Errands

Last week I had every intention to get all my errands done on the day my older three were at their once-a-week school.  (Errand-running is the only time I wish my children went away to school– not boarding school, but down-the-street 8:30-to-3 school– so that I could run errands alone.  In silence.)  But I was waiting on the house-painter to finish, and then I was running out of time.  So I threw SweetP in the car with my grocery bags and my list.  Stop one: the local farm, for eggs and produce.  The sign said “Open 10-4” but the local farm was closed.  No eggs for me.

Undaunted (though we should have been), we drove over to Costco.  There are a few things I like to get at Costco– local organic butter packaged under their label (I know this because the man at the local organic dairy told me so), chocolate-covered pomegranate seeds, locally produced marinara sauce… and then a ton of other stuff that I load into my  cart because how could I possibly live without a 128-ounce jar of artichoke hearts?

As we pulled into the Costco parking lot, I was calculating how much time we would have there and whether or not we’d have time to run over to BB&B where I had a gift certificate to spend… and I realized I had neither my Costco card nor my checkbook. No Costco for me.  So I drove on over to BB&B… and no gift-card either.  I must have taken it out of my wallet right before vacation.

I would just have gone home, but the whole point of running these errands was that they were on the way to pick the children up.  And I had an hour until I could do that.  So SweetP and I went to a park instead.

And two days later, I piled four gabby children into the car and struggled through the crowded aisles at Costco with all of them.  Only one of us was injured by a shopping cart.  No one ate any samples.  Only two ladies said to me, “Wow, are all these children yours?” (as if I would ever take someone else’s children to Costco with me).  Only one man said, “Gee!  You have your hands full!” (and he wasn’t referring to the 128-oz can of artichoke hearts either.)

But the upshot was that when we got home, I had four helpers to carry the food down to the pantry shelves while I contemplated having just spent the month’s grocery budget in one hour.