Shopping at 10pm isn't so bad after all

After my 3 kids had already spent most of the morning fighting, whining, and acting like zoo animals, I decided to take them grocery shopping. Why you ask? What on this Earth would posses me to do that? I don’t quite know. I suspect that I must’ve hit my head earlier that morning and suffered some sort of brain damage. It’s the only thing that makes sense.

Naturally when we got there, there were no more race car shopping carts left. For those that don’t know, let me explain: these are the carts that have a car attached to the front of them. Meaning I can strap my youngest into the cart seat, and my middle one into the little car. This means everyone is happy and more importantly, contained. Well, like I said, I must’ve suffered brain damage, because instead of turning around and going home, I went on in. I got one of those regular carts. I put my youngest into the cart seat, and my middle one in the basket where the food goes. It seemed that it would work just fine.

We made our way through the store with a minimal amount of yelling and crying. The baby had a melt down half way through and I had to carry her the rest of the time, but other than that, it seemed that this trip just might work out after all. As I rounded the corner of the very last isle, almost triumphant, I could see the finish line nearing. I began my victory dance, only to slip in some sort of puddle on the floor. “What is it?” I thought to myself. “Why is there a trail of drips coming from my cart?”

Horror struck when I recognized the familiar smell of “Tilex Soap Scum Remover”. Yes, that’s right. My 2 year old had not only opened it up, but poured it all over my groceries. “They’re clean mommy” he said to me. He’s so helpful.

Since I’m 26 years old and crying isn’t so much an option anymore, I did what anyone would do. I turned red with embarrassment, and spent the next 10 minutes cleaning it up. You see, when you spill toxic chemicals on your groceries, the store will not let you exchange them for new, clean, chemical free groceries. They pretty much want you to keep the ones you already have and quickly be on your way.

When I finally got to the check out, not so triumphant anymore, the check out girl was very annoyed. And why shouldn’t she be? She had to take every pack of meat that I had, back to the meat dept. and have it re-tagged and re-priced. The ink on the labels runs when you pour cleaning products on them. This took quite a while, and all the people behind me in line started to get impatient. The lady directly behind me finally asked what the hold up was. She thought it was just a regular old riot when I told her. She had raised 4 boys, so she said she understood. At least that lightened the mood a little.

When I got home, I spent half an hour cleaning the rest of my groceries off. I had to throw away 14 dollars worth of roasts, and a few other things. My cabinets still reek of Tilex, and worst of all, my bathrooms are dirty. I don’t have any cleaner to clean them with.

Next time we’ll eat peanut butter sandwiches for dinner.

I used to hate going out late in the evening after the kids are in bed. I'm usually too tired by then, and you never know what kind of weirdos are out at that time either. It used to seem like such a hassle to do it that late. But I learned a valuable lesson that day, shopping at 10 pm isn't so bad after all.