Not Me! Monday (#4): Pop-Tarts

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! For those of you that read MckMama, you've heard of this. For those of you that don't, feel free to check out her blog to get the background on how this started as a way to tell about some of the funny things that you generally would refuse to admit to doing.

Fourth Installment...

I love Pop-Tarts for breakfast. Not even on Not Me! Monday can I deny it. My favorite kind? Frosted Chocolate Vanilla Creme. Sadly, the only place I can find them is at Food Lion (even though Dale requests them on the silly Target surveys EVERY TIME we get one!). But, even more sadly, since this is the only item that I need to purchase at Food Lion, I don't take the time to go. Which means I just don't ever get this flavor of Pop-Tart. Tragic, I know.

(Side note. After finishing this post, I did a little research on the lack of presence of Frosted Chocolate Vanilla Creme in our local stores and found this. Shows you how long it's been since I made the trip to Food Lion, I guess. And I guess I should tell Dale to stop requesting them on the Target surveys, since he's just showing his ignorance (sorry, Sweetie!) and the survey readers probably wish there was a way to respond and say, "Enough already, joker! Kellogg's doesn't MAKE them any more! Leave us alone!" without losing their jobs for not being customer-friendly.)

So I've learned to be satisfied with my second favorite flavor. Frosted Cookies & Creme (complete with a new-and-improved package "look", I noticed yesterday).

I have a Pop-Tart for breakfast probably 4 of the 7 days each week. You know, when I'm not having Lucky Charms, or Cocoa Puffs, or Fruit Loops, or, on extremely rare occasions when I'm feeling like eating a bit healthier, yogurt and turkey bacon.

So it is not me, a grown woman, that, on most trips to Harris Teeter (our grocery store out here), puts 3-4 boxes of Pop-Tarts in the cart. And, when people (usually those who are still in their exercise gear after leaving the gym that is right next to the grocery store) see me do this and look at me funny, it is not me that gives them the "I swear this is the only even remotely unhealthy thing I let my children eat" nod, while frantically trying to use the 5 bananas and 6 cartons of yogurt in the cart to cover up the chips, cookies, boxed macaroni, and processed-and-way-too-heavily-sodiumized Progresso chicken noodle soup. And what bums me out the absolute most about this is that I really think I would be successful with this facade if my kids didn't blow my cover by choosing this very moment to exclaim, quite loudly, that they want to go to the bakery section of the store and get the "One Free Cookie" that is permitted each individual who shops there. And we want the "good" ones, Mommy, not the healthier, low-fat option.

Sigh.

Oh, yes. About my two kids (and how they relate to this post). Have I mentioned yet that they love Pop-Tarts, too? Mostly Ivie. I can still convince Macie to have the MUCH HEALTHIER Eggo frozen mini-pancakes (or the waffles, before the national shortage) most mornings after her fruit cup. (At least I make them both start with a fruit cup, right?!?) But not Ivie. This is yet another way that she appears to be just like her mommy. She even likes my "brown" ones the best, too! (Which usually means we have to brush her teeth twice to get all the chocolate out.)

This story might (might?) end up being longer than it should. You can blame the stinkin' background info that I have to provide in an effort to make the end result even remotely funny and worth your time.

So sometimes when we grocery shop at Target, instead of Harris Teeter, I have to settle for a different flavor of Pop-Tart (because most of the time they don't carry EITHER of my top two choices). Not long ago when this happened, I made the mistake of deciding to give Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough a try. I mean, how could that be bad? I love cookie dough!

Well, wrong choice. I'm not a fan.

But now I'm stuck with them in my pantry. Along with a box of Strawberry that I can certainly stomach if necessary, even though they're not my favorite.

So right now, I have 3 total boxes on the shelf, listed here in order of my preferences: Cookies & Creme, Strawberry, and Cookie Dough. I believe Ivie would wholeheartedly agree with this order of ranking.

Therefore, KNOWING that my lovely daughter much prefers the Cookies & Creme Pop-Tarts to the others, it is certainly not me that tries, each morning, to convince her to eat one of the other two flavors so we can rid our pantry of them without having to eat them myself. And, finding myself to be unsuccessful day-after-day in this quest, there is no way that I would stoop so low as to hide the Cookies & Creme from her line of sight when she opens the pantry and tell her that we are "out" of them...


...knowing full well that if I were to separate the boxes only slightly, she would see the box of "brown" ones in the back and request one.


And then I'd have to give her one. And then I'd be the one stuck eating the yucky cookie dough kind to GET THEM OUT OF MY PANTRY.

Nope. Not me.