Friday, February 25, 2011

Date Night

One can of chicken and a frozen 20+ pound turkey. A week or so ago an inventory of my freezer and pantry revealed this was the extent of poultry on hand. The turkey starred in P.W.’s birthday dinner; the can of chicken, I have been saving for an “emergency.” There were no strips, nuggets, patties, portions, or tenders, breaded or otherwise. It was critically obvious I needed to make a trip to Sam’s to restock.
I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you just how much I loathe grocery shopping. It’s right up there with a Pap smear on my list of fun things to do. And a Pap smear is way cheaper. So, I’ve developed strategies to make grocery shopping necessary as infrequently as possible. A trip to Sam’s Club every quarter or so is the cornerstone of my grocery routine.
Any of you who shop regularly at Sam’s know some stuff is a good buy and some stuff isn’t. MiraLax, for example, is a great value at Sam’s (it’s called ClearLax in the store brand). Velveeta is actually a penny higher per two-pound brick at Sam’s than at Wal-Mart. But it’s not the savings or the illusion thereof that lure me into the warehouse grocery club. It’s the thrill I experience at the thought of not having to buy an item again for months or even years! For example, I’ve purchased tin foil once since we got married and coffee filters twice, but only because I lost the first package before later finding it buried in my pantry…no doubt behind 15 pounds of tin foil.
Twelve bars of Zest and four tubes of Crest?…yes, by golly! A two-pack of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce?…sure, throw it in, dear, we use a lot of Worcestershire. A thirteen-and-a-half pound bag of Arm & Hammer baking soda?…hmm, very tempting, but let’s wait until next time to make that capital purchase.
Ok, so like I mentioned, I really dislike grocery shopping, but it always seems a little less torturous if Matt goes with me. At least that’s how it once was. I guess when I schedule these dates I forget that we’ll actually be accompanied by our unrelenting preschooler and our enthusiastic toddler. John & Patrick absolutely love grocery shopping. It is every bit as exciting for them as a trip to an amusement park.
And are they ever helpful! John reads the items to me from the list, or at least he thinks he does, and Patrick dutifully smashes each item to gain maximum space efficiency in the cart. They’re actually very well behaved…at least when they’re out of the car, that is.
This is how Monday evening unfolded:
5:00 pm (or maybe a little later) I look out the window to see Tony (Matt’s pickup) is in the shed. “Wonderful!” I think. He actually made it home early. He remembered we’re going to town.
6:00 pm (or maybe a little earlier) Matt finally comes inside. He’d been doing something extremely important to the driveway with the skid loader. That’s why he came home early. Seems grocery shopping had slipped his mind. He remembered about halfway through the project but had to finish up, or something like that. You may be wondering now why I didn’t go get him and ask when he’d be ready to go, since he was just outside the house. Well, truthfully, I was busy and not really ready to go yet either. I was changing the sheets on John’s bed. He never, ever wets the bed…except during naptime when he lays in bed AWAKE for two hours reading books. Then he wets the bed. Every time, religiously.
6:10 pm We’re about to walk out the door when Matt’s phone rings. Yes, you guessed it…a life insurance salesman. So, I coated, hatted, and booted the boys (had an argument about the necessity of a vest over John’s hoodie…he won) and loaded them and their gear into the gas-guzzling SUV. (a full-size sedan simply does not have enough cargo space for a Sam’s load.) Matt’s still on the phone as we’re driving away.
On the way there we map out our strategy to get the Sam’s chore done by 8:30, closing time at Sam’s. By the time we get to LaBelle, or maybe as far as Lewistown, Patrick is fairly disgusted at the way things are going, i.e., he is strapped into his carseat and has to sit still and has grown tired of incessantly pushing the (loud) honking button on his carseat toy. We decide to get supper for John at a McDonald’s drive-thru and Matt & I will eat on the way out of town after Sam’s and Wal-Mart.
So, John gets a burger and fries and actually eats some of the burger, which almost never happens. Even though it has those nasty little onion slivers on it, I choke down the remainder to keep from wasting it.
7:30 pm We get to Sam’s, do our shopping, check out (spent quite a bit less than usual), and re-load the boys, then go to Wal-Mart, which is also uneventful.
8:45 pm We’re Steak n Shake drive thru bound now (no way are we unloading and reloading again). Matt & I order our food. John doesn’t want anything except for one of those paper cars they give little kids at Steak n Shake. Fine. Whatever. The drive thru lady is very accommodating and gives him two (no charge).
We get on the road and John asks for his cheeseburger. Mommy then has to admit guilt. “Mommy ate it,” I say, “I didn’t want it to go to waste.” You have to understand that in the last year or so, John has never eaten more than one, possibly two bites of any cheeseburger, McDonald’s or otherwise. Now, there is much whining and waling (P.W. has long gone to sleep.) I get the brilliant idea to give him a piece of my Frisco melt wrapped in the McDonald’s wrapper we still have. Does he object? Of course! But not on the grounds that this is not “his cheeseburger from McDonald’s”. He objects because “it’s broken!!!! Fix it Mommy! Fix it!” Having no idea what is wrong with it, I ignore him and continue eating. He’s content for a while to take over eating my fries. We continue on our merry way when John announces he has to pee. It’s 30 degrees by now with a stiff breeze. So we pull over on the west end of West Quincy and Matt gets out to help him pee. No pee. So we load him back up, and as I re-buckle him, I get a sneaking suspicion there has been at least some pee leakage.
I finish my sandwich, and we continue driving along. About Durham John announces “I have some pee ready now!” So, we dutifully pull over, and this time I get out and help him. He must have released a half-gallon of pee. I am once again amazed at the volume of pee that boy can hold. We load up and no sooner are we on the road than John says “Mommy, I want my cheeseburger.”
I explain that I ate both cheeseburgers…the one he didn’t want to finish at 7:30 and the one he was not interested in (due to some sort of burger malfunction) at 9:00. I explain that there is no way we can get it back and I didn’t eat it to be mean or selfish and I would have to puke it up for him in order to get the cheeseburger back. I tell him at this point that puking the cheeseburger up is not a viable option.
This sets off what we refer to as a “self-destructive rage spiral”. During this rant, John screamed/whined at varying levels of decibels and intensity “Mommy, puke it up! Puke up my cheeseburger! Puke it up! You have some puke ready for me! Puke up my cheeseburger and give it to me! I am your baby bird and you are my mommy bird! Puke up my food!” All our attempts at logical argument fail, and my heart aches for his frustration at his mommy and daddy laughing at him during this formative crisis in his young life. Mercifully, he falls asleep just east of Knox City.
As I finish this post in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, I am praying "Dear Lord, please don't let him ask for his cheeseburger for breakfast."

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