Friday, June 10, 2005

Price check on aisle 5

The grocery store was a dream. Not exactly – but as good as it gets. From the moment we entered the store to the moment we exited it was an hour and ten minutes. That is a long time for a baby to stay patient. But he did it. I talked to him a lot while shopping – much to the amusement of other shoppers. I also gave him a few things to keep him occupied. When he’d get bored of something I’d switch it. He spent some time with a lemon in one of those cool crinkly plastic bags, a bag of beans, a package of Gerber baby spoons and a loudly rattling box of Mike & Ikes. In fact I accidentally bought the beans and Mike & Ikes though I meant to put them back. Of course I have already opened the Mike & Ikes and realized that I don’t really like them. They seem pretty damn bland to my taste. However I do favor the name Ike.

My biggest problem was the cart. You see since I only grocery shop every two weeks I buy A LOT of groceries. At the end of our excursion Noah was nearly surrounded by stuff. A passing woman actually said “Don’t lose him in there.” The problem only gets worse once everything is bagged. In order to get all the bags in the cart I have to take Noah out. This means I’m trying to carry him in one (tendonitis ridden) arm and steer a cart overflowing with bags and teetering under their weight with the other. Those carts aren’t exactly wieldy (is that a word?) – so it takes superhuman skill. Today I had no skill. After I got the cart out of the store I stopped the cart guy and asked him to please take it to the car.

Getting the groceries into the house takes planning too. I bring Noah in first and put him in the Exersaucer right by the glass screen door. This way he can see me at the car getting bags – so he isn’t freaked out when I go walking out of the house. Once I have everything in the front door I move Noah to the Jumperoo in the kitchen – and then move all the groceries to the kitchen and put all the cold items in the fridge and freezer. By then Noah is requiring my full-on attention so I wait to unpack everything else until he goes down for his nap. And that is my grocery store saga.

So get this – over seven months after Noah’s birth I received a bill from the hospital for his birth. Our hospital stay costs over $10,000 but Keystone settled it for just over $3000 – but there is a $300 adjustment fee with which they billed us. What kills me most about this is that I thought there would be a charge for Noah’s birth so I put money in a flexible health spending account last year. But after I set it up to withhold $600 from my pay last year a coworker informed me that she didn’t pay anything for the birth of her son – so last year I used the money for prescriptions, copays and glasses. NOW I get the $300 bill for Noah. Think they will try to repossess him if we don’t pay?

4 comments:

hazel said...

if they do, just tell them you lost him in the groceries.

Missuz J said...

Are Mike and Ike's those kind of black licorice (Jesus--how do you spell licorish?--Scratch that. He probably doesn't know either.) things? I HATE black licorich--sh-ce. Just wait until Noah startes sneaking things off the shelves and putting them in the cart without you noticing. Last week, i came home with some kind of bizarre canned meat product.

Katy said...

I'm starting to think after reading the adventures of super mom's MissuzJ AmandaK Patrice and NME that this mommy thing is hiiiiighly over rated, but then you go and post pictures and I start kicking and screaming I WANT ONE I WANT ONE I WANTE ONE!!!

NME said...

The black licorice ones are Good n' Plenty - and I agree they are AWFUL. They should be called Bad n' Too Many. And licorice would be better if spelled liquorish. The problems with the fruit flavored Mike n' Ikes is that they are barely flavored at all - though the box misleadingly said "Now with more fruit flavor." Evil candy liars.

Evolution/God (depending on your view)has seen to it that babies are ovary-stimulatingly adorable. If babies weren't cute we wouldn't breed - nor would we put up with the late nights, early mornings, and loss of freedom. But all that seems easy to sacrifice when you look in your kids adorable love-filled eyes.