feats of valour

This is a Public Service Announcement: Please, when given the opportunity, give the breast-feeding woman in the check-out line a break, will ya?

All right, so I was in line to pay for my groceries this weekend, and the baby pasted to the hip of the woman behind me started to wail, so, I said, sympathetically to the mother:

Would you like to go ahead of me?

She said:

No, that's okay.

So, I proceed to load my groceries onto the black belt, when I hear that the baby has stopped its wailing, and notice, out the corner of my eye, that the mother has hoisted up her shirt and whipped out her child's food source, right there, while simultaneously hoisting her banannas onto the conveyer belt. So, I was like, um, okay, I wouldn't have done it, simply because I have modesty issues, and Eli was always an erratic eater, but, hey, if you can breastfeed and fetch banannas from your grocery cart at the same time, you've got one big one up on me, sista, and you just go on and wave that breastfeeding flag high.

So, as I re-focus on finishing my grocery transaction, the child-clerk, with about as much awareness as a 2-year-old who is about to stick his finger in an electrical outlet with bright red wires protruding from it, says to ME:

Can you tell her I'M CLOSED?

(in my head: I'm sorry, maybe you were born blind and deaf and have this amazing ability to still drag egg cartons across conveyer belts, but you didn't, for some unexplainable and odd reason, see THE WOMAN BREASTFEEDING HER SCREAMING CHILD BEHIND ME)

Me to breastfeeding woman: Um, (nervously gesturing to the blind-from-birth child-clerk), she says she's closed.

BW: ARE YOU KIDDING ME?

Me to child-clerk: Um, could you just ring her up and then close? I *think* she's having a hard time.

C-C to me: Mmmmph. Well, I...(blah, blah, blah, blah, blah)

Then, no more words were spoken, and I shot her the biggest, baddest (well, okay, maybe not the baddest) GLARE of her life, as if to say, One day, oh young one who bags banannas while waiting to clock out so you can meet your boyfriend and skateboard off into the sunset while chewing gum, locking lips, and listening to your apple-green iPods, ONE DAY, you may have a child, and that child, if he's normal, may cry in grocery stores, and force you to hike up your shirt and PRAY that the girl behind the counter doesn't close her freakin' register on you.

Okay, so not exactly purple-heart material here, people, but she kept her register open, and they all breastfed (and skateboarded off into the sunset) happily ever after.

And on my drive home, I thought about never breastfeeding again.

:::

In other, non-heroic news, we have rekindled our affections for the YMCA (or the YPT, as Eli calls it) and have made it our absolute goal in life to go at least 3 to 4 evenings a week to pump some iron and take the child to the pool. The pool is wonderful and completely enclosed with an attached sauna and open year-round. I swam 4 laps yesterday and thought I might need to be rescued from drowing. If there was a doubt before, now it is confirmed: I am THAT out of shape.

And, appropos of nothing mentioned above, but just because it is so funny, Eli's own special name for the Golden Arches:

Ho-Donald's.

I told you it was funny. At least it is to us, even for the millionth time.

Hope everyone is having a great week. More from us soon...;-)