BECAUSE I'M A REALLY GOOD MOM...

At Wal-Mart today I put a bag of red seedless grapes in my cart and, when I started to walk away, another bag of red seedless grapes somehow grabbed hold of my cart and went right along with me, dropping small clusters of red seedless grapes in a trail behind me.

I hate Wal-Mart.

Luckily I noticed the tag-along grapes very quickly and stopped to pick them up and untangle the bag that had latched itself onto my cart. I think I only smashed one lone grape.

Anyway, I put all the grapes in the bag and looked AAAALLLL AROUND for a produce person so I could confess my wrong doing and make sure nobody bought the red seedless grapes that had been on the floor at Wal-Mart.

Because we all know how sanitary that floor is.

I honestly wanted to turn myself in because my brother is a produce manager at a Wal-Mart and I want to respect produce managers everywhere. Sadly there was no produce person to be found, so I made a big show of looking disappointed and concerned, in case anybody was watching me, and set the grapes among the lemons, thinking nobody would want them if they were among the lemons.

I don't know why I thought that; I just did.

Just let it be known that I tried to hand over the soiled grapes.

But that's not the point. The point is that the whole grape debacle would not have happened if I had not felt so guilty about having filled my cart up with junk food filled with high fructose corn syrup. I feel it is my duty to support the high fructose corn syrup industry because my husband's company manufactures it. Like I've said before, it's not good FOR us but it's been good TO us.

See, I only put the grapes in my cart so I would have something nutritionally redeeming when I paid for my groceries.

Because I at least want to LOOK LIKE a good mom.

I knew when I went to Wal-Mart that, along with my fat free cheese, apple juice, cranberry juice, ground beef and laundry soap, I would be buying lots of Little Debbie Snack Cakes; because, as I've mentioned before, my kids love Little Debbie. LOVE. HER. I bet at least one of them will name their first daughter Debbie. Or maybe Star Crunch.

Blake likes the Strawberry Rolls and the Donut Stix. Kayla likes the Cosmic Brownies. Cosmic Brownies have little colorful candy chips on the icing which I pick off when I eat a Cosmic Brownie. Actually, though, I myself prefer the Walnut Fudge Brownies because the walnuts surely have enough protein in them to qualify as a healthy, muscle building snack.

So I scooted through Wal-Mart hoping that if anybody I knew saw me, they would focus on the grapes and the fat free cheese and not the tower of snack cakes tottering inside my cart.

Now, before you all judge me for the abhorrent eating habits of my family and start pelting me with organic tomatoes; let me just say that my son is 5'11" and weighs 135 pounds. Believe me, he eats lots of meat and fruit and, well, okay just SOME vegetables. And he drinks a ton of milk. He gets a well rounded diet. But the kid is a stick. If he wore vertical stripes he'd look like a drinking straw. So I figure with his cross country running, his weight training and his wrestling he can tolerate a couple of sugary snacks a day.

And my daughter? Well, she just has a darling little size 5 figure and stays active with softball and basketball and running around with her friends. I suspect her Mall Time each week burns lots of calories. She also has pretty good eating habits. Thus, my willingness to keep sugary snacks in the house. They both eat them in moderation.

But I still felt a little sheepish pushing my cart through Wal-Mart loaded with enough sugar to keep a five year old hyped up for days. And of course the checker had to make a comment - "Wow! You do my kind of shopping." And I don't think she was talking about my cranberry juice.

So I'm working on a sign for my grocery cart:

MY OTHER GROCERIES ARE ORGANIC.