Tales from the Grocery Store

I know I am not alone in spending altogether too  much time in the grocery store.  I know this because I  often see friends and family members there many days in a row, too.

This weekend was a unique turning point in my life, however, and I think I might avoid the grocery store as much as possible from now on.  Wait, like, I mean, make more of an effort to only go to the grocery store once or twice (max!) a week.

See, on Saturday, we needed to go to the grocery store because we were invited over to a friends' home for dinner.  I offered to bring something, which I had good intentions of actually doing, but the reality of fulfilling my offer was going to require a trip to Ye Olde Grocers.  Stat.

I took Kiddo#2 with me because I'm trying to like, engage him in cooking.  His life goal right now seems to be consuming food, so I figure if I teach him to fish, I won't have to spend my entire fricking life inventing meals to feed his quenchless stomach.

Or something like that.

Anyway, we pulled up to the grocery store, and he skipped ahead to get a cart.  He raced it around the corner and ran over my heels.  Rage flashed in my eyes, but I decided not to pick him up and Hulk Smash him into oblivion.

I'm not sure why I was so benevolent; perhaps it was the coffee in my hand and the caffeine in my bloodstream, perhaps it was that I'd just awoken from a nice Saturday nap so I had more mercy than usual, but my son was neither launched to Mars, nor ripped from the driver's position on the cart.

Today was a good day.

We started down he produce section, picking up some good stuff here and there when Kiddo #2 said "What if the thing Pyper wants for her birthday is in the toy section?"  So, I thought we'd head over to the toys to placate my son and also allow me to peruse the clothing section since my kids are both 2 inches taller than they were before the sun returned to Canada this week.

We stopped by (insert some crazy toy that I won't buy because it's literally $35 and made of plastic) and ran into a friend I hadn't seen in a very long time.  We started to catch up when my son decided to drive the cart up and down some aisles nearby to fill the time.  Somewhere between "I can't believe how big your daughter is now!" and "I'm an artist! I know, crazy and cool right?"  it occurred to me that Kiddo #2 hadn't come down our aisle in several minutes.  Possibly 10.

The normal mother would panic that someone had not only stolen her child, but all her friggin' groceries too...  I, instead, slowly walked the store.  Every slow-turning cart was anticipated and scorned when it was only some oldster who didn't know how to drive anymore.

As I was about to give up on finding him, I ran back into that friend.  I jokingly said "I'm sure he's being detained for trying to finish shopping without a grown-up."  when "We have a Code Adam.  A Code Adam.  Looking for a... uh, ... woman?  Black top, jeans, black and teal hair and sparkle shoes."

Jayzus Cripes.  

Doing a much faster and older version of the walk of shame, (and this time without having my panties in my pocket) I walked to customer service.  There he was.  Kiddo #2, with our full cart of groceries (including some he'd picked up because he knew we needed them, and surprisingly there wasn't even one package of Oreos in the cart?!).

Kiddo #2.
Full grocery cart.
Standing with a check-out lady who was judging me as though my panties really were in my pocket and it was 5am...

I inhaled deeply and smiled.  With a sing-song voice, I called over "Oh Kiddo #2!  You are so independent!"

If the entire cast of Annie had appeared singing "Hard Knock Life" it would have been only slightly less awkward.

Check-out Lady:  Oh! You must be the teal-haired mother!
Me:  (smiling and trying to look like they didn't need to call CAS) Yes.
CoL:  He tried to check out but he said he didn't have your points card...
Me:  Ha! Oh, Kiddo #2!  You know we're working on saving enough points to buy the store! hahaha
CoL:  I thought I would have him wait here.  For you.
Me:  Well, thank you!
CoL:  It's just that most 5-year olds aren't doing the grocery shopping.
Me:  Well, we're highly evolved in my house. I'm training him to be the next Wolverine.
CoL:  And he has your cell phone.
Me: Yes, I figured that out when I tried to call him on it.
CoL:  Well kids are so wonderful. It would be a shame to ...
Me:  I know! I agree!  I think he's the bees' knees!  I am as surprised by this as you are, let me tell you.
CoL: ...it's just that we've never had to call a Code Adam on a ... mother ... before...
Kiddo#2:  So do you have your points card ready or what Mom?

I checked out as quickly as I could while joking and using big words to try and redeem myself.  Also I told her my name was Regina Philangi, so that will likely help.  I called Kiddo #2 Frank Jr. Jr. and Chandler, randomly, to make it seem like maybe he was one of the triplets Phoebe had on the 100th episode of Friends. It would be just vague enough a memory that it could be real, right?

We got the gift card for the movies (which is turning into our standard birthday gift, randomly, because I hate giving STUFF to kids anymore) and left.  We dropped Kiddo #2 off at his birthday party and I made a delicious fruit salad for the dinner party thing, with the perfectly ripe fruit Kiddo #2 had chosen while he finished our grocery shopping. So much winning!

Then today, I picked up Kiddo #1 from a playdate (do kids have playdates at age 8? or is it just like, playing?) and realized we had nothing in the fridge for lunches for Monday.

"I hate all the things." 

In retrospect, I should've suspected something was up by the way she sat with her arms folded across her chest and a "I hate all the things" look on her face.

We got out of the car, got a cart. Once we had just enough items in the cart that I couldn't just abandon ship and flee the store, pretending she hadn't said anything, Kiddo #1 said "Mom. I just feel so BAD about all the animals that have to DIE so we can eat."

Jayzus Cripes.

Fuck you, grocery store

Me:  Oh?
Kiddo #1: It's just like, that these animals live these lives and then one day, they're killed just to make food for us.
Me:  Ok.
Kiddo #1:  Well, it's not fair. And it's probably gross.
Me:  Ok.
Kiddo #1:  I mean, like, look at this wall of like, meat.  It's really big and like, animals had to die to get here.
Me:  Yes.  That's what happened to the animals that are in here.
Kiddo #1: I mean, like, what about the babies? Like, who raises the babies?
Me:  (truly trying to decide whether this is the right time to pull up Fast Food Nation/The Jungle on my phone, or whether this can wait until like, NOT TODAY.)  Well, I guess it depends on the animal.
Kiddo #1: I think we shouldn' t eat meat anymore.
Me: Remember when we didn't eat meat? It was a good time. We were vegan for almost a year.
Kiddo #1:  I remember that.
Me:  Well, the treatment of the animals was part of the reason we did that.
Kiddo #1:  ... Don't forget we need cheese.
Me: (pause) ... well, if you're really thinking of not doing meat... then we should probably not to cheese either.
Kiddo#1:  Why not?
Me:  Well, because you know how when a woman has a baby and makes milk for the baby?
Kiddo #1:  Yeah. But that's ok because she's making it.
Me: Well, it's kinda not like that.  They take the baby cow away from its mother sometimes, and just make the mom make milk forever.
Kiddo #1:  Well that doesn't make sense! Who feeds the baby?
Me:  Well... uh, they usually kill the baby.
Kiddo #1:  Good GOD WHY?
Me:  Well, uh, for us to eat.
Kiddo #1:  Ooooooh.  Oh that is HORRIFIC.

I take that back, apparently today WAS the day.

I know there were people in the store who probably wanted to throttle me: like the meat farmers and the dairy farmers and the food pyramid propagandists, and the vegans probably were cheering, and the vegetarians were grumbling and ...  but I guess I wanted her to understand stuff.  I didn't quite get into the meat-butchering process with her (I'm not ready for that, frankly), and we did buy cheese.

And tonight for dinner, she decided not to eat the grass-fed, organic, rainbow magic meat we had.  Instead I had to make her crepes.  Vegan crepes, and they were as delish as I remembered them.

They'll be more delicious when she learns how to make them herself, but that's a whole other trip to the grocery store.

Jayzus Cripes.  

Elsa's Brier

I tried Curling last weekend.  

I wish I knew what horrid stereotypes there are about Curlers so I could write some of them slyly, but honestly I knew nothing about it.

Like, I know more about Golf, and I'm not 100% sure golf is even a sport.

I mean, it's not like GOLF is in the Olympics, unlike Curling.
Shit. Is Golf in the Olympics?  Somebody Google that for me.

In the meantime, I had to learn something about Curling.

I can't hilariously poke fun of myself while I am learning something new if I haven't done some introductory fact-gathering beforehand.  Just a little Wikipedia glancing, just a little youtube watching, just a couple "key words" goes a long way to making your trainer not want to bludgeon you to death with the articles you play with.  But I did none of my usual research.  I was going in blind.

And just like when I wing-it with eyeliner, it was a horrible, terrible, no-go-very bad decision. Also, I was just as blind as when I put on eyeliner, since I always end up stabbing myself IN the eye somehow.  Fucking show-off stupid winged-eyeliner angels. 

Sure, I'll just wing-it and my eyes will look just like the top photo. Ok, just like the bottom one... 

Plus, like jogging is so 5 years ago; Curling seems to be the sport of choice amongst people on my Facebook page who like to talk about the new shit they're doing.

So it was a thorough, highly representative, scientific sample of population that was surveyed.

And so, today, I found myself at the local (arena for curling, which may or may not be called a Granite club, the jury is still out) with the kidlets and Husband and many people from Husband's workey-work.

This is so SO much harder than it looks.

I decided I would learn to curl.

First, you need to remember a few things about me before we go another sentence.  1) I am certain I am an Olympian-waiting-to-happen with every sport I try, and especially sports I have never tried.   2) I'm fairly bendy, despite my general un-fittedness.  and 3) I'm pretty much like Wayne Gretzky-- I can learn a sport just by like, being near it.

So like I said, Curling was about to have its ass handed to it.

Wearing my yoga pants for ultimate stretch, my new sneakers (which aren't new, but I gave up jogging once I mastered it, so now they lay dusty), and SOCKS.

Strike one against Curling: you have to wear bloody socks.

I was placed on a team with some, like, advanced curlers and some medium curlers.  I could tell they were only being nice to me because they wanted to learn from my amazing, innate sports knowledge.  Plus, I tell hilarious jokes, which diffuses some of the "I'm kinda amazing so you are probably nervous" tension. But I digress.

I watched teammates do The Throw.  I listened to a bunch of people tell me all sorts of mathematics and physics.  I watched the stones hit other stones and sometimes they kept moving after the "kok" sound, and sometimes they stopped abruptly for a reason that I didn't quite understand.  I felt my heartbeat quicken.  Oh shit.  This isn't a game.  It's fucking frozen MATH. 

I tried not to have a panic attack while they told me all the angles and magical math and geometry needed to play the game.  No one fucking told me there was MATH.  

Strike TWO on Curling:  Fucking MATH.  
 I was ready to go full Elsa on this shit.

Confidence shattered, I inhaled deeply and tried not to cry.  How can I be the most amazing curler in history if I need to be able to like, do angles and shit?

I snuffled and wiped a tear.  I looked around.  I saw my debutante kids throwing rocks like fucking professionals and felt a rage grow in my heart.  Ok, so I was mildly jealous that my stupid kids can pick up a game and I'm over here chewing on Xanax because I don't have anything to drink it down with.

And then, like Elsa once she figured out she's super hot and also amazing, I remembered I'm practically a yogi and I've totally go this shit.

Probably the Xanax kicked in, but hey, I'm going with me realizing I'm Elsa.

Xanax and I are masters of All. The. Things.

I put the rubber thing on my shoe, stepped onto the slidey pad thing with my other foot, and remembered I'm a fucking lefty and that everything I'd just watched was now completely backwards.

No strikes here: being a lefty is just a strike against learning everyfuckingthing, and not any one thing in particular.  I couldn't hold being a lefty against Curling. Much.

Of course, with my confidence shaken a SECOND time, I switched all my gear to the opposite feet and pretend this is no biggie...  But FRICK!  Frick, frick, frick.

So, after I threw the first stone, I realized another crucial problem.  Not only am I lefty, and I've never really even watched curling, but also this:  If you are going to do the curling, you must have some sort of core muscles.  Of any kind.  No matter how small.  Being essentially a cooked spaghetti noodle in the middle of a jello mold will not be as advantageous as you might think.

I threw the first stone.

What actually happened was I put my feet up on the foot things (which are kind like sprinters foot things if you've never really seen them before) and pushed myself forward.  Only, like true Jello, I wibbled and wobbled, ass in the air like a Hip Hop video.

Actually, it was most like me in downward dog, sliding about 30 centimeters, in slow motion, holding a 40 pound rock in one hand and a slidey white staff thing in the other, while my one foot started sliding up to my arms and my non-slidey foot stopped completely.  Oh, if I could have a video of this cat-ASS-trophic vision, I would probably pay money.  ... although I'm not sure whether it would be $$ to hide the video or to promote it.

 From the side I started off a little like this:

    


                     But from the back it looks probably more like this:

Probably what I looked like seconds before I fell.

And, I might want to remind you that it's not supposed to look like either of these pictures.
It's supposed to look like the lady waaaaaay above us.

So the people on my team, who were medium to expert curlers, watched me as I jiggled and wiggled and flopped and slid my way to the hog line (which is the first line after the giant target and at that point you're supposed to let go of the rock and it should gracefully slide to the other end of the ice and land perfectly in the "button" or center of the target).

Or it's called the hog line because it makes you feel piggish if you can't even fall that far, let alone push the rock across it.

The other players, patiently, generously, let me fall about 5 times before I managed to kinda sorta stay on my feet.  I think I was actually doing something kinda right at one point.

AND, I think I might have actually got the rock to slide like, towards the other end, with triumphant cheers erupting from my face like I actually HAD won an Olympic medal. 

But now is the best part-- 


I need to tell you that I've been trying to finish this post for four days now, but the rhythmic jiggling of this guy's butt is SO distracting!

There.

If I type waaaaay down here I don't see those floppy butt cheeks anymore and I can actually think about the best part of curling.

Oh shit.  It's been so long since I curled now, that the stupid cartoon has successfully derailed my train of thought.

Bloody hell.

Dang it.

Uhhhh.








Curling: The Cold Doesn't Bother Me Anyway.