My Bad Day - Tangents

I’m taking yet another diversion from writing about my great weekend to write about a bad day I had today – I need to vent. And yes, it involves Walmart – when don’t my bad days involve Walmart?!? First, my husband’s business clients blew him off, yet again. We were on the verge of a big business deal, but now the clients are stalling and becoming difficult to get ahold of – not a good sign. So I took the kids to Walmart to get them out of the house so my husband could have some peace when he called the clients – not that it mattered; they “weren’t home”. Sigh. So anyway, at Walmart, I discovered that they finally did it – raised the prices on diapers. I knew it was just a matter of time; the diapers have been the same price since my almost 5-year-old was a baby. So after absorbing the reality of the price increase on diapers (I have two kids in diapers! Time to rush the potty training, I guess.), I go to check out, and I’m next in line, ready to put my stuff on the counter, and an employee says “I can help you on lane 6”. So I went over to lane 6, but it turns out, the employee was wrong. They wanted her to take over on lane 5 instead of open lane 6. So I went back to lane 5, right where I had started, and now someone has gotten in the line with a SUPER-full cart in front of me. Of course. And I had hungry kids who now had to wait in a line with all that candy at eye level. Have I mentioned that I hate Walmart?

Then I get home and starting making dinner, and I have a crying baby underfoot – I don’t know why he always cries at home. He’s the happiest little guy everywhere else, but when we’re at home, he only wants to be held, and I can’t hold him while I’m cooking, doing laundry, cleaning or blogging, so… he cries a lot. I guess I can get rid of most of the toys that are starting to take over my living room since no one plays with them! And all day I’ve been looking forward to a nice hot relaxing shower, so after dinner, I went to do just that. But apparently running the dishwasher, giving the kids a bath and hand-washing a dinner pot drained the (new!) hot water heater, and my shower was lukewarm with a cold rinse at the end. Of course it was. I can only hope that my day turns around when the Cubs begin their season-opening game tonight – I’ve been looking forward to this for months, so hopefully my bad day wasn’t a precursor to the tone of tonight’s game. To quote Tom Hanks from A League of Their Own: “May our feet be swift, may our bats be mighty, may our balls be plentiful…” GO CUBS!

Earlier this morning, we ruined our chances of sleeping in (since our oldest daughter is on spring break) by signing up to bring a pet to my second-oldest daughter’s school – we forgot about spring break when we signed up for pet day for first thing in the morning, oops – so adding to everything is the fact that I’m tired today also. We let our little ones play at my daughter’s preschool; they had a blast, and we had fun watching them. My husband read a book to the kids, and we brought the rats for pet day – and it was SO fun to see certain teachers pale and shriek with fright – hehe!

So I guess the day wasn’t all bad; it was just Walmart getting under my skin, AGAIN. Oh, and get this – I saw the store manager (I’ll call him Mr. Palindrome, since his last name reads the same backward and forward) park in one of the handicapped spots right in front of the store. To be fair, he does have a handicapped tag, but I know from my sources that the handicapped tag is not for him but rather his elderly mother whom he cares for. But I still think he should only be able to park in the handicapped spots when she is with him, and I definitely don’t think he should take those spots away from his customers when he is perfectly able-bodied. Well, just my opinion, the guy irritates me because of all his dirty price games he plays at the Walmart and the small businesses the store pushes out of the way. Not that it’s a small business, but Kmart is the latest victim of Walmart in our town – it’s closing for good in May. What a shame – and to think the Kmart in our town was opened as the test store to see if Kmart would work in small town America. The test was successful, but that was decades ago, and times have changed – just like Walmart’s prices!

***UPDATE*** – The Cubs are on, and they’re winning – YAY! Soriano opened the game with a home run on the first pitch of the game! How cool is that? But, for some reason, the game is not on ESPN 2 like tvguide.com said. My husband bought me mlb.com, but that seems to be broken at the moment – they’re showing video during the commercials and nothing during game play. Not only that, my husband’s clients have called (but I guess that’s a good thing), leaving me with the two little ones at their crabbiest time of day. So I have 2 screamers and no Cubs game. At least they are winning (I think). When I put the little ones to bed here pretty soon, I’m tempted to join them just so I can start over tomorrow – every attempt I make at relaxing tonight has just made things worse!