No Use Crying Over Spilled Milk

Today started like any other Sunday. Park and I meet Chris for Sat. night church services, so on Sunday we usually do our weekly Wal-mart grocery shopping. Well, on a "good day" we shop , counting each piece of fruit as it enters the basket and playing "I Spy" for all the items on our list. On a "not so good day", I attempt shopping while simultaneously threatening and coercing him to keep both feet and hands inside the cart before we have a private pow-wow in the nearest restroom.

POW being the operative word.

Today's venture seemed to fall in the "good day" category up until we hit the milk aisle. "I need OUT, Mommy, " Park insisted, to which I replied, "Not yet, baby." He proceeded with various toddler tactics, including but not limited to incessant whining. I countered with my bag of tricks, which begins with the ignore technique, shortly followed by the distraction gimmick, and inevitably ending with the snack distributions. And all was well again.

We repeated the above procedures for the last 10 minutes of the outing, checked-out and headed to the parking lot. It's never a good sign when you are pushing a full cart of groceries and you suddenly feel leakage down your leg and all over your sandal clad feet. Thankfully I'm not talking about the kind of leakage that I've had heard occurs while sneezing during pregnancy.

Something in my cart was leaking and it was not Park (this time, anyway). I frantically dug through the basket to find the offending culprit and realized too late that the milk had busted and I'm now being sprayed from head to toe.

On a positive note, Park found it to be the funniest thing since Curious George. He laughed so hard he got the hiccups.

However, what did not seem quite as humorous to him was the fact that he now had to return to the same confining cart he had just recently been granted freedom from.

As I walked my milk stained self to Customer Service while pushing my unhappy camper, I was pleasantly surprised to be greeted with heart-felt compassion. Before I could even fumble out the story (I'm guessing one look at me and no explanation was necessary), I was escorted back to the milk aisle and graciously given a complimentary gallon of Horizon's finest.

Now, lets just say that I was at, oh I don't know, Target, perhaps? If you've previously read about my well documented relationship with Target, you probably realize that the following scenario would have taken place instead:

Yes, Ma'am, I realize you are covered in milk, but do you have a gift receipt for that? Oh, well, then I'm sorry you will need to return to the dairy aisle and pick out something that is of equal value to the milk that just busted. No, you may not go to the beverage aisle... It must be dairy. Oh, Ma'am, I'm sorry...Soy milk is a penny more than the original milk you chose, so you will need to find something else. No Ma'am , you can't buy two dairy products that equal the same value as the milk, it must be ONE item.

Thank you Wal-mart for CUSTOMER SERVICE that is actually SERVICE to your CUSTOMER! And thank you, Park, for keeping my sense of humor in tact.

Today was a "good day" of grocery shopping, give or take a little spilled milk.