confessions on a Thursday afternoon

My name is Chrissy Jennings and I am a criminal.
Ok, not like a bad guy criminal who smoke ups and shoots people and skulks in the darkness. But a criminal none the less. Parenthood and it's accompanying stupidity has caused me to be a bad person, at least in the eyes of large supermarket and home improvement chains.

Prior to becoming a parent I shoplifted one thing. It was in grade 4. A pack of purple halls. What a lame thing to steal!! I felt so guilty though that I went to a different store, bought a pack of purple halls, and reverse shoplifted at the red rooster. Once I also ate half an ice cream sandwich at the back of the store before putting it back in the case. Also- grade 4. Not a good time of life for me apparently......

Since becoming a parent I have stolen: electrical tape, a 2L of ginger ale, and most recently a family size Rice Krispies and a large box of pepperoni pizza pops.

The electrical tape was shortly after Alpha was born. He was maybe 4 months and I had to run down the the local home improvement box store and buy some paint and other things. Alpha was getting cranky, I let him play with the electrical tape, he fell asleep, the tape fell to the bottom of his car seat bunting bag thingy and wasn't discovered until the next day. Whoops. The ginger ale was when Charlie was about.... lets say 3 months old. Matthew had a brutal flu, it was so bad that he refused to watch even one kid while I ran to the store to grab a  few things. I was cranky, also sick, feeling overwhelmed, and had 3 super miserable 4:00 kids with me. I grabbed what I needed and didn't discover the ginger ale tucked into the top of the cart beside the car seat until Alpha and Bravo were in and buckled in their car seats. And Charlie was having an apocalyptic meltdown. I was NOT going back in. I've been meaning to pay for that ginger ale since, but never remember when I'm there.

Then there was last week. The older two were and Granny's. I just had the baby (and Delta who has officially made me stupider than I've ever been in my entire life). I rushed around, spent a remarkable $362 on who knows what and then rushed to the car because it was 20 minutes past Charlie's nap time and past his lunch time and he was MAD. it didn't help that we had a dumb and exorbitantly slow cashier. Then after Charlie was in his seat and I had unloaded the top of the cart I noticed the pizza pops and Rice Krispies.  Shoot. Seriously though, the line took me 45 minutes to get through. And those people are crazy about checking to see if you have anything on the bottom of the cart (and now I know why...) but not this time. So I guiltily put them in the car, returned my cart, seriously thought about leaving my dollar inside for penance (but didn't) and then drove home. And ate pizza pops for lunch. I would tell myself that i would tell them next time that I forgot to pay, but chances of that happening are about -12%.

Sigh.

I SWEAR I used to be a good person. Watch out: I'm one stop short of cocaine and guns.