A few weeks ago I decided it would be a rather brilliant idea to get up bright and early in the morning, pack up my two girls, and head off to a consignment sale.
A consignment sale that was 1 hour away from our house.
A consignment sale whose rules clearly stipulated that only umbrella strollers were allowed before 12:00 noon.
What – are your alarm bells going off? Well, mine weren't.
I cheerfully posited that we would rise early, quickly eat breakfast, load up, and take off for a day of fun, bonding, and getting fabulous deals on clothes from the homes of the affluent.
So, being the eternal optimist masquerading as a pessimist (i.e. I fully expect the worst case scenario but unfailingly believe the best case scenario will actually make itself happen anyway)...I went to bed long after midnight and cheerfully set my clock for 6:30 a.m.
And that was how my error began.
Of course, anyone with any mathematical prowess at all will quickly recognize the fatal flaw in the basic premise of my plan. Hey, for my money you don't even have to have prowess. Just a basic knowledge that 1+1 does not equal 1.
To clarify: umbrella strollers generally come equipped with two handles and four extremely wobbly wheels. Especially the two in the front.
People generally come equipped with two hands, which, when it comes to strollers, are both generally employed upon the two handles aforementioned.
So...umbrella strollers only before 12 noon and 2 young children to get around with me = a distinct and glaring difficulty.
But my ever-hopeful mind recalled fond images of previous consignment sales that I had attended by the same group. Not in the same venue, but each of the other 2 venues I had visited possessed a fair amount of wiggle room. No problem, I thought. I shall hold of one handle of each stroller and man-handle them through the aisles, which won't take long, and then I will be at the clothes aisle I seek and that is where I'll stay. Not so tough. Not ideal, but manageable.
I am, after all, an overly-cautious type, and I keep telling myself I should take more risks. This sounded just risky enough, but also manageable enough to be worth doing.
Yes. I completely dismissed the difficulty from my oblivious little mind and went to bed at 1:30 sharp. Or was it 2? No matter.
From that point on, the Lord kept sending my glaring signals that this was a bad idea...but I was blissfully oblivious of them until I was seeing them in retrospect.
I woke up to my youngest turning on the morning banshee shriek (which lasts exactly long enough to make me get up and look at her and then it turns into coos and giggles – the little actress) and sunlight pouring in the windows.
It was not 6:30.
It was 8:00.
Glaring Signal number one.
I groaned as I realized that there was no way I could be there by 8:30 at this point and imagined other people snatching beautiful little dresses that I could have found if only I hadn't overslept.
Then I reminded myself that I was not in dire need of anything, and it was fine – we'd just go later and I would never know what I had missed.
So the scramble began, and just under 1 ½ hours later we were pulling out of the driveway.
And we drove and drove and it was a beautifully scenic route through nicely-developed areas and crepe myrtles hanging heavy over fences and paper birches draping rooftops and long, winding driveways disappearing into groves of trees. It was all thoroughly relaxing (well, except for one or two blood-curdling shrieks from the back seat) and I was very happy we had gone out in spite of our later-than-desired start.
Well, it would help me keep from buying much at all, since I had places to be later – I would just go quickly and see if it looked like a sale worth coming to in the future.
And as I thought about these things, I found myself navigating a very long, winding road that plummeted down, down, down as if we were suddenly in the mountains. It was sharp turn after sharp turn and it seemed as if everyone coming the opposite direction felt the need to hug the center line as closely as possible. I was extremely relieved to be through with it as I turned onto the road that my GPS had been warning me about for the past endless, winding mile and a half.
As I contemplated my pleasure to be through with that somewhat-harrowing ordeal, I realized that my GPS was urgently telling me to make a U-turn. To turn onto this road. Onto that road. SOMETHING.
HELLO! You went the wrong way, Einstein.
Oh. So I followed her suggestions to reroute and, as I frowningly drove along trying to figure out what I had gone wrong, I had a distinct sense that we were taking a very circuitous way back. And then we were turning back onto a road that I knew I had already been on before.
And as things began to look more and more familiar, I began to get a sinking feeling.
Just as I feared. There we were, up at the top of the mountain road again, with my GPS heartlessly commanding me to go down again.
Say what?
Glaring Signal number 2, perhaps?
I reluctantly made the drive again – fortunately there was much less oncoming traffic this time – and made sure I paid close attention to the machine's instructions this time. And I went the right way. 10 minutes later than I would have if I'd just paid attention the first time.
Okay, so that was a little anticlimactic.
I began to feel, uneasily, that this whole idea had been decidedly bad.
Judging from the restless sounds in the back, my children (and the youngest in particular) were beginning to share that sentiment.
But I was over halfway there, so I plowed ahead, and managed to arrive at the sale more than 2 hours later than I had hoped to. After I finally managed to park, I began the long process of loading the girls into their 2 respective umbrella strollers. During which process the owner of the car next to me showed up.
Out of the 50 million cars in the parking lot, it would be the one right next to me that was trying to leave.
Glaring Signal number 3, in the form of an angel. Not really an angel, but the whole thing should have made me stop and think...y'know, this keeps getting more and more complicated. I really should just get in my car and go away.
But I didn't get it! I just hustled to get out of the way.
She was trying hard to be gracious and move slowly so that I wouldn't feel rushed, but I don't like to be in peoples' way.
Wait. What's that? Are you asking what I was doing taking two umbrella strollers to a crowded consignment sale if I don't like to be in peoples' way? Ummmm...yeah. You have a point there. You really do. Just call me cotton-brains.
So I hurried and managed to scoot out of her way fairly quickly, holding the inside handle of each stroller in a death grip and using every ounce of upper body strength I posses (don't laugh) to keep them going straight in front of me.
I noticed amused smiles coming at me from every direction, so I just put on a super-confident face (which, knowing how my attempts at controlling my facial expressions always backfire, probably looked more like a super-stressed-out face...even though I wasn't super-stressed-out...YET) and forged ahead until I got to the sign which said “Enter here.”
So I entered on the left side of the “Enter here” sign, but the Legalistic Lady overseeing the entrance said, “No, over here.” She made me back up my two strollers and I had just started to go go forwards again when I totally lost control of them just trying to get BACK in where I had already gone in once just so I could get back in on the RIGHT side of the sign.
Never enter on the left side of an “enter here” sign. Unspoken rule of consignment sales. Now we know, right?
I was having no success in getting back in control of my strollers so I just kind of picked them both up at once and dropped them down on the Right Side of the sign and plastered on a stupendously fake smile. I chatted cheerfully with the Legalistic Lady as she put bands on the strollers so no one would think I was stealing them, put a band on my eldest's doll so no one would think she was stealing it, and glanced at my purse and said, “Well, no one would think you were stealing THAT!” and wished me well with my two strollers as I struggled off wondering what in the blue-green earth she had meant by that statement.
I like my multi-colored-stripes purse. It matches almost every outfit I own. Casual ones, anyway.
Anyway, I plowed through the Large Items tent that I was routed into, on my way to the clothes I was interested in. I started down one aisle and discovered that there was no outlet. There was only one way out and it was blocked by shoppers. So I excused and pardoned my way down the aisle trying not to clobber anyone with my strollers...and I escaped into the open air.
There were signs pointing us into the Fellowship Hall area of the church building, which required me to haul my children over a curb and navigate a winding pathway riddled with toddlers having meltdowns and dads bored out of their minds.
Have you ever tried navigating a narrow, winding sidewalk with two umbrella strollers? You should. It's eye-opening. And I had aching forearms for a week afterwards. And that's all I'm going to say about that.
Moving on to more cheerful topics, a kind lady opened the door for me and I pulled one stroller in while she pushed the other behind me past another Legalistic Lady guarding the doorway.
How do I know she was a Legalistic Lady, you ask? Just you wait and I'll tell you. It comes later in the story.
More soon!
Edit: Part II
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