Grocery Store Saga

There's so much drama involved in household shopping.  Our limited, Brad Mosiman-imposed budget forces us to make some agonizing sacrifices each week.  Our visit to Walmart began, as usual, in the dog food section.  I have recently switched to a lower calorie brand but mix in Chloe's favorite generic kibbles and bits and bits and bits.  She enjoys the bits and bits and bits while generously leaving the kibble for Juno.  Brad insists that Chlo's preferred "bit" in the white tootsie-roll shaped one while I contend that her first choice is the cheesy bit.  This argument resulted in a non-biased taste test when we got home.  Two trials were conducted.  Chlo, realizing that I am the more emotionally-balanced of her two owners, thoughtfully threw the contest in Brad's favor.  Savannah argued that a fifty pound bag of bits and bits and bits was unnecessary as she explained the ratio of "bits" in proportion to the rate of consumption of our slightly more-than-ten-pound-dachshund so we loaded the tiny three pound bag in our cart and headed to the doggie snack section.  Savannah would just grab anything that cost less than three dollars but I tend to weigh the importance of taste, texture, shape and potential ability to delight my dog.  It can be a somewhat time-consuming process but it's totally worth the investment.

We headed to the rope aisle next.  I have a lesson plan this week that involves my 6th graders tying each other up.  I'm sure that I'll write about that later.  Anxious that her grocery money had already taken a serious hit without any people food having been purchased yet, Savannah was unhappy about this particular item.  I had no idea that rope came in such an assortment of cool colors.  Savannah noticed that the mark-up on colors was pretty significant and steered me toward the very boring clothesline.  I grabbed a hundred feet and then had to endure a ridiculous math lesson.  "How many 6th graders do you have?"  Fifteen.  "Will each kids be equipped with a length of rope?" Yes.  "How long will each length be?"  Two feet.  Sigh of exasperation..."Mom, you don't need a hundred feet."

Next, we headed to the greeting card aisle.  What?  Greeting cards?  Savannah was growing a little belligerent but nonetheless enthusiastically threw herself into the process of finding the cheapest cards possible while simultaneously removing sound cards, velvety cards, cards with movable parts and card sporting some pretty funny profanity from my hands.  We bought Daddy some Father's Day athletic socks and were ready to go.  "What the heck," Savannah complained, "we just spent sixty bucks and haven't actually bought any food yet."

The grocery store saga started with the selection of the cart.  This choice is always the center of great debate.  The idea that you buy less with a smaller cart is a proven fallacy yet I continue to fall for this consumer lie time after time.  I grabbed a cart with two working wheels and slid my way down the first aisle.  My first important purchase included eight boxes of "Gushers" fruit bursts (four for four dollars!).  Savannah's argument about this selection was cut short when she discovered lobster-shaped gummies in the bulk candy section.  We had a brief mother-daughter spat in aisle four when Savannah accused me of being "dramatic" as I employed my technique of getting the cart around each corner by slamming my body into it.  "You do it then," I yelled, abandoning my three-quarters filled cart.  I watched as Savannah's legs braced while she leaned her body weight against the resistant force of this contraption.

I graciously accepted her sincere apology and resumed the helm, sliding and slamming my way to the olive section where we interviewed fellow customers about the meaning of the word, "pitted."  Does "pitted" mean that the olives' pits had been forcibly removed or does "pitted" mean that the olive had not been violated?  And then, philosophically-speaking, why would anyone voluntarily buy an olive with a pit?  For the challenge?  Are they a sadist?  Is it an organic thing?  We exited the aisle with more questions than answers but placed a container of pitted kalamatra olives carefully at the top of our filled-to-capacity cart.

We successfully made it to check-out, having to bodily lift the cart to maneuver it into position.  I watched as a rather nice looking man got into line behind us with a basket full of single-guy purchases. "Savannah," I said sweetly, "Why don't you put the dividing bar up so that nice man can unload his items?"  Savannah did as directed, somehow missing my subliminal direction to flip her hair beguilingly over her shoulder and bat her eyelashes at this handsome soon-to-be-not-a-stranger.  I sighed before noticing his Ben & Jerry's "Phish Food."  "That's our family's favorite flavor," I said to my future-son-in-law.  Unlike my clueless daughter, this guy had his relationship radar on.  "It's difficult to find," he said, clearly referring to the problems associated with finding a meaningful soul mate.  "There's another one back there."  What?  Was he actually saying that there are plenty of fish, or in this case, Phish, in the sea?  Loser!  Or, if he was in fact saying that he knew there was another container of Ben & Jerry's in the ice-cream aisle, wouldn't a gentleman offer to get it for me?  This guy clearly was not for us.

It took our combined forces to roll our wobbly, rickety cart out to the van.  It was, as always, an emotionally draining event.  The divisiveness and anger. The heartbreak and loss.  Yet, every week, we hunger for more.  Every week, our appetites compel us to make difficult choices.  To determine which to feed...the wants or the needs.  To fill a sometimes aching emptiness.  My advice?  Choose the bigger cart.