Monday, Monday

So it's been a week now. I think I can finally blog about last Monday with some sort of a sense of humor. It really started out pretty nice. One of the first really beautiful days of spring (my favorite season). Sun was shining, tulips are poking little leaves out, kids want to go run around and scream outside instead of make laps through the kitchen. It's really a beautiful day. Davy, my 6 year old, proposes we take lunch out to the backyard for a picnic. We munch our sandwiches and watch the fish dart around in the pond. The time comes for kindergarten so we get all the shoes and coats and backpack and go to the car. (Here is where the foreboding music would start if my life had a soundtrack.)

One of the girls goes to open the car door and hollers "It's locked!" I holler back "Try harder!" I get out there to the garage and sure enough - all the doors - locked. One of the dimpled darlings had pushed the autolock button earlier in the day when they had gotten something out of the car. They had shut the door and all the car doors locked behind them. Where are my keys? Oh, in the car, of course. Thus begins the frantic search for the extra set. I hadn't needed them since before our move six months ago. To think about it, I hadn't seen them since. UGGGG! Another casualty of moving! At this point, I am running frantically searching all my hideyholes of clutter for where they could possibly be. (BTW-They still haven't surfaced. I will find them one day, 2 months from now, when I am looking for something else and no longer need them.) So I sacrifice my pride, call my insurance company to use my roadside assistance to get a locksmith to get us in to the car. Mind you, kindergarten has already started. Davy is highly indignant at my lack of ability to simply open a car door. Eventually, the locksmith guy turns up (Thank you USAA Insurance for paying for that :) gets me my keys and we're off to school an entire hour late. You'd think this would be enough of a bad day, however, that is just the prelude.

We were woefully out of groceries so I then had the bad judgement to go to the store. On arrival at Winco, Gracie gets out of the car dragging her green lovey blanket with the intention to bring it along. The particular blankie in question has been banned from following us everywhere we go for quite some time, however, today Gracie is determined. She lets loose with a fit worthy of JackJack from The Incredibles. Fire is shooting out her ears and everyone in earshot gets more than an earful. All my mommy tricks of coercion are completely ineffective and it is clear that if this shopping is going to get done in the 75 minutes left of kindergarten, we are going to just have to ride out Gracie's storm in the store. So she wails through the produce section to the audience of elderly shoppers shooting me baleful glances.
By the bulk foods aisles, we finally calm down into just scowling and I think that we might survive after all. I hurriedly collect what we need from the bins. Unfortunately, Emma honed in on my lack of attention and slipped down to the giant tubs of Easter candy without my notice. What she was up to didn't escape the notice of the store employee restocking though. He comes over, "Excuse me, ma'am, is that your daughter over there?" I look down the aisle to see Emma with a sticky faceful of gummy candy. I really wanted to deny that she was mine, but that was pretty hard since I had one just like her sitting in my cart. I apologize to the employee and go extract her from candyland with wailing and falling apart boneless and uncooperative onto the floor. So now that twin goes in the cart to finish her fit and we move as quickly as possible from the scene of the crime.
It is at this point that a smart person would have just paid for her groceries and skulked home. I am clearly clueless because I plowed forward determined to have at least enough for that night's dinner and some milk in the house. Around the corner is the baking goods section of the bulk foods. From past mishaps in this section of the store, I knew to park my cart by the entrance to the little U-shaped aisle so as not to clog up the flow of traffic and garner any more grumpy glances from my fellow shoppers. There happened to be a shelf of 50 lb. sacks of oatmeal beside my out-of-the-way 2 minute parking spot. They were the kind of sacks that are sewn shut on the end that you pull a string to open them. Generally, you don't get the right string and they are really hard to get open. Enter Gracie. (Yes, you hear the foreboding music again.) In slow motion, from 5 or 6 feet away, I see her grab a little string, I leap towards the giant sack yelling "NOOOOO!!!" But the deed is done. An absolute flood of oatmeal onto the floor! In the midst of it all, Gracie is quite satisfied with herself as everyone gasped and laughed and I wanted to evaporate into thin air. Oh, but the fun isn't done yet. Who comes around the corner to clean it up? The same employee who just witnessed the gummy candy debacle a few minutes before. Yay. I'm so proud. Feeling like such a super parent.
Again, a smart person would have left her cart, collected the errant children and gone home. But we still had no milk in the cart. I came for milk. Doggone it, I'm leaving with a least a gallon of milk. So I apologize profusely to the Winco employee who grunts in my direction as he sweeps. I put Gracie to stand on the side of the cart and make for the dairy section with all possible haste. I get to the milk case, collect my 2 gallons and turn around to a screaming child... again... she's throwing a fit again??? I fuss at Gracie, beg her to tell me what is the matter with her, plead to please,please,please just be quiet for another minute. She won't speak a word to me. Won't say a thing about what is wrong with her. This is unfortunately typical behavior for a tired and uncooperative Gracie. I decide she is just being difficult and decide to ignore her in favor of paying for what I've got and getting out of that store. We make for the front of the store until another shopper interrupts me to say, "Excuse me, I think her foot is caught in the cart." I look down and sure enough, her shoe is wedged in bottom rungs of the cart shelf underneath. Oh joy, proud mommy moment there. I'm sure the lady wanted to report me to CPS for my horrible parenting. I don't even remember what I said to her as I maneuvered Gracie's foot out of it's predicament. I was so embarrassed to say the least. We paid for what we had, loaded up the car, and went to collect Davy from kindergarten, late again for that as well. It was truly a Monday that will live forevermore in infamy.