Evidently, I had a brain tumor for breakfast.

Ok. So I go to Trader Joe's to stock up today. I regularly go in there to shop. Like at least once a week.

In case you were wondering, this is my attempt at foreshadowing.

Anyway, it's been a fairly lousy 10 day run, weight loss excepted. A random parade of projectile vomiting, someone stole my wallet and then used my credit card, I had to go to the DMV....I am expecting the plague of locusts any day now.

So, I go shopping. I am going to make a roast, which I have defrosted, and is all ready to go.

If you guys haven't seen the problem yet, here it is- one of the ingredients in the roast recipe is "dry sherry." Which is the only kind of alcohol we don't have in the house. And I have conveniently forgotten that while I have a temp driver's license, there's no picture on it.

I did pause when I grabbed the sherry, but then laughed at myself. Come ON people- I'm thirty. And dammit, I look thirty. I know that because, hey, I look at me all the time, and I am definitely a thirty-year-old woman. And I have probably looked thirty or thereabouts since I was about 15 or so.

HA! Fie upon my self-confidence! The 12 year old checker girl picked up the bottle of sherry from amidst about $100 of other groceries, and asked me for ID. I pulled out the paper temporary license, explained the situation, and expected- oh, I don't know....sanity, perhaps. Because, dammit, I'm thirty. I'm buying swiss chard and wild rice! Give me a break!

"Sorry, ma'am," she said."We're supposed to card if you look under 50. That's how they train us. I'll just ask my manager."

Fifty? Since when is it fifty?!!! Wasn't it supposed to be thirty?! Pretty soon, you'll have to roll in on your Lark and hook a bottle of schnapps down with your cane not to get carded. Fifty?

I sort of laughed- and made some comment that if I was under 21, Trader Joe's has some premium liquor and a huge wine selection, and I would definitely come up with something better to try to sneak through than a bottle of cooking sherry.

The manager came out. Short. Beetle browed. Napoleon complex. Ugly shoes. Crap in a basket! (That's an exclamation, by the way- he did not have actual crap in a basket.) He looked me up and down like I was an appliance on sale at Sears and he was checking for dings. Bastard.

"No, can't take this. Once she asks you, we can't run through the sale." Like a big cage is going to come down from the ceiling and sirens are going to go off or something.

What kind of stupid managerial B.S. is that?

Needless to say, I left without my sherry.

The punch line- the silver-haired guy in back of me (who laughed when I made the crack about the liquor) had a cart FULL of two buck Chuck. As I was leaving, he winked and slapped his I.D. on the counter and said, "OK, sweetie, I'm over 50- but I look much younger, so I thought I'd show you anyway."

GAH!