Of Shopping Trips and Generosity of Spirit, or, A Post That Took Almost As Long To Write As To Live Out

So I realized today that if Cari-Circa-First-Pregnancy had been standing in line behind Cari Now at the Wal-Mart this afternoon, that judgemental bitch would have been rolling her eyes in assumed superiority. But ha! How wrong she would have been! And by assuming, she would have made an ass of herself, but that would have sucked because herself is really me.
Follow?
No?

Ok, so I had one last store to stop at to officially wrap up this paycheck's grocery extravaganza. Plus, the National Weather Service keeps insisting on whipping all of Memphis into a frenzy by repeatedly throwing about that four letter word- snow. It was enough to drive a 5 month pregnant woman into fits of optimism about her children's ability to behave during what should be a short grocery store outing.

Great. Only Gabriel's in the middle (God, I hope it's the middle, and not somewhere still at the beginning) of potty training, so that meant we were on heightened alert. Any moment could bring about the "I peed" declaration so dreaded by mothers in public everywhere.
Oh, and Jude's teething, so his temperament was like to shift from "mildly cranky" to "full on Armageddon" with no notice.
And the kids had gift cards from their great Aunt and Uncle burning a hole in their pocket, and no amount of reasoning would deter them from spending it.

Whatever. I'm not daunted.

I begin to withhold fluids from Gabriel an hour before he leave, and keep him firmly on the toilet for the last 20 minutes. In this way, I hope to gain 45 minutes of empty bladder, which should cover the drive to the store, loading into carts, and navigating the wilderness of the parking lot.

I give Jude a round of teething tablets, throwing a frantic prayer to the universe that they relax him, yes, but not enough to put him to sleep on the way to the store, since he'll be a bastard if woken, teething pain or no.

The three big kids are informed that toys will not so much be glanced at until all the groceries have been located and placed in the cart. Even mentioning the word "toys" before then would result in a complete and draconian ban.

I arm myself with my list, load the kids in the car, and off we go. Ready for battle. And make no mistake- any public outing where the parent-to-child ratio is 1:4 is a battle.

The first roadblock comes when I realized how crowded the store is. This means I cannot have Lotus push a cart with Jude and Gabriel in it (she's a poor driver), and now Gabriel will have to either ride standing on the back of the cart, or walk and hold someones hand.
Thankfully, his new sense of diaper-free independence works in my favor, and he walks (semi)docilely at Lotus' side. Jude busies himself by cutting teeth on the germ-riddled pushcart handle, and I don't really care.

I try to grab groceries as quickly as I can, ignoring the baleful looks from my fellow shoppers, who first eye my four children, then the one on the way. I assume they're just pissed that my large family means my DNA has a better chance of surviving "Snowstorm of Death '10". Plus, we took the last jar of yeast.

A six pack of beer is tossed in for Ken, Sierra Nevada, because I'm hoping to sweet talk him into finishing the quarter round tomorrow. Then I see single 20 ounce bottles of Mountain Dew. A YouTube video was passed around during Halloween, about how you could make a glowing liquid using Mountain Dew, peroxide, and baking soda. Dude, how could you NOT try that at home? So into the cart it goes.

Finally, the kids are allowed to prowl the toy isle. The next 15 minutes I alternate between the phrases, "No, you can't buy that, it's too much", and "Gabriel, do you have to pee?" because I know we're pushing the limits of his little bladder. I greatly amuse the two other shoppers in the toy section.

The toy isle yields mixed results. Jude and Lotus find toys to fit their budget; Joaquin and Gabriel do not. Gabriel is fine with this. Joaquin cries.

Idly wondering which will explode first- Gabriel's bladder or my temper- I herd the kids to the shortest checkout line I find. Four sets of little hands insist on "helping" me unload the cart, and I'm too busy to notice that the short line, extra wide isle, and conspicuous lack of candy signal that I am in the only register that sells tobacco. This means there will be people lining up behind me who would choose to steer clear of us, but are in the throes of nicotine withdrawal. Awesome.

I'm unloading the last items, the beer and the Mountain Dew, when Gabriel and Joaquin come up to me with things in their hands. Joaquin has found a mini Etch-A-Sketch, and Gabriel has found Silly String. They ask anxiously if they can afford them with their gift cards, and erupt into jubilation when I tell them yes.

It's at this point that I realize First-Pregnancy-Cari would have looked upon this scene with self-righteous horror. And to amuse myself, I devised the following list:

Why The Woman In Front Of Me In Wal-Mart Is Probably The Worst Mother Ever
By Cari Donaldson, Mother of One

1. She's pregnant with her fifth child. Hasn't she ever heard of overpopulation?
2. She's in the cigarette line. She's probably smoking a pack a day.
3. She's buying beer. So she's guzzling beer while smoking out her 5th child.
4. She's also buying Mountain Dew. So she's a caffeine-consuming, beer-guzzling, nicotine addict.
5. She's got no boundaries, no limits on those kids. Just look at how she let two of them bully her into getting toys from the checkout isle.
6. I overheard her repeating the same two phrases over and over again in the toy isle. She isn't even trying to enrich her children's vocabulary.

And so, while Pregnant-With-First-Child Cari would have missed the mark on most of the items on her list, she not only provided me with a chuckle, but also the reminder that I still need to keep my judgements of others in line. As Father Bruce once suggested to me, I should cultivate "generosity of spirit".

Which is excellent council. But Cari Now is still going to stick her tongue out at Cari Then. She totally deserves it.