Mental Moment for Monday

As you all know I have been running from pillar to post (figuratively and literally) to get Mantra’s book where it needs to be and ready for everyone to grab their copy by the end of this month. You also know my one of gal pals, Lizzie, has been in the trenches with me. So, let me let you in on a secret.

One mid-afternoon, I got to thinking about all this running and had a Lizzie-style Mental Moment.

What if we could harness all the energy we spend running around?

Silly Monkey

No, not just store it up, but channel it into something far more productive than merely chasing our tails. There are hundreds of examples. What? Oh, yes you do. Let’s take the one I hate the most…the grocery store.

You pack up the kiddles and get in the mobile and motor to the grocery. Next is the fight with the handicapped cart…you know the one with the one wheel which does not touch the floor?

Then, there is the cotton top who is standing in front of the tomatoes who has to touch 45 before she picks one. Once it is in her cart, she looks back longingly wondering if she really liked #26 better…all before she beats you to the bananas, where she repeats the entire process.

Up and down the aisles in a mad dash, running from the meat counter to the liquor aisle to the frozen food section to the dairy. You have everything and rush to stand in line to wait for some ill-tempered teenager to tell you she is not old enough to ring up your Cabernet.

King of Condiments

While you are waiting for the manager to come to squint at your ID, which has had a more birthdays than he has, you realize you completely forgot the ketchup because who really goes down the condiment aisle every trip to the store? You have one point four minutes to get there and back to the snotty cashier, so you are running back to the register, really trying to look like you are speed walking for the exercise, to avoid the embarrassment of having forgotten the American cover up to every burnt dish known to man.

Little Miss “I really need to be discovered by someone who has loads of money so I can sit at home and play Playstation twenty-one hours a day” gives you your total. You open your wallet and discover the money you were going to use is sitting on the dresser right next to your speeding ticket and the receipt for the dry cleaning which was wrinkled before you could get it home.

Sheepishly you hunt around for some other form of currency whilst the eight people in line behind you at the only open register scowl as they shift from one foot to the other as though you planned this, and they cannot wait to tell someone about the idiot in the grocery who tried to buy a cart full of groceries with the change in the bottom of the console of the car.

Meanwhile, Kiddle One has discovered the gumball machine and is doing the pee-pee dance in front of you (and the other eight patrons in line) begging for a quarter at 40 decibels…replete with cajoling and promises to clean the bedroom where you have not seen carpet since the third birthday.

As you explain while Kiddle One sees you hand money to the pouting cashier you really do not have a quarter for one gumball, just one please please pretty please, Kiddle Two decides a wonderful idea is to begin running around the front end of the store playing freeze-tag with an invisible friend.

Bag boy is ready with your purchases, and you beg off seeing as you have nothing left with which to tip him. Off to the parking lot after running down Kiddle Two and threatening both children with a life sentence of unloading the dishwasher and bathing the dog…only to find out it is raining.

Now, children love to run in the rain, but you, well, not so much. Running to the mobile produces enough additional wind to blow the receipt away and get everything in the basket jostled around so that loaf of bread looks like a model for a Salvador Dali painting.

You know…It would be so much better to skip the running around and order in.

And now, a word from our sponsor…

So, why did we have this mental moment? Because this is the first stop in a scavenger hunt. What are we scavenging? You will note a number and a word (italicized and bolded) in this post. The word is one word in the name of a .wordpress.com blog. The number is the position of the word in the name. So far, you have….

http://running____________.wordpress.com

To find the other words in the name, you will need to visit some other bloggers who have some special wishes for Lizzie. Why are we having mental moments for Lizzie?

Today is her birthday.

The other bloggers holding the secret pass keys in the scavenger hunt are:

Ginger Snaap

El Guapo

Linda Vernon

Buddha Kat

Ginger Fight Back

Writer Wannabe 763

Happy Hunting!

Lizzie, I love you!

~~~~~~~~~~

Am I the only one who really hates the grocery store?

If you would like to wish Lizzie happy birthday on the special blog, but do not have a load of time to visit all the other blogs (but you should because they are all awesome blogs), stop by the birthday blog.


(c) Red Dwyer 2012
Re-blogging of this or any other post on Momma’s Money Matters
is expressly forbidden.
Copyright and Privacy Policy available
in The Office. 
Previous Post
Leave a comment

47 Comments

  1. I love Grocery shopping ..i really do..checking out new arrivals if any and since i go to one designated shop i know where i will find my things,plus i go in afternoons when the crowd is least….
    but yes there are people who take so much time choosing one from 250 packets of same things that i wonder if they are trying to pick things up by telepathy or have dozed off
    Soma Mukherjee recently posted..not fonda anacondaMy Profile

    Reply
  2. How gorgeous you highlighted Lizzie like this 🙂 And I missed it, having a bad week… oh sigh.

    Do you NEVER have a bad week?!

    Love the mental moment, & I think you’re massively creative around words & I love it!
    Noeleen recently posted..I Dropped the BallMy Profile

    Reply
    • You may well be surprised how I make bad weeks play in my favor. In the grand scheme of things, this week was wretched. However, I harness the morbidity of having a horrid week into thousands of words. One of my next books tells the fuller story of how I do that.

      Reply
  1. University Follies | Momma's Money Matters

Leave a Reply to Red Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.

CommentLuv badge

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.