Anyone have a sharp pencil I could borrow?

Shopping with children is always quite the experience as Dawn over at Because I Said So can definitely attest to (that blog post of hers is what first led me to her blog....it's way too funny and I think it sort of changed her life in ways she could never have imagined...or was that a baseball? I don't remember but she's ever so funny). Thankfully I only have four children and rarely do I subject myself to such torture as to take all four of them with me. Of course shopping here in this small town where you know everyone (translation...my kids know everyone and I'm just along for the ride) has it's own challeges since you can't shop without bumping into someone you know. It never fails that you stop and catch up with at least one person if not more so a quick trip to pick up a few things can easily take a lot longer than necessary. The children also tend to disappear to visit with friends (or store staff) so I feel like I'm forever looking for one of the children rather than for the groceries on my list. Also being a small town, the store is usually not too busy so the kids are used to empty aisles that you can run and slide down or basically act like a bucket full of SuperBouncyBalls dropped on the floor. Generally they are well behaved - manically busy but well behaved and in small numbers they can be even helpful - if you count blowing my grocery budget all to he**, helpful.

One recent rainy Saturday morning (which narrows it down precious little because there have been many many rainy days lately) I had the youngest two lil darlings with me running errands and we ended up at the grocery store. Let's reflect a little on this. Grocery shopping......... with the two youngest....on a Saturday.....in the summer.....in a resort town that triples in population in the summer....especially on the weekend (rainy or not) .....WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING???? So many people....so little space....so little space to bounce around in. It was FUNNER than FUN baby!!!

Anyway, my kids were trying to be their bouncy ol selves in the lack of space and I was well....I was slowly loosing my mind. I was looking for the items on my mom's shopping list and while I personally know better than to need to shop for myself on weekends in the summer, since I was there anyway I picked up a few (ahem a cart full) things for myself too. I was also trying keeping up with the endless stream of chatter coming from my kids which was making me wish I had a sharp pencil in my purse that I could use to stab in my ears to stop the endless noise.

I've noticed that when shopping you tend to pass by the same people aisle after aisle and one of the people we kept meeting up with was a friend of mine and we would chat as we shopped in the same aisle then move on and then chat as we met in the next. She of course thinks my kids are darn cute and funny (which they are) and the more times we met up with her the goofier they got - an audience will do that to them. We also attracted the attention of a small group of shoppers (did you know - Tourists seem to shop in small groups) with our endless banter back and forth, particularly three young 20-something guys (gasp....I consider 20-something YOUNG!) who I'd heard chuckling more than once over something the kids & I were talking about.

At one point, while multi-tasking and trying to find some unknown product on my mom's list and at the same time yanking a bouncing child for the 5th time out of the middle of an aisle so they wouldn't get run over by a passing cart I used my MOMMY voice (complete with bulging eyes for visual effect) and spewed forth request to " Stop bouncing around and touching stuff and stay by the darn cart before you get run over.....and for the love of God stop talking for 2 minutes so I can think! " ....just as the three young TouristGuys turned the corner. One of them stops and asks me I could tell his two buddies the same thing and his buddies both crack up laughing and start pushing and shoving each other.

An aisle later we meet up with my friend again as well as a friend of hers and also the kids' school principal (who apparently has no effect on children outside of school lol) and as the children are hamming it up the three TouristGuys pass by and stop to watch - thereby increasing the size of their audience. After a few minutes of watching the circus sideshow in the dairy section of the grocery store one of the TouristGuy's says "We don't need to go rent a movie - We can just stay here and watch the entertainment" OYE!!!!

Shortly after that I herded the sideshow off to quickly finish up the last remaining aisles of the store and as we are heading to the checkouts we pass by a sample cart ---- frozen yogert or icecream. What? You want to give my children SUGAR? What do I look like - an idiot? But wait.....food. Keeps their mouths busy. DingDingDing! We have a winner of an idea here!!! Two samples of icecream = an amazingly silent trip through checkout (where they did not ask for a chocolate bar/gum/candy) and the groceries loaded in the van and them buckled in and out of the parkinglot before they spoke again. Whew. I didn't have to dig around in the glovebox for a sharp pencil afterall.