Word to the Wise

Never take five children with you to any retail venue. Trust me--you'll regret it.

Take Wednesday, for example. Megan had earned one of those insidious little Pizza Hut coupons from school for achieving her reading goal for March. You know the ones -- "bring this to any participating Pizza Hut location for your free Personal Pan Pizza". It sounds innocent, but it's a sinister conspiracy to sell pizza. I guess I left my brain in bed that morning, because I took all four kids plus an extra teenager with me to redeem that little scrap of consumerist propaganda. Of course, it wouldn't be fair to make all the other kids watch Megan eat her little fried disk of dough covered with extra cheese; I ended up buying four additional PPP's. But it would be 15 minutes until they were ready, so we went for a walk. Past the bakery where I dropped $4.20 for six orange rolls. Then on down to Payless Shoes, where it just happened to be BOGO week, so of course we couldn't just buy one pair of shoes for Susan's birthday. Nooooooooo we must buy two, to get our money's worth!

Pizzas consumed, we entered Wal-Mart. Walmart was inspired, I believe, by the devil. Not because of it's labor issues or market manipulation, but because I somehow cannot walk out of that store without having spent at least $50, even if I only had two small items on my list. On this day, the damage was far worse, because I had five adorable little and big helpers to fill the cart for me.

I've got to figure out a better strategy before April's Pizza Hut Reading Coupon comes home.