How Not to Go Shopping

Well, I made one of the biggest mistakes a mother can make: I said to my family Friday night that I wanted to go shopping for myself sometime this weekend. Big mistake, and I knew it too as soon as it escaped from my mouth, so I tried to cover myself with a lame, “if I get the chance.” Now those of you new to motherhood may not know that in order to get some alone time in the mall, everything has to be cosmically perfect, and one way to knock the planets out of line is to voice your wish. This has happened to me way too many times for it to be just a coincidence.

Ilness strikes

Everything seemed to be ok, but early - very early- Saturday morning, my son comes in complaining loudly of a sore stomach. Now since we had a pretty early dinner Friday night and the kids didn’t have a snack before bed, I just figured he was hungry, so I fed him. Oh how wrong this was… The only plus in all this is that he finally can get to the toilet-or at least he did that first time. (His small garbage can took a beating the rest of the time and is now sitting on the back porch after I hit it full blast with the hose. I got some back spray in my face, and after gagging profusely-I better not get sick-I started questioning my choice to clean the thing. Don’t they have these in Wal-Mart for only a couple bucks?) I won’t go into too many details, but I will say that when the boy gets sick, he gets sick, and he makes sure everyone knows it. (He is not known for curling up in a ball in his room, quietly suffering-he writhes in pain, with more than a little moaning on the side.) My husband and I were losing patience with this illness by Sunday evening. Strike one.

The weather

Now my husband had also made a proclamation around the same time I mentioned my possible shopping trip. If the weather cooperated, he was going to replace our front door with the one we purchased not too long ago, and maybe get it primed and painted on Sunday. Yippee! Sounds like fun to me-not! How can I complain, though? I was the one who said we needed a new door, and I was the one who was nagging him about putting it up, but the fact is, if he did this chore, I would be involved as well, and I wanted the mall. I was secretly hoping for rain, but weather wishes never come true, and it was warm and sunny all blasted weekend long! And, just as I predicted, I was the "hold it here honey" girl, while he tacked and cut, and got the door in. Strike two.

All the other stuff

In the midst of these two memorable weekend events, I was running my daughter back and forth to practice, and then to Old Navy for a couple clothing exchanges. I also noted that since the weather was so nice and I had to be close to home due to my "hold it here honey" and nursemaind duties, I could hang the laundry out on the line to dry, and then there was painting the door Sunday, and I might as well work on the design of my blog, and we needed whites washed, and groceries…Strike three.

Well the weekend ended, I didn’t get in a shopping trip, and I stayed home with my son today because he still hadn’t really eaten anything other than a banana. I am looking into the future and I see a shopping trip sometime in the days ahead, but this time I will wait until I am in my car heading down the driveway before I shout from an open car window, “Hey,dear, I’m going to make a quick run to the mall.” You just don’t mess with those cosmic forces...