Two days in a row I'll have done my post for the day past midnight.  Have to make sure today's second post gets in under the wire.


"Shit, goddammit, motherfucking ow!" the woman shouted.  

A group of school children, congregated just inside the gate of the park, uniforms wrinkled and ties askew, giggled.

"Oh shut the fuck up," the woman barked at them.

She threw her purse on the ground and reached down and grabbed her foot.  Blood was soaking through the canvas of her sandal from the gashed big toe.  Her eyes scrunched up in a moment of pain before she unzipped her bag and began digging through it.  The children watched.

"Motherfucking bandaids," she mumbled.  Throwing gum wrappers, old receipts, torn bits of paper around her as she pawed through what seemed to the school children to be a messier version of Mary Poppins' bag the woman continued muttering obscenities.

"Fuck it," she said eventually, with a slight note of triumph.  The woman pulled a pantyliner from the depths of the bag.  She peeled away the plastic wrapping and proceeded to clumsily bandage her toe with the feminine hygiene product, sticky side out, of course.  Apparently satisfied with her handiwork, the woman zipped her bag, stood up, and wandered off past the gate, towards the bus stop.

The children went back to desultorily playing, kicking a plastic bottle around, all the while muttering, "Shit, goddammit, mutherfucking ow."