Shopping with children sucks



I didn't get my grocery shopping done last weekend.  So I have gone to the store every day this week.  I hate that.  I've also had to take kids with me.  Today, I took one of my coveted copies of Taste of Home with me to shop for a particular recipe for dinner tonight.  Big Mistake.  Because of course I'm going to be distracted by four little urchins.  And of course I am going to leave something behind.  And it might as well be the damn recipe I just bought a whole bunch of food for. 

I always double check that I have everything before I leave.  Four children?  Check.  Are all four mine?  Purse?  Keys?  Sunglasses?  The checker knew I had that magazine with me, because she fished it out of the shopping cart and handed to me.  But I obviously left it behind, and I didn't realize it until I got home this afternoon and got ready to start making the spaghetti sauce.  Damn.

I called the store.  I was on hold for fifteen minutes.  The checkstands are like thirty feet away from the service counter.  WTF?  I keep the phone to my ear, and I call back on my cell phone.  I am put on hold again.  Great... Hall and Oates - IN STEREO!  Nope... can't find it.  I described it in detail - including the NEON PINK post-it that is in plain sight.  Nope... can't find it.  (cough, cough, bullshit)

Mom arrives to pick up an onion (bless her), so she stays and I drive back to the store to look for myself.  The store also happens to be 20 minutes away, since we stopped there on the way home from karate.  I pull up - and hey look - our cart is still where I left it.  No luck.  I go inside.  I check out the check stand I went through.  And well, wouldn't you know... there is a bright pink stickie, calling out to me.  In plain view.  Right there, right where the checker is standing.  Except that it is a different checker.  So nice of the first lady to stash it there... so it could be forgotten.  So nice for the legally blind courtesy clerk to claim it was taken by another customer.

King Soopers?  Fail.

I hate forgetting things.  I hate that I can't get my act together and get the shopping done late on a Saturday evening like I am supposed to.  Without children.  How else can I sneak a candybar into the shopping cart?