional issues you have.” Hmm. It’s pick-your-battle time…and…Stacy wins. Stacy usually wins. Snarkwife hates that.

The couponophobic comes back, with a helper in tow. The helper opens up another register and says, “I’ll take the next person in line.” The woman behind me leaps like it’s the freaking Olympics over to the register. While I understand doing that gave her a peculiar sense of accomplishment (I beat her! HaHA!), it was just wrong…and unfair.

All together now…what would Snarkwife do?

Snarkwife would say something, and Snarkwife won this round in the battle of mouthy vs. indifferent. I said, “HEY. I’m next in line.” Now, this woman saw me limping around the store and knew I was slower and weaker, and would risk additional injury if I were to challenge her in a leaping race to the register. She erred on the side of Darwin. She erred…um…in error. She gave me this sheepish-yet-insincere, “Sorry!” look - you know, it’s the same one you get with a hand-wave when some nitwit cuts you off while driving. After Stacy finished signing the credit card receipt, Snarkwife looked back at the woman and said, “Happy Thanksgiving!”

Victoriously, I limped out to the Jeep.