vacations stink… and why i can’t grocery shop

so tuesday, i managed to dig around in my hat a little more and discovered a rabbit named papa john.  essentially, i shuffled the week again, and had our friday pizza on tuesday.  and, in actuality it’s something that was going to happen anyway because we were so excited about having the new papa john’s open up, but realized that we were not going to be home on friday (date night!!!).  SO, that was my excuse.

anyway, yesterday, i finally HAD to go.  i had been wondering if it was really so bad, or if it was just one of those things that i was building up in my head as awful and making it worse and worse every time i procrastinated longer.

i had to head to redmond, so i figured i’d go to the bella bottega qfc, rather than my usual stop at safeway.  that was my first mistake.  no, actually, that was my last mistake.  the first was not doing it sooner, the second was taking all 3 kids with me.  if it is possible to make grocery shopping with 3 kids WORSE, i did by going to this store.  the whole fiasco took like an hour.  why, you ask?  allow me to enlighten you.

first of all, i was in a new store.  i’ve been there maybe twice ever, so i don’t know the layout, i don’t know what aisles contain what, i don’t have my mental ‘map’ of where i start and how i proceed to finish in the quickest possible time.  there was lots of back-tracking and circling as i realized that i’d missed an aisle, or had gone to one end of the store, but forgotten something on the list that was back at the other end.  ugh!

second, i had shane with me.  one would think that having a 9 year old with you would be easier than the 1 year old or the 3 year old.  NO!  there are a couple of reasons for this that i confirmed yesterday.  1) he’d rather be somewhere else. 2) he irritates layla, making her very unpleasant. 3) HE ASKS FOR STUFF!!!! oh, i hate this!  the reason feeds into this…

third, i’m pretty sure i have a little bit of ADD. i’ve never been diagnosed or anything, but it’s pretty obvious.  i’m scattered and flaky, every report card i ever brought home made some mention of day-dreaming and neglecting to complete my work, i forget stuff, yada yada yada… so a big store that i’m unfamiliar with, a kid on my back (who would grab things off the shelf behind me if i got too close to it, and then was unable to reach behind me to get it out of his hand), a kid in the cart (who was introducing herself and her brothers to EVERY shopper and employee we passed… not to mention had a notebook and pen with her and was showing me every little drawing she made and asking me every 5 seconds, “how do you make an ‘s’, how do you make a ‘u’”…) and another kid who kept asking “can we get some of this, do we need this, i like this, please mom can we get some of that…” and picking up every package of chicken and ground beef in the case while standing there… “shane, stop touching all of the chicken.” “but i like chicken.” “do you also like salmonella?”  all of this led to me being completely unable to concentrate or even read my list for that matter.  seriously, i would look at the paper, and see words on it, but they would just swirl around and around and i had to make a conscious effort to block out everything and purposefully read the words i had written, figure out what they meant, and to formulate a plan for how to find that item.  aaaggghhhhh!!!!!

i know that all the parenting books and experts and all that jazz say to involve your children in the shopping and it will make it a lot more pleasant for you, entertain/educate them, blah blah blah.  that seriously isn’t an option for me.  MAYBE if i had only 1 kid with me and only a few things on the list… but i have a hard enough time figuring out how i’m going to do it myself, let alone somehow delegate things to the kids. 

so anyway, we finally finished the shopping and i felt like i needed a drink!  but it’s done, and next week we’ll be back to our normal schedule and i can do it the way i usually do and it’ll be much less painful!

needless to say, i’m already dreading the summer.  i hate that.  i don’t want to be one of those parents who feels the need to sign her kids up for stuff all summer long, just to keep them from driving her crazy.  so somehow, between now and then i’ve got to figure out how to manage all these normal things that i’m used to doing w/ only 2 kids, with 3.  AND, how to make shane and layla get along.  they are just horrible!  gas and fire, i tell ya!  i mean, really, i’d like to somehow have shane experience a miraculous change of heart and start actually loving his sister and thus treating her like he does… but in the meantime, i just need him to STOP poking and kicking and irritating and bossing her around!  he’s never been a mean kid and it just kills me to see him being so mean to her. 

so… that got long.  i’ll shut up now.