The Day I Got Free Bread and Milk

I should have known what kind of day it was going to be when, at 8:20 am, Lucy called out "Hey Mom, come and I see what I'm doing!"

She was cutting her hair.

When I asked why, the answer was "Because I'm tired of eating it in my mouth." I found my hair scissors and tried to even out the damage (she was taking off about 5 inches on her own).

The rest of the day was fairly uneventful. Lucy's preschool was short than usual, so I didn't get as much editing done as I'd hoped. When I went to pick her up, I offered to take one of her friends home with us so her mom could go to her doctor's appointment minus one active preschooler. I thought I'd get a bit more work in as they played.

That didn't happen. Lucy locked her friend in her bedroom because she wanted some alone time. It was traumatic all around. Luckily, a fancy snack picnic on the bed followed by a crazy dance party to the Glee Season 1 soundtrack saved things from completely falling apart.

After throwing together a hasty dinner, I looked at Mr. Nick and realized he was quite tired. Since we were out of bread and milk, I offered to take Miss Lu with me to the store before bedtime.

Lucy and I shopped our way through Smith's. We stocked up at the caselot sale, remembered to find things like toothpaste and denture cleanser, and finally, after 10 minutes of looking all over the store, found their farm bread. It's called cottage bread here, so when I asked for farm bread at the bakery counter they all looked at me like I was crazy.

We saw a cashier we know, said hi, and she offered to check us out even though her light was off. The time: 7:45 pm. We had two caselot boxes left to ring up when an odd, high-pitched beeping filled the air. Every singe register in the entire store suddenly crashed.

Lucy and I waited, chatted with the cashier, opened her bottle of Crush, sampled the mini muffins they were passing out to disgruntled customers, heard several people swear, waited some more, watched an entire episode of Go Diego Go on my phone, and finally—after making plans for a playdate tomorrow afternoon with the cashier and her daughter—made it home at 8:55 pm.

How did we escape? I really just wanted to pay for what had been rung up and go home, but I didn't have enough cash on me, and they couldn't process anything else. So the cashier asked her supervisor if we could just leave everything in my cart so I could come pick it up tomorrow. The only perishables I had were 6 yogurts, a bunch of bananas, creamer, and milk.

Actually, I had 2 milks and 2 breads that I really wanted to pay for with cash (they're the main reason I went to the store in the first place). But the cashier asked if I could just take them since I'd been waiting, oh, you know, almost an hour. The supervisor came over and said I could take one milk and one bread (and the Crush that we'd opened for Lucy). And that's how I arrived home with free milk and free bread.

Here they are, in all their free glory.

So not worth it.