Sometimes, though, my family needs a whole bunch of stuff all at once. Knowing the total cost at a store with nice ambience could make me keel over in shock, I go to the bargain grocery chain near our house--Winco Foods off Broadway Avenue.
How shall I describe the Winco Foods off Broadway? Preternaturally, frenetically bright, it's a flourescent-lit maze for the harried, the over-budgeted, the compulsive deal-shopper. Floors so clean and reflective they induce nausea. Acoustics like the inside of a warehouse. And always, always packed. So packed that sometimes you have to park your cart at the end of the aisle and wend your way through shoppers to gather what you need.
But the prices! The prices always make me want to break into song. (Although, it bears mentioning that buying frozen veggies at Winco is like playing Russian roulette--sometimes they're delicious, sometimes they're so frost-bitten and desiccated you'd think they were on Lord Shackleton's trip to the South Pole).
Last night was a Winco Foods shopping night. I brought Clara because Simon had to work late. I'd taken her straight from her nap, so she was still wearing her pajamas. Clara is not a fan of shopping carts. She keened and flailed and climbed up my chest with her footie-jammied feet when I tried to put her in the front of the cart. To keep her still and pliable, I gave her my phone to play with.
Everything went smoothly until we rounded the corner into Dairy, when I caught the singular whiff of a dirty diaper. As a mother, one knows the smell of one's child's scat. It's as distinctive as a fingerprint. There was no way the man with plumber's crack buying beer, or the woman with a nineties haircut and square shoulder pads, could have produced that bouquet. Unless they ate large quantities of Go-Gurt yogurt pouches and Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal. Which was doubtful.
I lifted Clara slightly to inspect the seat of her pants. Yep, she'd sprung a leak. For the first time in perhaps ten or so months.
She thought I was lifting her from the front of the cart to carry her on my hip, and shrieked when I put her back down: "MOMMY! Hode you! Hode you! Hug! HUG YOU!!"
I impatiently swung her to my hip, but it seems her desires to be held were all a ruse. She really wanted me to put her down so she could run.
"Stop!" I hissed as she yelled and squeezed my hip between her delectable toddler thighs. I bent her knee against me so she couldn't kick at my opposite arm.
It seemed like people were beginning to notice the smell. I could feel them staring. In retrospect, it seems more likely they were watching Clara's face go white, then brilliant red, as she screamed with rage. One-handed, I hurried our shopping cart down the dogfood aisle towards the bathroom.
Suddenly, the cart's right front wheel locked up. And then the left back did. I glanced down and saw the back wheel was clogged with what looked like a bunch of greasy, black strands, probably threads from some packing material. To my frazzled mind, though, the threads looked like hair. Like someone had used the cart to repeatedly run over someone's head.
Panting with effort, I discovered if I grasped the right corner of the cart, and pushed at an angle to it, I could slide the cart horizontally, like a jack-knifed tractor trailer. People hurried out of my way.
When we got to the bathroom, I saw the damage was worse than I'd ever imagined. My mind slowly reeled through images from the afternoon: Clara eating handfuls of blueberries before her nap; Clara eating an adult portion of baked beans at lunch; Clara gorging herself on grapes while I distractedly browsed the fruit stand near our house.
I didn't have a change of clothes with me. And, through some egregious oversight, I didn't have diaper wipes, either.
I did have a clean diaper, and the little purple sweater I carried in case she got cold. And, glory be, at the very bottom of the diaper bag, I found the polka-dotted swimsuit bottoms Clara wore when she was six months old.
We had to make a run out to the car to get her sparkly purple sneakers, and she locked me out of the handicapped stall once or twice while I was running back and forth with soapy paper towels. But after fifteen minutes or so, she was pretty cleaned up.
The swimsuit bottoms were so tiny they looked like a Speedo, and we didn't have any socks. Clara was incredibly peeved, poor baby, but I suspect it had more to do with not being able to run through the store like a wild heathen than with what she was wearing.
I feel your pain. I have so been there. Yet somehow after all of that she still manages to be completely adorable. I mean, just look at that face!
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