Mom Against the World

Corey left Saturday morning for a four-day business trip.

I am alone. Utterly alone.

Unless you count the three kids, ages six, four and eight weeks, who are determined to help me release the grip I have on my remaining sanity.

Oh, I joke. It's not really that bad. In fact, I took all three of them to the grocery store yesterday -- a Saturday, mind you, which everyone knows is Amateur Day -- and I lived to tell the story.

Would you like my survival tips?

1. I told Natalie and Connor before we left that they would get a cookie or donut at the end of the expedition if and only if they were "big helpers." Sugar has amazing motivational powers. (Spoiler alert: Lunch consisted of donuts with sprinkles and hot chocolate with marshmallows. And I sprinkled some sugar on the marshmallows just for good measure.)

2. I wore Teyla in my favorite fashion accessory -- the Baby Bjorn. (I wonder what Big Mama would say about that.)

3. I made everyone wear their coats for the duration of the time in the store. As Antique Mommy acknowledged recently, the winter wear workout is quite exhausting for those of us in the Northern Regions. I'm so tired of dealing with the coats and gloves and hats and boots -- all of which are shed the minute we enter a heated building, leaving Mom Sherpa to tote the gear around -- I think I'm going to start my annual late-winter Coat Boycott this week. It's when I stop wearing my winter coat no matter how cold it gets because It Should Be Spring By Now. And yes, I'm totally serious. Besides, it's supposed to be 40 here this week. Forty! Who needs a coat with that kind of a heat wave?

4. I had a categorized list. (Which is really like saying, "Hi, I'm me." I never go to the grocery store without a list. Nev-ah. I can scuba dive, move 9 times in 15 years, give birth without any medication and marry a black-belt sky-diver who has broken almost every bone in his body, but I cannot grocery shop without a list. Because that's insanity.)

5. I refused to get the race-car shopping cart, because I know it's easier to drive a semi-truck through the streets of Manhattan than to steer that beast around the produce displays. Instead, we opted for the double-seater cart, so both of the older kids would have a place to sit if their legs wore out. (Naturally, they sat very little. But Natalie did use the harness belts as a bridle on the cart, which became her bucking bronco whenever I was more than five feet away. "Whoa girl! Whoa!")

6. I smiled at everyone who dared make eye contact with me. Most didn't. Wimps.

And to prove how bad I really am, I even bagged my own groceries. That's right. The check-out lady asked me if I wanted help, and I said, "Oh! No thanks. I'm good." Then I told myself that I'd like plastic (don't judge; I always recycle), and I commenced to pack the produce and dairy with like products to make it easier to put everything away when I got home.

(Insert wild applause here.)

Surprisingly, there was no gold medal waiting for me when I pushed my loaded cart into the parking lot in negative-degree wind chill.

I think I could totally win on Iron Mom America -- if someone would just invent the show.

Up next: Mom Against the World attempts to get all three kids to church on time. Too bad she doesn't know the car battery is dead. (Music swells ominously then out.)