The Reason There's Not Much in the Fridge...

Face of an angel? Yes.
...Most of the time

I looked inside the fridge this morning and this is what I found - A sprig of thyme, a half a red onion, a stub of wilting tomato, a half carton of milk and a tube of anchovy paste.

Not so bad if you are a 19 year old pledge in Kappa Alpha Psi and a great meal is Ramen noodles cooked on a hot plate in your dorm room, but I'm a...FOOD BLOGGER for heaven's sake! My fridge should look like a green market every day of the week.

Want to know why my fridge is bare? Because we didn't get to Pathmark yesterday. Well, we did go to Pathmark yesterday, but we never actually made it inside the door.

It all started with gum.

I promised Lucy some gum as a treat and they didn't have sugarless gum at Duane Reade. Well, they had sugarless gum, just not the right flavor. They had spearmint, not strawberry, and Lucy and Edie hate any of the mints - spearmint, peppermint - so after plowing through the gum bins at the front of the store near the cash registers and realizing they had every sugarless mint gum imaginable, but no sugarless strawberry, I told Lucy we would get her some gum at Pathmark, since that was our next stop.

But that wasn't good enough. Because there was shelf after shelf of gum and candy at eye level (for a two year old in her stroller) and she was mesmerized and we weren't getting out of the store without a package of something. So, even though I knew the girls wouldn't like this sugarless mint gum, I stood in a very long line and bought it anyway. I gave Lucy a piece and Edie half a piece.

And they were content for about 15 seconds...until the mint hit their palates. Lucy started to cry and waved the half-chewed wad in the air until I took it and removed it from her sight. I tried to comfort her and tell her we would look for the good gum at Pathmark, but she wasn't having it. She started to cry.

I figured the best thing to do was just get out of dodge. I shuttled them out of the store and hurried down the street, carrying one baby in a sling and pushing the other in the stroller, while bending down occasionally to remind Lucy that good gum was just a block away.

Also sweet...and completely in cahoots with her sister

But the block to Pathmark was long, and riddled with much unhappiness.

Lucy wanted the good gum immediately. I did the rational thing. I explained to her and explained to her and explained to her again why we didn't have the good gum and that the good gum was coming. And every time I explained, I had to stop and bend down and talk to her in her stroller, which meant we kept stopping and it was taking us longer and longer to get to the good gum.

Lucy just kept getting sadder and sadder. I didn't know what to do and the explaining wasn't working, so I tried to keep it moving. It was the longest block in NYC.

Edie (in the sling) had her own thing going on. She was spitting the spearmint gum pieces up onto my chest, so I had little wet, spit marks and little half-chewed chunks of gum running down the front of me. This is not unusual. I usually have some kind of stains and debris on my shirts. This time I was wet, spit-on and stained.

We made it down the block but never got into Pathmark itself. It was the bubble gum machine outside the store that de-railed our efforts. Lucy decided she wanted a gum ball since she didn't get the good gum. This, I think, is completely reasonable.

Tears streamed down her face and she was hiccuping wildly and pointing to that stupid gumball machine and I didn't have quarters even if I wanted her to have that crap and we were just shit out of luck in front of Pathmark and quite frankly, Lucy had just about had enough of my inability to procure gum for her and so she did what any self-respecting toddler would do. ..

She sat down in the middle of the entrance way to Pathmark and staged a protest.

Not a tantrum. A protest. She stopped crying and just sat there. People stepped over and around her and looked at us like we were nuts. But she was calm as anything. Sure in her protest. Done with compromises and promises and bad minty gum.

And I just let her sit there. I respected her sit-in. Edie and I stood off to the side and watched. Lucy just let the people pass around her until she felt calm enough for us to talk and decide what to do next. Which coincided perfectly with the security guard who came over and asked us to leave, but by that time we were ready to go anyway.

And eventually we decided not to go grocery shopping. We decided to pack it in. We decided to admit that the day had gotten the better of us and we were simply going to surrender. And we went home and played. We pretended to cook dinner on the girls' play stove. With their play pots. And our pretend lunch came out perfectly. Edie made the pretend green beans. Lucy made the pretend prawns.

And we enjoyed each other. And forgot about good gum and yucky mint and spit up and stores and buying things.

I still don't have anything in the fridge...but I really don't care.

oooxxx YM