tardy

I had a pretty mellow morning.  Moo was looking for things to scream about so naturally she found some but we managed to get through without getting too ruffled.

We stopped at Wal Mart on the way to pick up the kindergartners.  We needed milk, plants and a dinosaur. While we meandered through the store I lost track of a few minutes.  I checked the clock and realized I should have been mid-check-out if I were going to make a prompt appearance in the carpool lane at school.  I headed to the check out accepting the fact that I'd be cutting it close.  I hate to be late.  I really hate it.

At the front of the store I saw that all four self check-outs were busy.  Also, Duke was done with sitting in the cart.  On every shopping trip he reaches a point where he's had enough, stands up and lunges into my arms.  He repeats the process as fast as I can sit him back down.  Today he reached the lunging point right as I started to hurry.  I can't use a self check-out with a lunging baby, so their busyness didn't give me pause, I surged on by to the regular lanes and picked one with not much of a line.

Sadly, when it comes to check out lines looks can be deceiving. Ahead of me there was one person paying and one person waiting.  Apparently there seemed to be some kind of hold up with the person paying.

Of course.

That always happens when you're hurrying doesn't it?  I looked up and down to see if there was a faster line I could switch to but there wasn't, and with my luck I'd switch to a line with a longer wait.  That happens a lot when you're hurrying too.

Finally the cashier moved on to the next person in line.  She was a price matcher.  Also, she had a question about lay-away.  She asked the question and the cashier stopped to consider, decided she didn't know the answer and moved to call someone to find out.  As she reached for the call switch she got a paper cut from one of the adds taped to the checkout stand.  This did not help with her speediness in scanning groceries.  Then the layaway authority arrived and consulted with both customer and cashier about layaway policies.  At length they all turned back to the task at hand.  This is where I learned that the second half of the grocery order was made up of WIC items. So the customer paid her first bill and then they delved into her second order.  If you've used WIC in the past you know it's not the quickest of processes under which to check out.  I took a few deep breaths.  Finally it was my turn.

The cashier didn't see my plant on the conveyor belt. She tipped it over.  The plant was very dry, dirt everywhere.  She had to stop and clean it up.

20 minutes from the time I noticed I should be leaving I finally made it to my car.  School had been out for 10 minutes.  Once I drove there, 15 minutes late for pick-up, I had to unload my littler two and go inside to fetch the kinders from the library.

How neat is that?

A whole day's allotment of stress squeezed into a 25 minute window.