I am that mom.

The scene - Target at 5:00 on Sunday evening.

I never go at that time, and will never again. It was busier than I think I've ever seen it. The aisles were so full of people, I had a hard time maneuvering the 'kid cart' that held my two monsters and the three ink cartridges I needed for Monday's workday.

The offspring were fairly good in the beginning. I owe that to the fact that they inexplicably buckled themselves into their seats to be cool, and couldn't move much.

I picked up the ink cartridges and diapers, and headed to the promised toy department so they could look. The deal is this - they look, we don't buy. They can look at stuff they want to add to their birthday list or Christmas list, or whatever. They know this, we do it every time and it goes smoothly.

So this went fine.

In fact, except for a few outbursts here and there, my kids blended in with everyone else's.

Until we got to the checkout.

The lanes were thick with people. We got in behind one guy who had a fair amount of items, so it was a few minutes before she got to my stuff.

A few minutes of sheer hell. Followed by a few more minutes of even darker circles of hell.

My kids LOST. IT. Cooper wanted to look at the movies. Griffin wanted to look at whatever Cooper was looking at and in order to get out of the cart he was strapped into, he started screaming "GODDAMN IT! GODDAMN IT!" at the top of his lungs. I let him out of the cart.

Cooper threw a rather large fit because I wouldn't buy him {fill in the blank, I can't even remember now} and he lay down on the footrest of the cart. I told him to stand up so I could move forward without removing his head from his body, and he ignored me. I bent down and picked him up and he started pitching a gigantic fit, screaming and crying and claiming his foot hurt.

This went on and on and on, in one of those bits of time where you're sure it has come to a standstill and you will never move forward, except then at some point I found myself out at my car. I'd managed not to yell while in the store, that was a plus.

I did at one point whisper into Cooper's ear, "Do you see anyone else crying in this entire store? You are going to be in so much trouble for this when we get home." I didn't look one single person in the eye the entire time we were in the checkout lane. I know we had an audience, I believe a two year old shrieking "GODDAMN IT!" is a guarantee of that. The ride home was unpleasant. For them. Cooper even managed to remain silent in shame until we got home, which is some sort of record.

Clearly, I have lost control. Let's call it - I never had it to begin with.

I came home and spent a bit of time in the yard with Ruby, decompressing. Where have I gone wrong? What can I do to fix it? My kids are spoiled, that much is clear. I started working on the "no toys" campaign earlier in the summer when a lovely trip to the Botanical Garden ended with 14 minutes of screaming because I bought Cooper the wrong toy from the gift shop.

As I folded laundry tonight I contemplated my options. Running away from home is out of the question although it does hold quite a bit of appeal. Nanny 911 is also out, they'd probably edit my parts to make me and my kids look even worse than we already are, and nobody needs that trauma.

If anyone has any suggestions, please let me know. I've implemented a "no kids may come with Mommy to any store" rule that I plan to keep up until I no longer remember this incident. Which may be years from now.

- H

Reverse psychology

What a lovely Saturday. My hubs took my kids to a car show far far away, so they won't return until dinnertime. I have had the entire day to myself!

I'm trying to break out of my sewing hiatusfunkcollapse so I went to the fabric store and started in on a pattern/tutorial for Sewing in No Man's Land, one of the freshest awesome sewing blogs around.

As I was finishing up on the tulip pants downstairs, the doorbell rings. I start sprinting up, catch a fifty-pound whirling ball of brown lab puppy as she barrels into me on her way to the party, and opened the door to a fresh-faced sixteen-year-old, because there is no way that kid was older than eighteen, salesman.

He had on a shirt from a local construction company who will go nameless but their initials are Thomas Construction.

"Hello, we're doing some work in your area and I'm wondering if your next home project is going to be inside the house or outside?"

"Uhhm," (I was bent over with Ruby's collar in my hand) "we aren't planning any projects for now and my husband tends to do the work for us..."

"Because I noticed your gutters [as he looked up at them] and you probably are planning on replacing them--"

"Those gutters are copper. That's what copper gutters look like. We aren't replacing them, we have to worry about people trying to steal them. So no, thanks but no."

I shut the door. Hard.

Here are my sales suggestions for the afore-unmentioned company, since I've spent the last fifteen years in sales (I know, I'm shocked too):

1) Don't insult your customer or their gutters.
B) Don't send a kid to my house to sell home repairs if he isn't old enough to drive a car and have a mortgage.

- H

This is a trick question, right?

My eyeballs are burning and the Powerpuff Gurllzzz are almost over, so I'm a gonna share a quick story witchoo and then go nighty.

Yesterday morning I awoke at the beautiful hour of 4-dark-thirty to get to the airport and trek my ass over to Omaha. So I could pick up my manager and drive both of our asses to Des Moines, Iowa. Where we met with a woman, and then drove back to Omaha to meet with a man.

Then we ate dinner.

Then we went to our hotel, checked in, I called home, and collapsed in a heap of tired in the LOUDEST HOTEL EVER ON EARTH. It was so loud I thought there was some lunatic from housekeeping vacuuming the floor above me all night. Weird.

Anyway, I got up again at 4:30 (by now I'm hating my life, wishing I could win the lottery and just SLEEP AGAIN FOR CRIPES SAKES) and somehow drove us to the airport (probably shouldn't have been driving in my impaired fatigue state, but whatever, we made it). Flew back to San Louie.

Since the travel plans had gone all screwball on me, I returned home on Southwest. It's in a different terminal from my departure flight. There are two terminals. They used to be called East and Main, but now I've noticed they've renamed them TERMINAL 1 and TERMINAL 2 and we have all sorts of official-looking signage to help you figure it out, because clearly they think it's hard and they think the public are idiots which in this story is irony.

So I landed in TERMINAL 2, and walked outside where there was a shuttle bus waiting to take me to TERMINAL 1 where I'd parked my car. It was labeled TERMINAL SHUTTLE. Perfect.

As I climbed on board, the driver turned to me and said "Good morning! Where to?!"

"Um, Terminal 1?"

"Alrighty, then."

Uhh?

- H

Birds in flight

Thanks for tolerating, even remotely understanding, my whinefest yesterday. Whaaa, I didn't get a girl, whaaaaaa.

OK, over it. I was reminded today of friends we know who fear for their health, their lives. Allie, who is in the Mayo right now battling an undiagnosed autoimmune disease. Bob, who doesn't think he can go on with the plasmapharesis or whatever it is that's keeping him alive these days, since his years-long battle with multiple myeloma. Who doesn't think he can go on at all.

I get it. I am happy with what I have, and if I have to force one of my grown sons to have a mother-daughter relationship with me in twenty years, then so be it.

Speaking of sons.

They got haircuts tonight.

Cooper wanted a mohawk. So we got him a fauxhawk.

Fierce fauxhawk.

That caused him to win the footraces, despite a clear cheat headstart by the shorter opponent.

Score.

- H

Pissed, and I don't mean drunk

I still want a daughter. How lame is that? And it pisses me off! Not that I don't have one, that I still want one. It makes me feel like some sort of idiot for not being able to just move on, dammit.
Tonight on the way home from my in-law's I actually said outloud "we could adopt a little girl, you know." After he choked down the vomit in his mouth my husband said no we absolutely could not and our family is complete and we all need to be happy with that and decisions need to be made that are good for everyone and some other bullshit that I didn't hear because by then I was totally pissed.

You'd have thought that by now I'd totally be over it. But after refereeing my kids for the weekend, breaking up countless wrestling-slash-death fighting matches I found myself saying "couldn't just ONE of you been a GIRL, for crying out loud?!" Because I'm totally convinced that girls wouldn't be so flipping physical all the time.

But I don't really wish that either of my boys were girls. I just wish my life was different, that having a large family and lots of kids was a possibility. There would be all sorts of shape-shifting and personality-switching going on for this to be a reality, but a girl can dream.

Eh.

- H