Begrudging Tomato  It was a fucking tomato.      I hold things in too long.  This has only been a couple of days, but it's still too long.      We four went to the grocery store for a few things.  That is the way it is here; there is no such thing as a quick errand.  La dee da dee everybody must go.  I had nine dollars in my pocket.  He wanted to hit up our already strained account for another twenty.  Twenty-two actually, when you count in ATM fees on each end of the transaction.  We needed four items: milk, bread, mayo, pancake syrup.  I said no.      It is his custom that whenever we go to a place of business, if coca-cola is avialable, he will have one.  Sometimes he makes a show of whining and asking piteously if he can have one, but usually he just goes and grabs one.  And really I don't mind.  Until...      After we got the milk, in order to get to the bread we had to go through the produce section.  My mouth watered at the celery, the bell peppers, the parsley and cilantro, the zucchini.  Oh, how I miss them.  It's amazing how badly I miss what I never used to care about.  Fresh fruits and veggies.  Ahhhhh...      Tomatoes.  A nice big beautiful red pyramid of plump shiny almost radioactively gleaming tomatoes.  I snapped.  I grabbed one, and snatched a little plastic bag to put it in.      "Well," he began, "we can see who decides what we are gonna buy around here."      He begrudges me a tomato.  When he spends us into a hole that leaves us with ten dollars to get us through two weeks of living, and I manage to keep the cap on this month so we actually still have money halfway through it, he is gonna begrudge me a tomoato.  I appeased him with a coke.      This is petty.  The whole thing is a whole sticky wad of petty bullshit.  Petty on both our parts.  The fucking house is freezing.  After a hectic work week with precious little sleep, when Saturday morning comes, I wanna rest, dammit.  He wants to get up at six and clean the house.  And resents the hell outta the fact that I don't.  God we are incompatible.      On a lighter note...      Really, I didn't mean for this entry to be a whiner entry.  They aren't my favorite kind.      From a Valentine's Day e-card I sent to someone dear to me, lost to me, maybe:  States of Being  Vision turned inward  Light lifted up  Love lofted high  Splashed from its cup  The strings struck clear  The note was plain  I crouched in green grass  And leapt into the rain     It came outta nowhere.  Well, that halfwhere from whence my poems come.      -- Spring