A Slice o' My Life

So for almost a week there's nothing, now there's two entries in one evening?! Well, I just had to share this because it's basically my life story in a nutshell.

As I'm preparing to load the car and go pick up Natalie from school (a 40 minute roundtrip thanks to our rural relocation), I realize that Greek chicken in on tonight's menu and that I don't have Feta cheese. I have already defrosted the chicken and I know for sure Dave and I will be eating out tomorrow night (our last show of the season-Hairspray!). Well, I don't like to leave defrosted chicken uncooked for too long and as much as I hate taking all four kids into the grocery store alone, I just can't eat Kalamata olives without Feta and I'm just going to have to suck it up and stop by Albertson's.

Since I drop off one of Natalie's friends after school, I am strategically closer to the store than I was before we made this little arrangement. Now a grocery stop is convenient, or so I tell myself. So, we make our 20 minute trip 'into town,' sit in the endless carpool lane, I finish the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament, and the girls arrive at my car door in short order. (Digressing to say it's so cool when you and a friend have kids the same age and they are close too. L is the product of Dave's old roommate/my first church Sunday school teacher and the wonderful woman he married. We love getting together and so do the kids. I could watch them play all day.) Anyway, I drop off L, chat with her abuela in my broken Italian/Spanish (Spatalian?) and find out Natalie is invited to sleep-over tomorrow night. Woo hoo! One less kid for my cousin to watch while Dave and I are out. Yea! So, now it's time for the dreaded errand. As wound up as the kids sound from the back seats, I should be afraid, very afraid, and I am. But, I am more afraid of Greek chicken without Feta, so into the store we go.

As I feared, I am a walking recap of some of Bill Cosby's best work. "Tristan, be quiet! Caroline, sit down! Natalie come back here! Come here-come here, come here come here! Stop it! StopitStopitStopit!!" I tell Tristan to "calm down" so many times that Elisa starts shouting it from the shopping basket. "Cawm down, Twitan!!" (Okay, so that part was cute.) Some people say that keeping a group of kids together is like herding cats, for me it's more like chasing marbles once you've emptied the bag. Part of this is my fault, though. I did get one of those huge car-shaped buggies which holds three of the four kids. Unfortunately, Tristan and Caroline were in the "car" and couldn't stop fighting. To "punish" them, I told them to get out of the cart and walk. Hence, the "marble" effect. As I stumbled through the store trying to keep everyone together, I decided I was the one who was really being punished. I'll have to think of something else next time. (Like maybe learning my lesson and not taking all of them to the store at once.)

Now the deli aisle is right next to the store entrance, so a smart woman would have grabbed her Feta and gone straight to the cash register. I never said I was smart. So, as I grabbed my Feta and a $0.55 off coupon for it (yea!) I spotted that cantaloupes were $1 each in the produce section. From there I saw another "good deal" and then Natalie thought we needed some couscous to go with our chicken and before I knew it I had spent about $40. But hey, I had a coupon for the cheese and the rest was "on sale." Of course, there was a problem with the lady's credit card in front of me, but when I noticed Tristan had defiantly crawled back into the car part of the shopping cart, I pushed it right next to the cash register so he couldn't get out. It's the little things that make me happy, really. Of course, Elisa had squirmed out of the belt in the seat at the front of the cart, so I couldn't savor my little victory for long. I was too busy keeping her from belly-flopping onto the floor even though she desperately wanted to. Finally, the lady in front of me remembered her PIN# and we were quickly checked out and on our way back home. (Of course getting from the store and back into the car is never that simple, but I'll spare you the ugly details.)

So, we get home. I have to pit and chop the olives, so that keeps me busy for awhile. Natalie does her homework and we grab Lady and the Tramp as early evening entertainment so that I can fix dinner in peace. (Remember, Dave leaves for work when I go pick up Natalie and isn't around to help. Lucky me.) Of course, Elisa is not happy unless she is disrupting me, so she sits right under my feet at the stovetop emptying out all my pots and pans while I step over and around her browning chicken, steaming carrots, and making a sauce that might convince my kids that carrots are still good even when they aren't raw. It's all done pretty efficiently and I am happy with that. Even with Natalie setting the table for me, my plate is still lukewarm at-best when I sit down to eat. I eat the not-so-mushy carrots in orange marmalade sauce, the tomatoes and olives make a good compliment to the chicken, and even the Splenda-sweetened fruit is good. Then Natalie points out that we forgot to fix the couscous. Indeed we did. You know what else we forgot? The Feta.

This is my life, oh yes it is. At least the cheese was fifty-five cents off.