Boreal toads, Bitches!

There I was at Sunflower Market... It had been somewhere close to 72 hours since I had set foot into a grocery store - meaning, the house was completely devoid of anything edible (you know, except for vegetables...) since my three oft-swimming children seem to need about 97,000 calories a day (in addition to Mr. K's requisite 6500 and my *um*... 6 calories) simply to avoid certain starvation (I still contend that I, I will have the last laugh at the end of days, rapture, cataclysm, series finale of Downton Abbey -- all you "metabolism-havers" are toast, and me, I'll be happily looting your closets of their expensive shoes and cozy bathrobes [because seriously... your jeans still will be too small for me] for months after you've keeled over or at least started eating dirt to fill your poor inefficient tummies Bwahahahahah [that's the advertised last laugh]) so, back to somewhere that sells Irish cheddar cheese and salt and vinegar potato chips I went, clutching my shell-shocked wallet in my hand.

Nope, not dramatic at all, thankyouverymuch.

So then, after I loaded my cart with all kinds of crap, some Mountain High full fat vanilla yogurt (because YUM), enough vegies to camouflage my decidedly unhealthy haul on the way to the checkout in case I crossed paths with a nosy parent of one of my kids' friends or you know, my mom (love you!), and a Grape Zevia (still tastes like Stevia but at least it's grapey in a concord grape bursting in my mouth kind of a way), I went to get in line (long line... darn you and your smartly-priced produce and crap, Sunflower) and a nice young couple with 1 bottle of wheat free-soy sauce got in line behind me.

A nice young couple waiting behind my behemoth cart full of crap and roughage (and 3/$1 avocados... BOOM! Take that, Tracy) with a bottle of wheat-free soy sauce plays on my deepest emotions. I start to piece together their life story in my mind about how they're there getting the wheat free soy sauce because their parents are coming to town and they're getting ready to announce that they're getting married or expecting a baby, or dropping out of grad school to follow Phish (or whoever the followable jam band of late is... I'm far too busy with "mom things" to keep track of such developments) full time and they just remembered that his Mom had recently gone gluten free and now the stir fry was going to be a disaster and there was much gnashing of teeth and wailing of wails until they remembered that their apartment is all of 30 steps away from Sunflower so maybe they should just go get the damn soy sauce already and so they did and now they're behind the lady with the cart full of food and leafy camouflage and they hadn't yet hidden their bong and everyone was going to be there in, like, 5 minutes....

OR... they had plans for an afternoon of red-hot lovin' and sushi and they realized they were out of soy sauce and the wheat-free stuff was on sale...

OR... they just needed soy sauce and could have done without the creepy lady and her big ol' cart psychoanalyzing them (this isn't really an option, I'm afraid... the mind wants what it wants).

So anyway, in order to save them from relationship ruin (or delayed nookie or a lack of soy sauce), I let them go ahead of me in line.

And do you know what those ungrateful jerks said?

"Thanks."

After all I did for them...

But I had to forgive their lack of deep and abiding gratitude because guess what was on the back of the dude's sweatshirt.....!

Boreal Toad Recovery Team

Had my youngest child been there, she would have peed a great puddle right there on the floor. This guy (who I saved from certain ruin) was a herpetologist and I (I) helped him procure his soy sauce in a timely manner. I knew this story was going to propel me into the stratosphere A's hierarchy of awesome (with an actual herpetologist or those weirdos from Man, Woman, Wild stingily occupying the tippy top of the pyramid - Jerks.) but it wouldn't be good enough to simply see the sweatshirt and relay the story of my good soy sauce deed, I had to talk to his herpness and so I said, "My daughter would kill for that sweatshirt" and then I explained that she loves reptiles and amphibians and I'm a huge scientific disappointment because I study soil and global warming and you know... meh. And he said, "Well, she ought to go to CSU" because they have a great project going on and Boreal Toads are really "hot" right now. And then he asked if she was actively looking at programs and then I told him she's 8 and then they kind of just paid for their soy sauce and hurriedly walked outside (and back to the pot-scented doom waiting back at their apartment).

And I was all like "was that weird?" and came to the conclusion that of course not.

So I came home and told A about how I saved a herpetologist from starvation (poetic license, y'all), and told her that Boreal Toads are "hot" and told her that she's totally going to CSU and she's going to get one of those sweatshirts. She jumped up and down, held on to my hands, hung on my every word, and then turned to walk out of the room, did a little "Yes!" movement with her arms, and declared "Boreal Toads, Bitches!"

...and she's been plotting her shortcut to grad school ever since. Today, 3rd grade, tomorrow, a life of poverty and toad chasing!