LaLaGirl – Twinfinite Chaos! Parenting Multiples and Dealing with Autism

So. I went to Costco about a month ago – actually a little more than that, because it was right before Christmas – and I bought one of those big bags of boneless, skinless chicken breasts. You know the ones I’m talking about? They’re individually wrapped, which I love. Costco’s Kirkland brand individually wrapped chicken breasts are probably the SOLE reason I drive twice as far to shop at Costco rather than just go to Sam’s Club.

A few weeks later, as I’m making my way through the bag o’ chicken breasts one meal at a time, I realized that there were several chicken breasts in the bag which were NOT wrapped! They were just thrown in there, willy nilly. What the hell? No biggie, I thought. Costco has a reputation for taking anything back, so I figured I’d just return the bag. Well, it was the holidays, and my kids were off track from school and home with me, so I kept putting it off. This week, they returned to school, so it’s just the little girls and me – much easier to make a Costco trip. By now, though, we’ve gone through pretty much the entire bag, except for one I left in its individual package, and the three that were without packaging. Still, I didn’t think it would be a big deal.

We hit Costco today, and I showed the manager guy my weird chicken. He made a face and said, “Well, what do you want us to do about this?” I was like…well, I’d just like to get what I paid for. Right? So, he went and got another bag just like the one I was bringing back, ripped it open, and gave me four chicken breasts out of it. Done. Then, I watched him throw the bag on a shelf behind him. I asked what was going to happen to it and he said after they charged it back, they would throw it out. Whaaaa? If you’re going to throw it out, why not just GIVE it to me? Or, lest Costco think I’m trying to slyly scam them out of some chicken, why not just determine the value of the four chicken breasts, and give me that amount in store credit? What a WASTE to just throw out like five pounds of chicken! The hell? People are starving all over the world and we’re just throwing out perfectly good chicken? This is really annoying to me. I’m already annoyed with the endless, wasteful, unnecessary plastic packaging they seal up everything in, and now I realize they just indiscriminately throw shit out, for no good reason at all. So lame. So here’s what I brought home with me today – the bag of chicken I bought, and the four chicken breasts that aren’t sitting in a dumpster right now:

Speaking of lame! Guess how lame I am? We’ve lived in this neighborhood over a year now – actually thirteen months and two days – and JUST TODAY I discovered a third park. The neighborhood is not that big, guys – if you drove around the perimeter of it, it’s less than three miles! There’s a big park just down the street, and a small pocket park basically on the other side of our house. And today, I realized there’s yet another pocket park just a bit further north – about a block from Kayley’s good friend’s house. In my defense, you can’t see it from the street – but to illustrate my dumbassedness, I spent HOURS scrutinizing every landmark on the map before we moved in here, trying to find every last park, pool, Starbucks, Target, and McDonald’s within MILES of this place. And I completely missed finding a park within walking distance of our house. DUH. It’s not a big giant park or anything, but it will be fun to go there once in awhile – they have monkey bars!

Happy Friday, y’all. I’m going to try to talk my sister into meeting me for a beer later. Twist her arm and all of that.

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It was gorgeous over the weekend, which was nice after the chilly week. I hope the nice weather sticks around for awhile. For some reason, I seem to keep missing the weather, so I haven’t seen much of the forecast. Exciting blog, huh? Let’s talk about the weather some more. Yeah!

Or, not. Anyway. The weekend. We did a few things around here. Friday night, the kids and I went over and saw Kayley’s dad’s new house. He just bought a house about 3 miles from ours. It’s a big, beautiful house, and I think he’s going to be very comfortable there. I’m happy and excited for him. We really loved and enjoyed the house we lived in together (which he’s been in for fifteen years now – holy cats!) but that neighborhood has kind of gone downhill in recent years and it’s a little run down. I know he’s happy to be “upgrading” and it’ll be really nice to be closer to K’s school.

While we were there Friday night, I had a nice conversation with the kid who used to live across the street from us. Except, he’s now like 6 feet tall and has a deep voice and drinks Miller Lite and teaches middle school. What?? Where does the time go? I think last time I saw him, he was IN middle school! It was fun to see him. And, I sort of got a feel for what it must be like for my parents friends to see Kim and me, after they haven’t seen us since we were kids. They’re always like, “Wow! You have kids! And you’re drinking beer!” and then they catch themselves and say, “Oh, but yeah. You’re like 35 or something, right?” It’s weird.

Saturday, Paul and I (mostly Paul, really) unpacked a bunch of boxes and consolidated them into more stackable boxes, so we could pass our large collection of various sized mismatched boxes along to K’s dad for packing. It was gorgeous outside, so the kids played around in the backyard, hanging from the swing like monkeys. Eeek! Saturday night, we had a little movie night and watched Wall-E with the kids. It was pretty cute! I enjoyed it.

And then yesterday, Paul and I took the kids to the park and then to McDonald’s. It was such a nice, spring-like day! I don’t want to say spring yet, since the first official full day of spring isn’t until Saturday. (Which happens to be my birthday!) I hope my birthday is fun. I’m thinking about procuring some of those darling little Yo Gabba Gabba characters from Toys R Us and baking myself a little cake. I think the kids would love that!

Now, I’m about to round up these girls and head over to Costco. They’re currently splashing around a few feet away from me in a bubblebath, a special “daytime bath” because Nikki fell asleep on the sofa last night and I couldn’t wake her up, so she missed bathtime. We’re making up for it today.

And, there you have it. You’re completely up to date on my fabulously boring life. It’s not very exciting, but I like it just fine. Hope you’re having a super Monday!

P.S. Jack Black is going to appear on Yo Gabba Gabba in a few short weeks. I’m so excited about this, I could burst. I’ll be writing about it in great detail very soon! Yay!

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