Pied Pigeon of Walmart

This morning, there was a pigeon in Walmart at 6 am.  How do I know this?  Because I was there.  Every other Tuesday morning, destiny calls me to witness a digital phantasm at my bedside that looks uncannily like 4:45.  Bi-weekly, the math of circumstance does it's evil dance.  Addend: my daughter has a ballet lesson at 4:00 pm. Addend: my husband starts his twelve hour shift at 6:30 am.  Addend: We have one car.  Sum: Must get whole family up at God-awful early hour to take daddy to work.

I can only imagine what the guard at the Naval Medical Center Portsmouth gate thinks when my husband shows my I.D.  Well, actually, I can imagine, but I'm really glad he doesn't articulate, that the woman in my I.D. looks nothing like the woman in her fuzzy fleece pajamas, with nappy head, and only half of yesterday's 24 hour lipstick.  Usually, the guard at the gate is the only one who sees us--still half conscious and pajama clad.

But this morning, I'd had enough coffee to know that we were out of apple juice, bread, Bunny Milk (what my kids call Nesquick), bananas, and diapers.  The absence of these items could signal the end of the world before lunchtime, so I decided to suck it up and stop at Walmart on the way home.  At 6:05, I stumbled through the door with my band of scruffy-looking nerf herders, and I prayed desperately that there was no one about with a video camera developing one of those "Only at Walmart" youtube sensations.

We started our sleepy meanderings in the produce department, and after a near knock-down-drag-out over who was going to put the bananas in a bag, I thought about walking straight back to the car.  That's when my son yelled, "Look mom!  There's a bird in Walmart!"  They forgot about the grocery list, and suddenly the Pied Pigeon was the sole object of their attention. 

"But what about the bananas, kiddos?" I would say.

"But mom there's a bird in Walmart!  He flew over there!" said my son.  He ran in whatever general direction the bird was going--which had nothing to do with the location of the bread.

"But what about the bread, kiddos?"

"De burd went dat way!" said my daughter. "And I dike dat dwess.  Can I have dat dwess mommy?"

"No Margaret, you cannot have that dress.  Bread.  The bread is that way."

"But mommy, da burd might poop on my dwess if we don't get it!"

"It's not your dwess--I mean DRESS--Margaret.  We're here for bread.  And juice.  And diapers.  And they are THAT WAY.  Come on you loonies."

The baby sees the bird. "WOW!" he says.

It took us an hour to get bananas, bread, juice, Bunny Milk, and diapers.  If I had stopped in sporting goods and test driven a bee-bee gun, we might have cut 30 minutes off the trip.  I was ready to make pie of the Pied Pigeon.

However, as most ridiculous adventures do, our adventure yielded a blog-able moral.  It's almost the end of January.  Many of us are probably ready to ditch the New Year's diet and either give up or try something new because "this just isn't working!"

Truth be told, it is way too early to determine whether or not your new commitments are paying off.  Studies show that a new habit takes six to eight weeks to form.  The worst thing you can do right now is give up or shift gears drastically.  Unless your diet or resolution is having a negative impact on your health, carry on!

Don't follow the Pied Pigeon!