Marathon Mama

I'm writing this while sprawled on the couch, pumping the fluids and recovering from the marathon I ran this morning. Okay, High Heeled Mama is so NOT a runner and most certainly not a marathon runner, but she certainly feels like one right now.

Most weeks, peanut and I spread out our errands over the five days available to us. It makes for an outing a day and ensures that we aren't in and out of the car too many times. But for some reason, we had several things we needed to take care of today. So, I packed up the snacks, grabbed the dry cleaning that has been sitting by the door for about three weeks and headed out.

First stop, drug store. Pick up prescription.

Second stop, Office Depot. This wasn't urgent, but the drug store is nearby and since I was in the neighborhood, figured better take care of this one now than have to go out of my way next week.

Third stop, grocery store. Oh sure, we did the big run this weekend, but somehow managed to forget toilet paper, conditioner and bananas. Truly items this family can't live without.

Fourth stop, post office. Needed stamps for a few bills and to return the letter mistakenly delivered to our address from an inmate at the Fulton County Jail (man, was I tempted to steam that sucker open and see what was what...but I'm such a good girl, I didn't. Although I did Google the inmate's name (conveniently in the return address) and she was on the court docket last summer for disorderly while under the influence...she must have been pretty disorderly to still be in jail for that offense!).

Fifth stop, dry cleaners.

For those of you counting, that's six times into the car seat; six times out of the car seat; one bag of Cheerios; one sippy cup; three payments where I had to put peanut down to pay and as a result he had time to rearrange the gum (drug store), Sharpie highlighters (Office Depot) and priority mail stickers (P.O.); one payment where I had to try to distract peanut from reaching out from the shopping cart and switching the instructions to Spanish or canceling the payment on the credit card machine (grocery store); seven bags into the house and zero meltdowns in our one hour, twenty minute marathon of stores...

Well, zero meltdowns on the run, which was actually quite a surprise. Instead, he saved it up for when I was trying to make his lunch. In the span of three minutes, peanut managed to attempt total destruction in just about every room of the house while trying to earn an Oscar for best performance in a drama by sticking out that bottom lip, eyes welling with tears and throwing himself on the floor/against my leg/sliding down the wall each time I said no or removed him from his off-limits activities.

And the day's only half over.

Good thing I wore flats today.