on second thought, dry noodles in mustard sauce sounds delicious

Imagine.

There's a grocery store in your town that is so ridiculously crazy on the weekends that if you are not a fan of Black Friday shopping and aggressively hip checking grabby ladies, you should just stay home and order pizza. (By the way, this grocery store's name does not rhyme with small-smart.)

You do you very best to avoid this store on weekends; in fact, you like to shop Monday mornings when there's approximately 17 people shopping with you. Your kids are in school Monday mornings. It's delightfully quiet! Like a vacation! It's as though at any moment, the produce will burst into song and you'll suddenly be transported into an animated movie musical!

But then your husband goes out of town on a business trip that you forgot about until a few days prior (oops) and you realize that you have no food in the house. So unless you want to feed your kids dry noodles in a yellow mustard sauce for breakfast on Monday, you know in your heart of hearts that you must face this particular grocery store. On a Sunday evening. With both your kids. Without your husband as back-up. (And of course you never consider going somewhere else. You might be desperate but you still know a good deal when you see one.)

So you load your kids into your car, (naively) full of hope for the coming trip. You arrive at your destination, park five miles from the entrance in the nearest open space, and expertly navigate the temper tantrum that occurs every single time you put your toddler in a grocery cart basket. So far, so good.

You get through the produce section with only minor issues, grab some lunch meat and tell your children to stop whining because no, they are not starving to death in the middle of the cheese aisle. And they do not need gummi worms, fruit roll-ups or caramel popcorn to make it out alive.

You notice a stand with free samples of salami and cheese on a toothpick. Brilliant!

"Here kids! Have these," you say. Look at you diffuse a potentially sticky situation, super mom. You give both your children a sample and move along into the cereal aisle, where you put a box of Kix (Kid tested, mother approved) into your cart.

Suddenly your younger child starts gagging. 'Oh yeah,' you remember. 'Not a fan of cheese, are you?'

You look around for a napkin (any napkin!) and finding none, you stick your hand out for the partially chewed up cheese bits before the gagging gets so bad that he throws up.

But alas. You are just a smidge too late. And you are now covered in toddler vomit, brought on by a nasty bout of cheese sample.