Boooooo Bayfield

Yesterday Griffin and I took a trip to Bayfield.

Bayfield of my heart. Bayfield where I have been to visit every summer for as long as I can remember. Bayfield where I got drunk underage in a bar for the first time. Bayfield where my best friend Marie and I sat on the highway for 17 seconds, to prove our eternal love for whomever it was that we were eternally in love with at that moment. (Don’t ask me how sitting on a major highway proves eternal love, but it sounded good at the time!) Bayfield where the shopping is a hobby shopper’s paradise. Oh, the little gifties and unnecessary items that one can purchase in Bayfield are beyond your wildest shopping dreams! Stuff you had no idea you needed until you walked in the door and it jumped up off the showroom floor and right into your arms. It happens in Bayfield!

For the first time ever, I left Bayfield after about 2 hours, and with a sour taste in my mouth.

Bayfield has always been friendly to me, good to me. But as a mother, pushing a toddler in a stroller, Bayfield is NOT a place I’ll return to any time soon.

You would think that people would have figured it out by now, that mothers with babies often LOOK for excuses to get out of the house, and damn it if shopping isn’t one of the best excuses out there. I mean what else is one supposed to do when you’re on Facebook Maternity leave? But it’s hard to push a stroller down sidewalks covered with a 3” layer of GRAVEL!! And it’s hard to get into stores with 3 or 4 steps up to the entrance. And, worst of all, are the stores where you can’t even walk through, because the stuff is piled so high that there is no room to push a stroller through. Not even my teeny tiny stroller. Never mind someone with a bigger stroller. I have a rule about places like that – Either I walk through them comfortably pushing my stroller, or I don’t walk through them at all. I even commented to one store owner that her store wasn’t very stroller friendly. She laughed, and made a joke about how it was hardly even walking friendly. Well DUH!! Maybe you should fix that dumbass! I mean, Moms and kids can’t go through your store, anybody even remotely senior can’t go in your store for fear that they’ll trip and split their head open on the corner of an $80 piece of wood with something clever painted on it (you bleed on it, you bought it!) Not to mention a WHEELCHAIR, people! I mean, C’MON!!! In this day and age????? Oh, and a ramp with an 8” step at the bottom of it, is NO LONGER CONSIDERED A RAMP!!!

So sadly, I won’t be returning to Bayfield any time soon. I did have time to buy a few wonderful things before the sour taste in my mouth took over and left me feeling nauseous. A few wedding presents for Steve’s cousins, a cute full body bib for Griffin, and maybe a little present for baby Lendra too. Today we're going to Giant Tiger in Wingham. Where strollers and moms fit happily through the aisles!