Things lately haven't been great. For the last few weeks, I've been getting near-nightly cluster headaches. My treatment regime of coffee, cannabis, and high-flow oxygen has helped, but there have still been a couple of attacks that were intense enough to be incapacitating. The last time I had to contend with attacks like these was in summer of 2020.
In light of the illness, I've fallen behind at work. I'm getting the bare minimum done, but there are a couple of client jobs that need more attention than I can give them right now. An article of mine did make it into the latest issue of International Paneling and my most recent NFT reviews on UNDRGRND are a hit on Twitter. So that's something.
Meanwhile, my main grocery store has been out of some of my staple foods for the last couple of weeks. 'Supply chain issues' are partly to blame. But they've also been out of muffins I can eat, which they bake themselves. Suddenly, all of their muffins are bullshit. They either contain banana, which I'm allergic to, or they're coated with sugary goo, which I don't want on my food. Why did they decide to stop baking unfrosted pumpkin and blueberry and poppyseed muffins? It's a mystery.
At the same time, 
Giving him the benefit of the doubt, I tried to buy a pound of coffee grounds from him the other day and found the experience beyond uncomfortable. He did everything wrong, beginning with using one hand to slowly transfer beans from the scale to the bag, a little fistful at a time. Then he didn't understand what I meant when I repeated that I wanted the coffee ground. He just stared blankly, holding a bag of unground beans out.
"I don't understand what that means," he said finally, after I repeated for the second or third time that I needed the coffee ground. I had to walk him through it. Following that, he rang me up wrong, and when I corrected him, he didn't re-enter the sale correctly. Instead, he started to pull money out of his tip jar to try and make correct change. It was a level of incompetence that I rarely encounter. Notably, this new barista wasn't giving off drug vibes. Rather, I got the impression that his incompetence was feigned as part of some bullshit interpersonal game he was playing.
It's extremely rare for me to have such a negative response to someone. And no one else seems to be bothered by the new barista. This gives the whole situation a Twilight Zone feel with no obvious solution. My natural instinct is to try to understand or even befriend those who I initially find repellent. But I don't care what this guy's story is. I just want him the hell away from me.
So, with the living nightmare of cluster headaches going on, and with the two places I go when leaving the house both tainted by bullshit, all I can really do is complain. Maybe next week will be better than this week has been.
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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