All I needed was raisins!

My 6 year-old son, Aiden, has been sick since Monday. He's not missed a day of school all year (the kid loves learning!), so for him to miss an entire week is a big deal. He's been feverish, has vomited off and on (sorry for using the V-word) and has been coughing his head off. My poor baby has just been lethargic and unable to eat much, but in usual Aiden style, hasn't complained one bit.

Yesterday, bless his heart, all he wanted for lunch was a bowl of oatmeal. I was ecstatic that he was asking for food, so darn it, I was going to make whatever he wanted!

Oatmeal! Sure! Comin' right up, sunshine!

I made the first bowl. Blech. It was awful. Too runny. I didn't even serve it to him.

The second bowl was much better. I added the butter and the sugar and the milk and the cinnamon and.... raisins? Oh, heavenly day. We cannot be out of raisins! Mama's boy needs his iron!

My 4 year-old, who basically blames his baby sister for everything, piped up.

"Lillian ate all duh waisins."

I knew that wasn't true, but before I could correct him, Aiden had run over and popped Lillian for "eating all duh waisins". (Fever and hunger make a boy mean, evidently.)

So, I had to punish my sweet, sickly boy for hurting his sister. Nothing like a red-faced, crying, feverish boy to make a mommy feel doggone *wonderful*.

I dug and dug and finally found one tiny snack-sized box of raisins in the pantry. Thank God for small miracles.

After lunch I sent my hubby a text message. "We need raisins."

His response, "Let's go to BJs."

Folks, the man works at a freakin' Wal Mart SuperCenter, where there are raisins aplenty, but he wants to drag 4 children, 2 of which are knocking on death's door, across town to the warehouse club.

I suspect that my husband has an IQ approaching genius, but sometimes I wonder about his everyday thinkin' skills.

(But I LOVE me some BJs, so I was rarin' to go. When a girl ain't been outside of her 4 walls for a week, BJs and a trip to Perkins for supper sounds like heaven.)

I had to bribe the sick kids to go to BJs by promising them a trip to a local toy store to purchase Webkinz (side note: these little furdevils are the techno version of Beanie Babies, and we all know how much those are worth these days...), so they agreed to go.

We had a list of about 10 things to buy. We only put 4 of those things in our buggy, but surprisingly, our total bill was in the $250+ range.

All I needed was raisins.

In addition we came home with a 5 pound bag of frozen flounder, 2 Bathroom Reader books, a flat of Coca Cola (in glass bottles! Be still my heart!), a can containing 100 Slim Jims, 10 pounds of ground sirloin, 3 pounds of bananas, 2 beef tenderloins, a box of Bisquick that would make the world's largest pancake, a megapack of Lunchables, a 10-pack of Chap Stick, Splenda, some kids' Tylenol, some Delsym (world's best cough medicine!), milk, eggs, grapes, 6 boxes of cereal, a flat of Danish, a dozen huge muffins and assorted other things you can't resist buying because they come in GI-FREAKIN-NORMOUS boxes.

(I apologize for using FREAKIN' twice in one blog. Forgive me.)

Why is that? Just because it comes in a box the size of my refrigerator, I feel compelled to buy it. I don't see myself wanting to fill my cart with a dozen boxes of cereal at the regular grocery store; I restrain myself from buying a 14 pounds of dry spaghetti on a regular grocery trip, but at BJs, I can't control myself. LOAD 'ER UP.

Methinks if I quit buying in BULK, I'd quit eating in BULK.

ALL

WE

NEEDED

WERE

RAISINS.