Such a Boy

Yesterday I needed to cut some fabrics for a quilt I am making and so I decided to cut while watching the cartoon movie Anastasia. As I was cutting on my card table in front of the TV, I was singing along with the songs. I watched this movie many times as a child, so I know every word. It was on the song where Anastasia is singing about how she is scared to go to St. Petersburg but wants to find her family. In the middle of the song, Rubin James sighed loudly and said, "When is she going to stop singing and actually go to St. Petersburg?!"

He is such a boy.

Crazy Woman on Aisle 9!

Okay, so I will finally admit that I’m a bit of a crazy person at the grocery store. But that’s only because I’m efficient. You see, even if I go to the store while my oldest is at kindergarten, I still have my 3- and 1-year-old boys with me. That means I have two ticking time bombs in my cart. The problem is, you never know when they will go off! This means I have to be fast, while still getting everything I need. So I walk quickly down the aisles, barely even coming to a complete stop to grab my items. I’ve really got it down to an art!

However, there are a couple of things that do manage to slow me down. First are grandparents. Not mine of course, just your generic, run-of-the-mill grandparents. I like to go to the store early in the day and that’s when many of them are there too. I actually have quite the track record of old men stopping me and talking to me and my boys in a grandfatherly way. Some of these old men are really sweet, like the one who told me he could tell I was a great mom, doing a wonderful job. On the other hand, some are downright odd. One told me he worked for NASA and had searched the entire universe for something cuter than a human baby, but couldn’t find anything!

The next thing that ruins my fast pace are the men at the store. I’ve noticed guys who are grocery shopping are usually very inefficient. I can always spot a husband shopping on his day off. He walks in the middle of the aisle, exactly in the middle, so no one can fit past him on either side. He moves at a snail’s pace, staring with a dazed expression at all of the food possibilities surrounding him. Finally, he spends eons trying to figure out which size, brand, and flavor to take. It drives me crazy!

Sadly, even the grocery shopping master (me) makes mistakes. The last time I took my husband and all three boys. I'm not sure what I was thinking! We procured two carts and put two kids in one and one in the other. Then we proceeded to shop. At the first I would pick what I needed and then turn around and wait for my husband to catch up. But after a few minutes of this, I realized the ticking bombs were not going to make it at his pace. So, I decided to ditch the wisdom of the Marines and left the man behind!

I weaved in and out of the aisles, dodging men and senior citizens, only occasionally catching sight of my husband. At one point I realized I forgot the toilet bowl cleaner, but I was already several aisles away and I could see Graham getting antsy in the cart. So I abandoned hope of going back for it.

An hour later, my husband managed to catch up with me. Now I had two carts full of groceries. This secured a full-blown eye-roll from the cashier. But, I had avoided major tantrums and gotten everything I needed (well, almost everything). So the next time you see a woman zooming down the aisles, just pull your cart to the side and let her past. There’s no telling what she’ll do in the name of efficiency!