Our boys were off on a Geocaching-Happy Birthday Trey-cliffs and creeks guy adventure today. Caroline and I downed a Hershey bar and some peach tea, packed up and headed out for our own variety of fun.

First stop, the library. Ohhh. Gotta make a rabbit trail. I love our library. You can reserve books online and they put them on a little shelf all rubberbanded together with your name on a cute round orange sticker on each book just waiting for you to scoop them up and check out. Back on track. Anyway, I realized that I had reserved the Spanish version of Eragon for Parker instead of English. Which is all good and well...as long as Parker can read Spanish. Which he can. But only if you use a controlled vocabulary of about 50-86 words that we have covered in the Learnables I Structures program. Since I am hopeful that the book has more complexity than See Spot Run, off I went to recheck the computer catalog. Several searches later I gave up and off I went this time to the information desk for help. The librarian assured me that the catalog is confusing and this happens all the time. I think she was just trying to make me look less inept than I really was. And I like her a lot for that. A whole lot. She found the book in another library in the system and arranged for it to be delivered for me to pick up on Monday. She asked for my library card and as I was thanking her for her help and digging in my purse for my wallet...I stopped. No wallet. At all. I checked again and my heart started to race. Where was it. I knew I had already used my library card so it was in this building somewhere. Or at least it was. My brain quickly scanned our path; the hold shelves, the children's department in the POL-RET aisle for Caroline's The Tale of Samuel Whiskers among others, The computers, Non-Fiction for a crochet book...Wait! The computer. I glanced back and saw the terminal we used was empty. I quickly walked over and there was my wallet. Open and sitting behind the keyboard. I took a deep breath and grabbed it and went back to the info desk. I could tell by the librarian's expression that she expected it to have been long gone. But it wasn't. And I was glad.

Next stop. The mall. I dislike the mall. Immensely. To me, the mall is an overwhelming sea of people and merchandise and noise and people criss-crossing and going all directions at once. Maybe that is why I am such a bad shopper. Sensory overload for my non multi-tasking brain. Ack. I like Target though. And all grocery stores. Grocery stores make me happy. Go figure. Caroline and I entered the mall and I quickly went into overload and suggested we get a snack. Food is good. We found a smoothie/fruit place and ordered a large cup of pineapple, melons, strawberries and kiwi fruit. Ah. This is better than shopping. We sat down and watched the SPCA animals and munched our fruit and made a silly phone call and talked. All was good. We finished up and I steeled myself and we went to our intended store. We could not find anything we liked and we were about to leave when Caroline looked stricken and gasped "Where's my purse?" We quickly realized she left her little pink purse hanging on her chair in the foot court. "No way will it still be there." I thought to myself as we wove our way to the escalator. As we walked up the escalator to speed things up, I saw Caroline craning her head trying to figure out where we had been sitting. I glanced over and saw an older man at the table and no little girl rhinestone studded pink purse in sight. I asked the man if he had seen a pink purse and he shook his head no. Caroline's eyes were welling up with tears and I tried to tell her that we probably were not going to find it. I saw a cleaning lady and asked if she had seen the purse. She just looked at me confused and I realized that English was not going to be effective. I tried to demonstrate, but she did not understand me. We began to head back for the escalator when a lady came over to me. She was sitting at an adjacent table to the older man and had heard us. She told us some other people were at the table before the man and perhaps they took the purse to customer service. I thanked her and we headed toward the escalator. We saw another cleaning lady on our way down and on a whim, I asked her about our little lost purse filled with stuffed kitties and notepads and other such treasures of a small girl. She asked what color it was and radioed something in Spanish. More Spanish back from the radio. "It’s at customer service." she answered matter of factly. Disbelief and skepticism filled my thoughts. I thanked her and we went to find the indicated area. As we came near the booth, I cautioned Caroline that it might be another purse and not hers. We asked at the desk and the attendants looked at me silently and blankly. I began to describe the purse, small, child sized, light pink with sparkly rhinestones and pockets like the back of your jeans, a zipper across the top, it has kleenex and kitties and notepads and colored pens inside... I looked at them hopefully. The woman on the left slowly reached down under the counter and still silently, slowly raised a purse. That was it! Caroline's purse! The tears in her eyes began sparkling and hopefully any doubt as to the actual owner of the purse disappeared. (I am actually not sure as the attendants never spoke to us or smiled. But they had the purse AND released it to us, so speaking and peasantries were optional. But ya know? They did work in customer service. You would think smiles and speech would be desirable. Go figure.) Thank you to the person who took the purse down and not home with them.

Our last stop was Kroger. We were both tired and my intermittent toothache of the last two and a half weeks was in the on position. I sat in the car and pared the list down as low as I could and we headed in. My cart pusher got the cart and off we went to produce. Most of our shopping could be done in this one area so Caroline parked the cart and went to sample some fruits. I started loading the cart and thought we were done when I remembered the shallots. I breathed in deeply and turned the cart around. Back to the far corner of produce for the shallots. A chipper produce guy came over to Caroline (We have shopped at this Kroger an average of say 3 times a week for over 7 years so we are familiar faces to most of the staff.) and said "I bet my refrigerator is bigger than your refrigerator at home." She looked confused and he continued "If your mom says it is okay, I can show you and your mom our big refrigerator." Caroline still looked confused but said "Okay." We left our cart and the man took us through the big, beige, swinging double doors with the ginormous kick plates and took us to where people were prepping food and on through the big sliver door to the refrigerator. He breathed out and showed Caroline that she could see her breath and pointed out the pears and broccoli and watermelons. She looked nonplussed and said "okay." I could tell she wasn't getting it and said "Caroline. You are IN the refrigerator. Right now. This room is one huge refrigerator." Her eyes got wide and a smile came over her face. She started giggling and we thanked the man and went on our way. Caroline giggled the rest of the trip about being in the "Really really really big refrigerator. Mommy! We were INSIDE the refrigerator. Isn't that funny?"

A nonstolen wallet, a loved pink purse returned to customer service and a private tour of the Kroger refrigerator. Thanks.

A happy day, indeed! Nice.

Aw... that's a great day. And it was wonderful to see you four today as well!

The fridge story demonstrates yet again why it is SO important to be around children so we can see things through their tiny (but growing) perspective.

I truly love happy-ending stories, and three in one shopping trip is astounding.