Last Friday it rained all day. My toddler didn’t take a nap. I had been in the house most of the week with sick kids and I still needed to get a birthday present for a best friend’s party, for my oldest daughter.
It was one of the those days we all have once in a while. But sometimes it’s nice to know such things happen to other people that usually seem so normal. Believe me, I’m far from normal or always perfectly put together. So I’m going to tell you about this afternoon where I got stuck carrying a stinky cloth diaper through the bookstore along with a wet purse with milk and smooched crackers in the bottom of it.
Feeling optimistic as I pulled out of the school parking lot with my three daughters, I brought up the idea of an outing to go get a birthday gift. Then came, “But noooooooo. I have to get her two boxes of Squinkies because that’s what she wants and that’s what I told her I would get,” said my loyal daughter about her friend whom she’s been “BFF” with since she was two.
Me, also knowing her mother since the girls were two, knows how much the mom can’t stand these little Squinkies running a mock in the house and the drama that follows when the micro sized toys quickly become lost into the depths sofa land. We had one experience with this, before Squinkies were forever banned at our house. So naturally, I couldn’t bear to do that to this mama friend of mine and bring dozens of the little creatures into her house. The girls without a doubt were teaming up on this one.
Since it was raining this was going to be a one-stop shopping endeavor, therefore lessening my bargaining power with my daughter as to where to go and what to get.
I have a philosophy that if it’s raining hard enough to need an umbrella, I stay put and I wait for it to pass. On most days I just don’t have an extra hand to maneuver an umbrella. It’s more trouble than it’s worth. Friday it probably would have been worth the trouble.
My idea of hitting up the art supply store for a gift was nixed. Even the fancy toy store they never pass up was nixed. But oh, the bookstore, that, my daughter decided was the perfect place to get a gift – from one best friend nerd to the next. Coffee for me, milk for them, cookies and all will be happy at the bookstore. The peace will be restored. I even splurged for a pumpkin cheesecake seeing I hadn’t been out of the house in a week. I got two bites before we had to grab everything and make our first run to the potty.
It was mostly a peaceful trip, between the poop and the milk cup that spilled in my purse mushing up the cracker crumbs that had been living in the bottom of it. And having to reorganize the whole section of fairy books in order to put them in the right order with the right series so my daughter could properly ponder over the perfect choice of books. Because heaven for bid, you don’t read a book without reading the series starting with the one that starts with the 1! But we handled it all calmly.
Then came our second trip to the potty when the last of my toddler girl’s stomach bug, mushy muck poop came out of her and into her cloth diaper. I had no wet bag, no wipes and no diaper. Because it was raining I didn’t plan on going anywhere.
So I took my cheesecake out of its paper bag, rinsed out the diaper, wrapped it in paper towels and stuck it in the bag. The cheesecake stayed in my hand. And I did, just to have you know, still eat that cheesecake – because it’s my favorite desert ever and I wasn’t going to be denied of it that day.
My toddler is now wearing no diaper under her pants that barely stay up without a bulky cloth diaper filing the rear.
Finally everyone makes their selections of books and we head to the checkout line. That’s where my toddler shakes her milk (what was left of it) all over the tile floor. Then the paper towels (still dry) wrapped around the poopy diaper, get used to wipe up the spilled milk.
We run to the car with no umbrella. Then I take the books out of the bag (the only thing keeping them dry from the rain) in order to use the plastic bag to put under my diaper-less daughter’s bottom to save her car seat from an accident and having to wash the whole thing. Luckily she is a potty training wonder child (when I want her to be) and she didn’t go the whole way home.
In the car my oldest daughter asked very politely to please get some ink for my printer because she had a story she wanted to type out and print for school. Office Depot was on the way home so I stopped. It was like a three ring circus while all three girls played hide and seek circling the isle where I was standing, studying the photos of all the 800 printers and 10,000 kinds of ink trying to remember which one mine takes.
I have a thing against printers and I went years without owning one as an effort to be paperless and save ink cartridges, to be greener. Needless to say, I had no idea what kind of ink to buy for my very seldom-used printer. But for a story typed by a seven year old titled “The day the earth stopped spinning,” yes I’ll buy it.
Lucky there was no peeing on the floor in the store from my diaper-less toddler.
We made it home, to pile out of Betty the Bus (our van) along with our coats, bags, poopy diaper, school bags, empty snack containers, empty milk cups, banana peels, my dirty wet purse and no umbrella.
What a day! We survived.
