Snails are faster than Kerrville residents...

I'm learning to navigate through life in Kerrville, slowly but surely. Really, more slowly than surely, because I'm learning that EVERYTHING in this town is done slowly. Like, death-crawl-slowly. Like, I-want-to-tear-my-eyeballs-out-slowly.

Today, I grabbed Punky from VBS and we were going to take my lunch hour to go to Wendy's and then to Wal-Mart. I'm pretty much already over the whole old people driving in slow motion thing, so getting there wasn't bad. We decided to eat inside Wendy's, something I rarely do, but I didn't want to sit in the Walmart parking lot and eat in the car. We went inside, stood in line, and after literally 10 minutes (and I was only third in line), I finally got up to the front.

Now, during my tenure in line, I noticed people ordering from both registers (I couldn't understand why the line was moving so slow with both registers open, but I did notice the staff behind the counter, numerous though they were, all leisurely strolling through the kitchen. Keep in mind that it was noon, the peak of the lunch hour). I stepped up to the open register, and watched as the staff continued their slow-motion pace. The family who was behind me in line stepped up to the other available register, and a girl immediately walked up to their register and took their order. She looked at me from her register and said, "Hi," and then went back to her order-taking. I stood there, still waiting for someone to come back to the register and take *my* order, since I was there first, but continued to be ignored. After the other family ordered, I said, "Umm, is this register still open?" The girl said, "No," and began to take another order. Umm, okay. So you *saw* me standing there, waiting to order, and you didn't bother to mention that the register... o...k. Sigh.

I stepped behind the people who were ordering at rude girl's register, ordered my food, and then stepped to the side to wait for my order. Most of my order was filled in a miraculous two minutes, but Punky wanted a shake, so we waited. I stood there with my food and watched as an elderly Wendy's employee with very brightly dyed red hair, God love her, slowly began to add the ingredients in his shake, and then she shuffled over to the shake machine and mixed it... slowly (keep in mind that I've now been in line for about 15 minutes. With the drive over to Wendy's, 30 minutes of my lunch hour have now been taken). Then, she slowly put his shake down on the counter next to her, picked up a rag, and began THOROUGHLY cleaning the shake machine. Yeah. From top to bottom. Inside and out. And she was wiping it SLOWLY...savoring every swipe of the rag, probably humming a little tune while she did it. The shake was sitting there next to her on the counter, I was standing there waiting for it, all she had to do was turn around and hand it to me, but no, she decided to pull a Heloise and scour not only the shake machine, but the entire counter surrounding it. Slowly.

At this point, I could feel my chest getting tight, and my breathing becoming shallow, and my blood pressure rising... I toyed with the idea of calling to her and saying, "Ma'am. Ma'am... yes, you, hi. Can I have my shake SO WE CAN EAT OUR FRICKIN' FOOD?!" My eyeballs almost began to shoot blood. But she was old. She was like 70, and she was working at Wendy's. I felt bad. I couldn't berate her for being tidy...

But oh my GOSH!!!! She *finally* turned (slowly) and picked up the shake in her little gnarled hands... and then shuffled SLOWLY over to the other counter, where she gingerly picked up a pair of tongs, got a cherry out of a container, DROPPED IT (I'm about to hyperventilate at this point), got another cherry, put it in the cup, put the lid on (which took another hour), and then shuffled to the counter, where she finally handed me my shake. With a smile. And I resisted the urge to snatch it and run, because I looked into her eyes, and they were kind, and I wanted to cry. She was sweet. She was working at Wendy's. Dangit.

I literally almost collapsed by the time I had the thing in my hands... my nerves were shot. Seriously. 20 minutes after I walked in and stood THIRD PLACE in line, I finally had my food.

We ate and then went to Walmart, which took another 45 minutes to get through... this Walmart here was designed by kindergarteners, apparently, and then I drove back to work, frazzled, my lunch hour over long ago.

I thought Bandera was bad when I lived there... but Kerrville operates on Retired Standard Time. No one is in any hurry to do ANYTHING. I guess I wouldn't be, either, if I had moved to Kerrville to RETIRE... but alas, I live among them, and I will be forced to either slow down and chill out, or I will have a nervous breakdown in about a month.

Just had to share.