What is up with Walmart?

About half an hour into our road trip last weekend I knew something wasn't right. A quick check on Kendra in the back seat confirmed my suspicions. She looked sickly and pale and had stopped watching the DVD the girls had been so excited about. Right away I knew I'd seen that look before.

Last year as the girls and I were driving home from our vacation at Fort Warden I saw it. She complained about her neck hurting and looked a bit green in the face. Only seconds later, just as we were crossing the mid span of the Hood Canal Bridge, she started throwing up. Everywhere. If you know that bridge, you know it is not the place to mess around- much less pull over. Tight lanes and high winds make it pretty dangerous, so the only thing I could do was to say, "Just hold on! We'll pull off as soon as we can!" Of course we can't leave out the mass hysteria- Lily crying over the smell, Kendra crying because she was literally covered in puke and me crying because heck if I knew how many miles it would be until I could pull over and then what???

This time, thankfully, I was a little more prepared and not driving. I grabbed the nearest plastic bag and told her to hold onto it- just in case, though I knew there was no way this was going to be a "passing nausea" type situation.

The first place we were able to stop was Walmart and she threw up just as we pulled into the parking lot. I left Martin to help Kendra to get out of the van while I ran into the store to get Dramamine and wipes to clean up the mess.

I'd never been to that particular Walmart before, well any Walmart for that matter, for a very long time. Looking at the store from the outside on the far left was a drive through pharmacy though so I figured I had an idea of where to head once I got inside "the maze." Wrong.

Not only was the Pharmacy not on that side of the building (that was the meat department, silly me!), it was clear across the entire store- which is a long way in a Walmart Super Store. Then I waited for ten minutes in line (three customers) just to ask where the Dramamine was in one of their eight aisles of pills, syrups and vitamins.

Of course when it came to checking out there were only 4 check stands open in the whole place and for some reason I got in the line with a 78 year old checker and behind the couple who couldn't figure out how to divide up all their purchases and pay separately.

A minimum of 15 minutes in that store for two items. Anyway, just once, wouldn't it be nice to find someone in that store who actually knows where things are and items that don't take a GPS device to find?

Ugh. This is one of the many reasons I avoid Walmart religiously.