Each weekend I gear up for an early grocery shopping trip on Monday morning. The easiest part is preparing the list of meals and items and attempting to stay on budget. The hard part has proven to be corralling two rambunctious little ones for the 45 minutes it takes me to navigate the aisles. Always they beg to ride in the big racecar cart which is a mammoth to maneuver and which always brings them to a point of twisting and writhing and wrestling with one another before the trip is over.
Each aisle something different is happening in the car I am laboring to push. After almost knocking over a whole shelf of glass bottled jellies and jams and almost taking out a poor man innocently buying rolls, we make it to the cereal aisle. Here it gets a little hairy. What started out as role playing a kitten (Adam) and his caretaker (Natalie) quickly changed into professions of love for one another and hugs and kisses till one pulls away from the python embrace. And now in this aisle it is Beauty and the Beast. Not a sweet, peaceful portrayal of the love story at all. Natalie almost yelling at Adam that he has to be the Beast because she is Belle and after refusing for the next aisle or so he gives in and begins growling as the Beast at the top of his lungs, causing her to shrink back and whimper.
That subsides and we are almost to checkout but it is not quite over yet. When heading for milk Adam loudly exclaims, "I smell something, what's that smell?" I murmur, "It's probably just the shampoos." "Nope, it's a lady, I smell that lady!" The lady turns to us with a dour expression. I hurry to grab the gallons and speed through checkout. Only it's not speedy. For some reason it takes a lifetime to ring up the items and put them in the cart, I am grateful the checker is so interested in talking to my children but I am starving, starting to shake, having a hard time holding Adam on what little bit of hip I have left now that this belly has appeared and trying to calm Natalie down who is wearily banging her head against my hip, "Please can we go? Please can we go?" It gets hotter. It gets longer. I feel as though I am about to faint. Seriously.
Natalie asks what's wrong with the checker's lips. "Why do they look that way?" Exhausted and near collapse as I am at that point I don't shush her or tell her it's rude to ask, I just say wearily, "Because that's how they look." Thankfully the woman is too preoccupied to notice.
Finally, finally we are leaving. I explain to Natalie my strange behavior those last few moments. The swaying, the dizziness, the apparent fatigue. No sympathy there. "You have to be brave Mom, when you feel like that just be brave." Okay, I'll try to remember that next time we head out for groceries.....
2 comments:
Hahahahahah. I was just 'with you' in the grocery store...picturing every minute.
I too have a love/hate relationship with the people who made those "car carts". The boys always want one and they like them, but then they fight. They are impossible to push with 75 pounds of kids plus all of the groceries.
I'm glad that I'm not the only haggard looking mom flying through the grocery store at 100 mph, just trying to get everything on the list. Luckily, one of our stores has a play area for kids ages 3-8. I go there whenever I can and then I only have to deal with one child.
But, at least you know that if you are brave, you'll make it next Monday. Or not. :)
Oh, I can SO relate, even the shaky part! By the end of the trip I am dying to eat and drink whatever we bought, in the car on the way home, just to stave off the fainting feeling. Then when we get home, lug it all up the stairs to the second floor! And now my shorter trips take much longer because my belly is so big that I can't walk as fast!
Those car carts are miserable, so are those 2 child ones from Walmart. My boys last an even shorter time in those, since you have to share the leg room!
You are brave, though. And you did it. Now you can feed your family and save up energy until next week!
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