Just another day...

I think I may have been one of those moms on Friday (you know, the kind that other people watch and while shaking their heads). I needed to take care of some long-distance errands, and at the end of the day I was in a time crunch but still needed to "run" into Sephora (like that's possible even without kids) to buy some new make-up. My two-year-old was with me, of course, and it was pointless to try to strap him into a stroller, so we walked hand-in-hand into the store for my "quick" bit of shopping.

If you're not familiar with Sephora, it's this shimmering store full of little bottles of potions to make you beautiful, and everything is sitting on open shelves with open compacts and tubes right there to use as testers. It's quite handy to have all of that available to test at will. I used to meander through the aisles there and explore the new trends for hours it seemed...but I digress. Back to my story.

I'm not great at remembering the colors I use, and my tan comes and goes this time of year anyway, so as my son ran from strange pointy tools to stranger psychedelic eye shadows, I explained to the salesperson what I thought I needed. My little guy was being quite polite and just touching things "with one finger" as we always insist, but I was pretty distracted. The dear salesperson, we'll call her Mary, listened to my broken discourse on skin types and colors and tolerated my abrupt interjections of "Stop that!" and "Come here!" (Neither worked, by the way.) She would ask questions and wait patiently while I ran around displays to find my little escapee. I held him tightly on my lap as he squirmed while Mary tried different colors to find the perfect shade. (I mean seriously, am I insane?) I asked her if she had children. Mary said no, but she had been around plenty in her lifetime. Right.

I finally headed to the register to pay for my purchase and began digging through Hot Wheels cars, raisins, and Kleenex to find my wallet while my little guy walked in circles around me. Mary asked, would I like a perfume sample? (Dear Mary, still sticking to protocol!) After ridiculous deliberation (How important is it really? I don't even wear perfume anymore, free or not!) I made my choice, Mary filled the little tube, and I finished my purchase.

Things were quiet. Too quiet. Mary and a fellow salesperson were stifling giggles. I peeked over my shoulder, then slowly turned to see my darling son standing next to the metal-colored eye shadows. He had black, gray, and blue lines streaked on his cheeks and a tube of fire-engine-red lipstick in his hands. He just grinned at me as he pursed his lips and drew crimson circles around his mouth just like Mommy does in the morning.