My Great Internal Struggle

I really love getting a sweet deal on something. Who doesn't? Like the other day, I found jackets for the twins on sale for $4.99 each, regularly $19.99, from one of the pricier clothing stores. Such purchases make me very happy indeed, especially since, when it comes to baby clothing items I NEED to buy 2 at a time. But, I must admit to having occasionally purchased something I didn't really need when I bought it but I figured I'd use it sometime, so I picked it up because it was an irresistible deal. Sad, I know-- but I'm not alone! I can't be the only one who has a couple of boxes of home-pedicure kits and extra shower poofs, bottles of sparkly purple nail polish, a few tubes of flavored lip balm, a couple reserve dog collars and some cans of tennis balls (read: Craps) in the garage. I see inside other peoples' garages. I know you're out there, fellow Craps-hoarders. It's okay. I'm not judging you. Oh no. I identify with you completely. But I'm changing my life and soon, I'll post that all (or at least almost all) of the Craps are gone. Then, when other people see inside our garage, they'll wonder what's wrong with us.

Like how I sometimes wonder what is wrong with other people. Now, I have strong feelings about common courtesy. Some stuff is really obvious: hold the door open for people who are leaving right behind you, stop the car to let kids cross the street, stuff like that. Maybe I'm old-fashioned or just have a big stick up my butt. Don't get me wrong- I understand that occasionally circumstances prohibit people from extending the hand of courtesy. For example, if one of my children were bleeding profusely from the head or found his or herself suddenly missing a digit or a limb and Hubby was driving us to the hospital, I would be exceedingly peeved if he did anything other than mowing over anything and anybody who unfortunately found itself in our way. Sorry, but it's the truth. However, such instances rarely occur in our household which in itself is remarkably fortunate since we live with an accident-prone Biscuit. Therefore, we are pretty considerate people for the most part (someday I'll tell you about our former next-door neighbors and why, after we were in our house for about four days, I was NEVER compelled to do ANYTHING remotely nice for them).

Anyway, it seems as though my love of getting great deals and passion for common courtesy will never peacefully coexist within me. They will never allow me to thoroughly enjoy the experience of both sensations simultaneously, as I learned yet again yesterday. I can only have one or the other, and I guess I'm going to have to either accept this as fact or choose between them. Sigh. What happened was this: Mom (Mimzi) and I took the Beans to one of those big stores where great deals abound in copious quantities (read: big seller of Craps). Now recently, I've been very good (that's my opinion- I suspect Hubby may believe otherwise but this isn't his blog so I can paint reality according to how I want it to be) about not bringing home more Craps. After all, that would be counterproductive. At Christmastime, I did NOT buy a watch at Costco that was not only a steal at $35, it was supercute to boot. Look at that! I digress yet again... It's because what happened shocked me to my core.

You see, I'm the peacemaker in the family. I'm the last one to pick a fight and the first one to try to make everything nice between everyone. I'm the comic relief, the pacifist, the sunshine. But yesterday, I broke. Wow, what a buildup. OK, so, getting to the point...

To get to the entrance of the store, Mimzi and I had to navigate both the Beans' limo (a gargantuan, tandem double stroller which is incredibly unwieldy) and a shopping cart with a couple of items to return (read: Craps which Hubby wisely vetoed when I brought them into the house-- sometimes I still can't help it!) along a sidewalk through an obstacle course of trash and bright red shopping carts. Talk about frustrating! I had purposely parked close to a cart return area because one of the items (Craps) to return was an area rug and there was no way I could carry it all the way into the store. I couldn't believe the number of shopping carts strewn throughout the parking lot. It was as if a bunch of mischievous Titans had played a cosmic game of marbles with them, scattering them across the far reaches of the parking-lot/ galaxy. Really. The thing I didn't get was that there were three cart return shelters that I could see from where I stood. Three. And they were all very close. It wasn't as though one would have to trek across a desert of parking lot to put a cart where it belonged. Whatever.

Mimzi and I made it into the store with our Beans and our Craps and exited with stuff we needed, like laundry detergent, socks and bibs. Boring, but useful. Along the journey out to the car, a couple following behind us noticed the twins. "Wow, I bet that's a lot of work. That's pro'lly why she's so skinny," I heard the woman say. That stuff gets said pretty frequently and since we were pushing it schedule-wise, and since she didn't bother to really talk to me, rather, she just spoke to her guyfriend or the air or her imaginary friend (don't know, don't care), I didn't bother to answer. Mimzi and I arrived at the Durango and she stayed on the sidewalk with the Beans while I opened it up and wrangled the Beans and our sacks of new Craps inside. The couple took their time getting into their truck, which was a beautiful, brand-new, midnight-blue GMC quad cab. It was so new it still had the paper dealer plates on it. This couple only had a couple small bags of Craps themselves, but they certainly had numerous extra pounds of flesh on both of their bodies. Which I'm not saying is a terrible thing. People's lifestyle choices are entirely their own business. All I'm saying is that a little bit of walking would have probably done them some good.

Anyhow, they took their sweet time getting themselves into their gorgeous new truck, never engaging me in conversation, but commenting all the while on the difficulties I was having hoisting the Bean-laden carseats up into the backseat of the SUV, folding the stroller and loading it and our other stuff into the cargo area, and returning the cart to the shelter. In the time it took me to do this (and I don't amble or meander, mind you-- after all, we have lots of things to do) they dumped their shopping cart off of the sidewalk and into the parking lot, loaded the backseat of their truck, climbed in and started the engine. I was walking briskly back to the Durango, which was facing them dead-on and I surveyed this situation with what had to be obvious disgust on my face. Now, I'm sorry to keep digressing, but I must make the important point here, since you don't know me, that I do not EVER expect anyone to go out of his way to make my world an easier place to live. But we have to go back to the common courtesy thing here. How friggin' difficult is it to walk a shopping cart to the shelter so that other people don't have to accomodate the inconvenience of driving or walking or pushing a Bean limo and another heavy shopping cart AROUND it?!? These people just pushed the thing for miles and miles inside the store in pursuit of their coveted Craps and now they can't go the extra ten of fifteen steps to put it back where it belongs? They laugh and carry on about how much work I have on my hands, yet I still manage to put something I used back in its place whereas they can't be bothered to do so-- wouldn't they be incredibly pissed off if they were to pull their pretty new truck into a parking space and hit a shopping cart that wasn't supposed to be there?

All of these words were spewing from my mouth on the brief walk back to the Durango. I was irritated beyond belief. What's wrong with these guys?!?!?! I strode across the sidewalk, yanked the cart back up onto the sidewalk and pushed it across the aisle to the shelter, talking all the way- not shouting, but projecting my voice loudly enough that I'm sure they could hear me. On the way back I counted my steps off on my fingers, one through ten. I arrived at the Durango's driver's side door and held my fingers so they could see through the windshield. And they were watching, believe me. Watching slack-jawed at this crazy, skinny, irate little woman who was holding up all ten of her fingers and undeniably waving said digits in their direction, crying fervently, passionately, "Ten. Ten steps. You can't walk ten steps? Shame on you!" and making that motion we all learned in kindergarten forever ago, scraping one index finger over the other. And with that I climbed into the Durango, feeling a little guilty about just having yelled at someone I didn't even know for an infraction of a nonexistent rule but dammit, they didn't need to ADD to the problem! And then I decided that I really needed to get something to eat because I was getting REALLY cranky. So I took my Beans, my Mimzi and my new Craps and went home, no longer a pacifist but an activist, a soldier, a crusader in the war against public discourtesy. A battle-weary crusader seriously in need of a snack yet still triumphant--the baby socks had been found on sale.