Where am I headed with this? I want this blog to be entertaining, maybe occasionally poignant and ultimately uplifting (take that as many ways as you can get it). But the subject depresses me, and lately I've had to erase an entry as soon as I've written it, because the last thing I want to be is pitied.
There are moments, however, that can be humorous and still inspire. I raised 4 kids for 30 years, and did all the grocery shopping for all those decades. As a lifelong insomniac, I thrilled at the introduction of the 24-hour market and used to do my shopping in the middle of the night, when I could think clearly and be less-distracted. But I hate shopping. All kinds of shopping, and food shopping most of all.
Now, rather suddenly, we are empty-nesters, I don't have a job and my husband works from home. We eat whatever we want, whenever, often calling a bowl of cereal "lunch" and an egg-and-potato omelet "dinner". It's all yelling up the stairs "I'm reheating the spaghetti? You want some?" and down the stairs, "No, I just had a burrito." He does community theater and keeps odd hours, and is not above wolfing down fast food on his way to or from.
Like this, we suddenly run out of food in the house. OUT. In manners that could never have happened when I was "doing for" others. The bag-o-salad is rediscovered as a slimy bag-o-goo, the cheese crusted at the edges, the eggs are gone, the fruit is gone, the frozen veggies are down to discolored, frost-singed balls twisted in plastic bag ends, the bread is gone, and unlike my granddaughter I do not find the prospect of a "peanut butter spoon" to be the beginning and end of haute cuisine.
This generally leads us to eat out, defiantly guilty. We start our meal with dammit we deserve this once in a while and end it with, geez, did you know that wine was $8 a glass? So the following day I slink back to the grocery store. This is a major deal for me. Nowadays I have mostly in-house clothing which I won't even wear to the mailbox until after sundown. To go out to the grocery store requires the same casual dress as eating at our neighborhood bistro, but the payoff is diminished, so I'm reluctant to squeeze into it. Anyway, once I'm dressed I zip over to the supermarket. If I have planned at all I get there early on a weekday. I never see anyone I know because after 12 years in the same community I don't know anybody.
Rarely do I make a list, or if I do, rarely do I remember to bring it with me. We were simply OUT of food, and I made the additional mistake of arriving at the grocery store hungry. I was anxious to get out of there with as little as possible, but also fell prey to my appetite in more than one aisle. I also remembered my husband, who does NOT have any weight problem, had run out of his bedside candy. He loves to keep miniature chocolate bars and licorice and a few others things for late night. I rarely accept one, but I knew that he was presently bereft of all of it.
I worked with handicapped people for most of my adult life, so it does my heart good to see the local markets making an effort to hire mentally-challenged adults as baggers and stock people. This week had a new young woman bagging, barely out of her teens, and eager and energetic. She gave me a lopsided smile and helped me unload the grocery cart. As she did, she shouted loudly into the air, "I got your DONUTS! I got your SOUR CREAM! I got your HERSHEY BARS! I got your PIZZA! I got your OTHER DONUTS! I got your ICE CREAM! I got your TWIZZLERS!"
She did not holler out "I got your broccoli" although I had bought some of that, too. In fact, the "sour cream" she proclaimed was actually low-fat soup in a sour cream-type container, but I guess she was enjoying announcing the products she most admired. After unloading the cart she whooshed down to the end of the conveyor belt and began bagging the items, holding each one up to the light and bellowing the most-embarrassing ones aloud.
I haven't been back to the store, although I know I forgot a few things and have run short of a few others. I really do have to go out again. Maybe I should look for this young lady and make an effort to only buy things I want everyone to know I have?
No one shouts out food choices at our markets, but I will admit it, I'm a terrible supermarket snob. I check out what people have in their carts both in front and back of me in the check out line, judging, judging, judging. Then I look in my cart and wonder if I have anything in there that I might be judged or tsk tsked at for buying. Usually I'm disgustingly smug. I'm not proud of myself, but there it is. The only non-rude part of my behavior (which is all silent, btw, it's a secret vice) is that I truly worry about how uninformed people are when they buy CRAP. Especially when they have kids in tow.
ReplyDeleteLaume, thank you for illustrating one of many reasons I was loathe to go public with this blog.
ReplyDeleteAll becomes clear now....
ReplyDeleteToo bad the baby has to go out with the bathwater, though. How about giving the little guy a break? Maybe an "invitation only" incarnation?
I'm damned entertained and want MORE!
You don't know me from Eve (I dropped in from BurkaMom's blog roll), but I think that your post was fabulous! I was laughing at the end, nodding my head in understanding and empathy in the middle, commiserating and relating over the subtitle of the blog (fortunately I have no desire to, nor hope in hell of running), and seeing myself at the restaurant right along with you.
ReplyDeleteI too abhor grocery shopping, and to a great extent cooking. I foisted the task off on my husband a few years ago and he has yet to shove it back on me. However, given that he is French, it is in his DNA to make us, at the very least, eat at 7am, 12noon, and 7pm. He's been gone for 4 days and I just wrote a post at ...Spit and Baling Wire... outlining how I was eating when, what, and if I wanted in his absence.
I love the writing of Nora Ephron and you could give her a run for her money. Anyone who cares what's in your grocery cart or on your back, by way of judging it to be aberrant, needs a shrink. Speaking of which, since I now live in France (the alleged land of haute cuisine), I actually spoke with a hypnotherapist about working on jacking up my enthusiasm on the food front...
Everyone, except the very poor and anorexics, eats too much. It's the nature of American culture and we are cultural products, among other things. They eat too much in France, too. But, for the moment, the stereotype of the svelte Frenchwoman is not yet in tatters and Lane Bryant. Just wait. It's coming, if my eyes do not deceive me in small town France.
So take heart. Don't hide from your blog. Flaunt your challenges. You are quite funny and your post was poignant.
If I may be so bold, you said yourself that you and your husband were in transition after 30 years of child-rearing and the old routines and traditions. Just take it one day and one step at a time. "Transitions:..." by William Bridges is a great book on that subject.
One thing is sure, you can't not eat and lose weight, for example, over the long-haul. But you can create new patterns and turn a chore into a joy. Your will find your way. And if you decide to write more about it, it will be fun to find out with you where it leads!
Thank you, Quasi, your words are so kind. Have all our nicest ladies moved to France? You nudged me into another post. I even have the next one after that in mind, so watch this space.
ReplyDelete