A Different Time

I will spare you all my excuses for why it has been so long. You all get it…no school plus two less than angelic (but quite hilarious) children and you’ve got a recipe for forgetting to even put on a bra before you walk out to the car. True story. So…on we go….

Just now, I was sending a text to one of my BFF’s regarding a super annoying FB post and I saw on the screen the last text I sent to my husband.

This is what it said: “We’re over by the coolers. I got the plates already”.

It just hit me like a ton of bricks stacked on a retail warehouse’s pallet how utterly lame we are. We spend our spare time at Costco buying saltines, paper plates and ear phones.

And we lose each other in there.

And instead of walking around to find each other, we resort to electronic locating.

We are such a freaking suburban cliche.

If we could step into my time machine and take a trip to 1998, my 22 year old self (whom I would strongly advise to stay out of the tanning bed and wear more sunscreen) would be giving me a serious WTF? face with her still unwrinkled skin.

Except for the fact that WTF? hasn’t been invented yet, because, oh yeah…not only did we not have cell phones, texting was not yet on the horizon–not even the now archaic T-9 word version–so we didn’t have the luxury of these very descriptive acronyms. Pay phones didn’t have LOL, LMK or IKR buttons. (And let’s be honest…we all know I wasn’t touching pay phones anyway. Because we all ALSO know that if you stick your finger into the change slot of a pay phone, you will get stuck by the AIDS infected hypodermic needle that some psycho planted in there for shits and giggles).

But if my future husband and I were into texting back in the dark ages, I can assure you we wouldn’t be texting each other from different aisles in Costco. It’s more likely we would have been texting each other from different levels of the Swamp to ask if the other needed another beer. (I’m actually also quite sure my future husband’s phone would mysteriously be on silent much of the time).

It’s just a different time I guess.

Sometimes it feels like growing up kinda sucks. But then your two year old tells you that you have beautiful, sparkly eyes and afternoons at Costco don’t seem all that bad. And a good sample day is a bonus.

Speaking of our trip to Costco…to all my fellow Costco customers who gave me the judgmental, you’re a horrible mother stink eye today, listen up: I am aware that letting a two year old watch an extremely loud episode of Diego on my iPad in the back of the cart like Cleopatra is less than stellar parenting.

However, let me remind you that chances are, last time we were at Costco, you were not present for the half hour long shopping trip turned wild goose chase, complete with loud tantrums, running into strangers’ carts, throwing flip flops and demanding samples that were not available.

I promise you that having to listen to the Rescue Pack song and letting her relax in the cart in her new glittery cowboy boots makes for a more pleasant shopping experience for all parties involved.

So, yes, your child may be walking calmly next to you holding your hand, drinking a flax seed shake and humming Mozart, but that ain’t how mine roll. And if it’s Diego that allows me to shop in peace (as much peace is possible in the madhouse that is Costco), then so be it.

Don’t judge.

I owe a lot to Diego. I’m not ashamed to admit how much I want to repay him by building him a brand new state of the art animal rescue center. I’d even throw in a new Jeep. He’s my boy.

So…Austrian (yes, I had to Wiki that) classical musician or cartoon Hispanic animal rescuer? Same diff. You do your bulk shopping, I’ll do mine.