Driving Me Nuts

Joel was golfing in a charity tournament today, so I decided the kids and I would use the day to get necessary errands done, including getting party favors/decorations for Ben's birthday party tomorrow. For some reason, although I have driven past Party City about 8,000 times I have never made a precise mental note of its location, because I don't usually have any reason to go there. But today I decided we needed to go there to get supplies to make goody bags for the party.

Mistake number one was not looking up the address before we left. We did some other errands first, and I thought Party City was somewhere in the vicinity of where we were. So I typed "Party City" into the GPS, and it said Party City was less than a mile away. So with that as confirmation, I started to follow the GPS's directions, which I thought were a bit odd because it was taking me off of the road that I was pretty sure Party City was on.

Mistake number two turned out to be not renewing my vehicle registration when it expired at the end of May. Because instead of taking me to Party City, the GPS delivered me right to the Matthews police department, and as I was driving past admiring all the shiny cop cars, one of them pulled me over for the expired registration. As I waited irritably for the officer to come back with the citation, Ben asked, "Are you going to jail?" And then Becca started singing, "Mommy's going to jail... Mommy's going to jail...." (It turns out that Mommy is not going to jail, and as long as Mommy gets the registration renewed two weeks prior to the court date, Mommy does not have to pay the fine either).

After that incident I was quite irritated, switched off the GPS, and (correctly) determined that Party City was on the road I thought it was on, but clear on the other side of town from where I was. So we set off again, with Ben whining somewhat understandably, about how long it was taking to get to Party City (this whole adventure took upwards of an hour I am sad to admit, including a potty stop for Rebecca who announced that she had to poop and wanted to do it in the potty so she could have "fruits" [fruit snacks, her reward for doing number 2 on the potty at home]. We stopped at a bagel shop where she entirely refused to sit on the potty).

We finally found Party City and set about getting the things we needed for the party, while Becca tried to snatch everything she could reach from her seat inside the shopping cart saying, "That's mine! I want that! LOOK! BACKYARDIGANS!" every 5 seconds and Ben countering with, "NO, that's NOT YOURS! It's MY PARTY! Can we get this? How about this? This? This? This?"

With sanity rapidly slipping away we wrapped it up at Party City and headed for the car. At some point in the parking lot one of the kids did or said something - I don't remember what at this point - and I yelled, "You kids are driving Mommy NUTS! NUTS! I am about to run through this parking lot screaming like a lunatic! That's how nuts you are driving me!" (Which outburst Ben thought was very funny).

We got in the car and started to navigate into the drive through lane at McDonald's next to Party City because by this point it was 1:30 and we had yet to eat lunch. As I stopped to yield to another car entering the drive through lane Rebecca yelled, "Mommy! GO! You are driving me NUTS!" Egged on by our laughter she continued to intermittently yell, "YOU ARE DRIVING ME NUTS!" all the way home.