Here it is!  What you've been waiting for!  Post #2!


Yes, I did just giggle when I wrote #2, and you should've too. Why?  Because bodily functions are hilarious.  The minute I stop laughing about farts, I'll know I've turned into a less-fun version of my mom. If you're not a fan of this kind of humor, you're probably reading the wrong page, because the top item on my Funny Things list is gas.  Second, of course, is #2, placed there because, well, come on.  You know.


I'm not going to write a whole blog page about that (today), but I thought I'd address it up front because that's the kind of person I am.


So my afternoon yesterday consisted of driving, going to a class, then going to Costco.  Usually, Costco is a great place and I love it there.  I would rather spend time in Costco than pretty much any other store I can think of, except Target, which has basically everything I like to look at, including funny t-shirts, all in one store that has a snack bar, which is a genius idea.  When fat girls are shopping they look for a conveniently placed snack bar, because we all know you can't go too long without your nachos.  I can say this, because I am a life-long member of the fat girl club, and it has nothing to do with size (well, in my case it does) and everything to do with your state of mind.  Moving on, we're at Costco.  I don't have anything I need there, so I'm not super excited about the whole trip, plus I'm with my mom so I know it means keeping up with her throughout the whole store, which is challenging in even the best circumstances.  In addition, after the first few minutes I realize that I'm going to be the one stuck with the cart.  When my mom goes into a store she becomes a completely different lady.  Normally, she moves kind of slowly, is easily distracted, and will chatter happily the whole time she's with you.  When she's shopping, she is focused, determined, and moves like a cat.  You have to keep an eye on her all the time, because she will just disappear.  It's pretty much magic:  One second, she's right in front of you, the next, she's gone.  I don't know how she moves that fast, but I think it's some kind of secret Mom-Powering-Up station, like in a video game, except it's for real and all the stations are in stores.  When I was a kid, if she sent me to go get salad dressing at the store, I knew I was in trouble because I wouldn't find her again until she went to the checkout line, which could be in 5 minutes or an hour.  There was no way of knowing, since she doesn't follow any sort of list or pattern while shopping.  Yesterday, therefore, I was determined not to lose her.  Then I have the realization about the cart.  That completely changed the game. See, I'm slightly obsessive-compulsive.  Okay, maybe more than slightly.  At any rate, I would rather lick the bottom of my own shoe than walk around a store for 20 minutes, clutching the nasty poop-particle-covered handle of a filthy shopping cart. It's a dirty hands thing.  Can't explain it, it just makes my skin crawl.  The cart wipes they have at most stores are ineffective at best, just enough to save me from sudden death (from said poop particles), and since they had that recall on tainted wipes that made people sick, I just can't bring myself to use them.  So I usually just carry my purchases or let the person I'm with push the cart.  That wasn't happening yesterday, however.  Mom was on a mission.  So I have to keep track of her, while being completely distracted by the cart handle issue.  Oh, did I mention my mom will completely stop, right in the middle of a busy aisle, whether there are people behind her or not? Yep.  It's awesome.  So I have to try to anticipate so I can go off to the side when she's going to stop.  Didn't work too well, but I survived.  So we make it through the store, and we're in the checkout line, and I'm congratulating myself on not only sticking with her the whole time, but also not hitting her (or anyone else) in the butt with my shopping cart.  Then I look up and realize that she's decided not to stand next to me in the line.  She's standing next to the young guy in front of us.  Not saying anything, just standing right next to him, smiling.  I'm not sure it was as much fun for him as it was for me, as it was a very long line and she stood next to him until we went up to check out. I forgot to ask her why she did that, but it doesn't really matter, because that was pretty much the high point of my day. We checked out, got her stuff into the car, and headed off. At this point I was still pretty psyched that for the first time ever, I didn't lose her on a shopping trip.


Next stop was Trader Joe's.  Lost her in about 2 minutes.  Had to go sit in the car and call her cell phone.  I failed.


Yes, I do make everything into a sort of contest with myself (which I lose about 50% of the time).  At least this was just a fail at tracking my mom in the store, so that's really not too big of a deal.  I fail at bigger stuff than that all the time, just so I don't get out of practice.  In addition, I just wrote a whole page about tracking my mom at the store, and you just spent five minutes reading it.  So I guess we're all failing together.  How special is that?  Plus, I feel really good about the whole #2 part at the top of the page.  I'd like to end on that note.  There you go.