Adventures

Dave and Aunt Nanci took Eva, Allen and Haden down to Balboa Park on Wednesday, to visit the aviation and automotive museums at Balboa Park. My family was all at Disneyland, so it was my first time at home alone with the baby. I decided to take the opportunity to get out of the house, and ran my first errand with little Amanda. We had three gift cards to Target, and they have a new grocery section, so I figured we could knock out most of the things on my list with one stop, without dipping into our cash reserve. When I got there, they had half the parking lot roped off for repaving, and drivers were rudely fighting for the other spaces. One guy behind me laid on the horn while I waited for a mother and her three kids to cross the lot in front of me. She yelled some choice words at him after he sped around me.

When I came back from the store, I found that a grey Suzuki had parked within inches of my driver's side, making it impossible for me to get into the car. I loaded everything into my trunk, took Amanda's car seat off the shopping cart, and carried her into the nearest restaurant in search of the driver. I must have looked panicked, the hormonal post-partum mother of a two-week-old baby, blocked out of her car in the summer heat. The girl at the counter immediately got on the overhead speaker and asked for the driver of a grey Suzuki to come forward, and within minutes he was backing out for me, blaming the parking job on his wife. It was added stress that I didn't need on my first time out with the new baby, but it taught me that I can handle a lot more than I think, even when I'm feeling most vulnerable.