Week in Review

After 2 "dry" weeks there were some "blog postable" moments this week:)...

Kai got his hand stuck in the elevator as the door opened! Every mom's nightmare...if they think of that one:) The door was half-open and stuck with his hand wedged inbetween the door and the wall of the elevator. He was crying, Haddon was crying, I was panicking and hoping my adrenaline rush would be able to pull the door shut to release his hand, but not so:) Some neighbors ran to get the security guards. When they arrived one was smart enough to bend the door back (it's thin) so that Kai could get his hand free. So easy. Why didn't I think of that? Well it was traumatic:) But he was fine. We put some ice on it and he could wiggle all his fingers so I knew there were no broken bones. He was playing w/toys 20 minutes later and had a story to tell Daddy when he got home from work..."Daddy...hand....stuck...hurt":)
******
I grocery shop once a week. I go to the same store around the corner. Most neighborhood grocery stores are the size of a convenient store. At this particular one there are usually about a dozen employees around 19 yrs old all for this small store and I go at a non-peak time. Because of these factors and b/c I look different, I'm usually inundated with greetings from every staff member, offers to help me, stares, laughing and talking in their native language about me, and the 4-5 different employees who randomly stop at my cart and stand there watching what I'm putting into it. They obviously don't have much to do. After 2 years of this it doesn't bother me, I'm used to it. But this week a nerve was struck.

Since I do the shopping for a whole week worth of food and most Indians shop for about 2 day's worth, I spend MUCH more than most customers. I also have 5 mouths to feed with American tastes which cost more than Indian foods. So, at the check-out, the cashier at the next counter who wasn't checking anyone out kept leaning over the computer monitor to see what my total bill was. She gawked, made big eyes and laughed... she'd done this another time before. Gotta blow it off. Well, there were 4 employees at my little checkout counter, all staring at the monitor, all speaking in their native language, using english numbers, guessing at how much I was going to spend and commenting on what the total was at the moment. I was boiling at this point. I told the guy who speaks the best english that I would not come back if people sat around and marveled at my bill. He told the guy bagging to stop but he still kept trying to guess the total! Ahhhh! I already feel so guilty that I get (am blessed) to buy so much food so I think my frustration was part guilt that what I spend on 1 week of food is what these employees make in a month (for my American friends, the grocery bill for 1 week here is comparable to shopping in the States...it's about the same), but also that I feel like a "freak show" and I just want to blend in like a chamelion so I'm not stalked and gawked at in the store:) Will I shop there next week...yes, I have other choices but this one has more food:) and it's convenient...so i'll learn to deal with this too...it's a part of adapting that never goes away, you just learn to ignore it.