MY DAY OUT

Chris has started baby-sitting for some friends of ours on weekends. He's been doing it off and on, filling in for their usual nanny, but starting this month, it's a regular gig. So, this leaves me with the responsibility of taking care of our weekend errands on my own. Most things we've been able to accomplish before or after baby sitting stints like grocery shopping. It's the other side errands that I'm now forced to do on my own. I remember being fairly independent once, but since being married to Chris, I've slowly let him take over just about everything. If it wasn't for him, I'd never leave the house. He's the one that gets me up and into the car. I'd never buy new shoes, underwear, yarn, or any thing on the Gap sales rack if Chris wasn't constantly conning me to go places with the promise of ice cream at the end of every trip.

Saturday, I had a short list of tasks I needed to accomplish. First on the list was go to Akin's to buy my Burt's Bees moisturizer. They don't have it. Apparently, its not 100% natural, so they no longer carry it. Okay. I don't panic and do something like by a substitute that I know doesn't work as well but instead breaks my face out into giant zits. I move on. I walk next door to PetsMart to buy Hooper's monthly supply of piggy twists and canned food. We're in luck. I buy the last four packages of piggy twists and save 8 cents a can on his dog food. This is good. I'm out on my own accomplishing something. Woo-hoo!

Next, I head to Hobby Lobby where I buy yarn for my next knitting project. I noticed a Starbucks with a drive-thru window in the Hobby Lobby parking lot and decide that I've been so good today that I'm going to treat myself to coffee. I've never been to an actual Starbucks before, but it's coffee. How hard can it be right? I pull up to the order box thingy and order a café au lait. The Starbucks girl then says, "What's that?" I start to panic, frantically searching the menu for something I recognize when she comes back to tell me they do have that, they just call it a Misto. A Misto!? Like the soup that no one ever wants at the Chinese restaurant? No, wait, that's "miso". Never mind.

I got my coffee and went over to see Chris and proudly show him that I'm capable of ordering a coffee for myself from Starbucks. His reply: "Where's mine?"

I barely managed to get my coffee, and he thinks I can order for two? Who knows what half double-decaffeinated half-caf thing he would have wanted? I should have order something else anyway just to see if the Starbucks girl would say, "What's that? No, wait, we have that...but we're calling it a Café au Lait now."