“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.”Gilda Radner

Monday, September 12, 2011

Driving Ms. Crazy

Imagine me: Crazy wisps of hair flying outward above my ears and a joker smile.

So...we forgot to get Joey's snack for school last night! No biggie, right? Right!

Left at 7:30 am. Got to Wegmans. Guess what! No carts! AT ALL!? So I had to walk through the store with Noah and Joey walking. No biggie!

Joey picked out 100 cal packs of Ritz snack mix. Had to get 3 boxes to have enough for his whole class. Now carrying three boxes of snack mix under my arm and holding Joey and Noah's hands and walking through the store at .5 mile per hour and neither of them watch where they're going.

Get to the juice bag aisle. Have to get TWO boxes of those, and they're heavy, so now the boys each take one box of snack mix each while I carry one box of snack mix and the two (heavy) boxes of juice bags, and FYI, I still have to be holding the boys' hands because they started walking .1 mile per hour and were not looking where they were going.

THEN we get to the checkouts and I am NOT kidding there was only ONE open! I finally get up to the counter (and, by the way, since Noah wasn't in a cart he thought it meant he could grab as many packs of gum as he could in 5 seconds), and decide to skip the Shoppers' Club card to save time because, after all, that means you have to enter more buttons, and who cares really? but the woman (my favorite cashier, actually) got all huffy at me and voided the whole thing and said we had to START OVER so I could enter my Shoppers' Club number.

On the way out to the car and Noah starts a fit because Joey has to sit in the outside seat so he can hop out at school. Joey says, "But Mom you have to walk me in because of all the bags. Daddy walks me IN to school on snack days."

I'm about to say, "Carry your own bags, Joe," when I realize the juice bags ARE heavy not to mention the three other boxes so I realize yes, I'm going to have to walk them both into the building with these damn bags.

I get there and my bra pops out of my top as I'm getting Noah out of the car, and the gym teacher and official school greeter is gaily waving and shouting, "There's ANOTHER JOE!! It's a TWIN!" and isn't it nice that he's there being so friendly--but not saying, "Hey, ma'am, let me get those bags, don't get your 3 year old out of the car because that seems like a lot of trouble and by the way adjust your top."

When I get into the school building (actually that part was pretty cute because Joey held Noah's hand, who walked in the middle being all demure and adorable), Joey decides to pretend HE DOESN'T KNOW ME. I'm not kidding. I say, "Joe, which is your classroom? Where are we going?" and he totally ignores me, like I hadn't spoken at all. Now this may not seem like a big deal, but because Noah is so slow and we have all these bags we are taking up a lot of space and people are starting to stare and I'm getting that loud voice I get when I'm near hysteria and I say, "Joey! Joey are we going the right way?" and he STILL ignores me.

We walk by his new teacher Mrs. Carr, who he says hello to of course, but doesn't stop and introduce us because well, he's six, and then we get to his classroom where he walks away from me wordlessly and begins hanging up his coat while I stand there all covered in Wegmans bags and Noah is peeking curiously into the room and I say, "Okay, Joey, I'm leaving these here. Now KISS ME GOODBYE," and his friends are there and he gets all embarrassed and you know what? Too bad!

On our way out, Mrs. Carr emerges from the office and introduces herself to me, and she actually seems quite lovely. She also tells me my boys are beautiful, so how bad could she be?