The Best Bad Day Ever

It was 10:39, I was Sca-rambling to get Little Giant in a sweatshirt, and get him out the door so we could go walking with our friends before I got too tired and cancelled. I was starving, and knowing that McDonalds had already stopped serving breakfast for the day (yeah, I'm not letting that one go for a while, sorry peeps), I quickly inhaled a granola bar, and packed a couple oranges and headed out. I picked up my good friend Angelina and we went to the park and did a couple laps around the duck pond with our kids in my new double jogging stroller.

Angie was walking fast, trying to shake off the very last of her baby weight.  I was walking as fast as I could with all this baby belly weight to carry. But we were both determined to get out and get walkin'.

Once upon a time, I used to run. I love running. But as soon as August hit with 100+ degree weather, and my morning sickness set in, I was done runnin'. A while ago, my doctor told me to exercise, and that yoga was not enough, so I should try to walk. Yeah, that didn't make me walk.

And then when Kim Kardashian got pregnant, I was reading about it online on some gossipy news website, and I started clicking on all the other celebrity pregnancy stories on the page.  I accidently clicked on the collection of pregnant celebrities who have posed nude on magazine covers over the last 20 years. (Yeah, if you are pregnant, don't do that.) So that made me actually start walking.



Then on New Years Eve, I was telling Angie and her husband all about the sweet deal The Rookie had scored on my new(used) jogging stroller. And Angie's Husband made her a deal that if she walked three times a week from then until April, he would buy her one too. This is a big deal my friends, because he is a really smart guy, who doesn't spend frivilously at all. He is more like the guy who will be rich someday because he saves all his money,  or invents something amazing, or invests in some stock that turns out to be the next Apple. But you will never know he is rich, because he still drives an old Honda Accord, and just lives off the interest of his billions. So knowing how monumental his offer was, she took the deal. And now we are walking three times a week.

Back to the duck pond.
It was huge and I made it around a couple times, but by about half way through the third time, my body was over it. So I waddled that last half a lap slowly back to the car. I was sore, but a good sore. (The kind of sore that makes you feel like you did something amazing for your body. I spent most of my teenage life high on that feeling from playing sports. That feeling literally made me so happy, that I kept playing sports in College. When that was over, I started running.)

Angie took this, while I sat on the ground and caught my breath.

So we made it back to the car, and both of us needed to stop by the grocery store to pick up some milk on the way home. (Isn't it weird the things you have in common with your friends? Like the fact that we both had to buy milk that day.) At the store we looked around for the cart with the children's ride on car attached. (You know the one where the kid can sit in the car attached to your grocery cart, and you push the whole monstrosity around the store. And it doesn't turn very well or fit in the produce area, but at least your kid stays happy for the duration of the shopping experience.)

Yeah, that one. We couldn't find it anywhere. So since we each only needed milk, we just put both our kids in the same cart. (What could happen right?) Her one year old in the child sitting area, and my child in the big part. I gave Little Giant a lecture about staying seated in the cart since he had never ridden in that area of a grocery cart before. Which he promptly ignored.

Then we stopped by the produce department because it was on the way to the milk. (Mistake number one) Angie needed some bananas and stuff any way.

Not five minutes into the shopping trip her son picked up a bananna, bit right into the peel and started choking on it. So we decided to put all the destructible items near LG (Mistake number two), and continued our quest for milk.

As we walked through the store I kept seeing things we were out of at home; cereal, snacks, frozen pizza. And all of a sudden, I realized how long it would be until I would get back to a grocery store again, and started grabbing things off the shelves and shoving them into the cart. I was like a squirrel stocking up on acorns for the winter. And Angie was no better. So there we were, two kids one cart, shoving food into every corner and crevice of the cart.

Except My Little Giant was riding in the cart where I was trying to shove food. So I tried to build a little cave of food around him. I was constantly shifting things around, keeping the frozen items from touching him, and trying to shove heavy things onto the shelf thing under the cart.  (Mistake number three)

Meanwhile, LG kept standing up, or would try to lay down on the bread, or reach for anything outside the cart that looked interesting. Angie's son eventually got sick of sitting in the cart altogether and she picked him up and carried him. So I tried to put LG in the child sitting area, but it apparently wasn't nearly as fun up there, so I had to lift him back into the body of the cart with all the groceries.

By this time, the whole trip was really wearing on my already sore and tired pregnant body. It wasn't a good sore any more, though. Now it was a painful, hips hurting, braxton hicks contractions, pretty sure my back is gonna break if I bend down one more time to put something under the cart, kind of sore. I even started limping a little, and barely made it to the back of the store where they keep the milk.

Just as I turned around to put the very last thing in the cart, I saw my Little Giant with two eggs in his hands...

Before I could even open my mouth to stop him, he smashed them together. Thus spilling raw egg on all the groceries near him as well as on the shelf below him. There was raw egg everywhere; On his hands, on cereal boxes, bags of veggie straws, produce, everywhere. It was a-mazing.

Luckily Angie had enough sense to have baby wipes with her. So I quickly wiped down my child and set him loose to play with a nearby ball display. We proceeded to blow through her entire baby wipes supply, plus another container of wipes that I grabbed off a shelf and opened on the spot, and several handfuls of paper towels, trying to get the egg off of our food.

The silver lining of the whole experience was when a worker came upon us, and helped out by grabbing her some new eggs, and me the paper towels. I told him I would pay for the eggs, but he said that it happens all the time. (Wait this happens all the time? Random kids buried in groceries in the back of carts, smash eggs together and make monumental messes due to the mistakes of their mother?) Pretty sure he was lying about that one. But he just took the ruined egg carton away. That man deserves a raise.

By the time we finished cleaning the egg off my face, LG had made a sufficient mess of the ball display, and Angie's son was now screaming. So we booked it to the exit, separated our groceries, paid, and got the heck out of there.

On the way out, we saw the cart with the children's ride on car.

Just sitting there.

It was like a stab in the gut. The tired, sore, frustrated, limping, egg on my shirt gut.

Yes I let them play in it while Angie loaded the groceries, yes it made it worse.

Afterwards Angie offered to buy lunch at Subway, and what pregnant woman can resist free food made by someone else. So we went to subway, which was packed. As soon as we walked in, Angie scouted the place and noticed they only had one highchair. Perfect. Oh, and all of the regular height tables were already full.

So there we were; two moms with two toddlers, sitting at a cocktail height table with Angie's son sitting in a low highchair. (Why do they call them highchairs if they are low? It really makes it annoying to try to explain this scenario.) My son sitting in a high, cocktail style regular chair, which I shoved right up to the table to keep him from trying to climb the three feet down to the ground.

While we ate, her son was entertained by wiping his now messy hands on our workout pants and then laughing about it. My son was watching a show on Youtube on my phone to distract him from trying to climb down. He only tried twice. And we made it out of there, all of us full and happy.

On the way back to the car, Angie caught a glimpse of her reflection in a window and mentioned that she cannot believe that she is out in public like this. (Remember we were still dressed for working out. All messy thrown up hair, no makeup, old T-shirts, and workout pants with food wiped on them.)

"Did you see this?" I said motioning to my face and hair.  

This sparked a gripping debate on who in fact looked worse. Which I believe I won. (It's nice to feel like a winner once in a while.)

On the way home, I reflected upon our outing. I realized that even though it was an epic fail, and even though there was egg on our groceries, and I was now completely exhausted, it was so nice to have a friend to share this bad day with. So much better than running errands with LG on my own. I cannot even imagine what would have happened if I was alone when he smashed those eggs. But I bet there would have been tears, possibly a tantrum, (from me of course, not him) and maybe a nervous breakdown.

So here's to you Angie, and to the Best Bad Day Ever. Lets try to walk in the mall on Saturday morning, see how that goes.