Costco: Warehouse of Horrors

Let me set the stage for you. It's a rainy Friday around lunchtime, the day before the latest Costco coupons expire. I walk, nay, run through the puddles in the parking lot to get myself, two small children, and sleeping infant into the store before we are either soaked with rain or run down by a senior citizen driving a Buick on his way home from getting a 5 gallon drum of mayo and 1000 multivitamins. Once inside the "store" we are gently reminded that we must show our Costco card before going in any further, so I load the three children into the massive cart and rumage through the diaper bag for my card, show it to the nice lady blocking our entrance, and proceed.

We pass the large TV's, which are conveniently playing the movie Cars so that my children will whine about not being able to watch it. We pass the overpriced furniture, which my children want to sit on, lay on, jump from, etc. We pass the clothes with Disney characters on them that Alayna simply must have. Unfortunately for her, I don't by clothes with Disney characters, so she frowns. Finally we reach our destination: the $41 diapers. Said diapers are one of the coupon items this month, meaning everyone else at Costco has the same diapers in their carts, including the senior citizens oddly enough. Ok, that's all we needed, so it's time to go check out, right? WRONG! We've driven all the way here, so we might as well take advantage of some of those other coupons that will be expiring tomorrow.

90 minutes, 4 samples (including sausage, soup, breaded chicken, and mashed potatoes), 3 shopping cart accidents invovling a display of syrup, someone else's cart, and me running over my own daughter, and one screaming baby later, we are finally picking up our last item: the ever popular Grandma Sycamore's bread. While putting my own 4 loaves into our cart, I happened to glance over at another mom doing the same thing. When she was ready to move on to the breakfast foods isle, her poor little 2 year old daughter layed down right there on the warehouse floor in front of the bread and closed her eyes. She simply couldn't make it any further. Her mom kept on going, but the little girl layed there like a slug. I paused, bread in hand, and watched. Eventually the mom realized her daughter was not going to be able to get up on her own and went and scraped the poor thing off the floor and into the cart already crammed with food. It was quite sad. My own children, though behaving very well, were at their wits end, too. Alayna was starting to wimper because she was so "sirsty" and Isaac kept saying," get me out of this cold place!" Eli just cried and took a bunch of aggression out on his frog rattle.

I always like to see what other people purchase at Costco. The randomness at the checkout kind of makes up for the horrors of shopping and spending half your week's salary. I myself bought diapers, paper plates, toilet bowl cleaner, lots of bread, chicken, lotion, ravioli, dishwashing soap, and juice. All that for under $200! What a bargain I got using those coupons! I probably saved like 10 bucks! Well worth all the frustration that is just an unavoidable part of Costco shopping. Some guy at the checkout bought a recliner, and the lady in front of me cleaned them out of giant muffins. Random, random. Where else can you buy fine furniture, cleaning supplies, delicious cheesecakes, bicycles, 10 lbs of frozen waffles, and a 5 pack of toothpaste all under the same roof?

On our way out we picked up the usual: hot dog and rootbeer, smoothie, and slice of pizza. Had I known it was still going to be raining cats and dogs outside, we would have eaten at the lovely little tables Costco provides and not tried to make it out to the car with our food. Oh well, a soggy slice of pizza and wet hot dog were a fitting end to this shopping trip. Next time we're out of diapers, I think I'll wait until Jason's home before braving the warehouse again!