Grocery Shoppers: An Analysis

The Super Bowl is this Sunday, and even if you don’t car a whit because the 49ers aren’t in it (sniff…) everyone should be extra cautious with their decisions about grocery shopping over the next few days. Seriously, if you don’t need deli meats or soda, DON’T go down those aisles. They’ll be filled with people wearing oversized jerseys and ugly slide sandals. But really, if you’re a parent, you always have to strategize about shopping. When you choose to go to the store can mean the difference between zipping through with your smartphone list, or banging your head on a germ-filled cart as you wait in line behind the lady who is sure those Lipton iced teas were a two-for-one.

So that you may shop at the best time for your personality, I give you “Who Goes Shopping When.”

Who Goes Shopping When:

• Friday morning – Stay-at-home moms; old ladies paying with checks.
• Friday afternoon – Harried parents who realized there’s nothing in the fridge and whose kids are pissed off to be shopping after a long week at school.
• Friday night – Teenagers inappropriately dressed for winter; men who might be homeless.
• Saturday morning – Dads and their kids, ruthlessly kicked out of the house by mom; oenophiles prepping for their dinner party tonight.
• Saturday afternoon – Leisurely childless couples.
• Saturday night – Partiers buying liquor; dateless singles buying the single-serving mini bottles of wine and a prepared stuffed chicken breast; defeated men buying tampons.
• Sunday morning – Extremely efficient moms who follow the exact same path through the store each week; heathens.
• Sunday midday – The people who were in church this morning, wearing their finery.
• Sunday afternoon – People with no sense of urgency who park in the middle of the aisle trying to think of what they want; moms who think shopping should be a family experience; couples married more than five years who bicker over pasta brands.

Good luck, and good Super Bowl.

Mommy Terror Alerts

Image: Office of Homeland Security

This has been a busy and stressful month, and I figured rather than continue to blindly subject my loved ones to my (seemingly random) rages, I should help millions of families and develop a Mommy Terror Alert System. It’s for your own protection.

Terror Alert Threat Level 1: Mommy gets very fidgety. Foot tapping, inability to sit still (well, if she were ever allowed to sit still), etc. Mommy makes lists in this phase. Long, impossible-to-accomplish lists.

Level 2: Mommy eats. Constantly. She is actually unable to stop herself. It may be salty, it may be sweet, but if she is seen shoveling snacks into her pie hole, keep your distance.

Level 3: Mommy stops eating. While less obvious, she is far more dangerous than overeating Mommy.

Level 4: Mommy frets over world peace and missing socks simultaneously. This may also be referred to as “intense overreaction.” May manifest as Mommy stomping through the house ranting about how nobody in this place helps her clean — and before you know it she is losing her mind over how you’re going to pay for college since obviously she’s going to have to quit her job to stay home and pick up everyone’s stupid JUNK AND OH BY THE WAY I GUESS I’LL BE A SHORT-ORDER COOK WHILE I’M AT IT! THERE ARE STARVING CHILDREN, YOU KNOW! This stage is extremely dangerous, as one wrong look from a loved one can push her over into…

Level 5: Crying. While insisting everything is fine.

Use Caution: While Mommy may progress through the stages in an orderly fashion, in times of extreme crisis–like a child refusing to sleep after Mommy has just done five back-to-back loads of laundry and has two hours of work to get done and there’s no bread for sandwiches tomorrow–she may skip levels.

What you can do: Uh, how about don’t piss her off. But if you must piss her off, you can help lower the terror alert level by A) Agreeing with her no matter what she says, and B) cleaning. Seriously, people, make your beds and mommy might just avoid a mental breakdown for one more day.

Memorial Day Potluck

We are now in the phase of our relationship where I will start stealing ideas from other blogs. Today I’ll be mooching off of the fabulous author of In Pursuit of Martha Points, who I urge you to read but only if you promise not to stop reading me. The idea is a blog potluck, which for me translates to “I don’t have any good ideas and I’m feeling pretty beat from my 20 minutes of exercise today, so I’m throwing random stuff out there that has no cohesion, and we’ll hope it’s funny.” Here we go:

I ate chocolate chip banana bread for dinner. Sometimes I wish I could purge in addition to my unmatched abilities to binge, and this is one of those nights because, guys, I feel gross. But I deserved a treat because I power walked for TWENTY MINUTES. While we’re on the topic of exercise, who are these people who run? They’re everywhere. You might be one of them. I don’t understand you. I despise running slightly less than I despise terrorists. If a troop of ax murderers were chasing me, I might run away. Running hurts; it doesn’t feel at all like flying; and it makes me sweaty. Big NO.

Wikimedia Commons: Editor at Large

Back to the banana bread, which is a concept I can get behind. This was the sixth time I’ve made it and once again the middle was completely underdone. That was technically unintended, but I was happy because Mr. Embee absolutely loves my chocolate chip banana soup. It’s just another sign our union was meant to be.

Sally wants to paint her room dark blue. I said no, because I think a navy dungeon is a bit peculiar, even for our family. She conceded and said maybe we could just have one wall that is a gigantic rainbow. Including brown and copious amounts of orange. I shoved a bowl of banana soup in her face and pretended I didn’t hear her.

I’m writing this in Sally’s room. It’s 9:35 p.m. and she can’t sleep. So she’s staring at me through the bars on her headboard. Staring. . . . Still staring. It’s pretty creepy. Oh wait, now she’s whispering: “Ribbit…pizza…piiiizzzzaaaa…milk.” Is this weirding anybody else out?

Little secret about me: Sometimes I look online at condos for sale and imagine I’m house shopping for just me. A cute single-lady one-bedroom where I have sole interior decorating authority, I do a maximum of two loads of dishes per week, and I don’t know, nobody stares at me from their bed. I think I’ll search now. Or puke up the banana bread. Nah, that’s gross, definitely home search.

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PS — This post and all future posts will apparently be broadcast on Twitter. I don’t really understand how. I suspect witchcraft.  I can’t offer you a cute little button to sign up to follow my Twitter feed –Yet. I’ll learn the witch’s ways. In the meantime, if you Tweet or Twit or whatever and want to follow that way, you can add @momcolorglasses to your list of Twatter Twooters.

Bringing New Meaning to Food Preservatives

I rummaged around in my purse for a snack the other day (there was crazed midget near me being tortured with food deprivation. She has rotten parents.) and found a tangerine. Perfect, right? Unless that tangerine has managed to dehydrate and harden into a leathery lump. Like most moms’ handbags, lots of things go into mine but usually only money comes out. (Remember what was in there the last time I went on an archaeological dig?) The layers upon layers of receipts, Kleenex and crayons created the ideal conditions for a tangerine to totally and perfectly fossilize in a mere three months. Oh yes, I can date the fruit. It’s science. (Check out the Happy New Year sticker on it.) This is the historical find of the year, I tell you.
Mom-Colored Glasses is going on spring break! Regular posts will resume after my week of nearly nude, drunken fun in Miami with college men. Or, you know, I might get the oil changed and clean some closets. Still deciding.