Adora's Great Idea

I needed to go do our monthly shopping at BJ's but, well, I'm pregnant and things like that really tire me out. Adora, on the other hand, is finally done with her classes for the semester and is bored. So here's her great idea - "How about I go with you and we take everyone along?!" I believe the last time I suggested this I asked someone to beat me on the head with a hammer before I walked out the door but this time Adora suggested it so the idea picked up some momentum. We loaded everyone into the van and took off. In all honesty, once we got past JM whining because there were actually 4 people younger than him who took up the four seats in the two carts, the kids were pretty durn well behaved. David had some trouble keeping his hands to himself and off of Nehemiah and everytime Adora scolded him I reminded her just *whose* idea it was to bring them all along.

We filled those two carts, got in line, loaded all the groceries onto the conveyer belt. While we were unloading the groceries from the cart the gentleman in front of us was staring at our brood with a big grin on his face. "Are they all yours?" Ah, here we go again. "Well, sort of all. They're all part of my household." "How many children do you have?" "I'm pregnant with number eleven." "Wow, that's fantastic! Just think of it...when they all grow up your family can obtain world domination!" Huh? That was a new on me and I liked the sound of it! "Yeah, world domination...that would be great!"

I was thrown out of my reverie when the cashier asked me for my BJ's card. Oh, sure, let me just get that for......no wallet! For some reason I had my checkbook but no wallet (the two are generally inseparable friends). Since I did have my checkbook the cashier sent me to the customer service desk to look up our membership number. While I stood at the desk, Adora ran to the car to check for my wallet there and Philip got put in charge of the carts (hey desperate conditions call for desperate measures). Of course my name was nowhere to be found in the BJ's computer system (nevermind that we've been members there for about the past FIFTEEN YEARS!). So I was handed a temporary membership number. Good. Moving on. The cashier finished checking us out and got to the point where she was going to push the button to ring up the total. "Are you ready?" She said. "Uh, sure." I couldn't really figure out why she was making such a big deal out of giving me the total. "676 dollars, 65 cents" I got out my checkbook and started writing the check while she looked at me increduously. "You weren't surprised were you? You didn't flinch." Uh, no, why should I flinch at an almost $700 grocery bill? I have 14 people living in my house, lady. (ok, I didn't say it but I thought it.)

So I wrote out the check and handed it to her and....the cash register refused to accept it. ...sigh...another manager called over (Fortunately the elderly gentleman stuck behind us was most forgiving) who informed all of us that there is no way to accept a check on a temporary membership...grrr... but have I mentioned the fact that we've been members here for FIFTEEN YEARS! But really I was completely exasperated with ME for forgetting my wallet in the first place. A new manager was called over and a new search begun for our membership. This time it dawned on me that fifteen years ago I was still going by my hyphenated name (yet another reason not to hyphenate your name ladies - so that when you get tired of doing it and just sort of drop it over the years you don't forget that you once did it and had every document - legal or otherwise - printed with that stupid hyphenated name on it!). The hyphen worked, my membership was approved as was my check and we were off to home! But I was pretty much done for the day. It took all I could do to rally myself for the big choir concert.