Bad Luck at the Grocery Store

This morning I felt like I was doing a pretty good job of getting everything done. I spent about half an hour preparing our two-week dinner menu and then making a grocery list with all the ingredients we would need for the next two week’s worth of meals. I got all the boys ready and dropped Kolby off at his class and we went to the grocery store. I had only been in a store a few minutes, and I went to the meat section to get a roast and some hamburger. Since I am getting to that point in my pregnancy when many of my maternity shirts aren’t even quite long enough for me anymore, I set my grocery list down on the wrapped pieces of meat for a second so I could pull my shirt down and make sure it was covering my belly all the way. Before I could react, the vent in front of the meat sucked my grocery list away. Now this wasn’t just a little slip of scrap paper with a couple things written on it, it was a full 8.5 x 11-inch paper with a grocery list the whole length of the page. The vent in front of the meat where the cool air comes out apparently sucks air inward too, and I could see no way to get the list – I could hear it being sucked all the way down below the meat to the floor behind the counter. At that point I didn’t know what to do. I never go grocery shopping without a list, and this time I had planned several meals that we haven’t had for a while, so the ingredients weren’t familiar to me.

I briefly considered packing the boys back in the car, driving home, packing the kids into the house, consulting my dinner menu and recipe books, making a new list, packing the kids back into the car, driving back to the grocery store, packing the kids back into the store, and starting the whole grocery trip all over again – but I don’t think I could have handled all that. So I pulled a new piece of paper out of my purse and stood there in front of the meat trying to remember all of the ingredients and the correct measurements that I had written on my original list. And I don’t know why, but Camden was having an especially difficult morning. He kept bursting out in tears and crying uncontrollably (and very loudly), for no apparent reason – and we had only been in the store about 10 or 15 minutes before he started doing this. I wrote everything down that I could remember on the list, and went on to get all of the groceries, Camden crying like he had been hurt for the majority of the trip – he had red eyes and nose and little old ladies kept coming up and trying to talk to him to make him happy, but they didn’t really help. At least I didn’t have to haul the boys home and back again to make another grocery list, which I’m sure would have been worse. When I got home, I was pleased to look at my dinner menu and find that I’m pretty sure I remembered everything I needed to get – I just need to double-check the measurements on one of the recipes to make sure.

After I unloaded all the groceries at home, we made a quick run to Wal Mart and got Camden some new shoes that match the ones that Kolby and Eli have. We got him size 4 wide shoes when he first started taking steps, and those were a little snug, so lately he has been wearing some old hand-me-down size 5 shoes I found in our storage bins of kid’s clothes, and those have been really hard to get on and off of his feet lately. So, I went to get him some that fit, and they didn’t have size 6, just size 7. I tried them on, and he can walk fine in them and they haven’t fallen off his feet yet, so that’s what he got. He’d better not grow out of size 7 shoes before winter is over.