Quick Trips and Hominy

You know it and I know it. Quick trips are a myth.

There’s no such thing as a jolly jaunt to the store anymore. Anything involving people under 4 ft in our house is going to take time. But, I try constantly to convince myself otherwise.

Today in fact, I bundled the kids up and scampered off to the store. I figured we’d breeze in and out like it was nothing. Big mistake.

Somehow we ended up at the market mid-afternoon on stock day. Great, I’m bobbing and weaving through boxes stacked floor-to-ceiling and bumping carts with stock boys and a hundred other customers who thought it would be the perfect time to get their groceries.

I have a list to keep us on task, but I also have two kids needing my attention. One is pulling jellybeans and Acai powder off the shelves and the other is complaining he’s hungry. Trying to reduce his intake of fiber and soy ink, I gently remove part of a magazine from his mouth when he begins crying, very loudly. So, I start hand feeding him cereal since I can’t find our snack cups, any of them. All this is going on while I’m balancing the world’s hottest cup of Chai, even with the insulator sleeve, my shopping list and a cart that only makes right turns. Why do I do this?

Over an hour into the expedition, we’re looking for beans. Turkey chili is on our menu this week and I need several kinds. So, we squeeze into an aisle with three other carts and a grocery guy bringing pallets full of stuff to be stocked.

We need more ingredients, but can’t move because the aisle is blocked both ways. I ask for help and get escorted to another aisle with the cart and the kids. We’re bobbing and weaving to keep up with the guy until he shows us what we need. Well, almost.

I stand there staring at it, wondering if there are any other options. Customers move around us and we’re getting pinned in tighter and tighter the longer I evaluate this purchase. We’re toast. The kids are done and we’ve got to get out of here or else. Fine, I say and wedge the 2-pound can of hominy in the cart.

We check out and need another escort, this time to the car. While the cashier waits, I’m putting on my coat and helping my daughter with hers. She asks for help with the umbrella, but starts pushing the auto button anyway and pops it open and closed in the store. We’re still not moving, but almost. I close it up and let her do it again once we’re outside. The cashier was helpful, but I’m still left with two carts, and a kid running around with an umbrella.

I thought we were in the clear, but now we’re in the parking lot and I’m nervous my kid’s going to jump out in front of someone. So as I’m getting the baby seat locked in and my daughter secured someone beeps at me. I’m trying to find my kid's seat buckles, which have disappeared into a black hole somewhere, when someone beeps again. What!? Do you see us surrounded by shopping carts with our van doors hanging open? I’m a little busy and you’re going to have to wait. I think. Trying to be nice, I snug up as close as possible hoping they don’t run me over trying to get the space next to me.

The lady parks, gets out, and says…absolutely nothing. Not. A. Thing. I start to mumble something and hope my kids can’t hear, because it’s not for kid ears.

I buckle my daughter in and tell her No, you can’t play with the really big, really heavy Ice Dozer (scraper for rough winters) on the way home you might hurt your brother. Then I huff and move onto the groceries.

I get everything loaded, get buckled in and start the car. Then I look at the time. We’ve been shopping for over two hours. Our weekly list is a third of what it normally is, I couldn’t find everything, and we still took for-ev-er to get through the store. 


Let this be a warning, parents. The quick trip is a myth, unless you go alone. Oh, and if you do take the kids, remember to avoid going anywhere on stock day!

Cabin Fever and How I Egged My Own Car

Just about everyone knows what it’s like to have cabin fever. If you’ve ever been forced to stay indoors during hurricanes, blizzards or bouts with the flu, you know that it’s tolerable for about the first fifty minutes and then all you can think about is everything you could be doing outside. Yet, there you are stuck doing absolutely nothing, because you can’t get your mind off of how closed in the place feels and how much you just want to get out.

Well that’s us. That’s been us since day three of our kids being sick, which was about the time we noticed our first child sneezing on our second. So nice when they share, isn’t it?

We’re in the second week of limited activities and instead of watching our 4yo bouncing off the walls, and going without bananas and milk yet again, I decided to take the kids on a quick run to the store. Go ahead and laugh, as most parents know, there is no such thing as a “quick” run to the store when you have kids in tow.

As soon as we got there I struggled to fit our infant’s car seat in the shopping cart. They tempt you with an abundance of food and goodies, yet they give you carts just large enough for a loaf of bread and some butter. How am I supposed to shop? Deep breath, and go.

So we make it inside and my oldest goes for the mini shopping carts. Okay, we can manage this. Maybe she gets the task of helping cart the groceries around, it seems harmless enough. That is until we make it halfway through the store and she starts running around doing her impression of Tokyo Drift.

Another deep breath and I get her to drive within 5 feet of me while urging her to stop taking everything off the shelves and putting it in said cart, “No sweetie, we don’t need soy cheese slices.”

Two more minutes go by as we’re waiting at the deli and she’s got her hands on the glass. This lasts 30 seconds before she starts drumming on the glass and pointing to all the stuff we should get. I patiently work with her and ask her to take her hands off the glass. I turn away to order some food, and she’s got her hands up on the glass again. “You need to stop playing on the glass,” I say. Momentary pause while I get our next item ordered and she’s at it again. “If you don’t take your hands off the glass you won’t get a cookie” I say feeling confident since this is what she’s waited the whole trip to get.

It takes less than a minute for her to go from absolutely perfect to sprawled out on the floor in protest. That’s it, “Let’s go.” She refuses to move and I am forced to hoist her over my shoulder. As she begins wailing, I realize I can’t drive the “big” cart and the kid’s cart while carrying her carcass over my shoulder. I try to set her down and she collapses onto the floor again. All I’ve got left is to lift her up and plop her down on a pile of uncured ham and soy cheese. At least she’s mobile now, sort of.

Next dilemma, there’s two kids and two carts. No way can I leave either one of them. So I’m hunched over at an angle pushing a crying toddler in the dinky kid’s cart, every third wail she’s belting out, and my higher hand is guiding the baby’s seat wedged in the “big” cart, which really isn’t big at all.

We make it past all the wine bottle displays and a nice lady ahead of us in line offers help to guide the “big” cart across the finish line, which is the register. I think we’ve made it, and we have until I unload enough groceries from the “big” cart’s kid seat and try to lift my now calm toddler into it. “Ouch! Something’s rubbing,” she says. Still lifting her above my head with her feet dangling chest high, I struggle to fit her in the seat, but after a few moments I have her secured. Two kids, one cart. Why didn’t I just do that from the beginning?

Feeling I’d accomplished something and not wanting to miss out on sweet goodness myself, I eye some cookies at the checkout and sneak them in with the food moving down the beltway. I heave a sigh of relief and we’re out the door.

It only takes us fifteen instead of the normal twenty to get everyone and the groceries in the van and we head home.

Things were uneventful until I started unloading the kids and groceries. It’s lunchtime, so I had to do it in stages. Kids out, check. Food on table for oldest and toys to distract baby, check. I unpacked food from the front and headed back to get the rest, clicked open the lift gate, and that’s when it happened. I watched in slow motion as a carton of eggs spilled over and the viscous insides of one slid out of the van, crept over our back bumper and jiggled into a pool on our new garage floor.

Sigh.

My thoughts: Karma, never should have touched those cookies. If my daughter didn’t get any, I shouldn’t either. And, I’m so done with grocery shopping. (See also, Disaster on aisle...)

Disaster on aisle…

Wait…who am I kidding, it wasn’t just one aisle. Stopping off for a few quick items before lunch today turned out to be a full-blown debacle.

Let me begin be saying that we started in the hole and the experience somehow degraded from there. After a lovely time at the bookstore where my little sweetie decided to see if she could outrun me the last few minutes of our trip, I told her to sit tight and we’d stop for a couple things at the grocery.

As we pulled in to park, a little voice asked, “Mommy, I’m sorry I didn’t listen good. (Pause to melt) Can we get a cart where you drive me and I drive the car?” She had just said something so sweet, I only have five items on the list, and I thought, what’s the worst that could happen?

Big mistake.

I help her wrestle her way into the cart as icicles form on our noses. I start to drive/skate my way into the store and run into two outdoor displays and the automatic doors while grabbing some greenery. We’ve only just begun. 

Being pregnant, it was nearly time for my 50^th trip to the potty. So we parked the car/cart monstrosity as far out of the way as we could and my little girl extricated herself from the cart so we could hit the restrooms. Ah, much better.

We grab a bundle of bananas, turn the S.S. Disaster Cart around and walk two feet before I hear, “Mommy, I have to go potty.” Turn the cart back around, park it and get her out again. This time the potty stop is wrought with drama. She tries to support herself with one of the handicap bars and I struggle to help keep her from falling backward into the toilet. The joys of parenthood.

I give instructions. She ignores me, probably thinking she’s doing a great service. I’m just worried she’ll regress two years if this ends up badly. Again, I’m pregnant and squatting down to hold her as she cranes herself backwards holding that darn bar. I tell her again to let go. She looks blankly at me, so I have to remove her hand before she and I both lose balance and fall in. She starts crying. This was not what I had in mind by stopping off for a few quick items!

We finish our crying jag/conversation and end up leaving without going. Awesome.

Back to the car/cart and start again. It’s lunchtime and this is supposed to be fast so we can grab some things and get out…Twenty minutes later we’re still stuck somewhere between produce and dairy. I bust into the grapes and rolls to try and stave off hunger crankies. Helps a little, but navigating the Disaster Cart around the tiny aisles has me ready to scream.

Somehow we work our way into and out of the aisles, hitting only a few innocent bystanders along the way and we’re ready to check out. She’s already crawling out of the cart and I’m trying to keep track of her as people go around us to other registers. Do you have your store card? Yes. Dig, digging. Found it. Where is she? Stuck between the cart from hell and the checkout counter. I help her out and keep piling the groceries, of which we have twenty or so – hey, I ran up a couple wrong aisles trying to turn the cart around, so we got what we got – and we paid.

You’d think the hard part was over, but she wanted back in the cart and I still had to trek back to the car. We only ran into one display, the door and the back end of our car before this time. She got out and decided that she wanted to roam free in the back of the car while I unloaded groceries. I think I growled and she got in her seat shortly after.

Kid locked in place. Groceries in. A neighbor stops us and we have a short chat. She is due in January, and looks fabulous. I’m due months later and feel like a cranky disheveled mess. Can we go home yet? She’s very nice, but I’m ready to eat my arm and seriously questioning my decision to make this ‘quick’ grocery run.

She bounces off to her car. I throw the last bag into the van. Grumbling the whole way, I return the Disaster Cart to the front of the store. I pause thinking that I should memorize the cart manufacturers info. so I can give them a piece of my mind when hunger strikes. We’re outtta here!

So friends, heed my advice –

Don’t go to the grocery store hungry and in need of a potty stop!

Avoid the store on free bread giveaway days.

Never, ever, under any circumstances think that you can conquer the Disaster Cart, a toddler and get though the store in less than thirty minutes – it just doesn’t happen!  

Now, will someone please help me off this seat so I can potty and get something to eat?  Please?