We have started going to the laudrymat to wash our clothes. I used to hate the laundrymat as a kid. It smelled gross, gave me a headache. So even before going, Strike One Against the Laundrymat! But this one doesn't have a perfumey, soapy build-up smell. It doesn't have Pac-Man either. The laundrymat of my memories had Pac-Man, which I played once and lost horribly! This one has a shooter game. Strike Two! Thank goodness the kids are too short to play! Don't you think shooting games are a bit too graphic for little kids? I'm not really a fan of guns unless they keep away stray dogs or bring home deer sausage.
Now a laudrymat is no place for rambunctious kids. The first time we went we took only the oldest one, and he played his DS and sat the whole time. Oh, he charmed some money for cookies and a pop from a lady. The little Fabio. The second time we had both boys and there were other kids there. The four of them ran all around the place, which I'm sure disturbed several patrons. Try as I might, I was way too hopped up on Benedryl to react in time! Allergies.
But to add even more to the negative persona of the laudrymat, there are free suckers. Strike Three! What kid can resist free candy? And the sugar mixed with a maze of large appliances is just a gauntlet waiting to be run!
So future visits are going to require advanced planning. The little one will have to stay with grandma like he did the first time, or something. We did try to break up the time by taking turns taking one kid or the other out to the Goodwill. It's close by and I found the oldest one two pairs of shorts! SCORE! However, the end came where I insisted on FOLDING the clothes this time!!! Which annoyed hubby, causing him to want to help, and let me tell you he can't fold worth a nickel, which left the kids almost unsupervised. This was not good and raised the hassle factor of the whole situation to a 10. We were both exhausted when the hour was up!
And then we went grocery shopping. (Death wish anyone?)
Now grocery shopping is a chore on a good day, with the boys, who are snackers, grazers, whatever you call it, hungry all day, demanding they get to take a grape or wanting to tear into the packages as soon as they are removed from the shelf. Grocery shopping also averages about an hour being that we trek from one end of the Supercenter to the other, length and width, to procure all the items on the list. During an hour a full and happy belly can change to a hungry one. But this was 8:30 at night.
On one hand, the boys were pretty full from supper and the whining when we told them 'no' was kept to a minimum with very little correction from parents. But on the other hand, they were quickly tiring out. Not only had they been out all evening, they had taken a field trip to the Zoo and walked all day. We were just lucky they weren't both screaming from exhaustion in the checkout lane at 9:30. Heck, I could have screamed from exhaustion myself if the Benedryl hadn't left me in a fog of delayed reaction!
Of course, we got home to find that there were still items we missed. Actually we were doing pretty good at that point just to remember to put the milk in the fridge!
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