WTFriday - Liquor Stores, Minimum Wage, etc.

First of all, I want to know this:

If I do not make minimum wage during the course of the neighborhood garage sale, does the Homeowners' Association have to reimburse me the difference?

Net profit: $27.50, folks.

I just left all the crap on the front porch for tomorrow. I figure, if some idiot is so hard up that he needs to shoplift from my garage sale, he can have at it. And I don't want to haul it all out again tomorrow. I'm calling every charity in town tomorrow at 12:01 pm, and someone is going to come get this junk out of my life. Thank God for my mom-in-law, though, who came down and entertained the troops so that I could give the hard sell to all the people who showed up. Next time I'm going to put $100 on everything, because no one even considered paying the sticker price for anything that was out there. "I'll give you $2," was the phrase of the day. I would make a terrible used car salesman. I was like, "Whatever, just get it off of my porch."

I actually made WAY more money doing coupons this week than anything else. $75 off of my grocery bill - over 33%! WOO HOO! The final total was about $138. It was mostly diapers, but they were half price, and there was much rejoicing.

Anyway, between that and the whole Zoloft issue, by the time dinner rolled around this evening, this was my motto:


I needed some pinot, baby. In a bad way. So after a little retail therapy, we walked to the store with the good wine (the local place that does tastings and the whole bit) and I went inside. With the kids.

On the way, MG uttered her longest sentence to date: "Mommy, I thirsty, get me a bottle of water please." Holy cow! Bonus points for good manners! So I promised her a bottle of water. Silly me.

The cashier, drunk with power, came over and said, "You can't have kids in here." I said, "You're kidding." He said, "No, it's illegal." I replied, "Well, it's illegal for me to leave them in the car." "That's the choice you make," he said.

That's the choice I make??? Exsqueeze me?

Are my kids going to go off into some dark corner of the (nice, upscale) liquor store and get hammered? Probably not. They're just going to remain firmly attached to my body, as usual, while I purchase a bottle of your very expensive libations. But apparently in this guy's world, I can either choose being a parent, or being inebriated. Nevermind the fact that inebriation is what gets most of us into this parenthood gig to begin with. Geez. They get you knocked up, and then they just drop you, and are all like, "Hey, Lady, you can't come in here with those kids, even though it was our product that got you that way to begin with." It's not like I'm going after them for child support!

Well, forgive me for reproducing, Wine Nazi. I'll just take my business elsewhere.

What really irks me is that I have an extremely vivid memory of pushing Mary Grace in her stroller through that very store when she was smaller. Granted, it is common knowledge that my memory sucks, but I am sure that this happened. Positive. He was just being a jerk today.

"Can I at least buy my kid a bottle of water?" I said. "Ma'am, it's not my law," Mr. Drunkwithpower replied. I should've pinched her, just so that she would cry and make him feel like the heartless bastard he is. I believe this would've been more effective than my own tears, which just encouraged him.

Anyway, by the time I got everyone back to the car, and buckled up, we were entirely too fussy and thirsty to suffer a third trip to the grocery store in three days, so we went through the drive-up for a root beer, and came home.

Fortunately, BJ called and said, "Do you want me to pick up something fast for dinner?" and I said, "Sure, I can open a bottle of wine in about 4 seconds, that's quick. Oh, and you'd better bring some chocolate, too." That's that "new math" they keep talking about - Wine + Chocolate = 90 mg Zoloft. All I need is a backrub, and I'm good.

2.5 glasses in. Much better.