Wednesday, September 19, 2007

A Girl Named Bunny (2 of 3 days)

Saturday morning I wake to find Bunny asleep on the couch. I cover her up with a blanket and go about my morning. Later in the day we decide to do the malls and shops beyond this country place.

First stop the Girl Scout Council to pick up a few Brownie items for Snow White. We make our selections and head to the register. There are two little boys running about the store but not in a wild fashion. They are around 5 & 6 years old and asking their Dad questions. They appear to be waiting for the lady running the store. After we check out she locks the store up saying she needed to get ready for her other job. I apologize for not knowing we were keeping her and she shyly says it was no trouble at all.

Off to the big mall. We arrive and discuss how the first floor is about the same size as the Opry Mills Mall in Nashville which we truly enjoyed. The mall we visited today had two stories and easily twice as many shops. We made our way through half of the mall when I suggested we eat a late lunch at a stake house I had seen.

Another Bunny moment. Her nose came within an inch of my own as she barked out like a little yapping dog... "I HATE stake! I hate it! hate it, hate it! Lets eat at McDonalds!"

ManSon says "That is not a real restaurant in the way my Mom means."

Bunny "It is so a real restaurant!" and Snow White quickly agrees.

ManSon laughs and says "I told you, you are a little girl. An eight year old is the only one agreeing with you."

I am again shocked at the 3 year old that continues to burst out of this 16 year old girl. I wanted to slap her but I repeated those lovely calming words in my head ‘She is only here for the weekend. She will be gone tomorrow.’ I politely say "It will be ok. I am sure they have more to offer than just stake."

Bunny shuffles her feet as though kicking sand and trudges along. We arrive at the stake house. ManSon is leading the way with Oldest Daughter and Bunny just two steps behind while Snow White and I bring up the end of our little procession. Just before we reach the front doors a lady dressed in a football jersey shouts out "You are stalking ME aren't you?!" She laughs as we all turn to look behind us...all of us except Snow White who points to her own chest and mouths "Me?"

The lady laughs and says "I just saw you at the Girl Scout Council. This is my other job." We all laugh and follow her inside the restaurant.

The hostess seats us at a booth with two chairs on one side. Figuring Snow White might be too small to sit on the tall chairs the hostess sets the Child's menu and crayons at the booth side. Oldest Daughter and ManSon take their seats thinking Snow White will sit between them with Bunny opposite of Oldest Daughter on one chair and me in the other.

Bunny will have none of that and slides up next to ManSon. This pushes ManSon to the middle where the child's menu is and he laughs "It has been a long time since I had the child's menu."

Snow White is goodhearted and agrees to sit in the very tall chair. She almost toppled over while climbing up to sit on the chair. Bunny laughed at the clumsiness of it as I tried to steady Snow White.

The waitress comes to take our order. Bunny orders something similar to what ManSon orders but she is unsure what Chicken Parmesan is. After taking down her order the waitress says "Your Chicken Parmesan comes with the salad bar located down stairs behind you." To which Bunny promptly states "I HATE salad! I hate it! Really hate it!" The waitress looks at me and I just shrug my shoulders. All the while I am thinking "At least she has this 'Hate' issue with all adults not just me."

ManSon, Oldest Daughter and I make our way around the salad bar. Oldest Daughter laughs and points upstairs to our table. There was Bunny pressing her face against the glass making faces at us. Snow White just rolled her eyes as if to say “How embarrassing.”

We return to the table and tell Bunny about the non-salad items on the salad bar such as the bread, chocolate chips, trail mix and fruit. She asked if the grapes were green or purple. I said purple and before she could say it I sarcastically mimicked her "I know, you hate it, hate it hate it."

ManSon and Oldest Daughter were shocked and did not know what to say or do. They sat there with their mouths open. They just could not believe I would be so out right rude!

Bunny on the other hand was ready to embrace me. Like I finally got in the swing of things!

That was not the impression I wanted to give her. I wanted open her eyes to how rude she had been. It was totally lost on her.

We returned to the mall intent on going through every store contained in the second half of the mall. ManSon approached a T-Mobile kiosk in the attempt to add minutes to his phone. The sales people wanted him to sign up for a new plan for only $49.99 a month. He assured them he was very happy with his existing phone and only wanted to add minutes to his phone. They passes him off to another T-Mobile kiosk who also tried to get him to buy into another plan. Eventually they passed him off to the head office upstairs. We waited for about 4 minutes with no eye contact from any of the sales people. ManSon said he could load up his phone with minutes from a card at the gas station. Enough minutes to last him about 4-6 months for only $20 so we left the T-Mobile office.

We found a gourmet doggy store and Snow White picked out a few specialty treats made with yogurt and carob for Pup. Oldest Daughter wanted to check out the FYE store so we went there next.

I had not caught The Da Vinci Code movie on the cable channels so I thought I would buy that movie and the Disney Princess Enchanted Tales. ManSon and Oldest Daughter did not see anything they really wanted but Bunny did. Right in front of the sales clerk who helped us look around, Bunny begged and pleaded with me to buy her a $16.00 hat. I explained they have an FYE store near her house but she kept pleading for me to buy it for her.

I am not use to begging from my own children let alone someone else's child so I said "I will give you the same rules I give my own children. If it is Not Your Birthday, if it is Not Christmas and it is Not under $5 you are Not getting it." She smiled, and skipped off to find something under $5...anything under $5.

Oldest Daughter giggled a little as her friend skipped away. "I have not heard that speech from you since I was 6 years old." Oldest Daughter, the sales clerk and I all laughed while shaking our heads and watching Bunny skip through the store.

3 comments:

Butrfly Garden said...

Let me know in advance if Bunny ever comes to stay with you again...so I can make you a shirt that says:

"It's okay - she's not my kid."

MommasWorld said...

Love the shirt idea! :-)

Pageant Mom said...

I'm not even there and I am losing my patience and I'm ready to give her a solid thunk on the head.

I hope her parents are at least minimally embarrassed by her behavior.

If not, that probably explains a lot.