Goldfish Zen Calm

Another innocent child is lured to the orange fish-shaped cracker of death

We were at Duane Reade yesterday and wouldn’t you know…The Goldfish (evil cousin to the much lauded and equally mischievous Organic Cheddar Bunny) were just at eye level to the girls as we rolled down the aisle in the double stroller.

Let's all close our eyes now and collectively place the ju-ju curse on all Duane Reade stock boys for positioning these bags of poison right at stroller eye level. Thank you.

This Goldfish sighting was very unfortunate because Lucy and Edie immediately freaked out and lunged towards the rows of colorful Goldfish packaging as if Santa were giving out free Princess dolls in aisle 7. Then, they broke into uncontrollable arm spasms and flailed about as if in some kind of Goldfish-induced epileptic seizure.

So long story short - I caved.

I had a bunch of errands to do and I calculated how long I could keep them in the stroller, whizzing them through the streets of Harlem, going shop to shop in the drizzling rain, before they would stage a mutiny and undo buckles and belts and hurl themselves out onto the sidewalk and pound the pavement with their angry little fists and hurl their shoes at innocent passer-bys.

A couple bags of Goldfish crackers might just buy me 20 minutes of what I like to call "Goldfish Zen Calm". But it wasn’t an easy decision.

I mean we don’t have Goldfish, Cheddar Bunnies or any other nutritionally-vacant, belly-fillers lying around the house. But I was torn - there was that 20 minutes of unfettered stroller contentment looming on my horizon and fantasies of "Goldfish Zen Calm" and the promise of goals accomplished and it was all a powerful urge calling out to me and I felt like my head was spinning and the kids were seizing and the store was whirling around me and I think I may have blacked out for few seconds because when I opened my eyes and the dizziness subsided, each of the kids was contentedly opening their very own bag of Goldfish.

Really, I barely remember any of it.

My first reaction was panic. What if someone saw me? Would I fess up and tell David, who would surely look at me as if I were some stranger with orange crumbs on my lips? Or would I just discreetly reach down and wipe the fish dust - and in essence, the traces of my crime - off my kids faces and forget to tell him it ever happened? Was this kind of Goldfish thing covered in our marriage vows?

And what about my readers? What would my readers say if they found me giving my kids something that wasn’t a cage-free, bird-friendly, pastured, shade-grown, free-range, sustainable, grass-fed organic snack? It's like I went off the official play book or something.

They might think I've been breaking into the scotch lately. A rumor I strongly deny.

So, then the paranoia kicked in and I wondered if any of my readers could be watching me from the tampon aisle? No really, the thought actually crossed my mind. I was like Pee Wee Herman with his pants down around his ankles in the dirty sex theater.

God, I'm a freak.

I looked around. The coast looked clear. I paid quickly in cash, so as to not leave a paper trail of my indiscretions (Elliott Spitzer should take lessons from me - pay CASH when you hire a hooker next time.)

I got my errands done and the kids ate far less than I anticipated since both bags fell out (or were pushed) onto the sidewalk within a few yards of one another, right there in front of New York Sports Club and about ¾ of each bag tumbled out onto the wet sidewalk in these two big orange heaps, one of which I rolled through before I even noticed and so, not only was there a Goldfish carnage in two bright neon orange clumps in front of store - where people who don’t have kids and have time to work out, were gawking at me and wondering why I couldn’t just conjure up a broom and clean up after myself - but the orange stuck to my stroller wheels and I distributed a trail of orange Goldfish dust all the way down the block and onto the street.

I tried to act like it wasn’t me but you know, we were pretty unmistakable. So, I did the only thing I could do - I held my head high and pretended nothing was wrong. It’s amazing what you can block out by just pretending stuff doesn’t exist. It didn’t even bother me that the kids kept looking back and pointing to the big orange piles and screaming, “THERE’S OUR FISH, MOMMY!” over and over.

I just kept walking. Kept my head held high. La dee da dee da…

What did I learn? Even the rain couldn’t wash away whatever orange-colored poison they put in these goldfish from hell. But I got my errands done. I got my 20 minutes. I experienced the "Goldfish Zen Calm". The children seem to be doing just fine.

Reminder to self: Stay the hell out of aisle 7.

Xxxooo YM

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A couple of noteworthy things:

• A book I recently ghostwrote - but can’t tell you the name of for fear the guy who’s name is on the cover will use it to beat me senseless - is out in stores and is doing quite well. I would tell you to run out and buy it immediately, but that might be hard since you won’t know which one it is. Maybe you should just go out and buy a book today. If you like it, I wrote that one.

• Over the weekend, we left the children at home – not alone, thank you, with their Godmother - and had a lovely dinner at Chef Michael Lomonaco’s “Porterhouse” in the Time Warner Building. I had the most amazing marrow bones and now I must make them at home because they are pure fat, but soooo much better than eating a whole cake or something equally decadent. And they are super high in protein and the kids can scoop out the fat with little tiny baby forks which will be HUGE here at Casa Yummy Mummy and so, I’ll be posting about that soon. I think this stuff is definately kid food. And if I’m going to eat pure fat, so are you. So start working that treadmill, baby.

• David is still in London. The girls are asking for him all the time. But the CSFB (The Competent But Sexy Finnish Babysitter) is back from Miami, all tanned and blond and satiated by drink and strange libidinous men on the beach. Thank God. My life is nearly normal again.

• I now have a Facebook page, although there’s not much on there yet since I am a Facebook virgin and figuring out how to do all the stuff there is a little like getting a degree in Nuclear Physics. So, if you know about Face book come on over! You can find me at Kim Foster and I started a group called The Yummy Mummy Cooks Gourmet, but now that I have a group I have to figure out exactly what that means and what I have to do with my group. Field trips? Homework? Free drinks? Panty raids? What? If you guys have any idea about this stuff, I’d love to hear them…

• Under the category of things I shouldn’t write about but will - we want to get pregnant this year and in order to do that, we need to wean the little period-stopper. So prepare for many excruciating posts describing us tearing the nipple out of Edie’s mouth and preventing her from having the one thing in the world she truly loves.
• That's all for now...