I’ve gotten used to grocery shopping. Today while in the grocery store I realized I wasn’t constantly thinking about how I used to be grocery shopping with a big pregnant belly. Enough time has passed that it’s not on my mind all the time; I feel more like me in my old body. Me as I am, not as I should have been.<\/p>\n
However… however. It was friday evening and it was busy – way busier than I’m used to. (I usually do my grocery shopping in the mornings.) Lots of people meant lots of kids… lots and lots of kids.<\/p>\n
I didn’t really notice at first. I’ve gotten good at turning my head to avoid looking, at tuning my thoughts out so I don’t hear a child babbling. I just hunker down behind my grocery cart and plod on quickly out of sight. But today there were just too damn many of them. Every time I turned a corner there were 5 year olds darting in front of my cart with siblings, or a 2 year old hanging onto his mother’s hand, wailing. I could tell it was wearing on me. By the end of my shopping trip I felt absolutely frazzled. I was trying not to forget anything off my mental list, but the chidrens’ cries and shouts were peircing holes in my concentration. I gripped my cart’s bar a little tighter, hunkered down a little lower. My eyes were fixed directly in front of me, trying not to look.<\/p>\n
I was getting angry<\/i>. Very bitter, very angry. All I wanted to do was buy food and get home to make dinner. That’s all… just some grocery shopping. But no, I can’t do this simple thing without being bombarded by taunts and reminders. Yet another child ran in front of my cart and I had the urge to ram my cart into him. So angry. Get out of my way. Leave me alone. Stop running around in a fucking grocery store. It’s not a playground.<\/i> I didn’t, of course. I never would. But I’d be lying if I said the thought didn’t cross my mind.<\/p>\n
As I stood waiting in the check-out line for the bored teenager to ring me up, a toddler in the next aisle over was screaming. The sound sat on my chest, pushing the breath out of me. “Peek-a-boo! Peek-a-boo!” said the mother. “Wha’s that? Nooo, baby don’t push the button. Silly baby! Silly baby!” The teenaged cashier handed me my receipt and thanked me. I forced a short, cold smile and fled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’ve gotten used to grocery shopping. Today while in the grocery store I realized I wasn’t constantly thinking about how I used to be grocery shopping with a big pregnant belly. Enough time has passed that it’s not on my mind all the time; I feel more like me in my old body. Me as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[76,69],"class_list":["post-1147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ivf-3","tag-loss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/71"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1147\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lunardreams.net\/baby\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}