Every store in America should be legally required to have a drive thru.

It's raining today.  Again.  For about the seventy-fifth day in a row.  And I had to get milk.  Which meant dragging Will through the rain to get two gallons of milk and then carry everything back to the car.  In the rain.  Did I mention that it's been raining a lot lately? 

I sat in my car contemplating my options - don't buy milk and deal with not only the screaming from Will, complete with the most heart wrenching signing of "milk" and "please" and "more" and, perhaps more importantly, sentence myself to a morning of coffee with non-dairy creamer and the nasty chemical coat I'd wear on my tongue for the rest of the day as a result, or suck it up and drag myself and Will and 2 gallons of milk through the rain. 

Carrying my son shouldn't be such a burden, right?  I mean, he's my kid and I love him.  Throw myself in front of a moving train kind of love.  However, this little bundle of joy that I love so much weighs 30 pounds and fights me like Oscar La Hoya when I try to carry him.   He yanks my hair, hits my face, screams and wiggles, all with the absolute knowledge that I will not drop him from a height of four feet and run for the nearest bar (which happens to be right next door to the store where I buy milk).  And, unfortunately for Will, this is my fourth time around so the whole cute baby thing doesn't have as much cache as it might have had for Ellie.  Doing errands with kids sucks and it sucks hard core.

Just recently, a friend commented that he called 911 on a woman who left her kids (approx 7 and 4) in the car while she went into Starbucks.  Fortunately for the woman, she got her coffee in a timely enough fashion that she avoided an uncomfortable conversation with the police.  My friend got feedback from his FB friends about how terrible that was and how could any mother do that.  And I'm sure he was proud of himself for taking a stand against bad parenting and poor choices.  Well, I'm not a terrible mother.  I'm a really good mother, if I do say so myself.  And I've done it.  I've left my kids in the car while I got a coffee.  While I've gotten another kid out of school.  I've put the kids in the car and then come back in to the house to get myself ready.  In Delaware, if someone called 911, and the police came, they would likely take my children away from me and put them in a foster home until an investigation was completed.  Because you can't leave your kids in your car, cause it's a slippery slope.  If you let some people leave their kids in their cars, then where do you draw the line.  There was a woman in my recent memory who left her kid in her car while she went into a bar and had a date.  Is me running into Dunkin' Donuts so much different?  It's all a matter of degrees, right?  

While it's possible that this woman is a crappy mom and is taking her own issues out on her kids, I'd like to think that she was probably just a mom who didn't feel like dragging her kids into another store.  Especially one that sells tasty looking treats for approximately the same price as my last pair of tennis shoes.  Maybe she had been out running errands, or worse taking them to the doctor, all day and just wanted a coffee without commentary from her kids.  A wise cop friend of mine once said that no situation is so bad that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a police officer.  My friend's intentions were excellent, but maybe just waiting by the car to make sure nothing happened to the kids, that they were in no danger, and then a private word with the mother might have been kinder and more civilized?

This brings me back to the rain. And the milk. And Will in the car, happily playing with a train.   And being a bad mother.  Suddenly, it dawned on me that there is another option. It is completely socially acceptable for me to leave my children in the car while I go into the gas station. I could be in there buying smokes and porn, but no one thinks twice about a car full of kids at a gas pump.  So I went to the gas station and bought milk for a ridiculous price, brought it home, and enjoyed my coffee while ignoring Will so I could watch Grey's Anatomy. 

That my friends, is being a good mother.