One two-year-old child plus one gigantic Shirley Temple drink (her first) at 6 pm equals...? One chatty, hopped up two-year-old child who's WIDE-THE-FREAK-AWAKE until 1 am. Yes, you read that correctly. My eyes were completely bloodshot and I was so tired I was about to vomit, but dammit I was not going to let this wide eyed little person outlast me! We even made her watch old episodes of The Facts of Life (which sent her father to bed) and Fantasy Island (how did I never notice that dead squirrel atop Ricardo Montalban's head??) to no avail. I was ready to grab some ether and a handkerchief, but Lauren wouldn't play along.
Consequently, someone (me) was ready to return to bed this morning about 30 minutes after rising. Lauren's cake biz (Gobblin' Cakes) is taking off and we had to run to the store for more buttermilk so she could finish a triple layer creation. Berit (the beautiful, blond, blue-eyed creature of the night from above) crashed in the car on the way to the store and that's how I found myself sitting in an Acme parking lot once again. I was in the wrong town, but it still illicited some childhood memories. I phoned my mother and said, "And so I find myself in yet another Acme parking lot while a mom is shopping." Acme was my small home town's grocery store and I spent nearly every afternoon of my childhood in the car while my mother ran inside for a "few things." Yeah, a few things and hours of conversation. But that's a blog for another day.
Lauren wasn't gone terribly long, but she returned to the car empty-handed. I asked if she had been mugged and she started fussing and fuming about the Acme, much as my mother did on many occasions. Apparently, as she was about to pay, the carton of buttermilk exploded. It was the last carton of buttermilk and the primary reason for our trip to the store (the other being a standard issue New Jersey Survival Kit: Taylor pork roll, eggs, cheese, and hard rolls), hence Lauren's frustration. So off we went to another grocery store.
I again found myself in the parking lot with napping Berit. Lauren returned to the car with full grocery bags in hand this time. "I just wiped out," she said as she entered the car. "What??" She had a scraped knee to prove it. It had been raining all day and the bottom of her jeans were wet and hanging under her shoes a little bit. She was having trouble getting past some store workers in an aisle and when she brushed aside them in frustration, karma knocked her on her ass -- or more literally, her right knee. I curse the heavens for having missed it!! She said I would have sh*t my pants and then pissed myself. Man! It was so bad it illicited shocked "Oh!"s from the other shoppers and a couple people offered to help her up although in true embarrassed New Jerseyan style, she wouldn't let them. Does this sound familiar to anyone else?
March of the Penguin
Crazy, right?
The rest of the day was pretty mellow as I faded more and more. That was always our thing though. Lauren would stay up until the crack of dawn watching movies while I tended to crash after the first one. It was great seeing Lauren, Cormac (her hubby), and Berit again as I don't see them nearly often enough. I always miss Lauren, but now I'm missing her daughter's childhood as well...
At least the kid let out one great belch for me to enjoy after her Shirley Temple last night. My hope is to see her often enough that I can still be a bad influence!
And now, in all fairness, a nice Daily Moment of Schmidt:
From an email from another high school friend: "I had NO IDEA that the Steve Schmidt who worked on the McCain/Palin campaign was THAT Steve Schmidt. His career choice aside, I did want to share one positive thing I could think of about him…. Ready? Here it is: I would never have graduated high school if he hadn’t helped me pass Sincavage’s history class. See? He is not 100% evil, despite outward appearances."
Feel better, Mrs. Schmidt?
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