Shopping carts

On one of my favourite internet forums, we have had lengthy discussions about shopping carts. Do you put them back in the store when you're done? In the cart corral? In the middle of the road? In the parking lot? Pushed against the curb? What do YOU do with YOUR shopping cart?

I pretty much always return mine to where I got it from. If I'm with the kids, I aim to park near (but not necessarily next to) a cart corral. That way I can load the car and easily return the cart. Or better yet, when I arrive, I can grab a cart to put Anna in, and not have to lug her ridiculously heavy infant seat to the store.

This morning I took the girls grocery shopping at Hen House, a local grocery store that has amazing muffins and a good selection of kosher products. There's a local bread company that makes awesome challah, and I wanted to get one. Anyway, we got there and I went to get a cart from a nearby corral. Anna's seat didn't fit the first way I tried it, so I tried a different way. (To be fair, her car seat is slightly wider than many models out there. It never really fit on an upside down restaurant highchair either.) Every way I tried, it didn't fit. I ended up using her cart/highchair seat cover and buckled her in. She only flopped over a few times during our shopping trip!

Partway through the store, I realized why the seat wouldn't fit in the cart. The front compartment was much narrower than most carts. Why? Because in Yuppy County, USA, apparently the shopping carts need to come with built-in drink holders!!! So of course I had to stop at the in-store Starbucks on the way out. Personally, I don't think that the drink holder was that great an idea. Anna tried to grab my drink no less than 5 times during the walk from the entrance of the store to the car.

Later in the morning we were at Target. No cup holders there, and the seat fit in just fine but there were no carts in the lot so I had to lug the seat into the store anyway. Go figure.