The Day The Lights Went Out At Target

I have this recurring dream.  I’m at a store, and all of the lights go out and I’m totally in the dark.  This isn’t really a terrifying dream, unlike the ones I have where we have a tidal wave.  Totally unlikely as we live in Iowa.  If that ever happens, I’m moving.  More realistically, I also have lots of dreams about tornadoes.  And being naked, but never naked in a tornado.  Or a tidal wave.

Something like that is coming our way… must go to the store!

Because we have yet ANOTHER snowstorm coming our way, I popped into Target quickly to pick up a few things in between work and the 3000 other important things I needed to do.  As I have shared before, Target and all other civilization is in a nearby town.  I was in kind of a hurry, but never in too much of a hurry to check out those fabulous end caps with 30% off, 50% off, 70% off, and NINETY PERCENT OFF!

As I was making my way from the Valentine’s clearance to the shampoo aisle, this happened:

That’s right, suddenly I was in complete darkness.  The lights went out completely. This was followed by a few moments of awkwardness. Then a light, then two, then ten, because smartphones!  Then the back up generators came on and were accompanied by… that’s right, the fire alarm.

What’s so amazing about that?  People, that’s what.  You’d think that 1) complete darkness followed by 2) a really loud fire alarm might get people moving.  But people kept shopping.

No, no, go ahead.  If there’s a fire you’ll burn up, that’s all.

This really, really bothered the former cashier in me (more than ten years in retail and no strange diseases contracted, thank you very much).  Hellooooo…. no one will be able to ring up your stuff.  Cash registers run on electricity people!

It wasn’t until some of the employees had to come around and assure people that while nothing seemed to be wrong other than the entire block shrouded in darkness and chaos,  they would have to leave since the fire alarms were going off.  They could put their names on their carts if they wanted to come back later.

I looked at my cart with a bottle of Miralax, a large bottle of ketchup, Craisins, my diet pop,  and two Valentine items that were 90% off and asked myself if it was really worth it to try and come back in a little bit.  It wasn’t.  So I left.

My kids were fascinated by this tale.  When I told them why I didn’t get anything in town today that was all they could think about.  They must have asked 1000 questions.
“Why did the lights go out at Target?”
“Were you scared?”
“Was there a fire?  Were the toys okay?”
“Did you die?”

That night I sat and looked at my dwindling supply of diet pop and flirted with the idea of driving all the way back to town to retrieve my precious Diet Sunkist Lemonade at the low low price of 3 for $10.

Nah…

Later on today when we are sitting at home in the middle of the next blizzardpocalypse I may very well regret that decision.  I’m lucky though because t least I’ll have some entertainment this evening.  Ironically, tonight at 8:30 pm EST there is a very special event going on. Got snow?  Got kids?  Want to gripe about the snow… and maybe the kids too?  Click on the image below to be taken to a magical place-the Moms Who Write and Blog website!

PS-If there is some kind of award for writing posts with Target as the subject I so think I need it…

Am I a WAHM or a BAHM?

We’re no strangers to the comic book store.  Not a great picture, but it shows my daughter’s undying love for Superman, however creepy he is.

I was kind of quiet yesterday for good reason.  We were trying to squeeze in Free Comic Day, a haircut, the retrieval of my husband’s car, and my birthday celebration into one day. Evil Genius was wonderful-he said it was my day.  This meant I got to do pretty much whatever I wanted, within time and budgetary constraints of course.  So after I did a little solo shopping at the mall while they were at the comic book store, we met up and drove back home to get the haircut taken care of and headed BACK to the big city to get in line to see Iron Man 3.  This was to be followed by a light supper afterwards.  I was pretty psyched to get out because I didn’t think I could stand another day of sitting home and doing very little, and I am dying to see that particular movie.

We got three blocks from the movie theater…and heard the unmistakable sound of a child throwing up in the back seat. Not like you want to know this, but the Professor has issues with spontaneous vomiting.  We never really know if he is sick or had one of his random episodes. Being the great parents that we are (don’t laugh) we turned the car around and went home.

Sorry Mr Stark, I’m going to have to wait another week or two or twelve to experience your awesomeness. After I cleaned the backseat thoroughly, Evil Genius cooked me a delicious dinner, we watched Rise of the Guardians with the kids, and then later on watched Anchorman again-because I needed some serious comic relief.  I love lamp.

Tony Stark reads my letter of apology…

And Evil Genius’s car is still at work.  Guess who’s taking him to work tomorrow?  I’m not complaining, since it’s Princess Gimme’s birthday I’m sure she’ll be up at the crack of dawn anyway.

I did a weekly wrap-up yesterday quite late, if you missed it and want to read it click here.

On to other things, today I am participating in a series about WAHMs over at Mommy Writings: Daughter of Maat.  Today is Part 1 of how I got into blogging and writing. I realize that I can’t really consider myself a WAHM (Work At Home Mom) since I don’t really get paid for what I do (yet.)  For the time being I’m considering myself a BAHM (Blog At Home Mom).  The link to the post is here.

Back home at the ranch, I’ve got a birthday cake to make for The Princess and birthday shopping to attend to today, but I’m feeling a bit *urpy* myself.  I really hope he didn’t share his germs with me!  Don’t worry, I’ll try not to breathe on you…

Wonder where we go for our geek fix?  In Central Iowa we have the coolest comic book store ever-it’s called Mayhem Comics and is located in both Des Moines and Ames.  I’m saving the rest of my information for a future post on our hopeless geekdom, but I really wanted to give a quick shout-out to this place because it is AWESOME! 

Help, HELP! I’m Trapped at Target!

I am passionate about… shopping at Target.

A bad day shopping at Target is better than the best day NOT shopping at Target. Am I right?

In case you haven’t noticed, Target features quite predominantly in many of my posts. There was the dream where I lost my daughter when she ran into a Target.
Target figured predominantly in the post about my daughter’s petrified poop.
And who can’t write a post about misbehaving kids without sticking a Target reference in there…

Maybe this on our Target’s door would make me NOT go in? If only.

I tell ya, it’s that famous hypnotic eye.  It does stuff to you.  Hypnotic eye?  If you read Parenting, Illustrated With Crappy Pictures, Amber Dusick penned (er, drew) it perfectly.  She surmises that bullseye is actually a big eye that hypnotizes you into buying all kinds of crap you really don’t need.  She is a genius-she is so right.  It’s either some sort of hypnotic eye or something they pipe into the store, like a nerve gas…

So my story today begins with a shopping trip.  This particular day I had come to town to get ingredients for a pudding cake.  If you’ve never had pudding cake, it may sound kind of weird.  Basically it’s a yellow cake with holes poked in it and then chocolate pudding poured over it.  Me not being a pudding person or a cake person, I wasn’t all that excited about it, though I was intrigued since I had never seen such a thing.  But The Princess was totally enthralled by the idea of making such a magical treat and off I went to get the ingredients.

As I stood in Fareway amongst the cake mixes, that’s when Target started calling to me.  I quickly moved to the pop aisle to check some prices.  I was trying to do the math on my pop because I’m addicted to Diet Sunkist Lemonade and must get it as cheap as possible.  I concluded that I could save a whole 50 cents if I drove over to Target-don’t mock me, it was the damn store calling me from clear across town.

I arrived at Target and was instantly lured in by it all.  I am incapable of just walking into Target, getting something, and getting out.  I have to see it all, lest I miss a great deal on something I can’t live without. It doesn’t help that the soda aisle is clear almost in the back of the store.  You have to go past everything just to get there.  There is something in that store that causes your mind to go blank.  You have to go perusing the end of every aisle trying to remember just what you went in there for.  15% off!  30% off!  And occasionally 50% and 70% off!  When Easter stuff was 90% off, I almost bought some of it just to say I got something for 90% off.

Apparently whatever it is that clouds your brain works a little too well.  What should have taken five minutes took 30 minutes.  I walked up to the front with my twelve pack of pop and paid the cashier, parked the cart and left to go out to the car.  This particular day I had brought my husband’s car.  His fancy schmancy Nissan doesn’t actually use keys.  It has buttons.  This is both good and bad.  Good because you never have to actually take the keys out of your pocket, and bad because you never have to actually take the keys out of your pocket.

I got in and realized that there were no keys in my pocket.  Which meant I had taken the keys OUT of my pocket at some point, even though I didn’t NEED the keys for anything because THE CAR STARTS WITH A BUTTON.  Step on the brake, push the button. As long as the keys are in the car it is supposed to start.

According to the car, there were no keys in it.  It did not start.  C-r-a-p.

Reality was starting to sink in.  I returned to the store and asked at the service desk. No keys.  I asked at the checkout.  They had not seen them either.  This meant that I had left my keys in the cart. I must be very weak, because I needed a cart for one item.

So I started looking through all of the carts.  I went around the outside and peeked into each cart.  Then I frantically starting pulling carts out.  No keys. Pretty soon this behavior attracted some attention-the guys in the red polos came over to help the crazy lady throwing around the carts.

After a few minutes of this with no avail I walked away and decided to call my husband.  He didn’t answer.  I texted him too.  No response.  Fabulous.

This was when I realized that I was TRAPPED IN TARGET.  This is like having PMS and being locked inside a Chocolaterie Stam.  It can only end very badly, with the Starbucks smells and the bargains, I could very well be in big trouble.

I had one thing working for me-sooner or later Evil Genius was going to realize that his wife had not returned with those ingredients.  Just to be sure, I messaged him on Facebook.  “Hey, check your phone!”  Then I tweeted…

(For the record, Evil Genius doesn’t Twitter for religious reasons.  He thinks it’s stupid.)

The minutes dragged on.  The awesome employees at Target were busting their humps trying to help little old me.  One girl walked all through the store on the off chance that maybe I had laid my keys down to look at something.  Another girl called around to the other employees to keep their eyes open for them.  They finally gave me a choice-I could give them my number when the keys turned up, or they could try to make an announcement over the loudspeaker.  I chose to wait it out and give them my number since I was already dying of embarrassment (have YOU ever heard them use the intercom at Target?  Me neither).

Thankfully, by this time Evil Genius had finally answered my repeated phone calls, and was ready to drive the half hour to get me if need be.  We decided to wait twenty more minutes. Two minutes after I hung up with him one of the service desk girls came bringing them to me.  They were in a cart, taking another ride all around the store.  I snatched them and got the heck out of there.

I arrived home over an hour later than I had intended.  I had to share my experience on Facebook when I got home.  Man I was proud of myself! An extra hour in Target with nothing to do but wait and I survived without buying anything extra!

For the record, it was all worth the trip to town.  As you can see, the story had a happy ending.  She got to make her pudding cake…

Pudding cake diva

This post was written as part of Finish The Sentence Friday.  Click the link and check out what other people are passionate about.  By the way I AM passionate about other things…

Dear Facebook: I Am Not A Stalker!

I think I found the blog  Go Cheap or Go Home by typing in “frugal mom blogs” into my search bar.  A fellow redhead, she shares my love of living on the cheap whenever possible.  She also doesn’t eat processed foods, something that I have attempted and kind of sort of do when I can but not nearly as much as I should.  She’s cool, and she writes a cool blog that can help you save money, so what’s not to like?

Below is a bit about Denise.

Here’s Denise! Hi Denise!

Denise calls herself a Frugal Living blogger, but really she just likes shopping.  She is by no means a “crazy couponer” who will drop everything to throw a manufacturer coupon on top of a store coupon to pay $1 for Shampoo on sale at Target.  But she has been known to go to extreme measures to save a buck, such as making her kids S-H-A-R-E, or worse, flat out telling them NO.  Every once in a whole, she will share a good four ingredient recipe that even your kids will eat.  Denise likes wine, the cheaper the better, as long as its not Boone’s Farm.

Denis was nice enough to jump at the chance to guest blog for me even though she is pretty busy herself.  I’m planning on returning the favor as soon as possible!  Here’s her post:

There is this dude, who I dated in college. He was a nice enough guy, and we had a “fun” relationship- nothing serious, no drama, no bad breakup, whatever, and for some reason now, I am friends with this guy on Facebook. I really don’t know why? We were no longer dating for a good 7 or 8 years when I actually joined facebook, and he even later than that. We don’t live in the same town, and I’ll probably never run into him out of sheer coincidence.

He does own his own business. Maybe at some time I thought it would be a good networking tool to be his facebook friend? As if I would go and work for my COLLEGE boyfriend one day?

I don’t know. It is making less and less sense to me now. And even less because we aren’t those kinds of facebook friends that witty-banter, or like pictures of each other’s “adorable” kids (Oh, mine are soooo much more adorable. No mine are. No mine are. Just kidding. He doesn’t even have kids. I win.). I don’t know if we even throw a “Like” on any updates for each other that often.

Oh yeah, I remember. He was getting married soon. I may have just been curious about his wedding. From what I can tell, his wife is adorable. Oh wait. I really am a Facebook stalker now, huh?? Only from what I have seen that he has posted! She’s cute, she’s not fat- or what ever degrading comment people try to make about an ex boyfriend’s new fiance.

I think they had a cool wedding. I dunno. I wasn’t invited. I only saw it in facebook pictures..

Okay, hmm. I should stop now, huh? I was trying to go somewhere with this. I can’t really say where that was anymore. Oh yeah. This really doesn’t get much better though.

A few weeks ago, I noticed he posted a picture of a trip to Napa Valley. Of COURSE I looked at the picture. It was Winter and Grey and Cold and MISERABLE, and of course I wanted to see a picture of someone’s vacation to Napa. Anyone’s!!

And then…. because I looked at that picture, his next one showed up in my feed. And next one. And pretty much his whole Facebook journal of the thing, which turned out he was more or less recording and adding to Facebook in Real-time.

Hello, Gruesome accident on the interstate that no one can turn their head away from? This is the college ex-girlfriend stuck at home with her kids watching your Wine Country Vacation on Facebook. Ummm. Yeah…

I haven’t actually been to Napa, but I’ve been to Sonoma. I thought they were more or less the same when I booked the reservations, forever years ago. They aren’t, but I thought I chose the better one. I looked at his pictures, and still thought, yep, I chose the better one. And at first that just meant the Wine Country, but the more, and more, and MORE pictures he posted, I kept thinking YUP, I chose the better one, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t just mean the Wine Country vacation anymore.

On their last day, they went to San Francisco. He posted a status update and I admit, I waited for the pictures to follow later in the day. I actually expected it to feel like a punch to the gut, seeing one of the places I Love MOST in the world, and people who aren’t me having fun there.

There was no Golden Gate. No Alcatraz. No Seals, no ChinaTown, no Powell and Main Trolley cars. I don’t know what they did there; it wasn’t what I wanted to see. I closed the album. I was done. So what if he was off on a couples vacation while I sat at home, mopping, again, and potty training a 1 year old? I didn’t need his facebook version of San Francisco, I have my own little slice of heaven right here.

So maybe there is value in being Facebook-friends with an ex, after all??

Thanks to my Sadder-But-Wiser girl for letting me be a guest on her blog today! Today’s post was a vacation topic for me, as I normally right about trying to stay frugal, really, I’m just Cheap, over at Go Cheap or Go Home. We’re kicking off spring with some awesome giveaways today, so please take a minute to stop by and say hello, instead of using that time to facebook stalk someone!!

We Can’t Just Shop Like Normal People

It seems that these days we can’t do anything like normal people-everything we do turns into a story.  Take this weekend when we went shopping.  This was because Evil Genius needed pants.  More specifically, he needed jeans that weren’t torn and stained.  Since we had our income tax return and a little time yet before we had to part with the majority of it, we decided we’d take the plunge and go get this taken care of.  I must clarify that he does not wear just any jeans.  Levis 550s are the only ones that he really likes and that actually hold up for a long time.  They are very hard to find in the right size-apparently there must be lots and lots of guys running around in the same size that he wears.  He’s so darn specific-because of this we decided to go straight to the big malls in Des Moines instead of hitting the little one in Ames.  Included in our adventure was child stealing and the possibility that my husband may become a Werecat.

In addition to shopping for jeans, we also went shopping for dresses and leggings for Princess Tantrum too.  This is because she is still trying to squeeze into a couple of 4Ts that are obviously way too small for her.  So did we buy any dresses? No.  Princess Tantrum walked into JCPenney, walked right up to a t-shirt with a big sparkly strawberry on it and said “I want this one.”  Never mind the fact that she has five t-shirts coming from Old Navy.  But this one was sparkly!

And there was other stuff…

I am still disappointed that the people that work at “The Gold Guys” are not actually gold people.  You know, like C-3PO.

The Professor was mesmerized by a slice of pepperoni pizza the size of his head that a little girl was eating.  He almost walked right into it.

Princess Tantrum thinks the “Justice” store is the most beautiful thing on Earth.  Everything is sparkly and there are so many lights.  She was disappointed to find out that she’s not actually big enough to wear the clothes just yet.  She’s planning on eating extra so she can start shopping there very soon.  I’ll take it-her other favorite store is Victoria’s Secret, because of all the sparklies on the bras.  I am very concerned about this child.

Do they actually sell guys shirts at Hollister?  I’m just wondering since all of their guys in the giant pictures are not wearing shirts.  I dared Evil Genius to strip his shirt off and go in there.  He declined.

I think I was stealth perfumed at Younkers.  How do they do that?

Evil Genius was disappointed that he went ahead and shaved when we saw a place that specialized in shaving.  One of the guys working in there had a handlebar moustache.  I think there was a bit of facial hair envy going on right then and there.

Princess Tantrum proved that she cannot walk through walls when she walked into a sign.  This was after she almost walked into about 15 other things.  Malls are apparently very interesting places.

I accidentally tried to steal someone’s child.  I grabbed who I thought was Princess Tantrum as we were walking through Scheels and told her to please move out of people’s way.  Only it wasn’t my daughter-it was another little girl about the same size as her, with about the same color of hair, who was also wearing a pink shirt.  Her mother acted horrified.  I’m not sure why because I gave her right back.

And the Werecat?  Evil Genius was attacked by a cat at the Animal Rescue League.  We stopped in just to look, and the last cat we visited with apparently was a wee bit overstimulated.  He set the cat on my lap and when Princess Tantrum reached down to pet him he went berserk.  There was screaming and hollering-then the ARL ladies whisked the kitty away.  As it turned out, the cat scratched him all over on his one hand.  Luckily, Princess Tantrum got nary a scratch on her, thank goodness.  Evil Genius swears he’s ok.  I pointed out that if he suddenly grew a lot of hair and started howling at the moon that would be when I’d start to worry.  He had another theory.  He figured symptoms would most likely include hissing at people, licking himself a lot, and falling asleep on fleece blankets.

We did find him jeans.  In fact we found him four pairs.  That never happens!

Can you say better late than never?  I signed up for this website MONTHS ago.  I had good intentions-I started to add this to my blog and then got distracted.  Gee, imagine that?  I am now trying harder to get myself out there, so take just a few seconds and click on the Top Mommy Blogs badge in my sidebar to vote for me on Top Mommy Blogs.  The more, the merrier!   You can vote for me once a day.  Just click and you’re done.  Visit, click, done.  How easy is that?

(I wanted to put a banner at the bottom of each post, but naturally I can’t figure out how to do it.  Advice, anyone?)

The ADD Mom Goes Out… With Children

Yeah, I don’t get all dolled up for shoppin at the Walmarts either…

This is second in a series about me when I actually am able to leave my house.  The first one is The ADD Mom Goes Out…Alone.

If I want to do something 99.9% of the time I have to take my children with me.  FYI-they don’t like to leave the house, so most of the time we just stay home.  Sometimes, however, we need things.  Like food.  And when my husband works from early to late and sometimes on the weekends then there is just cause to drag them out of the house.  It goes a little something like this:

Keep in mind there is no such thing as a quick trip out of the house when you have younger children.  There just isn’t.  You must start planning and organizing long before you actually leave the house with the kids.  There is a list to make, there are coupons to find.  Then you must put them in an order that doesn’t have you sorting through them at the checkout.  This usually occurs the night before.

*DISCLAIMER!-I am NOT an extreme couponer.  I have a binder with the little pockets that are even labeled.  It’s empty.  Instead I cram all of the coupons in something that I stick inside the binder.  Then I waste a large amount of time sorting through them, only to find half of them are expired.  When I do actually use a coupon on a deal before the expiration date, I don’t clear off shelves.  This is because a) I’m lucky if there’s more than one thing left, b) my children don’t eat food that is cheap or that  there is usually a coupon for, or c) my cart is already too full of other crap.  Why do I clip coupons???

Once I have the couple of coupons I actually found then there are other things to take into consideration.  You have to take things with you.  You must have:

1)  Something for them to do in the car.  It’s only a 15 minute drive.  But if they have nothing to do they will drive each other crazy.  And me crazy.  With my older child it’s usually his DS.  That drives me crazy in a different way.

2) Something to eat.  Taking them shopping takes a long time.  There must be snacks.  Or I will end up spending a lot of money I don’t want to spend.

3) Something to drink.  You’d think that would go along with something to eat.  But the drinks are consumed pretty much before I pull out of the driveway.

4) Reusable grocery bags.  Did you know you are an evil, terrible person if you use paper or plastic?

So I have my list ready, coupons in the purse, snacks, and drinks.  Now I will go spend a half an hour finding my keys.  Then everyone has to make sure they go to the bathroom.  EVERYONE.  Even if they say they don’t.

Then we leave.  There are usually two to three places involved and it takes 6 hours.  We usually start at Target.

Nothin. Sup with you?

We get to the stoplight by Target.  I give the warning to stop playing the electronic devices.  We pull in to Target.  I tell my son it’s time to shut off the DS.  My daughter and I get out of the car.  He’s still in there.  Finally he shuts it off and we get almost to the door.  This is where a tantrum will occur.  My son starts telling me that he never wanted to go to Target and he should have just stayed home by himself, or that he hates shopping, or that I am a horrible mother for making him leave the house.  All because he’s really too big to ride in the cart.

Then I have to go back to the car because I left something in it.  Usually the coupons.

Once inside both kids will have to go to the bathroom.  Then we fight over carts.  My son wants the cart two kids can ride in because he doesn’t like to walk, they refer to it as a “kid cart”.  These are the carts that are roughly the size of a school bus.  Extremely hard to steer.  I’m always knocking something over with it.  Once I knocked over a pack of Snapple.  That was quite messy.  Often I give in because I don’t want to listen to my son complain about how I am the worst mother ever.  My daughter will like this arrangement for a couple of minutes, and then wants to get in the “big” part of the cart because why would I want to put groceries in there?  And then when I say no she wants to get into the basket part so she can kick her brother.  And when I say no to that she proceeds to “touch” her brother with various things.

Target carts are so big and cumbersome. I prefer the ones at HyVee! So does she because they have PINK racecar carts!

This is where the bribery portion comes into play.  I tell them if they are good they can pick out something for lunch.  They always want a lunchable.  What is it about kids and lunchables?  I don’t buy them often-so that might have something to do with it.  In the course of the trip I threaten to have them put them back about 15 times.

My daughter always wants to hold things.  If I don’t give her something to hold she’ll grab stuff out of the cart when I’m not looking.  At some point something will fall out of the cart that she is holding and we won’t notice.  Something really important like toothpaste.  She’ll also drop the lunchable about 54 times until I bury it under everything so she can’t get to it.  And I wonder why I’m distracted?

Target has something in the store that disrupts your brainwaves and makes you wander aimlessly for hours.  They remodel those stores frequently so you can’t actually remember where everything is.  And those end aisles:  there’s stuff 15% off!!  It’s very distracting.  Now that they have groceries it’s even worse.  There are always a couple of things they’re out of that makes me have to make an extra stop at some evil place that I loathe like Wal-Mart.  Or I just don’t because I don’t want to take them anywhere else.  Meanwhile, although I have my list I have probably skipped over something REALLY important on it.  Like toilet paper. Did you know it’s possible to lose a giant package of toilet paper out of your cart without even noticing?  It happened to me.  It fell off somewhere in the store and I had to leave the checkout to go find it.

Which brings me to getting to the checkout.  Remember the coupons?  Remember I supposedly put them in order BEFORE going to the store?  They’re still not quite in order, which means that I still miss one or two or can’t find some.  And there is just no good place to sort through them.  Did you know that it’s not possible to go into Target without spending at least $50?  That’s the rule.  Even with coupons.  With two kids you can’t get out of there without spending at least $100.

Oh, and those reusable bags?  It’s almost guaranteed I left them in the trunk of the car.

One of them will have to go to the bathroom at this point.  I’m preaching self control because I really don’t want to go back into the Target bathroom.

Once in the car I dole out the snacks.  Only I’ve forgotten to pack a snack for myself.

Then it’s off to the next store.  Usually Fareway.  By this time it’s been forever and I’m breaking one of the two rules of the grocery store.  Don’t EVER go in there hungry.  The other one?  Don’t ever go when you are PMSing.  Breaking either of these rules yields similar results:  a cart full of stuff that is bad for me that I really don’t need.  Where are the coupons?  But first we have to visit the bathroom because I wouldn’t let them go at Target.  By this time my daughter has asked for 357 things between two stores.  Since I can’t put my son in the cart he keeps wandering off…

She also prefers Hy-Vee for the little cart selection. Like this one…

Fast forward to the checkout.  It’s an hour past lunchtime-we’ve been in two stores, the kids have thrown at least two tantrums apiece, and it’s taken four hours.

By the time we get home it takes me another hour to get everything put away.  As I do this I see some of the wrong items I’ve picked up-why does Fareway make ALL their store brand cans look the same?? I may or may not realize how many items I’ve forgotten, but I do see all of the extra stuff I bought because I was hungry.  Lunch is (of course) the lunchables for the kids and whatever I can find that’s quick. Crackers for lunch?  Don’t mind if I do!  They’re whole grain so that’s healthy!  Add a fruit cup so I can say I’ve eaten a fruit for the day.  (And that’s the last one because I forgot to put fruit cups on the list…)

Stay tuned for the next part of my series, The ADD Mom Goes Out… With Her Husband.

The ADD Mom goes out…ALONE

Yesterday a historic event occurred in our household.  I got out alone.  For more than 10 minutes.  I even took my car.  I overcame Mommy guilt and left the house and went to town.  It looked kind of like this picture:

I’m FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!

When I mean going to town let me clarify-we live in the Midwest.  We don’t live in the middle of nowhere, but the nearest decent sized town is about 15 minutes away, 20 if you actually want to go anywhere there besides Wal-Mart.

We had gone to the fair the day before, so of course noone else was even interested in leaving the house.  As a matter of fact, I’m not sure that anyone even noticed that I left the house.  I decided to go walk around the lake in our nearby big town.  I wanted to take a loooooong walk, and I had enough time I could explore some of those trails I keep seeing and find out where they go.  I put on my running shoes, grabbed my purse and water bottle, IPOD, phone, and left.

First I stopped and got the mail.  I don’t get out much, and they don’t deliver mail to peons like us.  And now that we have the dog, I rarely get out without him.  So our mail piles up for about a week before I make it over there.  Last week when I finally made it there I had the big yellow note in there:  “Your mail is too large to fit in your box”.  And there wasn’t even a package in there.  Not like I could retrieve my mail, though.  Our post office is open for approximately ten minutes a day if you’re lucky.  Unfortunately for me, I had already passed that small window of time.  So I had to go back to the post office the next day, which is a HUGE thing to do two days in a row.

Next I stopped and got a water and the Sunday paper.  Since I have become an unemployed bum, I had to forgo certain luxuries like a daily newspaper and getting something from the gas station.  Except on Sunday.  That newspaper is like gold to me. I read it cover to cover, er, front to back.  And I needed the water because it was hot and I had forgotten to fill my water bottle.

I stop and get the Sunday paper every week just so I can read articles like this one…

As I drove out of town I drove and searched through my purse at the same time for the Crystal Light stuff I put in my water.  I can’t drink just plain water unless I am parched, and my body would probably go into shock if I did.  Now I know I grabbed the little packet, but now I can’t find it.  And I have now emptied the entire contents of my purse onto the passenger side seat while driving.  It’s not there.  Drat.  And I’m thirsty.

I reformulate my plan.  Surely I can’t walk without lemon flavored water.  Splenda sweetened water.  My sensitive system can’t handle regular Crystal Light-I get heartburn so bad it’s like having a heart attack.  And of course only one place sells that Splenda Crystal Light stuff.  Yup, Target.

And I need labels.  Not just any labels.  CLEAR labels.  Because they look nice.  And the white ones leave crappy residue when you peel them off.  And I change my mind a lot, so I peel them off a lot.  So where can you buy clear labels?  Staples.  And Staples is right down the street from Target.  So I’ll take the long way around and get the labels.  Then I’ll go to Target and get my lemonade stuff.  And maybe some pop, because Target also is the only place that carries my lemon flavored Diet Sunkist.  Lemon again.

So I go to Staples, which is clear on the other side of town from the lake.  I love Staples.  I could spend hours in there looking for stuff.  But the Mommy alone time has a time limit because my family may need to eat, so I just need to go in and get out.  Staples clear labels are very expensive, and I need two sizes.  Hey wait a minute, don’t they sell clear labels at Target too?  I wander around for a few minutes, then select the size of labels I know I haven’t seen sold anywhere else, and fork over the money for them.

I have never bought staples or a stapler at Staples…

Next I go to Target.  I whizz in, grab the lemon Crystal Light stuff, grab the pop, and then go up to the checkouts.  It’s a college town and the day before classes start, so everyone and their roommate is there getting supplies.  I am ecstatic that I get right up to a register with no waiting!  Wait… I forgot the labels.  Back to the office supplies.  They don’t have them.

Where the heck did I see those clear labels?  Must have been Wal-Mart.  Back to the checkouts, buy stuff.  Out to the car and drive across the way to Wal-Mart, which is even busier than Target.  I find the labels.  And guess what, they have the other ones I paid way more for at Staples.  No.  NO.  Just get the ones you don’t have and go.  But the lady who cuts my hair remarked I needed a detangler comb.  Mine is missing.  Probably in my daughter’s room somewhere.  They sell those at Wal-Mart!  I run over to the hair section and grab TWO-one for me and one for my daughter.  Hers is pink. That way she won’t steal mine.

I walk out of Wal-Mart having now taken an extra hour to do all of this stuff.  By the time I get to the lake, I will have less than an hour to do my walk, because people have to eat, and my husband won’t think to start supper.  I have to wait for a train.  Then by the time I get there I have to pee.  It’s a good thing there is a bathroom right there.  Then I do my walk.  I settle for the shortened version, since I had less than an hour.  No exploring trails for me.  I do it and head home, very satisfied with having gotten some exercise.

I get home a whole 20 minutes late.  And guess what? He was starting supper.

You can read about the next adventure in The ADD Mom Goes Out… With Children