Archive for the 'Wal-Mart' Category

WalMart - Come As You Are, Even In Your Pajamas

February 27, 2008 | Snips And Snails, Wal-Mart

Last week, after the second blood draw, Sean and I went to Wal-Mart to get a few things that we needed and a few things we didn’t. He had been such a brave soldier through the whole ordeal — much better than mommy — that I wanted to let him pick out a new Lightning McQueen diecast car or something frivolous.

Because it was a fasting blood draw, we had to yank him out of bed at dark thirty in the morning. Consequently it was now the mid-afternoon and he was still wearing what he had on first thing in the morning when we put him in the car – pale blue long john pajamas, slippers with big snowman heads on the toes and a black and orange Halloween sweatshirt that says “Boo!” on the front and crazy rock star hair.

Apparently age four is when self-awareness starts to kick in because as we were getting out of the car, he stopped and looked down at himself.  He was mortified.  With a hand gesture that swept from his shoulder down to his knees, he cried, “Oh no! I can’t wear this to the store!”

About that time a sizeable lady about my age scuffed by in slippers and what appeared to be pajama bottoms.

I laughed to myself. I wanted to say, “You know what Sean, you are right. You cannot wear pajamas to the store. It is just not right. We need to go home and change.”

I was relieved to know that even though Sean is in the Wal-Mart, he is not of the Wal-Mart.

Food Rut

January 29, 2008 | Wal-Mart

I am in a food rut. Do you ever get in a food rut?

Normally I love to cook, I enjoy it, it’s another creative outlet. I love to feed people. 

But right now, nothing sounds good. I can’t think of anything to cook. I don’t want to cook anything. No one wants to eat anything I cook even if I could think of something to cook. Honestly, I would be perfectly happy to not cook anything and not eat anything, but these people called my family, they want to eat. They are so needy.

And we are out of everything except for the stuff we don’t like, like the cans of little miniature corns (yuck) that have been in my pantry for three years.  And the stuff that we do have needs one ingredient that we don’t have to make. Consequently I have been avoiding going to the grocery store. Wal-Mart stock has probably plummeted. Sorry Wal-Mart stockholders.

Today I could not put it off any longer. I had to go to the store and it was going to be painful. I just had no idea how painful.

Sean and I loaded up and braved the 120mph winds and went to Wal-Mart. And we filleth our cart until it overfloweth. And just as we were heading to the checkout lanes, I heard this ‘VROOOWMPH” sound, kind of like the Dolby Surround “The Audience Is Listening” sound at the beginning of a movie, and just like at the movies, the lights dimmed and went out.

Clerks starting telling the shoppers to go to the checkout lanes, that they were going to have to close the store.

But then I heard the VROOOMWMPH again and the lights went back on. Yay for the on VROOOWMPH! So I lingered over the red and green peppers before making my way to checkout lines, because this was Wal-Mart! Wal-Mart has a backup plan, right? Like a backup generator to keep the economy moving, right? Wal-Mart is like the government, we can depend on them, right?

I found an open lane and had half of my stuff checked out when once again VROOOWMPH! and no lights. So in my head, I said crapcrapcrap. I have given up cussing out loud, but inside my head, I still need more work.

The store manager said, sorry folks, the power won’t be back on for an hour or more. You can wait if you like.

So again, in my head, I said crapcrapcrap, because now I was going to have to get in my car, go to another store, all with a four-year-old who was almost maxed out on grocery shopping for the day, and start all over. And that thought made me want to cry or cuss, and so I opted for cussing, in my head.  Perhaps I should have stopped here and prayed for humor, but I’m a work in progress, y’all already know that.

I started thinking that maybe God doesn’t want me to have groceries. Maybe he wants me to eat the little corn.  I just didn’t see that he needed to bring down the local economy over a can of miniature corn.

So anyway, Sean and I left that Wal-Mart, drove a mile and a half down the road to the next Wal-Mart where we once again filleth our cart till it overfloweth. But this time, we did not linger over the peppers.

I’m still in a food rut. I have no idea what I will fix for dinner except that it will have peppers.

The Brown Shoes

January 15, 2008 | Antique Embarrassment, Wal-Mart

Today I had to go to Wal-Mart. And just now I’m cringing at the thought of how many posts I have started with that sentence.

Since it was a bit on the chilly side today, I pulled out a pair of casual coffee-colored suede-ish (not to be confused with Swedish) lace-up shoes that I really love and have had for a number of years. They are the kind of shoes that you love so much that you go back and buy them in another color. And I feel perfectly okay using “you” in that sentence because I’m pretty sure many of “you” do the same thing.

The problem with getting to be my age (and I say that as if there is only one problem) is that sometimes certain events, like say the purchase of a pair of shoes, seems like one or two years ago when in fact it was more like eight or nine years ago.  And sometimes, like today, that is a problem because certain materials have a shelf life. There is a finite period of time before decomposition and disintegration of certain materials occur.  And this disintegration, that might occur, needs to be timed juuuuust right.

Unfortunately, today was one of those days when apparently my timing was off.

Because I left the house wearing two shoes that looked like this.

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And I came home wearing one of those shoes, looking like this.

 

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I was merrily strolling  down the produce aisle in my favorite suede-ish type shoes when I had some sort of shoe blow out.

 

All of a sudden, and for no discernable reason, I was half an inch shorter. I looked down and I was standing in a pile of crumbly black disintigrating rubber. I looked behind me and saw a trail of crumbly black disintigrating rubber. It was like I was leaking Oreo crumbs out of the leg of my jeans. I felt like I should sweep up or something. Then I realized that sweeping up in Wal-Mart would be an all-time low, even for me – possibly even lower than the day I flushed my sunglasses at Lego Land.

 

Quite honestly I didn’t really know what I should do.  I considered heading over to the shoe department and putting on another pair of shoes, but the thought of walking around the store in plastic shoes shackled with elastic seemed somewhat less cool than leaving a trail of Oreo-looking detritus in my wake.

 

So I just schlumped along with my head held high trying to rise above my crumbling, disintegrating pride.

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Penance: Three Hail Mary’s And A Trip To Wal-Mart

December 3, 2007 | Silliness, Wal-Mart

The other night I dreamed that I died and went to heaven and when I met Jesus at the gate he said, “Remember that time you busted my head off?  Well take this.”  And then I was cast into hell, which was actually Wal-Mart on a Sunday afternoon.

And remember that part in the Bible that says if your eye causes you to sin that you should gouge it out and if the left hand causes the right to sin, then you should cut if off?  Well apparently my right hand was feeling really repentant about the whole dropping Jesus on his head thing because in the shower on Sunday, while I was shaving my legs, my right hand “slipped” and tried to slice off my left hand. Luckily, the left hand has always been a pretty agile and wily kind of hand and was able to zig and then zag and then serpentine and it got off with what I thought was just a nick in the nail, no blood. Yay for the left hand, boo for the right hand.

But later, as I was making the bed and tucking the covers under the mattress, swiftly executing the perfect hospital corner that is essential to a well-lived life, I realized I had sliced my fingernail deep into the quick because a thread from the blanket caught the….. and oooeeeowwee! Wailing and gnashing of teeth ensued. Yeah. It was a near death experience.

Then later that day… (cue Twilight Zone music) I WAS in Wal-Mart and verily I say to ye, it was hell. I won’t describe the kind of hell Wal-Mart is on Sunday because I know y’all are sinners too, just like me, and have probably been cast into Wal-Mart on a Sunday.  It causes you to rethink your life, doesn’t it?

So I get in line with my necessities – plaid wired Christmas ribbon, tortilla chips, more plaid wired Christmas ribbon – and wait for all eternity as the snot encrusted little boy in line behind me, who is standing in the back of his mother’s cart eating a cookie, keeps trying to wipe his mushy cookie hands on the back of my shirt.  And as I’m trying to dodge cookie boy, the elderly man in front of me is telling me a long and involved story in what may or may not have been English.

When it’s finally my turn to check out, I put my stuff on the line. Chatty Cathy, who grew up to be a cashier at Wal-Mart, sees the bandaid on my finger and asks what happened. Without thinking I told her that I cut myself shaving.  She stopped scanning and asked incredulously, “You shave your hands?”

And because I am rotten and wanted to mess with her and be the freakiest person she had to check out on a Sunday, I just nodded and offered no further explanation.

Some Occasions Just Call For Fancy

January 18, 2007 | Mildly Amusing, Wal-Mart

I went to Wal-Mart today and there was no incident. I just wanted to report that.

However.

Last week when Sean and I went grocery shopping, he was very insistent that he wear his dress shoes. With his sweatpants. I tried to tell him there was no reason to get all fancied up, that we were just going to Wal-Mart and he might not want to go to the trouble. But he was insistent saying, “I need to be fancy.” And well, I can understand that. Sometimes one needs to be fancy, even if it is just at Wal-Mart.

The extra effort was not lost on the greeter.

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Electric Cart Lady Karma

January 9, 2007 | Mildly Amusing, Wal-Mart

I lost Sean’s diaper bag, but thanks to some good electric cart lady karma, I got it back.

I really hate to lose things. I check my wallet three or four times after using my credit card to make sure that I have put it back in it’s proper place and my plane tickets are always gray and frayed by the time I hand them to the gate agent from making sure they are still in my purse where I put them three minutes before. But the worst part of losing something is the obsessing that must follow.

I really hated to lose this bag because after going through several different versions, this particular diaper bag was just right - not too big, not too small and not too fem for Antique Daddy to carry. It’s made of brown canvas and has little outer pockets for drinks and lots of inner pockets for Clorox wipes and Purell and all the rest of the disinfecting stuff we OCD types haul around. I found this bag in the tack shop at PetCo and now that I think about it, I’ve probably been carrying around a feedbag. Which makes my total lack of cool make a lot more sense.

It was several days before I realized Sean’s feedbag diaper bag was MIA, but I knew exactly where it was. Wal-Mart. I mean it’s not like I had been to the spa, Neiman’s, The Kimball and then out for a three-martini lunch. If I had been, I certainly wouldn’t have had a diaper bag with me and if I did have a diaper bag with me, I would have chucked it out the car window on my way down the driveway. No, sadly, if I’m not at home, I’m probably at Wal-Mart - another contributing factor to my chronic uncool.

Over the Christmas holidays we had a lot of visitors. A lot. And old Mother Antique Mommy’s cupboard was bare. I normally keep the pantry of a Mormon housewife. I usually have enough canned and dried goods on hand to survive a nuclear winter or at least host dinner for 120 on short notice, except for table favors and I doubt even Martha can do that. So I had to make one of those grueling stocking-up trips to the store. In the process of unloading one metric ton of canned goods onto the conveyor belt and spinning the turnstyle-bag-thingee and shouting “Big money!” as though I was on Wheel of Fortune, keeping track of Sean and chastising the cashier as I like to do, I must have set the diaper bag on the floor or somewhere I wouldn’t usually set it. Oh that the person in line behind me might have beseeched the cashier on my behalf to return my bag.

Several days later, when I finally did realize the bag was missing, I went back to the store, stood in line at the Customer Service desk only to have the gal tell me that she hadn’t seen a brown diaper bag. When I asked her if she could please just look, she tossed a glance over her shoulder and said, “Nope. Don’t see it.” Deflated, yet undeterred in my obsession, I went home where I could obsess more comfortably.

Like Nancy Drew (minus Ned and a convertible) I could not rest until the mystery of the vanishing diaper bag was solved. Three days later I decided to give it one last try and I called the store to inquire about said diaper bag hoping for a different person with a different answer. Apparently I had earned some good karma on the electric-cart-lady-egg-return deal. Someone competent answered the phone. She asked me to hold on while she checked lost and found. After she dropped the phone on the desk (which rendered me deaf only for a short time), she shuffled some papers, knocked over some boxes, used a blower dryer, ran her desk through a wood chipper and then zipped up an angry cat into a suitcase - at least that’s what it sounded like on my end anyway. Then she got back on the line and reported that yes indeed, they had my diaper bag! I was so happy.

I have my diaper bag back and I owe it all to the Electric Cart Lady. God bless you Electric Cart Lady.

I Don’t Actually Work At Wal-Mart

January 5, 2007 | Antique Crazy, Sometimes Tart, Wal-Mart

Jeff Foxworthy says that if you spend more than 40 hours a week at Wal-Mart and you don’t work there - you might be a redneck. This gives me pause for concern.

So.

Yesterday, I was at Wal-Mart for the few things I had failed to get on my previous five trips earlier in the week. I tend to have bad luck when it comes to check out lines and I’ve learned that the key is not to find the shortest line, but to spot the most skilled checker.

With that criterion in mind, I landed in a line directly behind THE electric cart lady. The checker was a young man, about 20 and he was reasonably proficient. He managed to get electric cart lady checked out and on her not-so-merry way in no time at all and then he began checking my few things.

I noticed that as I pulled my cart forward to the bag-turnstyle-thingee that electric cart lady had left behind a bag that contained a carton of eggs. So I told the young man checking the groceries that she probably hadn’t gotten too far and that if he hurried, he could catch her. So I’m standing there with outstretched arms holding a bag of eggs across the conveyor belt as though I’m offering him my first-born son. And checkout boy just looks at me. And then he looks at the eggs. And then back at me. With contempt. I’m not sure if the contempt was for me or for the eggs. Maybe he can’t eat dairy, I don’t know. But then he rolls his eyes to emphasize his contempt for 46-year-old women offering eggs. And I could see why. After all, a man of his stature and in his position could not be seen running after an electric cart lady hollering, “Ma’am, you forgot your eggs!” So undignified.

So to help him in making a good choice, I thrust the eggs at him again and said to him in my best mother voice, “Young man. Go. Take that woman her eggs.” I nodded my head at him and gave him my disturbing “is it sweet or is it wicked” smile. And that must have frightened him because he took the eggs and trotted after electric cart lady, but not before heaving a sigh of yet more contempt. I waited patiently for his return while the three people in line behind me took turns heaving sighs of contempt in my direction. It’s good practice for when Sean becomes a teenager.

When he resumed his post, I said, “There now. Aren’t you glad you did that? Wasn’t she appreciative?”

And he said flatly, “No. No she wasn’t.”

“But oh! Think of all the stars in your crown!” I said with much merriment.

No. I didn’t really say that. I just said, “Oh. I can see that.”

As I left, I checked the bag-turnstyle-thingee three times to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. I didn’t want checkout boy and three contempt-heaving shoppers to return my eggs to me one knuckleball at a time.

Peace On Earth Good Will Towards Electric Cart Ladies

December 8, 2006 | Mildly Amusing, Wal-Mart

Yesterday I discovered that we were dangerously low on plastic sparkly Christmas stuff. How on earth could we celebrate the birth of Our Savior without a plastic toad wearing a Santa hat for our fake tree? We couldn’t y’all, we just couldn’t. So off I went to Wal-Mart in search of Christmas.

If you’ve ever been to a Wal-Mart - and I suspect you have if you are still reading - you’ve probably wondered why on earth they make the Christmas aisles so dang narrow? Are they not aware that their customers are by and large (pun intended) super-sizers? My suspicion is that the guys who man the security cameras are also the ones who set up the aisles and they are just hoping some sort of incident will break out, some sort of electric cart lady-crazed mommy incident. That would make some good YouTube.

And so.

Thursday morning I find myself wearing Wal-Mart athletic wear in the Wal-Mart holiday department. And I know right then that nothing good can come of this.

I make a right turn down the blue/white ornament aisle and I notice that there is a sizeable lady in her electric cart taking up more aisle than would allow me to pass with or without a cart. So I kind of stand there for a minute and attempt to look beyond her to see if I really even want to be in the blue/white row.

I’m pretty sure I don’t want to be in the blue/white row because I’ve been in the blue/white row almost every day this week. I guess I think the stockers put out the good stuff out after I leave. But they don’t. It’s the same blue/white crap stuff that they put out in September, but a fresh supply of blue/white crap stuff. But what I think it demonstrates to y’all is how hopeful I am. I am a person with hope. A person who hopes to discover the mother lode of fresh blue/white sparkly plastic cr stuff that Wal-Mart has been holding out on us.

As I’m standing there looking beyond electric cart lady, I notice that her head looks like a pea perched atop a sack of flour. She can’t turn her head, so she just turns her eyes. She sighs at me and gives me this “Do you mind?” look, as though I were trying to read a newspaper over her shoulder. Apparently I didn’t see the Do Not Disturb sign on the blue/white aisle. I give her my “No problemo!” smile and baby step back out of the aisle. I am in the Christmas spirit. God rest ye merry electric cart ladies!”

No problem is right. There is more stuff from whence the blue/white stuff came just one aisle over. I head for the red/green or hot pink/lime or silver/white or wooden/country aisle because I’m all patient and easy going like that and it’s the holiday season! Somebody get that electric cart lady some figgy pudding!

As I’m standing in the country ornament aisle looking at the fabulous array of tacky beautiful foreign factory made hand-crafted ornaments that have absolutely nothing to do with Christmas, I hear the hum of electric cart lady coming down “my” aisle. She pulls her cart within inches of my knee. And she stares at me. She clears her throat. I look at her expectantly thinking perhaps she wants me to reach something for her. “Can you move? I need to get through,” she says in a voice that sounds eerily like Beevis.

I respond by saying:

a) That thang got a reverse on it?
b) Your point is?
c) You’re not the boss of me.
d) I’d like to see you get off that thing and make me.

Because I fear being featured on YouTube if I get into a fight with an electric cart lady in the Wal-Mart holiday department, I instead say, “Sure. Let me just grab my Santa Toad and I’ll be out of your way. Can I get one for you too?”

Shamu Shops At Wal-Mart

November 7, 2006 | Antique Crazy, Wal-Mart

I am loath to admit that much of my wardrobe comes from the Wal-Mart active wear department these days. It has come to that. Unthinkable for a gal who in her 20s once ate at the happy hour buffet for an entire month so that she could spend her entire grocery budget on a pair of Joan & David boots.

The reason I end up buying so many of the things I wear at Wal-Mart is simple: I am there. Everyday I am there. I have a cart. I throw it in the cart. I take it home. I wear it. End of story.

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This morning, after I donned a brand new pair of black Danskin “athletic” pants and a matching black long-sleeved top with blue and white stripes down the sleeves I was thinking that I looked as though I could pass for a person who actually works out, a person who actually deserves to be wearing so-called athletic wear. I was thinking that cheap clothes are not THAT bad. Until this:

Sean: Hey Mom! I like your diving suit!
Antique Mommy: My what?
Sean: Are you going diving with Shamu?

I looked at myself in the mirror. I did look like I was going diving with Shamu.

Perhaps I need to rethink my Wal-Mart wardrobe.

Things At The Grocery Store That Make You Want To Say Darn

October 3, 2006 | Sometimes Tart, Wal-Mart

1. The 400-pound deaf lady in the electric cart who is memorizing the entire section of jelly and refuses to move so that you might grab your blueberry jelly and be on your merry way.

2. The unshaven out-of work single guy wearing pajamas bottoms who wants to chat you up about 2% vs skim.

3. The woman in leopard leggings who insists on putting her items on the check out conveyor belt even though you still have half a cart to unload.

4. The cashier who double scans a $20 box of diapers which you discover only after you are on your way home.

5. Getting home to find the bottle of pomegranate juice you splurged on leaked all over the back of your car.

6. The bag boy who puts the frozen turkey in with the bread.

7. Running a cart laden with $153.71 worth of groceries over your own freshly painted and pedicured toe.

8. Spending $153 on groceries instead of a nice pair of shoes.

Antique Wal-Mart Babe

August 8, 2006 | Antique Crazy, Wal-Mart

Sunday, I violated not only one of God’s commandments, but one of my own: Thou shalt not go to Wal-Mart on the Sabbath. But it had to be done. We were out of Cheetos.

Usually when I darken the door of Wal-Mart in the middle of the week, I’m all dolled up in a pair of paint splattered cut-offs, a faded Old Navy tank top, flip flops, no makeup and a ponytail. I like to accessorize my look not with stylish earrings - that’s too expected for someone as trendy as moi - but with a toddler on my hip for a bit of whimsy. Since it was Sunday and I had been to church earlier in the day, I had on a dab of makeup and my hair had been recently washed. And I was minus a kid attached to my thighs like a bad pair of leggings. So, yeah, I was looking pretty good for me.

After selecting the least disgustingly filthy cart, I gave it a perfunctory Clorox swabbing and then headed into the store in task-mode ready to get the goods and get out of there. I stood near the entrance by the cookies, reviewing my list and making a mental plan of attack.

As I was going over my list, I felt someone looking at me. I felt it on my neck. I felt eyeballs on my neck. I lifted just my eyes from my list to see a young guy, maybe 24, clad in cowboy attire complete with Stetson, standing by the roasted chickens. Staring at me. I looked behind me to see whom it was that might have captured his attention, expecting to find a 20-something Carrie Underwood look-alike. No Carrie, just icky Wal-Mart cookies.

I looked back to my list and I felt the eyeballs again. He was still there. Still staring. I was still a little sensitive from my recent McDonald’s experience, so I checked my blouse to make sure it was buttoned.

Gawking cowboy or not, I had stuff to do, so I headed into the store — towards him but only because he was standing between me and my Cheetos. As I walked in his direction, he nervously strode off towards the ladies clothing, but unfortunately, he was still looking at me when he walked into a rounder of clothes. The last I saw of him was two cowboy boots sticking out from under a rack of ugly flame-stitched sweaters.

Is it really an ego boost when you’re turning heads in Wal-Mart? But then again, at my age, you take what you can get.

Must be the new math…

January 14, 2006 | Sometimes Tart, Wal-Mart

This recent exchange with the cashier at the grocery store:

AM: There was a sign that said red peppers were two for $3.
Cashier: No ma’am, they are $1.50 each. Do you still want both of them?
AM: Yes, I want both of them. That would be $3. Two for $3.  $1.50 x 2.
Cashier: (rolling her eyes and twisting her eyebrow ring)  Ma’am they are $1.50 each, do you want both of them or not?
AM: Umm…  Okay, $1.50 each and not a penny more.

Christmas Shopping 101

December 5, 2005 | Mildly Amusing, Sometimes Tart, Wal-Mart

Christmas Shopping 101: A crash course study in the inanity of humanity. This course meets at Wal-Mart and studies holiday shoppers in their natural habitat.

Our first case study meets in the Lawn and Garden department where the aisles are wide enough to accomodate Calista Flockhart or a zipper turned sideways, but not both. Here we will observe the shopper who is searching for just the right large electrified plastic lawn ornament to compliment the plaid sofa and washing machine on her front porch. The shopper in this example wears leggings three times too small thus cutting off the circulation to her ears which is the only reasonable explanation as to how the she can be oblivious to the trail of bleeding ear drums and busted fluorescent lights left in the wake of her screaming child. The child, clad in a diaper and T-shirt, does not appear to enjoy Christmas shopping. He/she is positioned in the cart seat like a wet lasagna noodle and breaks from screaming periodically to gnaw on the cart handle.

Our second case study will take place in the Photo department where you will observe a 93-year-old deaf woman getting a lesson from the only clerk available on how to use her new digital camera. The clerk speaks loudly and ernestly about e-mail to which Granny Clampitt responds, “You say this is on sale?” The people in the line behind her, which snakes around the perimeter of Texas, are only there to pick up their photos. Their collective goal is to get out of the store before New Years or before someone’s toddler blows a gasket - which ever comes first. Those in line are conflicted in their emotion and alternate between exasperation and greater levels of exasperation.

Our third and final case meets at the check-out area where we observe the line from the Photo department has wrapped around and become tangled up with the check-out lines and some sort of spontaneous shopping-cart square dance has broken out. Off to the side we see an abandoned cart of carefully selected holiday gifts and a woman leaving the store holding a squirming toddler by the ankles. “Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays!” the greeter calls to the woman wrestling the child like a boa constrictor. “Yeah. Right. Merry Christmas. What. Ever.”

At the end of this course you will learn how to shop on-line.

Advanced Grocery Shopping

August 16, 2005 | Antique Crazy, Wal-Mart

The earth is inhabited by two kinds of people: Those who love to go to the grocery store and then the other 98% of the population — those who have a life. Until my son came along, I was among the 2% who rank a trip to the grocery store right up there with a day at Six Flags. Lately, however, going to the store is more like going to a friend’s Tupperware party — you are obligated to go, you’re looking for the cheapest thing to buy and you hope you don’t have to go again for a long time.

Once upon a time, my weekly visit to the store was a serendipitous adventure. Tom Thumb was my boyfriend. I couldn’t wait to see him. It was exciting to think about what new and exotic fruit or vegetable or gourmet item he might have for me – would it be tomatillos, star fruit or imported olives? I would spend several hours going systematically up and down the aisles looking at all the different items and thinking about what fabulous dishes I might prepare. My cart runneth over (or to use proper Texan, my “buggy” runneth over). Even though my household consisted only of my husband and me, the boy bagging the groceries once asked me how many children I had to feed. Unfortunately, for him, he happened to ask this question too soon after a failed in-vitro attempt. I burst into tears. He tried to become invisible, and in fact, he was never seen again.

Now that I have a kiddo, I’ve quit seeing Tom. Sam is my new guy. If Tom Thumb is Omar Sharif, Wal-Mart is Al Bundy – convenient, cheap, annoying. The truth is, I have a love-hate relationship with Wal-Mart. I hate how they dominate the retail landscape. I hate how they wipe out the small mom-and-pop businesses when they come to town. I love that they are a block away and sell formula and diapers for less than anyone else in town. And most of all, I love the entertaining study in humanity that is Wal-Mart — almost as good as the airport, only with more local flavor.

Aside from where I shop, how I shop has changed as well. Where shopping once was a leisurely exercise, like golf only with more physical and mental exertion, it’s now a study in ergonomics and economy of motion. The goal of every trip is to maximize the shopping that needs to be done within the time restraints of my toddler’s disposition on any given day. No wasted motion, no wasted effort, no wasted time. Not even a second glance towards the beloved olives. I remember how, in my previous life, I used to see women in Nike’s, running through the store like spooked race horses that had somehow gotten out, pushing carts laden with children and macaroni and cheese, taking corners on two wheels. And I would think to myself: “They should really slow down and stop and smell the cilantro — life is short.” (Apparently I also had more time to wax philosophic.) What I didn’t know, until now, is that no one with a toddler buys cilantro and yes, life is short, but a toddler’s cart-tolerance is even shorter and death is only a slightly less attractive an option than a toddler melt-down.

Before Sean came along, there were no daily emergency trips to the grocery store. I consulted my cookbooks, I made a list, I pressed my clothes. If I were out of, say, anchovies, it could wait until next week. These days, it seems that I am at Wal-Mart just about every day for some emergency item, like chocolate. I realized this recently when the greeter, who knows me by name, calls to me as I’m pushing my over-the-legal-weight-limit cart out the door. “Nice Nike’s,” he says with a knowing look and a wink, “See ‘ya tomorrow.” I felt so cheap and tawdry! As if no other grocery store would have me! Tom wants me back you know. He still sends me coupons….