“Look out, world. I have a giant cart.”

Maybe it’s a function of age, maybe I’m just busy, but lately it seems like the days are speeding by, like one of those cartoons where each daily calendar page is flying off in super fast-motion. Yesterday I noticed a work deadline of April 29. April 29, no problem! That’s tons of time, I thought, until I looked at the actual calendar and realized that April 29 is Friday. Where did April go? I don’t know. I just don’t know.

So work is busy and classes are busy and everyday life is busy but everything is good, good, good. Yesterday was another PD day and, in contrast to Friday’s zoo day, I took the boys to the optometrist. One child had been complaining that he was unable to see the Smart Board at school, and the other boy was on the “watch list” in terms of his vision, and to make a long story short, I bought two pair of glasses yesterday. One child is thrilled with this, and the other is not, so it’s a bit of a roller coaster around here.

I will say this, though: children’s glasses and glasses in general are much, much more attractive than they used to be. When I was in grade six I got my first pair of glasses, and let me tell you, they were as ugly as fuck. Or, ugly AF, as the kids say. The frames were pale pink and were gigantic, and a few years later they were replaced by burgundy frames similar to those worn by every teen girl’s idol, TV host Sally Jesse Raphael. What thirteen year old girl doesn’t want to look like the fifty-something host of a tabloid talk show?

Our friend and optometrist said that it seemed like in the Eighties, people really wanted you to KNOW they were wearing glasses. It wasn’t enough to have glasses, they had to take up half your face in a statement that said “Look out, world. I have glasses.” Sort of like how we all teased our bangs so the tips of them were several inches off of our foreheads. “Look out, world. I have bangs.”

All I’m saying is that kids these days do not know how lucky they have it.

My other exciting PD day activity was a giant Costco trip. I had a thought when I was leaving the store, as my entire upper body was practically vertical pushing the cart, and it was taking every ounce of effort in my body to control that cart and not accidentally run into anyone, that an interesting concept that Costco should adopt would be a cart weigh scale, similar to those that they have for large transportation vehicles. Wouldn’t it be interesting to see how much your giant Costco cart actually weighs? I mean, it’s not like it would change anything, but it would give me empirical data for when I tell my husband about my day. My husband is a wonderful man, but he does not view Costco trips in the same light that I do. For example, he thinks they are “fun.” I think they are “a chore.” I go to Costco approximately every three weeks with the hypothesis that more frequent trips mean lighter trips, and for the most part this is correct. Every so often, however, I find myself inexplicably out of all the heaviest/ most expensive things at once, and then my Costco trip takes on the properties of an epic journey, or a Sisyphean task.

If there were weigh scales, I could quantify the effort that is put into the actual Costco shopping trip. Because it’s not just about the time in the store, is it? I don’t know if I’ve ever spent more than about forty-five minutes actually in the store. I’m pretty efficient at filling my cart and then getting the fuck out of there. The actual effort involved is a) pushing the cart through the parking lot and silently cursing the people who leave their carts everywhere but in the cart corral, b) loading the groceries in the car, c) unloading the groceries from the car and bringing them into the house, d) putting all the groceries away, and, finally, e) separating out all the items from the gargantuan value packs for individual freezing, washing grapes, slicing strawberries, etc., etc. I mean, you can’t just put a giant pack of chicken breasts in the freezer as-is. I can’t just put the grapes in the fridge unwashed because that defeats the purpose of having a quick and easy healthy snack for the children on hand. Also, I’ve seen those videos where strange insects/ arachnids are hiding in the grape bunches and I would like to avoid that if possible. Strawberries will disappear quickly if they are washed and sliced but a clamshell of strawberries is doomed to either go bad or I am doomed to be asked at very inconvenient times if I would help with the washing and slicing of said strawberries.

Very very long and fairly dull story short, it is always better to deal with all those little things at once than to let them go, which means that a large Costco trip takes hours to complete. Again, a weigh scale would be nice, so I could tell my husband/ write in my fitness journal that I carried however many pounds down the stairs. It’s all about celebrating your accomplishments, isn’t it? And yesterday I accomplished both a Costco trip AND the selection of glasses for two boys, so I feel that I deserve some praise and adulation indeed. Or maybe a Costco-sized treat, at the very least.