Better luck next time

Newborns are temperamental. One day they sleep like an angel morning to night, the next day they wail continually, satisfied only when held in your arms. Life with a three week old is always up in the air, doing anything is a gamble because you never know which baby will "show up" at any particular moment.

Today, I decided to go take the plunge and do the weekly grocery shopping with Julian. Hello, disaster. It did not go well. I picked a Monday morning thinking it would be a quiet day at Safeway. I was wrong. The store was crowded and the lines were long.

I walked into the store with a sleeping baby in a car seat. Perfect. Except exactly one minute and thirty seconds into our trip, Julian woke up. And he was mad. But I was determined to get the job done. At first he was merely whimpering, but soon enough he escalated into full blown crying. I whisked through the store, throwing the items from my mental list into the cart. Each time I turned down a new isle there was someone who wanted to stop and chat. "Oh a new one! How old?" "Can I see your baby?" Almost everyone was good natured and sympathetic to my plight. But of course there was the one exception, there usually is. Today it was an uptight old biddy, who likely believes that children were meant to be seen not heard. She stared at me from across the cereal isle, her mouth pressed into a disapproving smirk. As she passed me she glanced inside my car seat and clicked her tongue. "Poor thing, he should be wearing socks you know" she muttered and continued on her way.

Socks? You mean the socks that have been abandoned in the backseat of the car because the child keeps on kicking them off his skinny little feet? Lady unless I duck tape them on, the socks aren't going to stick. Besides, it is about 80 degrees outside, and even the grocery store feels warm. I wanted to run after her with some sort of snide come back. If we are offering free unsolicited advice I would be happy to share my thoughts about the contents of her grocery cart (Doritos and Hungry Man frozen dinners). But I hold my tongue and press on.

I raced through the rest of the store, deciding to give up by the time I reached produce. I headed to checkout and eyed the long lines. There was no good option. So I picked a random line and waited. For whatever reason there was no one available for bagging, although there seemed to be about 12 Safeway employees standing around doing nothing. I bagged my own and just about ran out of the store.

I arrived home to find that I made quite a few grocery mistakes in my rush.

• I purchased honey mustard pretzels instead of plain, yuck




• I bought enough chicken for a family twice my size. Oops.




• I forgot the eggs.




• I forgot the cottage cheese.




• I selected juice boxes for the boys lunch, instead of the low fat milk drink boxes because I could not reach the milk.




• One bunch of over-ripe bananas and one bag of baby carrots will have to suffice for fruits and vegetables this week.

Better luck next time?