Tiny First World Problems

Tiny Problem 1

I went out for dinner with an old school friend last night. This was the culmination of many months of planning. Over the months I had booked the restaurant three times and cancelled twice. The day before yesterday, the restaurant people left me a voicemail asking whether I was still coming [you can see why they might be concerned]. I rang them back and explained that I was. Then, yesterday morning my friend texted and said that she wanted to go somewhere local and later. So, I rang the restaurant at 4 and cancelled again. At 5.40 my friend telephoned and said, “Actually, I’m making much better time than I expected, have you cancelled the restaurant?” “I have,” I said arcticly. “Why don’t you ring them, they may not have given the table away yet.” I bit my tongue and I rang. “We can’t give you a table in the restaurant but we can give you a table in the gastobar.” [Far from gastrobars we were reared etc.] “Fine,” I said. In the pair of us went. “Oh,” said my friend, “it’s such a pity we’re not in the restaurant, it’s far nicer.” I glared at her and she added hastily, “And it’s all my fault, of course.”

TP 2

Mr. Waffle took the children to school today as I was going to a conference in the opposite direction. They trooped out at 8.30 and I didn’t need to leave until 9. For the first time, I contemplated breakfast alone at home. I tidied up the breakfast things and put on the kettle. Just as the kettle boiled, I heard a cheery voice say, “Hello, hello!” as the cleaner let herself in the front door.

TP 3

I cycled to the conference in driving rain. As I was locking my bike it tipped over neatly sending the contents of the basket into an enormous puddle and emptying out my handbag entirely. I fished out flattened, floating scraps of paper and electronic devices as best I might but not before leaping backwards to avoid the falling bike and landing in the puddle up to my knees.

TP 4

The base of my thumb was a little sore and reading Dooce’s blog, I thought I might have injured myself from constant candy crushing. Dooce obviously acquired her injury while earning a living so that made it more glamourous. So this morning I took candy crush off my phone to save my thumb. This evening I got the train to Cork. When I went into the newsagent at the station, they were sold out of the Irish Times so I was left to entertain myself as best I might with no candy crush, no wifi and a very dull work related book which I have been carrying around in my handbag fooling myself that I will read. It was also, obviously, still damp after its morning dip.

Please tell me your stupid problems so I don’t feel utterly shallow or, at least, not utterly alone in my shallowness. And there is some fundamental problem with the syntax of that last sentence and I am too tired to fix it. Is that TP 5? I think it might be.