Saturday.

Yesterday was a beautiful if not a little too windy day.  My photo shoot got cancelled because the poor baby I was supposed to shoot got sick with a respiratory infection.  So we thought we'd take advantage of the free morning and nice weather and do what?  Go to Sam's Club in search of a new mattress.  Good times. Here's our current mattress situation:  The mattress I had pre-Kurt is getting up there in years.  Kurt bought a mattress years ago when we first met and his "ex-roommate" moved out with all the furniture.  Literally.  I don't think he had a chair to sit on.  So he purchased a mattress under pressure without much research.  Come to find out that it's total junk and we wake up every morning with aches and pains that we prefer to attribute to said mattress than to our age.  So we've spent some time figuring out the best mattress for us for the money is at Sam's Club. 

We've never been to Sam's club.  Now we know why.  Granted, we were foolish enough to go on a Saturday morning, but our stress level was maxed out after about 3 minutes.  The shopping carts were rusty and most had at least one bum wheel.  We hesitated putting SB in one at all, and as we tried to wipe down the cart, customers were shoving us to the side to get through the door.  Come on people.  I saw those Christian bumper stickers all over your cars - it's "love they neighbor," not "love they neighbor unless they get in between you and your giant size box of Lucky Charms."  So we find the mattresses and they did not have any of the memory foam ones in stock.  They only had a few spring mattresses out that you could lay down on, but judging by the cleanliness of the store and clientele, that is not something you would want to do.  So big waste of time at Sam's Club. 

On to Costco, while were in the neighborhood.  Much cleaner, still stressful, however.  People will run you down to get to the last bacon-wrapped scallop that the sample lady is handing out.  Anyway, we find the mattress section and discover that there is no actual mattress to try out, but get this, the memory foam mattresses are somehow shrink-wrapped into a box that will fit in the trunk of a car.  They have wheels and a handle on the box and you just roll it out the door and into your bedroom.  After you take it out of the box it will fully expand within 72 hours.  Sounds like something you'd see on The Jetsons, right?  We didn't buy it on the spot but decided to research the reviews a little and come back if all sounded good from cyberspace.

Lunchtime.  We stopped at Showmars, because as you know if you're from Charlotte, everybody loves Showmars.  It's true.  The people that work there are always so nice.  SB double-fisted her Grilled Cheese, putting one half down every now and then to eat a french fry.  Healthy lunch for our growing toddler.  Oh well.  We had a vegetable for dinner, I think.  While having lunch, Kurt gets the brilliant idea to go look at some play houses for our princess.  Kurt is dying to get this girl a playhouse for the backyard.  He said he had seen a few places while running errands a few weeks ago, so off we go on a little adventure.

Place #1 was way out by the airport in a vacant lot near Wilkinson Blvd.  Not a good part of town.   If you didn't know that about Charlotte, the razor wire surrounding all the parking lots in the vicinity and the caged up drink machines outside the extended stay motel would have tipped you off.  Um, so no playhouses, actually, just tool sheds.  Fail.  Next.

Place #2 was literally off the Interstate.  "Tuff-Shed.  Open to the Public."  Grand.  There were a few little playhouses we could see as we whizzed by at 65MPH so we turned around and got off the next exit and backtracked down the side road which was littered with crumbling shanties, a makeshift junkyard and scary trailer in the woods right across from Tuff-Shed.  I say to Kurt, "you go ahead and look at your playhouse, SB and I are NOT getting out of the car here this is sketchy."  He thinks I'm silly.   He runs in the bldg and comes back with a salesman, or as SB would call him "a Scary Stranger."  (Please refer back to  this post for info on scary strangers.)  Predictably, Scary Stranger loudly says hi to our princess, throwing her into the pit of despair, complete with loud sobs and big rolling tears.  Now I will say that Scary Stranger needed to speak loudly to be heard not only over the din of traffic flying by on the Interstate but also the incredible wind that had whipped up.  Kurt takes SB out of the safety of her carseat and follows Scary Stranger to the playhouse displayed literally a baseball's throw away from I-85.  The playhouse is really just a small shed with some decorative trim.  The guy opens up the little door and Kurt coaxes SB into the shed and climbs in with her.  Still crying, she clings to the back wall of the shed in terror.  I say enough, pluck my baby out and bring her back to the car.  It takes several minutes to calm her down and get her back into the carseat.  I just hope she's not in therapy 25 years from now still suffering trauma from the time her Mommy and Daddy stuck her in a shed on the side of the Interstate.