Thank you, lady at the mall!

On Saturday, my family and I went to the mall. We haven’t been to the mall in ages. I have a serious phobia to crowds. Crowds, for me, are often defined as other people being in the mall with me. Saturday was especially busy. There was some sort of police dept. firefighters bizarre with vehicles and a huge amount of really fine looking community service men in uniform. YUM. The kids were acting their ages…6 and 3. I wanted to shop for clothes and knowing the kids would never stand for that I sent DH and all four kids to get a drink in the bookstore at the coffee shop located there.


I looked around the clothing store. Tried on a couple of things and then realized that DH had the credit card and I would need him to pay. I went to the bookstore and sat down with the kids. DH was at the counter. Apparently, I shop for clothes really fast or the bookstore has the slowest barista on the planet. While I was sitting there, chatting with the kids about what they had been doing while I was shopping, this lady walks over to our table and says, “Can I say something about your kids?” OH CRAP, I hate, HATE unsolicited advice and am not that gracious about taking it. But, with my kids sitting there I felt the need to at least attempt being diplomatic so, I say, “Uh, yeah, sure.” (I’m eloquent that way)

She then proceeded to tell me that my kids are…The BEST behaved kids that she has ever seen. She went on and on…I actually got a little verklempt she was so complimentary about my kids. It was such a pick me up, it made me feel good about our parenting style. When DH came over with the drinks, I told him about the compliments and I could see him visibly swell with pride over his well-behaved brood.

About that time, Lukey, in an effort to communicate more effectively by adding large arm movements to his story spilled his drink. I took him to the bathroom to get him cleaned up. The two older girls came with me because they were beginning to get a little squirrely. While I was gone, the woman came over again to tell my husband how great our kids were and asked if she could buy them a treat. DH is not one to turn down free food so he of course said yes. Free and cookies are two of his favorite words in the English language…put ‘em together and he is in heaven.

Eventually all the cookies were eaten, the drinks were drank, spilled or thrown away and it was time for us to go. As we were leaving, my oldest daughter went over and told the nice lady, “Thank you for the cookies, they were sooo good!” The mall lady got a little teary eyed.

My good mom feeling lasted for quite a while. I don’t know if pod people replaced my kids or if the mall was pumping in air borne tranquilizers through the heating system. Whatever it was, I was able to buy some clothes at the clothing store…the kids sat quietly by the register while the sales clerk tried to talk me into getting the store credit card eventually ringing up my purchase even though I could have saved $11.00 blah, blah, blah.

They stayed together in a group as we walked through the rest of the mall, and left the play area without throwing a fit when we said it was time to leave.

As we were exiting the mall, we decided to buy some drinks from Target for the ride home. At that point, whatever was keeping my kids from being themselves wore off. Lucas took off down an aisle and wouldn’t come back when called, Dee Dee started to cry because Lola wouldn’t let her carry the bag from the clothing store and a passing couple gave all of us a dirty look and the obligatory, “Some people!” once they were passed.

I started to laugh hysterically…yup those are my kids! I did look around for the mall lady... knowing my luck she'd be just around the cornder waiting to demand her cookes back. I must have had good Karma that day...we got out without the nice mall lady seeing my 'real' kids!

Monday Madnesss.

Monday Madness…it was as if this journal topic cursed me today.


This morning started out pretty quiet for me and the babies. I’ve had a sucking chest cold that is slowly killing me by making it impossible to breathe. It doesn’t help that there are so many funny ladies on this site that make me laugh which causes me to have huge coughing spasms. So I’ve been staying home and trying to learn how to laugh again without coughing.

The problem with this plan is that sometimes I need to go to the post office for my eBay store. I had a package today that I’ve been putting off mailing for a week. It needed to go to Canada, which meant a trip to the post office for me. My DH has the same office hours as the PO so waiting until he comes home is not an option. If I had been smart, I would have gone this morning. Hell, if I had the IQ of a hamster I would have mailed it on Sat. when I could have gone to the PO by myself. Woulda, coulda, shoulda. I went to the PO after school with all four kids. My reasoning, I have to go pick up the girls so I’ll be out anyway and usually the PO isn’t that busy anyway.

This is where the curse enters the picture. I had to drive around the parking lot of the PO for 3 times before finding a space. When we got into line, there were already 17 people ahead of us. Of course, each of these 17 people was trying to send chemicals to Iraq or something equally funky. Not one of them just needed stamps! Not unless it was stamps hand painted by Picasso that had the self-sticky back. Then two of the clerks decided to go on break…leaving one window open…HELLO! Can you at least wait on the angry people trying to send chemicals to Iraq? The fact that I was doped up on cold medication probably didn’t effect my perception of what was going on at all.

Amazingly, my kids were pretty good considering the situation. They sat on the floor and played with each other. They got a bit noisy but it’s not as if we were in the library. The guy behind me kind of wanted to say something but he never did. A wise decision on his part.

After what seemed like hours, but in reality was probably not more than a few minutes, we made it to the front of the line. The kids were about ready to climb the walls but they held it together long enough for me to pay and get out of the lobby of the PO.

When we got to the car, I found three of the cards that the PO puts on their boxes to show which ones are empty in Lukey's pockets. Whoops...guess I wasn’t watching my little demons as well as I should have been.