YELLOW ALERT

Okay, first can I just say it's H.U.G.E. that my husband has Sundays off on his current shift bid? All my airline friends are nodding in complete agreement. That's because they understand that it's entirely normal for it to take TWENTY FLIPPIN' YEARS to hold a weekend day off in the airline industry. Oh yes I am serious.

So anyhoo, Carl currently has Sunday/Monday off and thus was home with us today. And we began dropping like flies. Carl was already sick with a cough that could use a lung brush, not to mention other classic symptoms of infirmity. By mid-afternoon, I realized I wasn't feeling so hot myself, as the classic upper respiratory symptoms came on. Reece's nose was running, Cierah had a 102.1º fever (she looks catatonic with a fever) and Brandon began fussing and refusing his bottle. Only Liv stood victorious over our downward spiral toward Scurvy. Still, we needed groceries.

So the plan was, head to Arby's for the "five for $5.95" deal, then grocery shop in a mad dash so we could be done before one of the "H's" upchucked in the vegetable aisle. I would feel sooo bad if that happened. At least if it were in the paper products aisle, I could open a roll of Bounty and ask a passerby to clean it up. Just kidding. I would never do that. I'd be thrifty and hand them the generic brand.

Okay, so we arrived at Arby's and I began ordering while Carl settled the kids into a booth. Big mistake on my part. My brain just wasn't in it and by the time he caught up with me, I was engaged in a 2nd grade math challenge with a very patient, very young manager who must have read the pre-Scurvy look on my face because he kept staring at me with that, "Do you have any clue how scary you look?" expression. Then this;

"Ma'am, it's a five items for $5.95 deal."
"Yes, but I've only ordered 10 items so far, so I still need two more. I'll take two drinks."
"So, you want two "five for $5.95's?"
"Whatever. Yes, is that what it works out to?"
"Well, you have 10 items so far so I can ring them up that way, and I can add the two drinks as well if you want."
"Well yeah! I want the drinks in the deal because I only have 10 items so far."
"Yes, Ma'am. That's what it comes to, ten items. So the drinks would be extra."
"Why? I thought it was 'five for $5.95.'"
"It is." (His look changed to pity which, I believe, was intended for himself.) "You already ordered your ten items before you requested the two drinks. So do you want those too?"
"I get 12 items. I've only ordered 10 so far."

By this time, he was no longer staring at my pre-Scurvy mug. Instead, I was searching his for signs of drinking on the job, knowing that at the very least he missed a math class or two.

Then it hit me. In my state of pre-Scurviness, I was focusing on the 6 bucks (okay, $5.95) as six items. So I was thinking we got 12 items altogether. I apologized for my scarecrow rendition ("If I only had a brain") which he graciously accepted. I know he was glad to see me walk away, wondering what he did to deserve me in his line.

So, we sit down to eat and we looked like the Beverly Hillbillies. I looked truly washed out and tired. Carl looked like a Grizzly Adams understudy. Reece had bungee snot hanging from both sides of his nose (someone pass that child a Kleenex already), and Cierah looked, well catatonic with her blank stare and flush cheeks. And she sat there in her fancy red patent leather sandals eating her two pieces of toast brought from home. Olivia looked fine, the oddball in the midst of our scary germ scene, like Marilyn on The Munsters.

I sealed our fate as the new Beverly Hillbillies too when I tried to grab a dripping straw away from Reece and it bent and then flicked milkshake all over Carl, Olivia and the wall behind them. Oh, and as we walked out, Cierah announced in that loud voice saved by preschoolers for the sole purpose of parental humiliation, "I didn't frow up, Mom. I didn't frow up anything at all." Just what diners love to hear when eating. Sigh.

We finally made our way into the grocery store, divided the list in half and proceeded to power shop with the intention of getting done in twenty minutes. And we might have too, if not for Reece's personal shopper experience. I mentioned a few days ago that he reminds me of The Story of Ferdinand, which is about a bull who is happy to just sit back and watch the flowers grow. Reece was busy doing his own shopping at his own speed. I would have strapped his pokey behind down in a cart but all the cool two-seat "car" carts were taken and I could only put one child in the regular cart. As Cierah was the catatonic one, well,... you get the gist. So I grabbed Price Check Paulie Reece and we headed to the front of the store to meet up with Carl for check out.

I still don't fully comprehend what happened next, but I somehow managed to clog up the entire exit process at the front of the store. I was putting items on the belt for checkout and Carl was behind me doing the same. The next thing I know, I'm alone with the cashier, catatonic Cierah in her seat blankly staring behind the empty eyes of a fever. Reece and Olivia were gone (to the bathroom with their Dad's permission I later learned), Carl was gone (to the money machine I later learned), and the baby was in his car seat in another cart in front of me, a cart that was now extended out of my checkout line into the walkway that leads to the exit doors. And my completely filled cart of groceries was out there with him. People were beginning to form a human traffic jam behind my two inconveniently placed carts and I couldn't wedge my sick self past my own cart to do anything about it. How completely resigned I was to pre-Scurviness in that moment (the vitamin C lozenges were right there next to me on the rack; perhaps I should have tore into them and swallowed them whole; either that or I should have grabbed the cucumber out of the lady's cart behind me, snapped it in two and stuck a half-pickle on each eye to relieve the dark circled bags that hung there).

You know, when I worked at the mall as a teen, they had a code for people like me. A yellow alert was used when a shopper behaved suspiciously in one store so other stores were given a "heads up" via the secret yellow alert code. I'm thinking the Arby's manager probably called one in on me to the grocery store ("I always feel like, somebody's watchin' me," sang 80's wannabe Rockwell.) So maybe it's a good thing I didn't "sample" a seedless grape after all?