Do they sell Walls at Walmart?

You know why they call it a Wal-mart; it's because it's wall-to-wall full of people like us looking for a deal. Yes, we explicitly went out of our way to go to a Walmart because it's the only place where you can get a 2 liter bottle of Diet Coke for 94 cents, and 60 diapers for $10.74. So for three bucks more, I can get twice the amount of diapers than I can at Freddys? I'm there.

So after much planning, we decided to drive down to Renton with two cars, since it is some kind of illegal to try to squeeze 3 adults, 2 babies, and a teenager into a car. It was the second closest Walmart to Redmond, Lynnwood being about a mile closer than the Renton one. Since I grew up in Renton, it was pretty much a no-brainer. So the Walmart convoy commenced its journey to the corporate brothel of retail.

Driving there wasn't too much of a problem, though my wife could never be a private investigator, or a professional driver. She had a tough time keeping close behind me, which was compounded by the evening traffic. My mum suggested a Chinese buffet place in Renton that was in view, and the food there was sorta okay in the most mediocre way. Their shining claim had to be the crawfish and abundance of prawns, both of which I disliked, and I didn't handle the crab too well. The kids, who make dining out an adventure of social acceptance, peppered the carpeted floor with rice, a couple of egg rolls, and some other things they deemed yucky. I spent most of my time diverting grabby hands from Zoe and the rest of the time shoving bits of Jello down her mouth to keep her from combusting.

Onto Walmart, which was the biggest one we've been to. The one in Bellingham is a fair size, but this Walmart in Renton probably had it's own post office, waterworks, sewage, mascot... Okay, maybe not that big, but there were that many people crammed in there. To quote my ex-girlfriend in her most unpolitically correct White girl quips, "It was like Customs."

We ran around trying to make some friggin' sense of their layout, which seemed to be all obscured by other shoppers. Shopping with a cart was almost comical, I think a lot of people just parked their carts and sent family members to go fetch specific items and then regroup. We were wise - we got two carts. But with two babies, that's just the fashionable thing to do, I suppose.

200 plus friggin bucks later and tons of diapers, we were on our way back home. Due to the fast moving traffic of 55 mph, I lost my wife in the darkness and the vast headlights, and I raced home to try to call her on my cell phone, which I had given to her if this circumstance were to come up. I was afraid that she'd overshoot her exit and end up in Canada, which wouldn't be so bad if the currency exchange was a little better and the babies didn't need their baths.

But my wife made me proud - she found her way home just fine without my help, despite my massive worrying. Good thing we got more diapers.