I quit you, McDonald’s. I quit you.

It is Saint Patrick’s Day, and a tradition in my family is to head over to good old Mickey D’s and score a Shamrock Shake. My mother and I used to do this for two reasons. One, we enjoyed the mint along with the exclusivity of the annual treat and two, we enjoyed giving a sip to my father who would scrunch up his face and say, “Ewww. It tastes like toothpaste.”

Years long since my father’s passing, and in the first year of my son’s life, I am searching again for a Shamrock Shake. I come up empty.

My thinking on this sinus-headache-filled morning is this: I will take my son from story time at the local library to run a quick shopping errand to the McDonald’s on the way home. The headache has caused us to attend the late 11:15 story time, so I spend the five minutes between the Bed, Bath & Beyond and the drive thru justifying not only picking up a shake, but lunch as well.

This is what happens at noon, in cities across the nation, when new moms are carting around a sleeping 6-month-old baby and a loud, quavering stomach.

So the irrational justification goes like this: if I get a “medium” size meal, with a Diet Coke, I’ll score a small shamrock shake. If I had given up and scrounged through my own fridge at home for lunch, I’d have been doing it with a giant shamrock shake.

I’ll admit, the fries are good. But by the time I get home and get the baby out of the carseat he’s awake again, so I have to occupy him, and by the time I sit down with my food, the fries and burger are cold. And the burger doesn’t look as Angus-ey as it does on the commercial, and the shake I’m tasting is not at all toothpaste-like, because when I pulled up to the drive through and asked if they had the Shamrock Shakes today, the girl’s response was, “We should today of all days. But no.”

*sigh*

So the meal wasn’t that great, and now I feel slouchy, and my stretched-out size 12s are starting to feel tight all over again. And it’s taken me more than six months to get here.

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