IT’S JUST NOT COOL TO USE YOUR NEW BABY TO STEAL

*Greetings muffintopmommy readers! Before you read the post today, I want to thank all of you for helping spread the word about the blog–we have had an unprecedented amount of readers this week. You are rocking the top muffin style and I love it! If you don’t have a subscription yet, please look for the orange button to your right. See it? It’s right…there. See? Yup, right there. Don’t be afraid…just click it! And that’s the first step toward getting your 100% FA-REE, money back guarantee *(*just seeing if you’re paying attention…cuz sometimes the hubs smiles and nods too but I know he’s really watching the Bruin’s…) subscription. Anyway, once you hit the magic orange button, you can sign up to receive muffintopmommy by feedburner or email. Just don’t forget to verify your subscription once you sign up. (Does WordPress think I’d be shameless enough to sign peeps up without their express permission? Yes. You bet.) Several of you in your awesomeness have been kind enough to pass your muffintopmommy emails to your pals–and even some of your DADS and HUBS who now read the muffintop (How awesome is THAT? We’re not just for mommies!), but I would politely ask that you send them the link and ask them to click onto the actual blog so that muffintopmommy gets the official blog “hit” from it as that helps me out….”I want credit for the big salad!” , George Costanza, Seinfeld. 

Also, (I know, what a windbag I am today..mea culpa, mea culpa) we have a new muffintopmommy fan page on Facebook! So if you’re on FB, please join. Just type in muffintopmommy in your search box (top right where you search for your friends) and you should find it. My blog is a work in progress (Read: I have absolutely no natural ability at anything remotely technical and therefore seek help from kindly, tech savvy friends…) and soon I will hopefully have a badge right on the site you can click to join, and with any luck, some cool new graphics.

Enjoy the post. I started writing this long before I had a blog—when my baby was still little enough to be in the bucket car seat. (Sniff…where does the time go?) The material is timeless I think, so I thought I’d share…..

*******************************************************************************************************************

Sometimes I have to take all three kids to the store, and when I do, I don’t linger. If I linger, I run the risk of losing one of them, or my purse, or my mind, or all three. Usually I put the baby in the bucket in the body of the cart, my two year old sits in the front, and my four year old walks with me. This works out great provided I only need a “few” little things. Once you put the bucket into the body of the cart, there’s not much room left for “stuff”.

By the time I get the “few” little things that have multiplied before my eyes and engulfed every square inch of the cart (Please refer to, “Target: My life, my passion, my love!), and corral us all to the check out, my oldest is whining for Matchbox cars and my two year old is beet red, fuming like a major league ball player on ‘roids because I won’t let him open the Dora fruit snacks. “Open! OPPPEEEN! OPPPPENNN ITTTTT!”

Oh, the injustice of it all.

I don’t even get embarrassed anymore. Glass houses and all that. (Go ahead and judge me, I dare you…you know you’ll be there, too!)

By the time I pay, put everyone’s hats and mittens back on, and move the brood out of the store and to the car with all the efficiency of a clumsy snail, I usually get two of them in their car seats before I take the baby out of the cart and realize, sonofabitch, there were two items wedged behind the car seat that I forgot to pay for. Usually it’s something small like some Chapsticks (Why yes, I am an addict and no one can stop me. No one. I live for Crackstick!) and some chocolate.

Exactly. The important stuff.

Oh, the dilemma. Either I have to get the hooligans back out of the car, and schlep all the way back into the store and get back in line to pay the $3 or whatever it is for the stuff OR I have to just toss the bounty into my car and rationalize I will pay next time OR I have to just leave the contraband in the cart, and hope someone from the store spies it when they go to collect the carts and returns it to the store.

I’m telling you right now straight up, I am SO not schlepping back to the store with three kids in the cold for the sake of three bucks worth of stuff. When I had one baby, I always did it. Two kids, I sometimes did it. Three kids, oh no, that shit so ain’t happening. MAYBE if it were a $25 can of formula that I desperately needed to feed my innocent baby or felt too guilty to leave in the cart, then yeah, but you can be sure I’d bitch and moan the whole way back! And why does it always seems cold or rainy when I pull this stunt?

I’m also not taking the stuff, whether it’s three bucks or 25 bucks. I just can’t. Maybe it’s the Catholic guilt that lingers from childhood, or the fact that I was raised by a police detective and a second grade teacher (I know, what are the odds? Talk about bustometer–couldn’t one of them have been, I dunno, an accountant? I couldn’t break my curfew in HS OR spell a word wrong…don’t know how I made it….it was a rough life, you see.)  Anyway, since I never got away with squat growing up, I just know I’m not going to start now.  And even if I did, I’d obsess about it and replay it in my head til I drove myself crazy because deep down I’m a closet nerd. (Right— you’ve probably figured that out by now. Was it the Lands End shoes that gave it away or professing my love to a big box store?)

No, seriously though. Can you see me, looking over my shoulder in the Target parking lot, making sure no one saw me chuck the candies in the way back? And with my luck they would!

I can hear it now, one of the other moms whispering, “Wow, times really ARE tough! I just saw muffintopmommy lifting Dove candy outside of Tarjay!”

“Nooooooooo!”  the other mom would sniff, “as if she needs it too! *Snort!* She should be stealing Weight Watcher dinners, not caaandy, ma ha ha ha!”

And besides, if I’m going to steal and sully my good name, I’m going for the big haul damn it, not some Crackstick I could have paid for myself! (Real crack probably is outside my budget…so it’s nice I have my cherry alternative at the ready.)

So, out of viable options, I’m left to just dump the cart and run for cover, burning rubber out of there like a teenage wild child who just got his license.  This option I know is imperfect, because leaving the stuff in the cart essentially just makes it easier for someone ELSE to come along and take it, provided they share my affinity for cherry Chapstick. Hey, I did the heavy lifting and got the loot out of the store, and now it’s like low hanging fruit for the taking for any unscrupulous shopper that happens by! Now that I think of it, I could be charged with aiding and abetting.

I’m a criminal after all. Crap! (How much does James Sokolove and Affiliates get by the hour? Anyone know?)

I'm innocent. I swear. It was all a big misunderstanding! I can explain!

Do you think four Hail Marys and two Our Fathers will cover it? I don’t imagine a priest has ever found himself in this awkward position of moral ambiguity, being single and all. I think I should dole out my own penance on this one. Which has to be, listening to my kids when they find out there’s no candy when we get home. Yeah, that should square me with God I think.