Sweeten my day ... with Kolonopin.

Despite the plethora of pills that I take on a daily basis, I still have THOSE days. And. This was one of those days ...

Because I'm a military wife (and slightly, ok- insanely- anxiety ridden), my family gets a certificate for something called Give Parents a Break. Therefore, twice a month, Nathan and I get to drop our three wee-ones off at the base day care for FOUR hours FREEEEEE. That's right, eight free hours of sitting a month. Well. This past Saturday was GPAB, and I was so looking forward to a few hours with my husband after an absolutely insane week of planning for our move to Europe (including filing for our family's passports, which is a story ALL on its on). 

Having three children, you can pretty much guarantee that ONE of THREE will be sick at some point at all times. Saturday was no exception. My poor, sweet eight month old baby slept till noon. When he woke up, he was so hot it was uncomfortable to touch him. His fever was unbelievable. We quickly realized that our "date" would not be completely child free. (Can I say (for the record) ? Lennon is the most absolute most perfect baby on the planet. He was sent from Heaven and delivered straight to an undeserving mother. In fact, no one deserves an angel quite like him).

So at 1300 (that's 1 pm, people) ... we dropped off our oldest two hellions and at daycare, and planned the next four hours. Originally, we had planned to get lunch and then go bowling. Well, because my sweet baby boy was sick, I was reluctant to take him to the bowling alley. We decided to do Little Caesars and rent a movie. ALERT. We live in the suckiest suck town in Missouri (Knob Noster). It takes us at least 20 minutes to get anywhere ... even Walmart. (It's ok. I feel bad for me too.)

Another random point (that really starts the entire point of this blog) ... Little Caesars (which is 30 minutes away) has THE WORST fountain drinks EVER. So, when we decide to go there, we fret over the awful pepsi we're about to experience. WELLLLLL .... This time, I had the genius idea (because my baybay was so sick) to get tea from McDonalds, rent a redbox, get pizza, and just hang out at home watching a movie until time to pick the other two up. (If you don't know what a redbox is ... you're totally missing out, and I'm so genuinely sorry for your loss) .

And so we begin.

Nathan, Lennon, and I drive up to the McDonalds in Knob, get in the drive through, and realize how looooong getting two sweet teas is about to take. We discuss which movie we want to see (We chose "Marley and Me" ... amazing choice, btw). Then, my impatient self decides it would be SO much quicker for me just to run in, get the sweet teas, and grab the redbox movie on the way out. Nathan (reluctantly) agrees to my new plan. 

As I'm getting out of our van,  a school bus pulls into the McDonald's parking lot. At this point, my slow pace turns into something just short of a sprint (everyone knows what school busses at McDonalds means, right?!) Nathan pulls around, and I enter the McDonalds ...

Dun Dun Dun ...

I walk in and there are two men in line ahead of me. They are standing so far apart that I am, literally, right inside the door. As if the two old, pokey men weren't enough, I notice the cashiers. There was an insanely slow woman TRAINING  a woman who seemed to be MUCH slower than the already slow cashier. Great. The slow leading the slow. I looked around, somewhat in a hurry (I mean, I only have SO much free time). I glance at the second register and a woman is slowly sanitizing trays. I start getting frustrated at the pokey-ness of it all, and decide to calm down and let it go. The first man moves along ... just as the bus full of giggly soccer girls arrive. I push my way into my place in line behind the even still pokey man. The stupid giggly girls were standing, literally, two inches behind me. They spoke as loud as they possibly could ( I'm sure of that. I mean, come on!). I have a serious issue with my personal "bubble", so I turned and glaaaared at the girls on my heels. No progress. After several minutes, I made it to the special-ed cashiers to place my order. (Sidenote: When you order a large sweet tea, you're promised a free red box rental). I ordered my two large sweet teas, and was handed two enormous styrofoam cups WITHOUT  redbox codes. sigh. So I had to ask my dumb cashier if I was wrong in thinking that I deserved redbox codes. So, she finds a random cup and digs out two codes that have obviously come off of old french fry boxes. She says to me " I promise they'll work. They're still good." Um... Ok.

So, I take my two gigantic cups to the soda dispensers, desperate to leave this place. I had to push myself through approximately ten to twelve nasty muddy soccer chicks to get to the ice dispenser. The ice was running out. I got about half the ice I normally would in each of our cups. No big deal. Less ice equals more tea. Then. I went to the tea dispenser. The friggin tea ran out about a quarter through one of my cups. Ugh.

I treck back through the nasty giggly girls and find my way to an open place on the counter. A crazy fat Hillbilly Woman (somehow affiliated with the soccer girls) looks at me.  "What're they outta of?", she says. "Tea". "Well, sweet or unsweet?", she asks. "Sweet. They're out of sweet tea".

Finally, I go against my natural southern instincts and rudely interrupt a McDonalds employee. I ask (with  my two empty-ish cups), "Can I please get some sweet tea?" ... She says "Are we out?!" Ugh. "Yes" I say. The lady gets me some tea from the drive through barrel of tea, and is nice enough to add in the lids. She brings them back and I'm still freaking out from the overwhelming crowd of giggly, muddy girls. I look down at my two cups. No. Straws.

Instead of trying to push myself back through the icky girls, I decide to walk around the entire "restaurant".  I hurrily grab two straws and balance them on my giant cups where there are already Redbox codes balancing. The end is near, I think. 

Psh. 

As I walk back around McDonalds, I'm feeling relief at knowing that this experience is coming to a close. Then. I saw a girl dressed in full prom gear. Sitting casually at the table next to her mom ... eating whatever the hell she was eating. At this point, I was confident ... Totally, completely confident ... that this was a nightmare. As I walked toward the door, a man (who happened to be holding at least four bags full of sandwiches and several drinks) held the door open for me. I think I laughed at him. Then I got outside of McDonald's hell, and rounded the corner to the Redbox. (For those who, sadly, don't know ... A Redbox is a "vending" machine where you can rent a movie for only a dollar a night ... Amazing, really)......

My hands were full of giant teas, straws, redbox codes, and I had a heavy purse on my shoulder. I looked at the redbox, and then at my hands. (If you're wondering, Nathan and Lennon were sitting comfortably in a parking spot, oblivious of the chaos that I was experiencing). I rearranged the teas to free up my right hand; I entered in the code that was carefully balanced on one of the cups; I then chose "Marley and Me"  and began the check out process. Oh. Shit. "Please Swipe Your Debit or Credit Card Now" ....

I stood there for several seconds trying to decide if I could telepathically retrieve my USAA card from my wallet. Sigh. So, in the end, I had to put EVERYTHING on the ground, and pull out my card. I swiped the card and put it back in my wallet. Picked up the tea. The straws. The Redbox codes. And soon realized I would need a place to put the movie. I moved everything around AGAIN. When the DVD finally appeared, I placed it between my arm and my purse, repositioned the cups of tea, straws, and codes, and headed for the car. 

Nathan met me at the curb. Relieved, I stretched out both of my hands to hand him our (hard-worked-for) teas. As I did, The movie I had just rented SLAMMED to the ground, opened, and the actual DVD hit the pavement. Sigh. All I could hope was ... That the tea would be good and The movie would work. 

I got in the car..... A FULL on anxiety attack hit. I was shaking so hard from my ridiculous experience that I couldn't even get a straw in the giant lid... I took a pill ... And there we were.

We drove thirty minutes to our Little Caesars in a semi-neraby town, where THAT McDonalds told me to "Sweeten my day".  Pft.     

The pill worked. The date was great, and the movie was amazing. 

But McDonald's did NOT sweeten my day with it's $1 Sweet Tea.

Full Disclosure:

We had Mcdonald's for dinner tonight. Nathan went. It was good.