This is just ONE day of my life...

Friday morning.
I woke up at 7am, for no particular reason. Friday is my day off.
Bang zip! In a flash, Elizabeth is awake, Dylan is awake!
Whooo hooo!
Cereal, milk and bananas are tossed at the wild monkey babies. I guzzle coffee, like it was air and I was Arnold on Mars in Total Recall when he got ejected from the bio dome and he couldn't breathe and his eyes popped out of his head. Like that.

I had to go into town to pick up my paycheck (paycheck! cha-ching!) and run some errands. I told Elizabeth that we would leave in a WHILE which she interpreted as "Get on your heaviest winter coat immediately, we are going to town to eat candy pizza and hang out with the Care Bears!" She was stoked.

She looked pretty much like this:



So now I have an eskimo two year old pushing me out the door when I'm not even out of my pajamas OR wearing shoes.
I reluctantly got dressed, dressed Dylan and got ready to go out to the car when Bob said:

"You can't take the car today! I'm fixing it!"

*exasperation*
I pile myself, Elizabeth and Dylan (in his HUGE car seat) into Bob's Toyota Tacoma, not the extra cab either, just the regular cab. The REGULAR!

The whole way into town Elizabeth is kicking the gear shift and wanting to change the radio station.
Dylan was pulling Elizabeth's hair.
I was losing my mind.

I stopped at the cash gas station (where you get a discount when you pay in cash) and I pulled up to the pump on the wrong side. Dammit!
So I turned the truck around to the RIGHT side.
Got out, put in my money and it got spit right back out to me. Damn machine! You don't take $50s! What the hell. I'm paying in pennies next time. I had no other denominations. I was screwed.
So, with a quarter tank of gas and a light prayer, we continued our adventure.

We got to my office, picked up my paycheck (cha-ching!) and spent some time with the sad sorry people who actually have to work on Fridays. Lame.
Then it's off to Wal-Mart!
We actually got in and out of there very quickly and I got a great new scent of body wash/lotion for a low low rollback price instead of paying Bath and Body Works' ridiculously high price for their delicious wares. Same scent half the price.

When we got back out to the car, some idiot had parked next to the truck and left his mean, mangy mutt in the car. That dog barked incessantly at us the whole time I was loading up the bags and the children. Elizabeth was screaming at the dog "SHUT UP! BE QUIET!!! CALM DOOOOOOOOWWWWWN!" But that didn't work.

So, I went to the gas station, again, this time with a $20...no they don't take pennies either. Damn discriminatory monetary policy!
Threw $20 aka 8.972 gallons of gas into the truck and it was on to the BANK!

(I love errand days)

After an uneventful stop at the drive thru ATM (which incidentally is MUCH MUCH easier in the high profile truck than the LOW LOW profile (so low we can't go through the automatic car wash) of the Mazda) we headed on to Dollar General!

I love Dollar General.
I got three movies, three wooden puzzles and some candy for like $25. That's ridiculous.
While we were on line, Dylan somehow twisted himself in the little cart seat so that he was turned around facing the wrong way and half his body was falling out of the cart. He freaked, I saved him.
I didn't notice that my son was about two seconds from tumbling to the concrete because I was asking the cashier if Elizabeth could run something across the scanner (we had JUST used the self checkout at Wal-Mart and Elizabeth LOVES to use the "booper" to "boop" things") The cashier declined, apparently, the task is too serious to be relegated to a two-year old...fair enough...
But it's not SO serious that the good managers of Dollar General put any thought into merchandise shrinkage aka shoplifting.
I learned on this trip to the DG that they only have ONE person working at Dollar General at a time and after she rings you up she leaves you on Scouts honor and goes back to restocking the shelves in the back of the store.
Seriously, I thought about shoplifting so much Dollar General crap. Like $7 worth.
But I didn't. Don't worry. I'm a community member and all that...

I guess that the mere thought of lifting some merchandise was enough to throw a karma boomerang at me though because once we got out the doors of the Dollar General, all hell broke loose. Well, not ALL hell, but some of it.

I parked the cart (wagon, buggy) in a little packed snow drift and went to open the truck doors. I got TWO steps away from the cart when I heard screaming and crying.
I turned around and saw that the cart had tipped over and Dylan was now face first into the snow, Elizabeth had been flung out of the cart and was laying in the parking lot.
Holy crap!
I scooped up the kids, brushed off the snow, grabbed my items and got the hell out of there! I left the cart laying in the snow. Defective!

No deers, elks, cows or anything ran in front of the car on the way home. When we finally did arrive home it was only around 12:30 pm. I had been awake for 5.5 hours and I had already almost killed my son twice, contemplated shoplifting, fought a child over proper gear shift etiquette and made an ass of myself at the gas station.

Lord have mercy.
The rest of the day was pretty quiet. No tumbling falls, no shark attacks, no felonies.
I was glad, and surprised!