oh, monday...

Zach has the Business Trip Day from Hell today. He left on a flight to Palm Springs at 6am, and will be returning tonight at approx midnight, after a 5 hour trip.  Yes, 5 hours to get from southern california to northern (who're we kidding? middle) california. It's all just... screwey.

A 6am flight meant he left the house at 5am to get to the airport (likes to live dangerously, that one... at least when not accompanied by his travel-anxious wife and child), which meant waking up around 4:30am.  Donovan was gracious enough to wake up *just before* Zach, you know, to help save us from having to rely on such silly things as alarm clocks.  I tried getting him to go back to sleep, to no avail, though it did mean I was lying in bed with D right as Zach had to leave and did not get to say good-bye. At least he's only gone till late tonight.  

At the leisurely hour of about 6am I finally let D out of his cage bedroom, where I took advantage of our ginormous computer screen by letting him watch Thomas and Mighty Machines videos on Netflix in one browser window while I checked email and facebook (and bought a toddler alarm clock, in the hopes of teaching D what is an appropriate hour to wake up) on another window right next to it.  Clearly, I have fallen off the "no-TV" wagon, but I try to still limit it to special circumstances.  Like when Mommy woke up waaaay too early and her brain is not functioning yet.  Which, wait, would be all the time. Hm.

We were out of milk this morning, too, so unless I wanted to steal the last few ounces from D's sippy cup in the fridge, I didn't have any for my cereal.  Or for making coffee.  

So finally around 7:30 or so I decide to get us dressed and head out to the store so we could get some food.  D was insisting on wanting to take his toy stroller for a walk outside, so I compromised with him and let him walk it to the car, where he instinctively walked it to the back of the car and waited for me to open the hatch door. Just like we always do with his real stroller.  We drove to Safeway, where I decided to take a gamble-- D was still talking about wanting to walk the stroller, and from the parking lot I figured it wasn't very crowded.  So I let him bring the stroller inside, I grabbed a hand basket for the groceries ( didn't need to get much more than a few essentials) and told him to stick close to me.  

To my surprise and delight, he did really well with this.  I think he was so happy and excited to get to a) walk on his own legs in the store and b) have something of his own to push, that he listened pretty well when I told him which way to go or asked him to stop.  He didn't even take many things off the shelves. And since the store was relatively empty, there weren't many other people for him to get in the way of.  So it was all going really well until we went to check out.  We're standing there in line, and the lady is checking all our things, and I reach into my bag to grab my wallet... surely I had my wallet, I'd made sure before we left that I had everything else ready... but... no... shit. I'd left my wallet back home.  

And of course, this was the time I'd decided to drive to the nicer Safeway further from my house, instead of the crappy, small one practically across the street.

And why did I choose to go to this other, farther Safeway? It's not like I needed the greater selection-- we only got a handful of items.  But this one has a Starbucks counter inside, and I wanted to treat myself to a cup of coffee.  

So the nice cash register lady (I suppose this is the other upside of this particular store, the staff seemed much nicer than at our usual one) held my things behind the register while I raced out to the car. D, of course, chose this very moment to switch his mood from "agreeable" to "ogre." As he made very clear, very loud requests to be taken OUT of his carseat, I drove home as quickly as I could (while still trying to be safe), parked, raced inside, grabbed my wallet, and drove back to the store.

Luckily it was still uncrowded, so going back through the line and paying for our groceries was quick. I then gave D a bag of his favorite Gerber Crack Yogurt Puffs to appease him long enough to order at the Starbucks counter.  

Because after all that, I was certainly going to get my damn coffee, dammit.