Saturday Shopping Summary (Warning: Boring)

Alexis went down for a nap, and so did Lee and I. Lee went upstairs to lie down, and I sat on the couch, pretending to myself I wouldn't just lie down. The nap was ecstacy. I'm still about 6 or 8 hours behind on sleep this week.

After feeding Alex her lunch and waking up Lee, we went to Wal-Mart. It costs two dollars and fifty cents a minute for me to be in Wal-Mart, and we were in there a while. We bought:

• 2 dressers for the baby's room - unassembled.
• 2 small plastic bins for use as baby laundry hampers.
• 3 Smoke detectors - batteries included.
• 8 AAA batteries- one for kitchen timer, 5 for Alexis' toy phone, which would be a lot, if it weren't so rockin' a toy.
• Digital clock-radio. Could have saved $.18 by skipping the radio option, decided to splurge.
• 2 Sun-shades for car.
• Bibs - we passed on the bib that said "Born To Shop."
• Diapers, size 4 - We're cloth diapering, but still need a few to simplify travel
• Box of Balance bars - Triple Chocolate Chaos flavor. Judging by the ingredients, Chaos means "Partially Hydrogenated Tropical Oil."
• Trash bags - for our trash.

We also dropped off a box of stuff at the thrift store, which CLOSED right as we got there at 3 p.m. I was really looking forward to seeing if any new board games showed up there. I pulled a sweet copy of the 1986 Milton Bradley Cathedral last week.

We went to a busy McDonald's. The cashier was brand new, so she couldn't work the register, and it took her 3 tries to figure out how to give me $.72 change. First she got 3 quarters, and stared at her hands, as though she were a caveman discovering particle physics. Then she tossed all the quarters away, and started counting nickels out of the nickel compartment. That lasted a while. Finally, she gave up, and gave me 7 shiny dimes and 2 corroded pennies.

When my order arrived, she had rung up a Small fry, for 95 cents, instead of a Regular fry, for an even dollar. What's the difference? For a nickel more, you get twice as many fries. I pointed out the error, and a manager watching the transaction swapped me the fries and waved me off with a "don't worry about it!" McDonald's should just sell the two for the same amount of money, and be done with it. Lee had a double cheeseburger, plain and dry, and I had two Hot & Spicy Chicken sandwiches.

There were also big handwritten signs on the registers telling the customers which register accepted cash, and which accepted cash AND CREDIT. Go ahead, buy fake food with next month's money, I won't stop you.

After that, we went to a friend's house and dropped off a second box of stuff on their doorstep, because they weren't home.

As a last useful task, we stopped and got gas, which including a store discount, was $2.13 a gallon. We haven't had the Forester long enough to know what kind of mileage it gets.