I pulled into the parking lot of our local grocery store – parked 1 space away from the cart return, hopefully creating a buffer zone large enough to avoid any run away carts, yet close enough to let the children sit in the car while I return the cart after unloading the groceries. I walked over to the cart return and put Twinkle Toes (my 2 yr. old daughter who walks on her tip toes almost wherever she goes) into the back of a cart. Frog Legs (my 4 mon old son who is eternally “jumping”) who was still in his carseat, went in the front basket. I thought I was brilliant – getting Twinkle Toes into a cart before we rolled past the “car carts,” which she is eternally begging me to use.

I did once. I gave into her whining, hoping it would keep her occupied and I would be able to charge through the store w/o a backward glance.  I pushed that Lincoln-Navigator-Limousine-of-a-cart through the store, bumping into pratically everything, and almost beheading Twinkle Toes when she stuck her head out the window of the car unexpectantly; and I vowed I would never do it again – especially since it did not keep her anymore occupied than a regular cart. Twinkle Toes, however, loved it. So I thought I was pretty smart to already have her nicely situated in a regular cart before seeing those blasted car-carts. However, Twinkle Toes did not appreciate my brilliance and started throwing one of her embarassing fits as soon as she saw the car-carts lined up nicely right by the store entrance just calling her name. Thank the Lord for the calming effect of graham crackers which promptly ended the fit! We made it through the produce section w/o making any more of a scene.

Next stop – the pharmacy, which I hate at this particular store. The only other time I used this pharmacy was when Twinkle Toes had pink eye over a year ago. The pharmacist called her a “boy” even though she was wearing a purple dress and had a barette in her hair, entered her information incorrectly into the computer, gave us the wrong drug form – drops instead of a cream which I didn’t notice until I was already home, told me to come back to get the cream and didn’t have it available when I came back. Finally he did not offer me any compensation for the mix-up when I returned the THIRD time to finally get the cream – so much for customer service. But I continue to shop at this store, so using their pharmacy is only common sense. On this day the pharmacy technician looked like she had just bitten into a pignut and certainly didn’t act any better. I probably didn’t look much better either as Frog Legs began to let his disatisfaction with his carseat incarceration be known while I was trying to talk to Pignut Lady about my prescription. Thus began my one-armed steering for the rest of the shopping experience. The next couple of minutes actually progressed relatively normally other than the strain of one-armed cart steering. When I returned to pick up my prescription, I was pleased to find there were no obvious mistakes.

About this time, Twinkle Toes began to get upset with her own incarceration in the back of the cart. Time to walk, and so began my  never ending montra of “Come on Twinkle Toes.” “Stay close to Mommy.” “Put that down.” “Walk!” “Either you walk, or I’ll have to help you.” … and so on. With my attention split between Twinkle Toes, Frog Legs, my one-armed steering and actually trying to shop, I really wasn’t surprised when my cart bumped into the corner of a fruit snacks display and fruit snacks boxes went flying in every direction. Actually upon further investigation, I realized the bottom corner of the display had a huge crease in it, leaving me to believe that many a cart had made contact with it before I did. Anyway, there were fruit snacks boxes everywhere. As I threw them onto the display any which way I could get them to stay, I noticed a store employee not 10 feet away from me stocking pencils. Are you SERIOUS? I’m trying to restack this display one-handed and keep Twinkle Toes from undoing what I already righted, and here the person who should be bending over backwards to make my shopping experience as pleasurable as possible is totally ignoring the fact that I’m breaking into a sweat b/c of a poorly placed display. (If you are sweating in grocery store, you’re doing some serious work since the temperature in most grocery stores is usually around 50 degrees.) I finally got all the boxes back on the display as hapharzardly as I possibly could so that at least the restocking staff could benefit from my misery, and after casting the employee the most disgusted look I could muster which she didn’t seem to notice, continued on with my shoping toward the freezer section… almost finished.

I only had 3 more items to go, when I heard “Will Mrs. Natalie M. please come to the pharmacy.” “Great,” I thought. “What did they screw up this time?” Well I wasn’t about to go dragging Twinkle Toes to the pharmacy on  other side of the store, only to have to drag her back to the freezer section to finish shopping – that alone would take another 20 minutes. So I took my good ol’ time and figured they could wait on ME this time. Finally finished and proceeded to the pharmacy counter. Pignut Lady was at the counter and also the appearance of the incompetent pharmacist who had screwed up Twinkle Toes’s earlier prescription made my blood boil. “What did he do this time?” I growled to myself. “Mrs. M,” said Pignut Lady with a semi-smile on her face, “You forgot your wallet.” And she handed me my wallet with a grin that made me want to leave my cart right there and walk out. “Guess you won’t get very far without it,” she added. “I would if I left my cart right here and let someone else put it all back,” I thought. I looked down – Frog Legs had finally fallen asleep in my arm which was in a permanent crook, not to mention the shooting pain in my shoulder, for which I’m sure I’ll need another prescription.

Time to pay – I was never so glad to hand over my money to a total stranger in my life. Of course, in order to unload my cart, I had to put Frog Legs back into his carseat which woke him up and the crying commenced once again and began escalating to a wail. Leave it to me to choose the cashier who believes she is “The Baby Whisperer.” After ringing up about 5 items she would stop and try to calm Frog Legs down by talking to him. If all I had to do to get Frog Legs to be quiet was talk to him, don’t you think I’d be doing it already?

Finally on the home stretch, I’m ready to sprint through the parking lot for the car, but first we have to get by the car-carts again. Twinkle Toes, who is now tired and getting hungry as well, sees them too, and her emotions go into overdrive as another fit begins, which ends in another round of one-armed steering as I carry her and push the cart out to the car. With Twinkle Toes and Frog Legs both safely crying their eyes out in the backseat of the car, I load the groceries into the back of our station wagon and return the cart. Home at last, Frog Legs fed and Twinkle Toes occupied with a book, I search for my favorite water bottle, the only one out of the 4 I have that doesn’t drip water every time I take a drink. After several minutes of searching, I realize it’s still in the cart sitting in the cart return… and that will be its final resting place, another victim of the day.

It was  a recipe for disaster. My brother-in-law comes to our house for dinner once a week. I spend a lot time in preparation for this once a week occurrence – even if it is just mental preparation. Not b/c I feel a need to impress him w/ my less than wonderful cooking skills, mostly b/c I need to feel like I have a good, well-rounded meal planned ahead of time so I will not be caught offering last week’s leftovers, although he has endured them on occasion – and eats as heartily as any other meal I serve. Also, I admit, I’m a sucker for his never ending praise of “that was delicious” each time he comes – he’s a bachelor with not much in the frig other than beer—not too hard to please.

Anyway, a recent trip to our local discount grocery store had me walking away w/ 2 pounds of thinly sliced Italian ham for around $4 – a good buy in my book,  and had also jump started my mind into flipping through recipes which require such an amount of meat. Of course – a stromboli, which I have made many times since getting married almost 7 years ago, although my husband might argue not enough times to satisfy his appetite. In fact, my sister-in-law seems to be the stromboli queen. We may have eaten more stromboli at her house in the past 2 yrs since she was married then we have at our own. And she makes a good stromboli – with 3 (or 4 – I forget) different kinds of meat and tomato sauce, a key ingredient which I have been omitting for way too long. The last time we were there to eat stromboli, my arrogance got the better of me. She had undertaken making 3 strombolis to feed a large crowd of ravenous people – a feat which being the sleep deprived mother of a 4 month old and almost 3 yr. old can hardly fathom. I was exhausted just watching her roll out her dough, and sadly to say – very sadly to say – I was almost a little satisfied  to know that she wasn’t Martha Stewart when her dough stuck to the countertop for her first stromboli,  resulting in very small holes in the end product where the dough could not be stretched back together. (Why are women always competing with one another – can’t we just give each other a break?)

All that to say that when I started my own stromboli making endeavor this afternoon, I knew I could be Martha – I could have a perfect stromboli. I could picture it sitting on the table – Italian ham and roast beef, mozzarella and parmesan cheeses, green and red peppers, black olives and mushrooms baked together in a delicious, soft, golden-brown healthy whole wheat curst…. whole wheat crust? Where did that come from? Recently, I’ve been experimenting with using whole wheat flour in recipes and decided that stromboli dough could also be whole wheat flour worthy. So even after I had mixed up my dough and let it rise for 30 min., I was unthwarted by the fact that it hadn’t risen a centimeter during that time. Was it the whole wheat flour? Was it old yeast? Who knows…Who needs puffy dough anyway? You just end up flatting it out when you roll it. Thus I proceeded to roll out my dough after thoroughly spraying my countertop with Pam so my dough wouldn’t stick. It was beautiful – all the layers of meat and vibrant vegetables intermingling. Wouldn’t Martha be proud, I thought to myself. Oh yes, she would have been too – if it weren’t for that next step of peeling the dough off the counter and sealing up all that glory. Now sometimes I am not a very careful person – in fact I get frustrated with fine details rather easily, as my husband can attest to… especially when things don’t go the way I feel they should. Instead of simply peeling the dough off the counter in one big sheet like I have done so many times before, I very soon realized my dough was stuck – not coming off without giving me a good fight… which of course, made me want to fight. The dough won. I did a reasonable job getting the the bottom sealed up – yes, there were some very small holes comparable to my sister-in-law’s, but hey – it was the bottom, and only I would know they were there. However, when it came time to flip the whole stromboli from countertop to baking pan so that the bottom would be in the pan, my patience failed me as it has so many times before. The top of the stromboli was stuck fast, and my fingers clawed at the dough, ripping huge holes until the whole mess was beyond recognition.

My anger flared, my pride wounded – the meal I had so carefully planned, imagined looking so nice, looked forward to hearing one more time “that was delicious” – would not meet any of these expectations. I considered throwing it out – getting rid of the evidence of my humanness. My mind searched the freezer looking for any meal that I might throw together in less than 20 min – but to no avail. Even if my SIL did have small holes in her stromboli, I’m sure she NEVER had any cooking experiment gone so awry. I could imagine my BIL telling my MIL, who IS Martha Stewart, about the horrible concoction I made him eat, while my FIL shook his head at the failure of a wife his son had married.

But I decided against all this, and pictured my hard working husband coming home to a wife w/ a vendetta against stromboli, which would probably be directed at him. Instead, I did something I have so rarely done in the past 3 or 4 years. I turned on the music… I found the perfect CD of the Cranberries, mad and angry at the world, and let them do it all for me. While I sang the words “You’re so pretty the WAY you are” to give my self-confidence an extra boost, I put my beautiful flop-oli into the oven for the last step before I would have to serve my failure – naked and vulnerable – to not only my husband, but also to my BIL. His words to me this evening as we sat down to supper…. “Was this a casserole gone wrong?…. This is delicious.” Victory.