Deadlines

An awful lot of my life is deadline driven right now. Everything is scheduled around work--except the activities of Max and the twins, where everything is scheduled around when THEY need to be somewhere. Right now I'm racing a baby shower deadline in my knitting (and the baby shower is most definitely winning)' I'm racing the "first aunt arrives on Thursday" deadline; and I'm racing the deadlines of two small math projects. I also have half-a-dozen smaller deadlines associated with my sister's wedding--almost all of which I'm behind on.

So yesterday was a "check worries off list" day. In the morning I checked "get tush to YMCA and exercise" and "get back on your diet" off the list. In the afternoon I checked off "plan meals for the next two weeks" and "make grocery list" off the list. In the evening I checked off "go grocery shopping" and last night I checked off "do first four pages of math project." I felt tired, but relieved by the time I went to bed.

Grocery shopping was interesting. We went at dinner time, so I stopped at McDonald's first and fed the minions to keep grocery shopping from becoming a disaster. I haven't been true, big grocery shopping in, oh, a month--and we were out of everything. The cart we used has this enormous plastic car attached to the front--actually, this one seems to want to look like a UPS 18-wheeler. Ben rode in there and ate his dinner. Milo wanted Mom time, so he somehow managed to accordian-fold his legs to get in the basket seat. After awhile, Ben finished up and wanted to walk around with Max, and the (rather large) grocery cart was full, so we started filling up the cab of the plastic UPS truck, too. Did I mention we were out of everything?

When I got out to the truck I encountered something I'd never seen before. At this point we had two carts because nothing ever fits back well in an over-filled cart, so Max had gone to get a second grocery cart. I unloaded the UPS truck grocery cart and then unloaded the one Max had gotten for us. At the very bottom of the cart there were two grapefruits, bagged and tagged.

We don't buy grapefruits. I haven't eaten a grapefruit in at least a decade. I wondered if Max had grabbed them by mistake when he meant to get oranges. He claimed (and this is possibly quite literally true) that he'd never seen the grapefruits before in his life.

I wasn't going to take them back. I didn't know where they'd come from (left in the cart by a previous shopper? Waiting near the cashier to be reshelved?) but it seemed a sign, so I put them in the cart.

This morning I cut one of the grapefruits in half, sprinkled it liberally with splenda, and had that for breakfast. Not bad. I wouldn't do it without the splenda though. I'm just really not a grapefruit person.

Today is church and knitting and one of those wedding-related projects. Ih, and I put chicken in the crockpot which I will refreeze when it's done. It's for making chicken enchiladas while the aunts are here. That's it. That's really enough.