Losing My Mind

Yesterday I got more done that I can remember in a long time. I will not bore you with the silly details, but part of my errands to be run had to do with taking a rod-iron chair and getting it welded. It cost only a shocking six dollars. I was totally floored. If you are wondering, I am used to milk costing oh, around four bucks a gallon. Well, maybe a little less, but if you rounded it---you get it. Anyway, I dropped the chair off at 10, and the lady (who was gruff, somewhat dirty, major hick-like, and very rude) told me that I could pick it up at 2. I hate going back home when I am "in town", so I took the opportunity to take the kids to lunch, go walk around the mall in search of new New Balance running shoes, and that is about it.

I certainly discovered what young mothers with small children do during the day. They don't stay home. They take the kids to the mall and let them play in the play land inside. My kids were ok for some of the time and terrible for most of it. I mean, they argued all stinking day long. I think yelling is wrong, and I have already done some major repenting, but once I got in the car with them I let them have it. The girl broke down when we got some frozen yogurt and cried like a baby over nothing, the boys kept pelting each other on the heads or knocking each other down, therefore knocking stacks of shoes down at the shoe store. I warned them to stay near me when we first got there and I described to them what happened to the America's Most Wanted guy's kid. I didn't even leave out the detail that his head was severed. The result: they fearfully stuck to me like glue and antagonized one another right within arms reach of me. At least I was not constantly trying to herd them in, which has been a problem in the past.

Now don't get me wrong. They were not being terrors. It was just that no one else had kids because everyone else's kids my age were in school. On my way out of the mall I held the door open for a lady and she looked at my kids and said, "School's out today?" (Why, oh why, do people do that?!) I said that I homeschool and she gave me that look of "yeah, that's nice. I bet you do." Then she said something like, "It's nice they have a day off" or something like that---like it is any of her business. Makes me feel like a criminal.

Yeah, they took the day off yesterday. Yep. I took the stinking day off yesterday and I bought some running shoes and I bought a dress. When I tried the dress on, my daughter was in the dressing room with me. She smacked my exposed belly before I pulled the dress on and said, "I love your fat belly. It wiggles when I smack it! All moms have fat bellys don't they?"

Well, not all mothers, I thought. I remember when I was five to seven pounds more than I am now a lady in a dressing room told me that I should do what she did and cut out the carbs and I would lose ten pounds. I thought that was a little bold. Kind of like the boldness of the lady who exclaimed how nice it is that my kids could have the day off.

For the record, my belly is not fat, it just wiggles when smacked. Ha ha.