Thursday, September 14, 2017

Long Dress, Long Stories

As a follow up to my last post about running errands, I had my second Shipt grocery delivery order. As the day wore on, I hadn't heard anything but didn't think much of it. Right before my 5:00 office delivery, I received a text that my shopper had a family emergency and they had to have someone else fill the order. It would be a little later, but they would credit me $15 for the inconvenience. I was happy with that solution. Jon was able to pick up the boys as I waited for our necessities. As I was driving home, I remembered that our driveway got resealed that day so I'd have to park in the street and make several trips to bring everything to the house. I know, first world problems, right? I am merely venting about my continued bad luck with trying to make life easier. It was a Monday at 7:00.... I was tired and hungry! Third Shipt delivery went 100% perfect yesterday so I do believe it was a fluke thing that happened.
I've been getting good feedback so far about sharing my crazy life on here, so I thought I would keep it up today. I know I enjoy reading Mom Blogs or Mom articles that have a sarcastic sense of humor to them and it helps me to know that I am not alone in this struggle! Doing the outfits help me feel like I have a piece of "me" to focus on, but writing about life has been very therapeutic. I mean, didn't blogs start out as "online diaries" anyway? I have a handful of wonderful friends who hear all these stories, but when they are not around I need to let it out! So here I am preaching about how I am trying to make my life easier with all of these services, and justify spending the money on them (saving in gas, time, etc...). It is hard for me to do that though when it comes to what I wear. The fit, sizes and quality of clothing and shoes can vary so much, that I prefer to shop in person when I can. I love stores that have the "find in store" feature on their sites, so I know ahead of time if it's even worth my while to go if I'm looking for something specific. The closest Anthropologie to me is in Ann Arbor which isn't the most convenient to get to sometimes with traffic and such. They didn't have this dress so I went ahead and ordered it online with free shipping. And I'll continue this part of the story in a bit.......
So now I will jump back to another "bad luck" week, which eventually involves this dress. When Jon travels for work, I like to plan little things for the boys and I to do to keep distracted that he is not there. Okay, truthfully I also don't feel like cooking dinner or cleaning the kitchen. So one night, we planned to go to a new splash pad that had opened in Jackson. I work in Jackson, so after work I ran to Grass Lake to pick up the boys and then headed to the splash pad which is back on the other side of Jackson. That alone is a lot of traveling. I planned to run through the McDonald's drive thru for Happy Meals for them to eat at the park. The debit/credit machine was not working at the McDonald's we went to and I did not have any cash so we had to head to another one, maneuvering all the construction that was going on in the city. Meanwhile, some road rager got mad at me for something, I have no clue what. Got our food, got to the park and it looked like the splash pad was closed! I was sure I checked to see that it was "family night" on Wednesdays.... what the hell? We parked and got out to eat and I told the boys they could at least play on the playground and we'd have to come back to the splash pad another day. I spread all of their food out on the picnic table, to find that there was no ketchup even though I had asked for some. The park has a little concession stand, and luckily they had ketchup. Start eating and Richard announces he has to go to the bathroom. The bathroom is....... quite a long way away. He's too young to go by himself, so I explain to him that we can't just leave our food (and I wasn't packing / unpacking it again). We finish eating and start the trek to the bathroom which is by the splash pad which is now up and running. The grass was uneven and filled with goose poop and since I wasn't planning on that I didn't have the greatest sandals on for the adventure. There was a huge line to get into the splash pad now. The boys had to change into their swimsuits in the bathroom, so I had to help them with that all the while yelling "don't touch that" or "get off the floor". Whew! Finally though, we were ready to have a great time and it ended on a good note!

The next night, I promised Richard I would take him to Toys R Us to spend the gift certificates he got for his birthday. I planned for this to be a "quick" trip so we could get back home to eat dinner and take baths. Well, I should have known it would take longer than I anticipated for the boys to look through the entire store. By this time, Richard is begging for a pretzel which is at the other end of the mall. Calculating the time it would take us to get home and make dinner, I agreed because I knew he was hungry. The last time we went to the pretzel place, Carson was not interested but I figured he might have changed his mind. I ordered "bites" and a drink for all of us to share as a before dinner snack. Once we sat down, Carson threw a fit because he did not want to try the pretzels and because the pretzel place did not sell milk. Worked through that and as we started our long trek back to where we parked (Carson is at that almost out of stroller stage for shopping) and I did not have a stroller so it took a very long time. At one point, I looked down and saw I had dripped pretzel cheese down my shirt. It's times like this when you regret all your Mothering choices. Here, I was trying to plan a few fun things for the week - was what I was trying to do that difficult? Then you start giving into the requests that you didn't originally plan on and the next thing you know you want to break down and cry knowing you still have to make food, give baths, unpack backpacks, etc when you get home.
The last night Jon was gone, I was dead set about staying home. The two previous nights were enough. When I got home, this dress had arrived and when I tried it on it was like a foot too long! Sure, I could have had it hemmed but the cost of that would have eaten up the sale price I had gotten it for. I hate returning things in the mail because the processing takes so long and with my luck it would have gotten lost! Knowing that my schedule would not allow me to get to Anthropologie after Jon got home, I thought about running there to return the dress and check out their sale. Then my mind said, "no Heather, don't do it!"...... but then I thought about Olga's Kitchen for dinner. By the time we got on the road, I figured all of the rush hour traffic would be done. We're cruising down the road aaannnndddddd come to a stop. I check my phone and see there has been an accident. Oh, and not just any accident that closes one lane.... it was one that closed that entire side of the highway. Yep, should have stayed home. The closure was near an exit, and the highway was open again after that same exit, so all we had to do was wait to get off and get right back on 94. Got the dress returned and picked up the shirt in this post, all the while the boys are not listening and slobbering on the mirrors and the sales girls think they are being so cute. Stick a fork in me, I'm done!
So how am I wearing a dress I supposedly returned? I spent my recent birthday in Chicago and I found the "petite" size version of the dress at the Anthropologie there! And even got a better sale price on it (extra 40% off)! But look, even "petite" is touching the ground. Seems to be a design "miss". The vibrant skirt has peacocks in the print and the top has some beautiful embroidery. It's a spaghetti strap style, so I'm thinking I might try the "90's trend come round again" by wearing it over a t-shirt.
Jean Jacket & Sunglasses - TJ Maxx
Sandals - Younkers
*I am also wearing an amber stone necklace Jon bought me in Poland, but my hot mess self has it all caught up in my jacket.*

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