Posted by Jim at January 24th, 2004

Once upon a time, before the arrival of children in my life, Saturday was restful.

Now, Saturday is the day of working on all the things that didn’t get done during the week, but definitely must be done (grocery shopping, for example). Bringing children grocery shopping takes forever. Leaving 2 toddlers with one parent while you go off grocery shopping is unfair to the other parent as 2 to 3 year olds are well… active. And have no concern for life and limb. Or whether they will break things.

So we go together. We strap them in the cart like criminals and push around the grocery store. We might or might not get lattes from the Starbucks inside the store (which has the unpleasant side effect of making any kid that does get loose harder to control).

In the end, it takes something like 3 hours: One for trying to figure out what’s on the grocery list/trying to get kids ready to go, some 40 minutes for traveling to/from the store, and finally about 80 minutes inside store.

The 80 minutes inside includes the actual task of getting groceries, plus controlling children, plus time for running back to get items that you forgot because you were attempting to control children.

I am amazed we get back from the store at all.