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Random ramblings about Target….bear with me as I try to get writing again

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I’ve been to Target three times in the last three days. So…about an average week. Ha! No, I don’t usually go quite this often. But the first trip led to the second trip which led to the third trip. And the third trip guaranteed that I won’t be going back for a fourth any time soon. Let me give you the run down on the week’s visits to Tar-jay.

Visit 1
On Monday, Reid had his birthday party and he received two identical Star Wars Legos kits. Luckily, one parent was nice enough to include a gift receipt (which I always forget to do, myself). So, on Tuesday after school, Reid and I went to Target to exchange his toy. The whole way there he was moaning, “What if there is nothing I like? I don’t want to do this.” Post-preschool exhaustion is a real problem for Reid. But then we walked into the Legos aisle and he immediately saw a Harry Potter set that apparently he was born to own. He grabbed that thing and clutched it so tightly in his little white hands that I don’t think anything could have pried it out of his grip.

Okay, so objective achieved. Now all we had to do was get from the toy section in the back of the store to the registers in the front of the store without spending $5,000. Ha! Okay, maybe we didn’t quite spend $5,000. But we grabbed quite a few things, some necessary some…not so necessary. The not-so-necessary included a six-pack of Reese’s peanut butter eggs. I don’t need them. I know I shouldn’t have them. But, damn, those things are delicious. And they were on sale! Normal price $3.49, marked down to $3.00. There was a big sign saying so.

Let me just interject that, as a true candy connoisseur, I believe that Easter is by far the best time of year for candy. Some people will make the case for Christmas time, or maybe Halloween. Those people are wrong. Peanut butter eggs. Starburst jelly beans. Cadbury carmel eggs. Peeps. Sweet sugary deliciousness. Every spring my Twizzlers have to look the other way, because they know I have no will power and will be cheating on them for weeks on end.

Anyway, so we rang up all our items and were headed out of the store when I noticed that my peanut butter eggs had rung up at full price, not the sale price. Well, it was only 49 cents, you say? Hardly worth worrying about, right? To that I respond, “Have we met?” I hate when things don’t ring up the right price at stores. And it has happened to me more than once at this particular Target, so I am even less likely to let them off the hook. Reid and I headed to Guest Services to remedy this gross injustice.

Of course, it took about ten minutes to get my 49 cents back. (Not my personal record, mind you. I once spent almost 20 minutes getting 99 cents back at Modell’s. I am nothing if not committed to being consistently idiotic about this stuff.) The first cashier wasn’t sure what to do, and was all aflutter. Then the employee at the next register said, “Who cares. Just ring it up at $3.00. It’s 49 cents.” This was said with a really expert withering look in my direction. I replied, “Yes. But I like to bring these things to your attention, because I figure you need to fix them in the system so everyone isn’t overcharged all day.” Blank stare. Yeah, that’s not happening.

So finally, finally, the guy figures out how to return my peanut butter eggs and then ring them up again with the correct price. I have to hand over my Tinkerbell Visa card again, and then we’re finally done. By this point even I was like, “Why, Jill, why?” But we’d done it. We’d struck a blow for consumers everywhere, and shown Target that they can’t take advantage of me.

Until I got home and realized that, after our transaction, the cashier had handed me my two receipts…but not my peanut butter eggs.

Visit 2
So the next day I had to go back to the same evil Target to get the peanut butter eggs that had been so viciously stolen from me. This time I went before picking up Reid from school, because he may be just five years old, but he would definitely have called me on this ridiculousness if he had been aware of it. After I got my candy (I just went back and got one off the shelf – the shelf that still said $3.00 on it! – and put it in a bag with my receipt from the day before. I was not willing to face the humiliation of asking permission at Guest Services. How do you explain that one? “I was here haggling over 49 cents…”)

I had a few extra minutes, so I walked around a bit and got my Target on. Construction paper. Yes. Birthday present for the party next week. Yes. Swim and sport shampoo for Aidan’s shower. Yes. Pajamas for Mack. Yes. Then I saw a rack of cute t-shirts. I went and tried one on and I liked how it looked. So I picked out three different colors. This is how people like me – people who don’t like looking at themselves in the mirror anymore – shop. We find something that doesn’t look too bad and we buy it in a whole bunch of colors. Saves time and agony.

I went up to the register, realizing I was running out of time before I had to be at the preschool for pick up. The cashier held up the pajamas I had chosen for Mack and commented on how they were on clearance. “That’s a good price! Were there other ones?” I chuckled to myself, thinking she was just like the Target Lady character on Saturday Night Live, who is always exclaiming over everything that comes through her lane. I replied that there were a couple other sets of the pajamas on the rack, in a couple of sizes. She said, “No, but were there other ones? Other kinds? I don’t like these.”

I’m sure she didn’t mean it to sound as rude as it did, but I couldn’t help replying, “How nice of you to say that, since I am buying them.” But the good news was that everything rang up the correct price and I made it to the preschool on time. A successful trip to Target!

Until I tried on the light pink t-shirt I had bought and realized that it made me look like warmed-over death.

Visit 3
Now, I return a lot of things to Target. By “a lot” I mean that I return more things to Target every year than most people will ever buy – and keep – in their lifetimes. It is Target’s own damn fault, though! They’ve made their returns process so simple and convenient. So if I see some shorts, but I’m not sure whether they will fit Aidan, I buy them anyway, knowing I can always bring them back with no hassle.

I never gave much thought to my addiction to Target returns. And then once I said something to fellow DwCer Erinn about returning something and she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever returned anything to Target.”

I don’t think there could be a sentence in the English language that would be more bewildering to me. I was absolutely floored. I. Cannot. Imagine. That. Life. That life is as foreign to me as being Paul McCartney or a Sherpa or a drug mule. What does she do with her time? Why does her brain allow her that flexibility? How can I get to that happy place?

Anyway, I, of course, was back at Target the next day to return the pukey pink shirt (and replace it with the same shirt in two different, better, colors). And…since I had time…Gatorade for football practice? Yes. A birthday card for Byron? Yes. Drain cleaner? Don’t mind if I do.

But my sojourn through the second happiest place on Earth was marred by the screaming of a little girl being wheeled around the store by her mother. This dear, sweet little harridan, who looked like maybe a young three-year-old, sat in the back of the cart screeching for the entire 20 minutes I was shopping. Her mom was moving at about the same pace I was, so I couldn’t get away. This girl was having a fit because “I….WANT….A….PUZZLE.” Over and over with the I want a puzzle. For 20 minutes.

The mother was mostly just ignoring her. (And ignoring the looks of fellow shoppers.) Every few minutes she’d coo, “I know. It’s hard. It’s so hard” or “I’m so sorry.” or (this was my favorite) “I think it is wonderful that you want a puzzle. I know it’s hard that there aren’t any ones you don’t already have.”

No “Stop crying.” No “That’s enough.” No “Stop making a racket – you are driving everyone nuts, you spoiled little asshole.” She didn’t take the kid outside. She just ignored it and then acted like it was cute the way her kid was SCREAMING like the world’s most obnoxious prima donna. I could imagine this girl’s future and I predict that it includes a lot of tiaras, a mostly-ignored pony and some really inappropriate men.

Don’t judge me. I was seriously pissed at this mom by the time we hit the grocery aisles and I saw her at the end of a row, sheepishly telling a fellow shopper, “She wants a puzzle.” with a little half-smile, as if to say, “Isn’t it cute?” I went around the corner, where the little angel could see me but her mom couldn’t. I waited for her to look at me and then I quietly but firmly said, “STOP. IT. STOP IT RIGHT NOW.” Her eyes got wide and she stopped right in mid scream and watched me as I walked backwards down the aisle. At the end of the aisle I put my finger up and pointed at her and mouthed “STOP IT.” again.

I’d like to think I saved this poor girl from a lifetime as a spoiled brat. Like maybe her tiny brain would have an epiphany right there near the soup – “Hmmm, just because Mommy doesn’t make me act right doesn’t mean it’s okay to torture all the innocent people in this shopping establishment.” But no. My influence was short-lived. I could hear her screaming again a few minutes later.

I bet her mom stopped at another store on the way home to find her a puzzle she doesn’t have already.

The good news is that I came home with everything I paid for, and nothing needs to go back. I don’t have to go to Target tomorrow. Victory! (Although, come to think of it, I am already running low on Reese’s peanut butter eggs.)


A partridge in a pear tree

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My husband Byron travels quite a bit for his job. Some months he is gone almost all week, every week. Most of the time this doesn’t bother me too much. It’s been this way for ten years. The kids don’t know anything different. I’m used to it, and I manage on my own when he’s gone. Besides, I really like all those Marriott points and frequent flyer miles.

But sometimes I really wish I had a husband who didn’t go out of town so much. Last night, for example, I really needed him for a two-person job, and all I could do was call him (in California) and get hysterical over the phone.

Here’s what happened. A little after 10:00pm, I came downstairs to unplug my outdoor Christmas lights for the night. My kids were all asleep, and I was thinking maybe I would eat some ice cream, watch some 30 Rock, and get to sleep early. I opened the door, unplugged the lights, and was coming back through the door when I heard a woosh and felt something fly over my head. It only took me a moment to realize that a bird had flown – dive bombed really – into my house.

I spent the next hour and a half locked in a battle of wills with that bird. I wish I could say it was a wacky, sitcom-style romp. But it was awful. I was all alone, chasing this bird around the house with a broom in one hand and a mop in the other. I have two-story ceilings in several rooms, and the upstairs hallway is open to my family room. So he would fly upstairs and bump around in the upstairs hallway, while I threw stuffed Christmas toys at him from the family room. Then I would finally give up, and charge up the stairs, at which point he would dive directly down into my Christmas tree. I would shake the tree to get him out, and he would come screeching out past my head, on his way back upstairs.

Meanwhile, I had the front door, back door, garage door and several windows wide open, as the temperature dropped into the twenties.

A couple of times, I got the bird cornered in the area where our kitchen connects to our sun room. The sun room door was wide open. I would drive the bird into the sun room, waving my broom, and he would go over and sit on the open door. But he refused to fly out. Every time I would come closer to try to knock him out, he would fly back into the kitchen. This went on for about 20 minutes at one point.

Finally I woke Mack and got him out of bed, even though it was after 11:00. I explained that there was a bird loose in the house, and I needed him to stand in a doorway and wave a mop at it, while I stood in another doorway with the broom. He “helped” for about two minutes, then went to the closet and hung the mop back on his hook, and walked straight back up to bed. I think he thought it was the weirdest dream ever.

This bird just did not want to leave. More than once I caught him sitting in the wreath on my (open) front door. But when I waved the broom at him, he flew in, not out. I just didn’t know what to do. I was starting to think about how we always wanted an extra bedroom and maybe it was just time to look for a new house.

Several times I tried turning out all the lights, hoping that he would be attracted by the outdoor lights and fly out. But he wasn’t going for that old trick. Eventually, though, he must have gotten as disoriented and panicked as I was. I had all the lights out and I crept up the stairs, knowing he was sitting on the banister at the top. I drew the broom back and – wham – knocked him silly. Which has to be one of the most shocking moments of my life. I am often mocked because I can never kill flies with the fly swatter – I always hesitate that fraction of a second too long. I don’t have the killer instinct.

The injured bird managed to get downstairs one more time, and camped atop a family room window. I ran down and trapped him under my broom. Then I climbed on a table, opened the window with one hand, ripped down the curtain rod, kicked out the screen with my bare foot and…stopped. What now? I’ve got the bird trapped above the window, but I have to get him over the window ledge and out the window. While standing on a table. Without letting him fly away. And it is still pitch black in the house.

The phone started ringing. Obviously, I couldn’t move to go answer it. So the machine picked up, and it was Byron, leaving a message, but a short one because it was “really loud in this restaurant.”

My utter resentment gave me renewed strength. I managed to reach a blanket rack with my left foot, and grabbed a blanket with my toes. I used it to make a kind of chute from the broom to the open window, held the side down, and went for it. There was some movement and my enemy went out the window. I think. I’m only about 98% sure (it was dark, and there was a blanket in my face and I don’t know whether he could still fly). I’m still jumping at every noise. I didn’t sleep very well last night either, out of anxiety and guilt.

We all came down for breakfast this morning and the room was just how I left it: curtains and rod pooled on the floor, screen lying in the backyard, blankets and toys strewn around the carpet. Small feathers were scattered about. The boys asked what happened and I told them about my adventure the night before. I didn’t want them to worry about it happening again, so I stressed how I had run upstairs and shut their doors right away, to save them from the deranged bird. I thought maybe they would thank me.

But no, six-year-old Aidan starts telling a whole story about how that bird probably just turned 18. And he “wanted to go out on a trip by himself, but his parents didn’t want him to go. He said, ‘I’m 18. I will be fine.’ So they let him go. And then he never came back.” They all agree how sad it was that mean Mommy hurt the bird and how much the bird’s parents will miss him.

Nobody thought it was sad that Mommy had to chase a crazy bird around for 90 minutes, by herself in the freezing cold, in her nightgown. Oh no.

I say the bird was asking for it.

But I did already go to Target this morning and buy a remote-controlled outlet, so from now on I can turn my Christmas lights off without opening the door. Best $6.98 I ever spent.


Girls rule

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This afternoon, my niece, Kiley, joined the boys and I as we ran lots of errands and went to (shocking, I know) Red Robin. In all, we were out for six hours — me and my brood of four.

It was fun to have her along as I got totally different comments from strangers. Usually I get variations on “Three boys! Oh my!” Or, “Did you want a girl?/Are you going to try for a girl?” Or the old, “I had all boys, too, dear. You will survive.” (accompanied by gentle patting of my hand).

But with Kiley we got “Oh, all those brothers and just one girl, she has it made.” And, “Just the one girl? She’s a little princess!” And my favorite, “Your children sound WONDERFUL.” I NEVER get that one when I just have the boys with me.

I also got to watch Aidan and Kiley waltz around Target, complete with dips and turns.


Supplies

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Byron handled the school-supply shopping this evening. He thought he was doing me a big favor. But I’m kind of grumbly because I like doing it. It’s like the perfect type A activity – having to get everything in the right size, and the right color, and the right number, and “chisel tip,” and “alcohol free,” and “dries clear.” Plus, I never pass up a chance to go to Target for any reason.

I do wonder why Aidan needed 20 (twenty) glue sticks. There will be 25 or 26 kids in his class. What class needs more than 500 glue sticks for the year? What exactly will they be gluing? Is there some sort of black market in glue sticks, and the teachers plan to sell them off to supplement their salaries?

I’m also wondering why Mack needs, specifically, a ruler with three holes, a fabric pencil case with three holes, and paper with three holes…but no binders or folders with three rings.