When I met Karen 5 years ago, she told me that she would sometimes go to the Stop & Shop parking lot to drink coffee. Since I only had one kid at the time I thought that was a little odd, but I loved her despite her weird habits. A few days ago I ended up in my car with Adlani sleeping in his car seat and 20 extra minutes before Aliya’s bus arrived. I joyfully drove at a high rate of speed to the Dairy Queen drive-thru, sped on to the bus stop, and sat there for 15 blissful minutes – just me and my strawberry Blizzard. At some point I realized that I have become the strange lady who sits in the parking lot just to be alone.
A few days later I was headed to the mall for Norah’s 1-year photo shoot. Norah fell asleep while I was doing an errand, so it was just me and the wild man, Adlani. It was too early to go to Portrait Simple so I drove home, ran inside while the kids were strapped into their seats with the doors locked (bad Mommy), and grabbed my cereal so I could sit in the car in the driveway and eat breakfast. A few minutes later Norah started to wake up so I quickly threw the car in gear and drove to the mall. Once there, I realized that there were at least 50 construction workers to entertain Adlani, so I pulled into an empty spot and continued with my breakfast.
As I sat there scraping the last of my cereal from the 2-cup measuring cup I had chosen for my cereal bowl (it’s actually very handy – a handle, a place for your spoon to rest, and it’s big enough to avoid spills), I realized that a security guard who looked quite a bit like Mr. Clean was standing outside my window (apparently my good fortune at finding an empty space had to do with the construction-vehicle-only parking signs). As the window slid down he said, “Hi…What can I do for you?” Me: “Well, my floors just don’t have the same shine and fresh scent since you’ve stopped coming around.”
OK…I didn’t really say that but as I sat there in my junk-filled car, wearing yesterday’s clothes and hair, no makeup, eating cereal out of a measuring cup, and facing Mr. Clean, it was either say something funny or just throw my pitiful self on his mercy. Since my brain is shot and I’m not as quick as I once was, I chose the latter. Me: “I’m letting my kid watch the construction guys while I eat my cereal. Can I have 5 minutes?” Mr. Clean: “No problem (you poor pathetic loser).”