I spuddle.

Yesterday The Birdy and The Bun woke up sounding like baby seals on an ice floe barking an SOS to The Universe. Using my excellent Mummy instincts, I flashed back to last year when The Birdy — sounding similar — accompanied me on a doctor’s appointment for something unrelated, and was instantly diagnosed with pneumonia, although I had thought she was fine. Fool me once and all that. I immediately called my new doctor and booked them in for 3:30.

Other than the coughing, they seemed OK. The mad, crazy fevers of the weekend had eased, so naturally I thought that before the doctor’s appointment, they would probably like to go to the garden center with me so I could ogle plants, a trip I sold as “a visit to the place with the bridge”. Yes, there is a bridge. Sort of. I don’t think it’s what they were imagining but it wasn’t a lie, per se. Then out of guilt, I bought them a large cookie that was bigger than both their heads combined. Then I ate most of that myself because it turns out they weren’t that hungry due to the fact they were so sick. I don’t even know why I wanted to go so badly as I ended up buying just two tiny purple plants, which I only purchased because The Bun was so emotionally attached to them that he cried so hard when I suggested we leave without them that I thought he might throw up on the floor.

Somewhere around 3:10, I realized we were already late for the doctor’s appointment on the other side of town, which was too bad because I’d just sat down for the first time all day to drink a cup of tea. That’s how it goes when you’re me. Maybe I’m just bad at time management. Maybe.

By the time I’d raced across town, found parking, and hurled the kids into the waiting room, they were some unhappy. And when I use the words “some unhappy” here in the case of The Birdy I’m using it to mean “lying on the floor sobbing uncontrollably whilst flinging her body around like she’s trying to escape from a leg-hold trap in the forest that’s in the path of a hungry, large bear”. The Bun was more stoic. In fact, he continued to “read” a book to himself in a quiet voice as though there were nothing in the world going on on the waiting room floor, the fact he can’t read notwithstanding. I was tempted to pull out my iPhone and begin a soothing game of Sudoku knowing that when The Birdy starts nothing will interrupt the Force of the Tantrum, but sadly I cannot shake the whole “what will people think” vibe, so I picked up her flailing little self and attempted to pin her arms in a stylized “hug” such that she couldn’t punch me in the head. It’s these kinds of events that make everyone else in the waiting room ask the doctor for permanent birth control surgeries. Even the ones well past the age of fertility.

I digress. This doctor is new to us. He’s very nice, in fact, an old family friend. However, every time he speaks, I translate it in my head into LOL speak. I can’t help it.

Dr: Hai, how iz kidz?
Me: They have bad coughs.
Dr: They iz better?
Me: No, iz worse.
Dr (lifting The Bun): Bun iz heavy!
Me: Yes.
Dr: Glands iz swollen!
Me: Yes.
Dr: Iz better tho!
Me: ?
Dr: Birdy iz worse! Antibiotics iz gud.

You get the idea. By the time we left, The Birdy had stopped screaming and was actually pretty upbeat. Off we went to Safeway to fill the prescription and get groceries.

Sounds easy!

Not easy.

Safeway is one of the stores that have those giant grocery carts with a plastic car-like contraption with pretend steering wheels on the front where you can jam your kids, such that they are at the maximum allowable distance from you at the same time as being too close to each other to not poke each other repeatedly in the eye and then claim they didn’t do it. Sometimes the carts make the kids happy; however, more often than not, they try to push each other out of the thing while screaming the toddler-equivalent of obscenities. They had plenty of time for this while I waited in a line of two people for the pharmacy counter. I’m not sure why the guy in front of me thought that the pharmacist would care/understand/want to know about how back surgery would be better for him than continuing to feed his addiction to prescription pain killers, but after about twenty minutes, we were all pretty much up on the details. The Bun had escaped from the cart and was wheeling The Birdy around at high speed, made extra dangerous by the fact that those carts are about eight feet long and impossible to steer. Shoppers were darting out of the way and fixing me with steely glares, while I stared straight ahead and pretended they could not penetrate my invisible armour with their eyeball blades of red-hot anger. Then I pretended that my invisible armour actually rendered ME invisible! Then I pretended that I was leaping over the counter — invisible! — and grabbing the medicine I needed and running from the store! And that my kids were invisible, too!

Then it was our turn.

Insert boring story here about insurance.

Checking out at Safeway is always a nightmare because you are not allowed to push the eight-foot car-like cart extravaganza filled with recyclable (OK, I ADMIT it, I forgot them again. Just this ONCE.) grocery bags to your car. You must trade it for a regular cart. This is because the temptation to steal the two-hundred pound monstrosities is infinitely too overwhelming to most shoppers. I mean, who wouldn’t want to have one of their very own, perhaps in their living room?. After just one too many people wrestled one into their moving-truck car and made off with it, Safeway decided that shoppers can no longer be trusted to use the prized cart cars outside of the store, even accompanied by a Safeway-employed chaperone. Not even a uniformed chaperone. With a gun. Needless to say, prying the kids out of The Beast in the tight confines of the buggy aisle is a challenge at best. For one thing, after torturing each other mercilessly for an hour, they’ve finally decided that they love it in there and NOTHING IN THE WORLD is more fun. For another thing, they can hold the door-thingies so you can’t get them out, and watching you struggle amuses them, much like the words POOP and STOOPID and knock-knock jokes with unrelated punch lines. I finally extracted the hysterical Birdy, who was having none of it, and who then proceeded with a repeat of her above-detailed temper tantrum. Sadly, there was no room on the floor to deposit her, so I again had to hold on to her while she punched and kicked, screamed, sobbed, and interspersed the show with pathetic-sounding coughs which made me look like an evil ogre (who perhaps ought to be reported to Social Services for having her anywhere outside of tucked into a tidy bed, perhaps in a hospital). The Bun was instructed firmly (i.e. I shouted at him) to get out of the cart, which he attempted to do by somehow diving headfirst out the fake windshield, landing on his head/neck/bent-back finger somewhere near my feet. He commenced wailing. I tried to bend over to hug him, but with my destroyed discs I cannot bend while holding 30 pounds of flail’n'wail. While I received plenty of sympathetic/annoyed/enraged looks from fellow shoppers, the cashier seemed entirely oblivioius to the drama. I admire someone who can overlook so many moving limbs and outpourings of snot and tears. I’m sure he’ll make a good parent one day.

Finally back in the car, I shuttled my now-exhausted offspring on one more errand — picking up a package at Sears because they will only hold them for ten days and it was day eleven already. Loading them into the car for the last time, I realized that somewhere along the line we’d lost The Birdy’s jacket. I liked that jacket. My mum bought it in Hawaii and both kids had nearly worn it out and it was cute. Suddenly I was more emotionally attached to that missing jacket than to any other article of clothing ever. I felt like crying. Where is the green jacket? MUST FIND THE GREEN JACKET.

I called Safeway. No, they didn’t have the green jacket. It was likely somewhere in the store, they surmised, but they wouldn’t go look for it, rather they would wait for someone to turn it in. Then they would call me. If they found it. Which, by the way, was unlikely. Because people didn’t turn much stuff in, when it came right down to it, they were likely to keep my green jacket. Oh, and what colour was it again? Could I describe it? So that when they were flooded with jackets in the lost and found, they would know which was mine?

I had a vague memory of removing the jacket at the doctor’s office, so I called them, but they were gone for the day. Now desperate for the green jacket, I decided to retrace my steps in the car, in case perhaps one of the kids had hurled it out the window while we drove. And would you believe it? While driving down the street, we found the green jacket tied to someone’s fence. It’s true, internet. Sometimes, there are green jacket miracles.

I was so happy, I may have wept a bit. Or maybe I was already weeping. It was that kind of day.

When we got home, I realized that I only had a portion of my groceries. Where were the rest of the groceries? Once again, I called Safeway. If you want their number, let me know, I have it in my mental Rolodex now. Yes, we’d left a bag behind. Yes, they knew what was in it. Well, they knew one or two of the things in it, but they’d put it all back on the shelf. Yes, my husband could come and get it, but he had to ask for “Tim” after finding “Tim” at one of forty-seven checkout lines because “Tim” was the only one who had access to the mystery of my missing bag and what was in it ONLY TEN MINUTES BEFORE. Items that they had returned to the shelf with the kind of speed that superheroes use to rescue babies from burning eagle’s nests at the top of giant sequoia trees, because ONE OF THE ITEMS IN THE BAG WAS FROZEN. Apparently, there’s a rule. Whoever writes the rules at Safeway must really enjoy themselves. No carts in the parking lot! No looking for lost articles! No bags left behind for more than fourteen seconds without being dismantled if frozen fries are involved!

I carefully detailed the missing items, reading off the receipt. Yes, said “Tim”, the bag would be there for Clayton to pick up. How many bananas were in there, again? There were no bananas. Oh, right. How many apples? Er, no apples. Laundry soap, juice boxes, fries. Oh, OK. How many potatoes?

NO POTATOES. I was starting to contemplate adding random items to the list. Like wine. Or perhaps whiskey. If only you could buy those things at Safeway.

You know where this is going, right?

I wasn’t there, so I can’t provide details, but eventually, Clayton says he just grabbed the bag and ran amidst a fray of confusion: “Tim” wanted him to pay again, no one knew what was in the bag to begin with, the grey-haired clerk insisted he go home and get the receipt, etc.

Many hours and debacles later, I stumbled to bed. I was just drifting off when I heard The Birdy start to cough again. And cough. And cough. And… wait, that wasn’t a cough, that was a projectile vomit! Hello, middle-of-the-night bed-making baby-changing fun!

The good news is that our new dryer is supposedly arriving today sometime between noon and five. And tomorrow, maybe, or some other time, we’ll have it hooked up. And none too soon. I have lots of sheets to wash.

So how was your day?

Edited to add pics of The Green Jacket. Just so you can see why I’m so unreasonably attached:

Filed under: Kids, Laundry, Shopping