you won’t find it here. (a point, that is.)

I guess this picture is just about perfect for this post.

Piper Finn looks a little creepy.  Otto Fox looks mostly miserable.

(But they are both still sort of cute despite the weirdness and the displeasure.)

I’d say that’s a good summation of my day.

I should just stop right there and step away from the keyboard.

But I can’t.

Because that’s not how I roll.

Today was a school day.  But it was also a day that required a few quick morning errands.

A few quick morning errands.

Oh, how I laugh at the idea even now.

Before the bulk of our real shopping was to begin, Bergen reminded me of a promise I apparently had made to him for the previous three days.

“Mom, you said we could stop at the dollar store whenever we went out again.  We didn’t go yesterday.  Please.  I have one dollar saved.  I know just what I want.”

I vaguely recall saying something silly like that to my eldest boy, so I swerved the Suburban into the parking lot.  (I think even the parking spaces at the dollar store are sub-par.  They seem somehow tinier.)

We all unbuckled.

(5 kids.  1 adult.  Please don’t forget our child to adult ratio.)

I slumped the toddler onto my hip and we headed into purgatory, a.k.a. the dollar store, to wait while Bergen wavered frantically between choices – the whale that grows in water or the plastic dragon or the army guys or the parachute guy.

Parachute Guy won.

Piper Finn announces the need to urinate.  Our tribe marches to the restrooms.  Girls’ restroom is occupied.  Since it’s a single person restroom and there are no men currently in the entire dollar store establishment and I have a freshly potty-trained daughter I choose to take no chances.  In we go to the men’s bathroom.  I am forced to allow Toddler Boy to toddle as I hoist Potty Trained Girl on the seat.  Before I can even fully warn Potty Trained Girl of the dangers of touching the toilet seat with her hands Toddler Boy has toddled right over and into the trashcan.

Eventually we recover and take care of business.  (But not before I am secretly disgusted at all public restrooms, no matter the level of their cleanliness, and have a slight urge to throw up.)

During the “taking care of business” portion, Bergen is suddenly struck by more indecision.  He thinks he made the wrong choice.  Should he switch it up now?  Are the army guys his true destiny?

The pressure is mounting.  Mommy is reaching the edge of some level of sanity.

And Otto decides he has simply had enough and he does what I did not do earlier.

My son threw up on the floor of the dollar store.

A dollar store employee had to step over and around it.  She made eye contact with me, said nothing, and kept right on trucking.  To her register.  Where no one was waiting for her to ring up their purchases.

Another dollar store employee watched the whole scene from the vantage point of her ladder while stacking crates of Ajax. She glanced my way multiple times.  Spoke no words.  And never stepped off her ladder.

Come on ladies, I don’t really expect you to clean up my son’s vomit, but could you at least crack a smile, make a sympathetic cluck or even just sigh in disgust for me?

And so the story ends.

(Pointless, just as I promised in the title.)

I wiped up the remnants of Fox’s Cheerios breakfast with paper towels from the men’s restroom.

Bergen settled on Parachute Guy after all.

I stripped Otto down to his bare chest and carried him out of the store that way.  (That attire seemed to fit the atmosphere better there anyway.)

Berg paid for Parachute Guy all by himself – with a quick loan from his big sister to cover the unexpected seven cents tax.

And all this occurred before the real errands of the day were even underway.

Yes, that is the glamour that really is my life.