Of cable & cliffs

Last night I think I caught a glimpse of how a pregnant man might act. At least, it is how I imagine a pregnant man might act. I was in a foul mood. I could feel it in myself; I knew I was just spitting mean. And all I wanted was to sit in a chair, unmolested, and watch TV. My TV. Not Ben 10. Not Tom & Jerry. Not Barbie in Mermaidia. Not Shark Tank or the news. Just mindless, mama TV, preferably something I've been loading up on the DVR in anticipation of many long hours of night nursing. I did not want to compromise. I did not want to share the clicker or have a kid or three crawling all over me. This may not sound like the most ambitious of dreams, but, believe me, for a mama of 4 and even a wife of 1, it isn't as easy as it sounds. So I ungraciously kicked out the cartooners and collapsed in the recliner. I got my show on, and in less than 30 seconds had 2 little girls on my lap--not just cuddling calmly (of course) but literally physically fighting on top of me and around my enormous belly. Then I had one child decide it made more sense just to perch near my shoulder on the recliner, like a cat. Or a parrot. Then Chad came in and started complaining about the show I had chosen. (He loves this "Shark Tank" show about business people and inventors trying to cut a deal with investors. In better moods, I can tolerate it, but as a liberal arts girl at heart stuck in the deepest bowels of corporate America for 45+ hours a week, I lose interest in topics of commerce and money by some Friday nights. Especially this Friday night). We do have other TVs in the house. But one is in the kitchen, which is not conducive to lounging, and one is in the basement and hooked up to the satellite receiver in the living room (which means you can only watch the same show -aka Shark Tank). In addition, since our basement flooded, there is no carpet and limited furniture down there (mostly stacked against one wall), so it isn't exactly pleasant. So, I made a decision. "That's it," I declared, lumbering to my feet and looking for my shoes. "I'm going to buy my own TV." Everyone looked up in surprise, both because I'm not much of a TV girl and because I'm not given to such spontaneous and expensive demands. I almost always prefer reading to channel surfing, and have been very noisy about my insistence that shrines not be built in our home to the almighty tube. But ever since we got back from visiting my sister over Thanksgiving, I've been taken with the idea of a small TV in my bedroom. Carrie has a little nook in her bedroom with her baby rocker, the DVR, and a DVD player where she can sit and nurse her baby away from the noise of the main house, or nestle her big boys in for a movie while she naps or reads on her bed. It seemed like a nice little arrangement. I have a rocker, and a bedroom, and even an extra DVD player somewhere. All I needed was a TV. I asked for one for Christmas, and it didn't happen (I did get my Kindle, which was higher on my list). And I've been halfheartedly wishing for one ever since, though I never put any action into it. So this wasn't altogether an unheard of demand. But at 8pm on a random Friday, it was a bit surprising. It occurred to me then, that this is the kind of thing a pregnant man would demand--and then go do. I, however, have made it through 4 pregnancies without insisting upon my own TV. So my family was a bit taken aback. Undeterred, I loaded up. Here is what a pregnant man would NOT do. Agree to take his 2 youngest daughters along on the errand (their request—not their dad’s). Grab the list of other WalMart necessities on the way out the door. Write down the spouse's instructions about price, brand, pixels, and also take his order for cold medicine. But, whatever. I was on a mission. I got to WalMart, got to the TVs and proceeded to look for the size and brand I had been encouraged to buy. Here's where it gets annoying. My phone rang. Claire climbed up on a shelf next to the teetering TVs. I answered the phone and Chad started telling me about the deals he was finding online, and babbling about resolutions and LCDs vs. LEDs. Claire fell face first off the shelf and Lucy started rummaging through my make up bag and pulled out a dark red lipstick delightedly. The WalMart guy came over to "help." Can you guess how this story ends? With a purchase of cold medicine and sippy cups, an aggravated stomp across a crowded parking lot with a screaming two year old under my arm (she did not take kindly to not being allowed to wear lipstick), and a fast, pissed off drive home. This is what I wanted to happen. I wanted to march into WalMart, gloriously, hormonally annoyed, and pick the first TV I saw off the shelf. I wanted to whip out my credit card and stomp back home, where Chad would meekly be waiting with his drill and cables in hand to hang it and hook it up for me. Then I wanted to crawl in my bed and watch some movie I’ve seen a thousand times but is NOT designed for children and just veg out, uninterrupted. I am a buyer. A decider. Chad is a noodler and a debater. We are good for each other (of course I realize this is one of those things that makes us make sense together). I’m a cliff jumper. Chad is a cliff ponderer. I see a cliff, decide to jump, climb up, and jump. Chad will sit looking at the cliff, measuring the height of the peak and the depth of the water below, gauging the weather and the wind, talking to others who have jumped and others who have not for months before actually, tentatively, approaching the cliff in consideration of a jump sometime in the future. His job is to stop me from jumping off cliffs into boulder strewn, shark infested waters. And my job is to keep him from staring too long at sunsets into which we could soar. I used to make purchases (even big ones) this way all the time. Emotionally. Quickly. I’ve never been rich, but I’ve never worried much about money. In all my hours of pondering my next meal, it has never been due to concern about how it would be paid for. And I’ve never enjoyed the process of shopping and comparing features and benefits and prices. If I want something, I want to go out and get it. End of story. This is endlessly frustrating to my penny pinching and detail obsessed husband. So I’ve acquiesced, in most cases, and, again, in this one. I’m not that into stuff, so I’m generally fine going without, or waiting for him to decide. But last night, I wanted my OWN DAMN TV. But, reason prevailed, of course. I’m still not convinced it would have hurt anything to spend a few hundred bucks on my own little TV. The other thing about me is I’m not one to grieve over missed opportunities in purchasing actions. If I saw the same TV for $50 less a week from now, it probably wouldn’t even register with me. If some fabulous new feature came out in TVs next week, I wouldn’t mourn its lack in my own set. But Chad would. And apparently I wasn’t quite irrational enough to decide it was worth 6 months worth of “should haves” from my beloved over a TV I would certainly be too tired to watch by the time I got it home and hooked up anyway. So this is what did happen. I came home and put 3 children to bed—one a weeping toddler who just couldn’t get over the lipstick incident. I brushed my teeth, prayed with my son, kissed my tween (who wasn’t a bit tired, of course), and collapsed, exhausted, in my own bed, to dream of the day when I could reign over my own clicker, completely supreme.

i-groceries

I just scored two bags of free groceries. Unfortunately, it is crap I almost never buy, for the most part. But the kids will be thrilled--sugar cereal, bologna, hot dogs, ramen noodles, 2 economy size bags of chips. It's the kind of junk the daughter of a one time nutritionist just can't bring herself to purchase much of anymore (I'm not so good on the sweet stuff, but the kind of junk windfall we just enjoyed is a lot of products I can avoid pretty easily). Today started out like any other day, dragging my enormous behind out of bed and into work before the birds were up, packing lunches, sipping coffee. I had placed my weekly online grocery order last night because I've been too busy to get it done at work, and too tired to get in before my shift to do it in the relative calm of the office before 6a. For some reason, the grocery website is set up to remember me at both home and office based on my email and name/address, so I rarely have to log in. For some reason, however, my home computer thinks I want to pick up my groceries at one location, and my work computer thinks it is another (work is right). You'd think that somehow with the shared password, first and last names, email account, and street address the website would somehow link home me with work me and at least call the ordering error to my attention. But you would think wrong. Anyway, this morning was Sammy's class Mass, so I had to be out of the office for about an hour, which meant I couldn't spend any time dinking around with the order and it's location. I sent an email to the "contact us" address, hoping they could straighten it out, and went about my business. See, the whole point of online grocery shopping is to save me time. Not to explain to every shop clerk and shelf stocker the intricacies of e-commerce. During my work day. Or, worse, AFTER my work day when there are innumerable children, chaos, and noise swirling around me like dust around that old Peanuts character "Pigpen" (apt metaphor, that!) So, in fairness to the grocery store, they straightened out the location for me and were completely polite, friendly, and professional in the process. But that was only the beginning. When I showed up to pick up the groceries, I called, as I always do, when I was about 5 minutes out to tell them to meet me in the checkout line. On good days, they are there waiting for me when I arrive. I hand them my check, they load up my groceries, and I'm on my way. Easy peasy. I don't ever get off my big behind. Today was not one of those days. Eventually they found my order, which seemed a bit extensive, though I'm far too exhausted these days to actually get out and inspect the bags before we get home. I handed them my scrip gift card and the check to cover the difference, and away we zoomed. I noticed some errors as soon as we got home. The first bag I picked up was the one full of chips, hot dogs, and ramen noodles. Not mine. There was a gallon of 2% milk. Also not mine. Long story short, they got MOST of the order right, and apparently threw in the cart full of stuff from the poor schmuck who was about to pull in behind me. But here's the thing. I hadn't come straight home. Lucy was at Grandma's house for the day, and I hadn't picked her up yet. So we stopped there and stayed to visit for awhile, finally loading up a leisurely hour after picking up the groceries. So that's when I discovered the error. I called immediately, but I'm guessing they had already had an earful from the other customer. They told me to just keep the extra stuff. They were replacing the other person's order as we spoke. So it's chips, hot dogs and ramen noodles for the Luekens for a few weeks, I guess. They also graciously agreed to bring out the few items they had missed (5 lb. of clementines, a bottle of pesto sauce). So here's the thing. Online shopping isn't exactly cutting edge. I realize that online grocery shopping may still be a bit unconventional, but I have been doing it weekly for about 3 months now, and am absolutely hooked. I have always hated spending time I don't need to away from my little ducks, but it is completely impractical to bring all of them along anymore, at least when I want to retain what little sanity I have left and make the most of my precious non-working (these days non-sleeping) hours. Chad also works a lot and gets a little overwhelmed by the whole flock, so the last thing I want to waste my precious "daddy duty" hours on is grocery shopping. Especially every week. The charge for pick up is only $5, and from what I'm seeing, I am far more vigilant about sticking to my list when I'm not actually in the store so I'm guessing I am actually saving more than $5 each week by not shopping in person. The arguments for this arrangement are endless. Our local store has offered online grocery shopping for at least 2 years now, but as far as I can tell, I may be the only regular customer. So they remain fairly confused by it. Every. Single. Week. Every time I call to tell them I'm on the way, even though it is almost always "Ellie" or "Mercedes" that answer, they mutter a hesitant, "Oooooo--kayy, um, hold on," and then put me on hold while they figure out what tomfoolery I may be up to with my "online" nonsense. The guys (it's usually guys) who bring out the groceries to load them up always have their brows knit confusedly, and generally at least one person comes out to ask me what I'm waiting for before they arrive with my groceries. They nearly always seem surprised that I want to pay them (and, in their defense, I could pay via credit card online, but I like to use the church scrip program to help offset the kids' tuition as well as stick to our budget, and that whole complicated gift card transaction can't be completed online). The website clearly states that costs may be slightly different than indicated based on necessary substitutions or in store outages, so I usually ask for a receipt which usually results in even more confusion. Once, they handed me a $5 bill and some change and when I said it had to be a mistake they said, "just...Can you just take it? They said it was for you." I did, because clearly they just wanted me out of there with my complicated expectations and enormous order. It's actually kind of funny, in a way. The kids hate waiting in the car--they, of course, would much prefer to run willy nilly throughout the store begging for candy and sugary fruit things and pulling items off shelves and disappearing behind soup can and cereal box displays--but I put on a movie for them and happily browse facebook or twitter on my phone while we wait for the confusion to subside so I can head home with my weekly booty. And then some, judging by this week. There are all sorts of little inconsistencies and issues that drive me a little batty beyond just the constant aura of confusion that hovers over everyone at the store when I make my weekly purchase. There are some items I can't get, and I inevitably click something wrong (like the time I ended up with 10 of the giant yogurt containers because I didn't pay attention to ounces per carton). Sometimes the shoppers make mistakes--but, hey, sometimes I do too! I'm sure I could take things back and straighten it all out, but usually it isn't worth the hassle (we can get by with one loaf of bread instead of two for 7 days, and for every time they forget something, they throw in something extra--this week in addition to the extra 2 bags, I got that extra gallon of milk and 2 extra tomatoes). I'm a little worried about how they calculate the savings when I use their store coupons--it seems very much based on the honor system and while I do my utmost to be honest and make the prices online match the prices I key in the coupon codes, I'd much prefer it if they could match their weekly ad prices to the online costs. They never ask. They never check to make sure I include my coupons with my check and gift card. So who knows. For now, I plan to keep shopping online. Cutting edge mama that I am. Seriously, though--I wish more of you would try it. Maybe together we could cut through the confusion and start an online grocery shopping revolution. It will be like i-tunes. Only for cheerios and ramen noodles. Imagine the possibilities.