No one wants to be around someone who's angry all the time, and I assure you I am not. Outwardly. Even your best friends tire a bit when you can't get off the dime about WHAT HAPPENED, unless you can make it amusing, and you have new stories. Rather than saying THESE ARE THE THINGS THAT KINDLED A HOT COAL OF ANGER TODAY, let us call them Piquing Incidents, and see if there's a happy ending to all this.

Piquing Incident Number One

Lunds and Byerly’s had a BOGOF on spicy chicken tenders. While I can't eat it all this week, there is of course the divorced man's creed: I can freeze it for later. While I was at the store I noticed they had BOGOFs for other things as well – there was an excellent ice cream offer, and a two for one on my very favorite pizza. Great opportunities! I could avail myself of neither of them, because

I don't have room in the fridge. I also went to Trader Joe's and picked up some stir-fry, but passed on a few other things because again, the freezer space is tight. How I loved provisioning for the family, making sure there was always enough of everything. I loved doing the cooking. I'm sure it meant something, but of course, in the end, it didn't.

Piquing Incident Number Two

Had to stop off at the central nervous-system depressant dispensary to get some refreshments, and had the same feeling that I've had for months now when I walked through the tequila aisle: 1) I don't want any, because the last time I bought a really good bottle of tequila I swear it tasted like soap, and the last time I bought a not-so-top-shelf bottle of tequila it tasted like rotten soap. There's such a variance there – even the most banal scotch in the Canadian whiskey department is going to be suitable and drinkable. The bottom-shelf bourbons may burn, but you can adulterate it with amenable fluids. But the other thing that gets my goat and really rakes my ruminant is that I would always associate the long shelves of tequila with the trip to Mexico that had recently concluded, or the one that was surely soon to follow. You know, the tennis resort where she happily said this is our place six months before dissolving the idea of "ours." I loved it there, and I have many happy memories of the beach, the place where we would take lunch, the amusing dinners, watching the sun go down, the gym – and it’s all gone, and I can never go back there again. I mean I could, but I’m not going to. Just the whole idea of going to a resort by myself. Feels pathetic. So now I hate tequila.

Luckily I experienced Piquing Incident Number Two in a liquor store, so there was some means to ameliorate the situation, just not immediately. Actually, there was - a fellow was demonstrating gins. Is that the proper term, demonstrating? Let me show you how this works, my friend - you pour it in the glass, and then you raise it up just so - watch my arm - and guide it to your mouth. With me so far? But I didn’t want to stand in a store and drink a thimble of gin. I want to stand in a store and drink four thimbles of gin and then take a nap. Well, how about trying one of these pre-made cocktail samples? It was good. I told the demonstrator that Daughter had worked on the ad campaign for that one right there, Blue Whale. He was delighted to hear that, as it was one of his favorites.

"It's the botanicals, isn't it?" I said, displaying the entirety of my gin know-how then and there. He'd said yes, they were quite unique, and since I had nothing more to say I had to shift to BS mode, and talk about how I didn't trust gin from anywhere but England, and even then I was suspicious of Scottish gin. It's amusing how we look at the bottles that say "Founded in 1715" and think well, that's the good stuff, when they were probably selling absolute poison to alcoholics sprawled in the street or living in Hogarthian hovels.

Piquing Incident Number Three. Then we went to Petco (hence the fish up above) so Birch could get his nails done again. It would be a 10 minute wait, they said - just wander around the store and we’ll call you/ I wandered around the store for 25 minutes. Birch loves the place, because it’s full of all the best smells. I’m sure he wanted everything, and I had to say no we have rawhide at home. We have a ton of treats left over from the times the ex would go to the store and spend inordinate amounts of money on dog stuff. He's generally happy if I give him an old shoe, but it was her way of treating him and making his life interesting with dental chews and chicken-flavored sticks as thick as gorilla's femur. He was sniffing at the big bags of food, and I had to say I'm sorry but we're single income now, we're not upgrading your kibble. Piquing Incident Number Three.

That's just how it is when you're abandoned, I suppose. For a long time everything reminds you of everything. And you wonder how it works on the other side, whether she's thinking about you a few times a day and doing a jig because she doesn't feel like she's carrying around six sloshing buckets of resentment. I wonder if she ever thinks of the house like I do, with that strange immediate and total recall and familiarity, and think this is just a break I'll be back home soon enough. Probably not. It's possible that leaving the house is my fault now.

I was looking forward to dinner: the spicy chicken tenders on a soft roll with cole slaw and pickles. I gave the chicken 30 seconds in the microwave, half of what was recommended, and when I cut it open to gauge the interior temperature, it fought the knife. It was like trying to cut through a new saddle.

Eventually I managed to eat it, but not without some difficulty. I realize that “tenders” is a product category, not an adjective, but I feel as if it violated the spirit of the law. So off we went! Birch was excited to go somewhere again. Two car trips in one day! Awesome! Off to Lundsnbyerly's where I gave master class on how to return something. I brought both items back, I had the bag, I had the receipt, and I approached the desk and didn’t say can I speak to a manager, which always makes them think oh God now what, but I asked for somebody who is authorized to make a return. Upon being informed the gentleman to whom I was speaking was duly investred with such power, I said in all my decades of shopping here, I've only returned two items, and this is the second. These chicken tenders were anything but, and actually were like eating a breaded oven mitt. I ate two, so you can take a dollar off the $7.37, but I'd really like a refund.

He looked at them and said yeah they don't look very good at all my gosh, and he instantly beeped them and gave me my money back. But that was not the end fo it. He said since you didn't like these, would you like to go back to the deli for something on us? I said that wasn't necessary; I was perfectly satisfied with the refund, and thanked him. Whereupon he said hold on, got a gift card off the rack, beeped it, activated it, put $10 on it, and handed it to me. I said that's really above and beyond, Dan, I appreciate it and that is why I shop here.

Some people may think that I was foolish for not going back to the deli and getting $10 worth of free stuff, but that would be taking advantage of them in a way that seemed selfish and excessive. I mean, I got my money back. I wasn't asking for anything more. The offer was enough. But once you put it in card form and handed it to me, well, the die was cast.

Then I went back to Petco and returned the leash I'd bought that afternoon to replace the old one with many inexplicable knots. There were knots on that thing that would confound a sailor on Magellan's crew. Now, if she were dead, it would be sad but sweet to think that my hand on the loop of the leash was keeping her love of the dog alive, but of course she is not.

I'm sure she misses him. Too bad. There's no way he would have liked Scottsdale. Ungodly heat, , no wild field lush with foilage and the scent of mysterious critters, and of course he would have spent hours upon hours alone at the rented sublet weeping when she went off to hike or play tennis or see her Mother. He's better off here.

Anyway he was thrilled to go to Petco AGAIN! I retuned the leash. I bought him a bag of rawhides, the little ones he likes. When we got back to the Fred we went out to the place where I sit and have a cigar and he chooses one of the many sticks he has carried from Sunderwood Park, and he chews and I puff and we sit in silence as the sun goes down. I think about the future, and I think about the day I just had, and it occurs to me: someday, I'll look back, and say that was one of the good ones. Maybe it really was.