The Great Escape

In which your humble narrator throws off the shackles of viral-based confinement and high-tails it out of the house.

Having been infected with yet another virus this week, Child #1 spent 5 entire days home-bound. Being confined to the house makes Child #1 transform from a pleasant, agreeable Dr. Jekyll-type character into the 2.4 year-old version of Edward Hyde. Despite the hellish nature of his first 6 months on earth (colic), which were then followed by "The Great Unpleasantness" (6-12 months) he's been a rather amiable little chap ever since then. That is, unless you make him stay home for more than 2 days in a row. Then the evil begins.

It starts innocuously enough with fussing, whining and an overuse of the word "no." It then progresses to throwing things, slamming doors and tantrums. This continues to build until he reaches the stage of "Purposive Badness" wherein he starts doing weird stuff that he knows is completely forbidden, i.e., getting into the refrigerator by himself, pulling books off of shelves, and making a mess with whatever (usually liquid) substance that his fatigued, ill and stupid parents have left within his reach. Once he starts drawing pentagrams on the floor and trying to summon the demon Lord of Hell he gets put into a time-out.

Today, all of us having mostly recovered, I asked Child #1 if he wanted to go to Costco. Despite being in the midst of one of his weird little projects, he looked up and seemed to have a spasm of joy while he shrieked "YES!"

So Child #1, Child #2 and I embarked to Costco to buy toilet paper, baby formula and cheese. There was a space next to the cart corral when we got there, so I plunked both children into the cart (Costco has double seated carts) and we went inside where we walked virtually every aisle, just looking at stuff. After purchasing our items we had a delightful snack at the snack bar and spent 5 minutes looking at the demo Nissan Altima parked by the exit.

On the freeway on the way home, a small voice from the back seat inquired, "Can we go to another store?"

So we did. And after a stop at the Co-op, our arms full of Hippie Groceries, we returned home again, safe for at least five more days from the infernal one.