Persistance…. **Sigh**

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Nuff said.

So, we get to check out and the cashier says “$15.57″ just as I am about to swipe my card, pay and head for the door, Hubby says:

“How much is it?” (I repeat the price to him)

“How?” (“I don’t know” I say)

“All that stuff?…” (I say nothing and I swipe my card)

The cashier hands us the receipt and we head for the door. I take a look at the receipt and notice it only has three items on it: fingerpaint, paper and a tee shirt. I look at Hubby and say- “She didn’t charge us for the beanbag… but I saw her scan it… what do I do?”

Let’s pause for a minute

In all honesty, if this was say… five years ago, I may have kept walking and said “oh well, her bad”

BUT

It’s 2010 and I’m a Mom with a conscious and so we walk back to the register, wait our turn in line and kindly tell the teeny-bopper that she didn’t charge us for the beanbag. She then shouts to the manager “My scanner hasn’t been working properly all. day.” to which the manager shouts back “move to register four!!” She thanked us over and over again for coming back and I basically said: “I don’t want to be a thief or anything. Plus if I took this beanbag Karma would totally bite me in the ass and something bad will happen to me down the line and it’ll be like see- remember that time you stole that beanbag?” (Cause yeah… that’s the kind of luck this family has)

I look at Hubby as we walk out of Target and say- “See honey? We are good people.” (To which he says “yup”) And I just say “that’s how this family rolls…”

Hopefully the Big Man Upstairs was saying “well done good & faithful servant…”

What would you have done?

“His lord said unto him, Well done, thou good and faithful servant: thou hast been faithful over a few things, I will make thee ruler over many things: enter thou into the joy of thy lord.”

~ Matthew 25:21

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I’m glad we waited because it was free to get in. (Yeah!) On top of that awesomeness, Cadence got a free mini-pumpkin since this was going to be her first Halloween.

It was a really nice desert day and for a relatively tiny space, they had lots of cool stuff. Cadence got to see a cow, a sheep, a goat, some piglets and ducks and a bad-ass looking turkey. It was HUGE! My girl isn’t afraid of anything, though, so of course she wanted to touch the sheep- but that was a negative- who knows where this sheep has been.

We tried to get in some cute shots with her in front of the pumpkins and touching a few, but what do you know- she was afraid of the pumpkins! We put one in front of her and she tried to roll it away as quickly as possible. Even when we got home and tried to show her the mini-pumpkin, she cried and tried to hide from it behind her Daddy.

I ended up getting some really good pics, though, and the best part of it all- one of the owners let us go home with a pumpkin for ten bucks! That’s all we had in cash on us, so he told us to find a pumpkin that we thought looked like a ten dollar pumpkin and it was ours. We found a good-sized pumpkin, but it didn’t have a price on it and the guy said “Whaddaya think? Ten dollars sounds about right.” And off we went. That’s probably the nicest person we have met since moving to the great state of California. It turned out to be a lot of fun and a good day for all.

You can visit my Flickr Photostream here: C At the Pumpkin Patch

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Let’s talk about my journey to seat 19F on flight 416 to New York City. Chris and I left Desert Town with ample time to get to LAX- or so we thought. Then there we were, sitting on the 405 in bumper-to-bumper traffic and it’s 2:20 ish. I go into semi-panic mode in my mind, saying things like: “How can I fix this if I do miss my flight?,” “My Mother is going to freak out,”  “Good thing I had the dress mailed to me and got it altered here.” The optimistic part of me- I think it comprises of .01 % of my brain- thinks we’ll make it (my flight is at 3:20 by the way), we have to make it, the Garmin says we will- why would it lie? Needless to say we made it by 2:30 and the woman at the check-in counter says to Chris “She’s not gonna make this flight.” Wrong thing to say, lady- I’m getting on this plane! She was the least of my worries, though.

My heart was racing as I made my way up to the security check point to deal with the friendly TSA agents- here to help protect our skies, right? I will say two nice things about the TSA people: 1) My sister is a T SA agent, so that gives them a few brownie points with me and 2) I love this family line thing where I get to skip all the folks traveling without kids and go right up to the metal detectors. Really, the family line was the whole reason I made my flight, because there were a lot of people on line. I get through the metal detectors with no trouble- after all, this isn’t my first time flying with Cadence, I’ve been trying to master the art of getting through the line in a timely fashion and I think I did pretty well.

Here’s where the drama starts. I get through security knowing that they would need to do a bag check (I had 3 bottles with me). So the TSA guy, whose name I didn’t get opens the thermos with the milk and proceeds to tell me that I can’t take my ice pack any further- you can only use it if you have breast milk. I could just feel the fire begin to burn inside of me, so I just nicely said- are you serious? I flew from Florida to LA with this same ice pack with no problem- have the rules changed since April? And really, why only breast milk? Does formula not need to stay cold as well? Milk is milk. **Whoa, we just hit an air pocket… I may have peed a bit in my pants** Anyway, I am ready to rip TSA guy a new one when I think of my sister and all of the pain in the ass passengers that she probably gets so I say to Mr. TSA: “Look, I know you’re just trying to do your job, but I need this ice pack. I can’t fly for 5 hours and just have the milk sitting out.” And this is the part where I got into a back-and-forth conversation with a dumb ass who clearly knows nothing about formula.

TSA guy: “Well, why don’t you have the powder?”

Me: “I don’t use the powdered form.”

TSA guy: (puzzled look on his face) “But isn’t there a powder that you have to mix it with?”

Me: “Yes, but I don’t use that kind, I use the ready-made.”

TSA guy: (idiotic silence)

Me: “It comes already made in liquid form.”

TSA guy: “Okay, but where’s the container?”

Me: “In my fridge at home.”

TSA guy: “You should have it.”

Me: (About to lose it on this guy) “Once you open the ready-made formula, it needs to be refrigerated right away, how would I keep a bottle this big (I show him the size using my hands) cool on a plane?”

And this goes on until I remember that I am going to miss my flight, so I go to snatch my thermos and TSA guy says “I have to test the bottles.” “Well, let’s get going ’cause I’m going to miss my flight” I say. As genius TSA guy is testing the milk another TSA guy walks over and says “What are you doing?” So loser TSA guy tells TSA guy #2 about my oh-so suspicious ice pack and TSA guy #2 says “It’s fine, I let Moms take those all of the time, just swipe it and give it back to her.” Loser TSA guy says “I thought it was only breast milk?” TSA guy #2 says “Nah, give her her things.” “Oh” says loser TSA guy. In my most annoyed, loud Brooklyn tone I say “Are you done testing?” (Yes) And I cover my milk, snatch my stuff and walk to my gate- fucking idiot…

I board the plane with its mood lighting on the inside and take my seat and would it be my luck that Cadence and I are sitting in front of germ city? This guy is sneezing and blowing his nose for days and days. Sweet, I think, contaminate the recycled air in this enclosed space. That’s ALL I ever wanted! Ugh.

Maybe about 20 minutes into the flight, someone let one rip. Now, I know that everyone passes gas, but this was foul. I thought Cadence pooped her diaper- that’s how bad it smelled and how long the smell lingered. Really? That’s inappropriate in an enclosed space!

Cadence is sleeping right now, so I’m typing this with one hand. The flight’s pretty good- bumpy from time-to-time. I thought the constant movement of the plane would put her to sleep. I didn’t think that she would try to take my neighbor’s sweater away (while she was sleeping nonetheless), try to pull the hair of the woman in front of me and really not give a damn about what’s going on outside the window. I brought every defense mechanism that I could think of including a bag with her favorite toys, a Baby Einstein DVD, juice and a bag of those dissolvable banana puffs she likes so much. They seem to be working for now.

I was prepared to have a drink or two on the flight to make Cadence’s (at times) wild behavior more bearable. Besides the fact that she’s being surprisingly good, I’ve been having these crazy pains in my sides and lower abdomen plus some nausea. Unless my birth control is defective, I know I’m not pregnant… so I think I may be dehydrated. I guess that’s what happens when you become a caffeine addict, huh? I drank two sodas back-to-back yesterday… that probably wasn’t a good idea. So I’m going to try and drink as much water as possible between tonight and tomorrow so that I can drink up at my brother’s wedding on Saturday- I really hope it’s open bar.

I just want to land so I don’t have to hear the tool in 20F blow his nose any more- what the heck do you have in there dude? Planets? According to Google Maps  we’re going 592 mph at 37,072 feet, with 1,226 miles to go. We’re cruising right over the Illinois/Indiana border & it’s -66 degrees outside (brrr). New York City, here we come. Let’s see if I, too can sleep on this plane.

My flight rules?

a) Keep your germs to yourself

b) Keep your God awful bodily gasses to yourself and

c) I’ll try to keep my child’s hands off of your stuff- pretty simple, no?

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We had 3 stops to make, which made it impossible for Cadence to take a really good nap because as soon as she’d fall asleep, I was at our destination taking her out of her car seat. Walmart was our last stop… my favorite place on Earth. I know that (allegedly) they make things in China in sweatshops or so I’ve been told, but really, everything is cheap there- I’ve scoped it out- and we need to save money, so that is where I go. Plus, they sell pretty much everything that I need and I am ALL about the one-stop shop.

I had my list in tow, because I now know that I need to focus when I go out shopping. Cadence needed her own laptop- Chris and I were hoping that if she got her own, she’d stop trying to break ours (this didn’t really work as we’d hoped). So that was on the top of my list, plus a few food items for this week’s menu. I ended up spending more time in there than I wanted to (surprise, surprise) and by the time we left it was way past Cadence’s feeding time. Of course I left the house without a bottle like a genius, so I thought- how can I fix this? Do I chance it and starve her any longer and drive home or do I pick up a jar of baby food and feed her in the car. I decided to do the latter… and wasn’t that big fun?

We get in the car, I put her in the front passenger seat and crack the food open. Lucky me I had a feeding bib and a spoon in her diaper bag. Things started out really well, she was eating away (carrots- her favorite) and grunting at me to hurry up and feed her faster. Then, she became more fascinated with other things in the car, like the door handle and the window and wanted to put her mouth all over those things. So it was a whirlwind of no, Cadence. Here’s your food Cadence- eat this Cadence. Then she wanted to DRIVE the car. So as she tried to come into the driver’s seat, I tried to put down the jar of baby food in my hand and looking around said Oo! the dashboard looks like a great place. Really? How many times was I dropped on the head as a kid. The dashboard is slanted, but I didn’t think about that when I oh-so confidently put it down, then instantaneously watched it start to slide right back in my direction.

So, I rush to catch it. Ask my husband- I’m not a good catch (I am also no good at throwing, but that’s another story). Needless to say, the baby food just missed the floor of my car, but still managed to splash out and decorate the front passenger seat and the rug beneath it. Fun! All the while, Cadence is now trying to climb atop the steering wheel in order to grab the Jamaican flag ornament hanging from my rear view mirror. Now, if you know anything about carrot baby food- you know it stains- badly! As I try to clean it up with the napkins I got from KFC earlier today and hold Cadence so that she doesn’t land ass up on the floor of the car I say to myself- what were you thinking?

What can you do but laugh? Cadence seemed to enjoy herself- thoroughly.

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