Jeez

Today Amy and I took all our kids to Mr. Gatti's for some lunch and good fun. So let's see...there was her two children and two step-children and my er, 4 kids, so that's um, 8 kids total: Dylan (13), Bethany (12), Chase (10), Ashlyn (8), Kenny (7), Haley (6), Owen (3), and Skylar (6.5 months). Amy and I are both 33, in case anyone out there is wondering or cares. And yes, we deserve medals, bight shiny medals. Or cash.

3 hours later Amy and I were both broke and I'm pretty sure Mr. Gatti's will never be quite the same. And because the playdate was so successful we decided to cap it off with a trip to WalMart to finish up buying school supplies. With all 8 kids. Apparently all that Dr. Pepper and dessert pizza went to our heads.

I have come to accept the fact that I will never be able to find a spiral notebook that does not have perforated pages (it MUST NOT have PERFORATED PAGES, NO, don't try to send your kid in with a notebook with perforated pages) for Ashlyn so my school supply shopping will never ever be complete. I know this because WalMart doesn't have them. And if WalMart doesn't have them then they must not exist anywhere except in some 3rd grade teacher's twisted mind. Also, there is some type of folder that Chase needs that is on the shelf right next to the spiral notebooks that DO NOT HAVE PERFORATED PAGES. You know, right beside them. In La-La Land.

At some point during the time at WalMart Owen decided to lay down on his back on the bottom of the buggy that Kenny was pushing at warp speed around the store. Some time after that his shoe became lodged in the bottom of the buggy. Owen became upset and Kenny started lagging behind us, pushing the buggy while bent over trying to help Owen get his foot unstuck. This, in case you don't know, causes massive weaving of the buggy, which can then crash into displays and/or other unsuspecting shoppers. And Kenny's all pointing and gesturing to Amy and me and we're up ahead kind of pretending we don't know them and nodding and saying "Yeah, we see Owen! How cute is that!" not knowing he was stuck until some stranger stopped and began to help. So Amy and I ran back and to make a long story short we had to take the shoe off to get Owen out. Not a big deal, but attention grabbing for sure, as people heading towards the check out lines all gawked at us as they passed by, probably thinking we were on some day-care center field trip.

Then Amy forgot that she needed some butter and so she went back to get it while I mama-ducked my way to the front of the store with all the kids straggling behind me. We passed a man whose smile faded as the line of children parading in front of his buggy seemed to go on for miles. And he asked me. You knew he would ask me. Somewhere inside everyone there's a little bit of class that somehow flies right out the window as soon as you pull into the WalMart parking lot. That's why you see all those freakin weirdos in WalMart all the time.

"Jeez lady, are all these kids yours?" (eyes bugged out)

And I got to say "Er, no, only half of them are mine." (weak smile)

But you know, somehow that didn't make it any better.