The Scene

We are officially moving from our apartment on the last Saturday of this month. Every day until then, I'm going to lose 5% of my hair. The stress, stress, stress is making me a mess, mess, mess. The hardest thing is I can't do a lot of the stuff I need to do to get our new place ready (pack, paint, child-proof ...) when Rain is with me. I want her to hang out with me, but I can't sand wood in one hand and cuddle her with the other, right? So, I've been having my sister watch Rain a lot. I try to bring Rain with me whenever I can, but when I do ... well, here's what happened today:

I took Rain with me to buy paint. She was asleep when I took her out of the car, so I thought, "Sweet! I can shop in peace!" Well, ten minutes into the trip, Rain wakes up. She LOVES going to home improvement stores, because everything dangerous and pricey is out on the floor with no locks. Stacks and rows of toxic sprays, glues, & pesticides? Weeeee!

Well, I tried and tried to keep her in the cart, but she started crying and screaming. I tried carrying her--no go. She wanted to walk, and I was annoying her. After a few minutes, she was crawling all over me as I tried to restrain her. At one point, I sat her down to put on her shoe (yeah, by this time she had lost a shoe and was foaming at the mouth). She screamed, and it echoed along the aisles of metal cans and bounced off all the ears of the retired and childless men shopping at that hour.

"See??"I hissed at Rain. "I'm that lady at the store with a screaming kid who everyone hates! See who you've made Mommy into?"

I was so mad, I got up and walked off. "Fine!" I said. "I'm done with this!" I walked about five feet and peeked behind me. Rain turned her back to me (with a sassy flourish, no less!) and stomped off in the opposite direction. So, I walked another three feet and looked again. Rain had stopped as well. This is the part that troubles me most: after checking to see that I wasn't looking (I was), she hid behind a barrel in the aisle.

"Is she trying to make me believe she really ran off?" I thought. I ran towards the side of the barrel, and looked down on her. She was spying on the spot where I had just been. She was trying to punk me out! My mouth dropped open as she leaned out a bit like, "Now where did that silly woman go?"

"Rain!" I said, annoyed. She turned back and smiled like, "Yeah, I knew you'd be back."

Ugh! I was so mad. Rain knew it, too. For the next hour, she kept reading my eyes in this freaky sort of way. I think she was trying to decipher if I was mad, or if I was amused. She sort of smiled but all fake like. Her eyes said, "What is Mommy thinking? How can I bend these thoughts to my will?" I kept a straight face, but shook my head a few times to hint, "I'm not happy, and this isn't the end of it."

In conclusion: who is available to babysit this week? What--was it something I said?