Grocery Shopping, in person

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?

Elevators

Sigh. The elevators at my mother's senior living complex have to carry thousands of pounds every day, including the heavy motorized scooters driven around by disabled people. The buildings are around 30 years old, and probably built by graft and payoffs in the first place, and those elevator scare the beejeebers out of me. Mom lives on the 3rd floor and I do all her grocery shopping for her, so most of my visits there are solo. I come in on the ground floor and ride up to the third (top) level, and the elevators creak and shake and whine all the way up. There is an occasional CLUNK or even a whistling noise, and the little boxes shudder and seem to sway just a little. I'm almost always alone when I ride up (or down) and I never fail the think this will be the time. The cable will break and they'll haul my lifeless corpse out of the basement and say "She was more than Old Otis could handle!"

Worse, I wonder if three flights is enough to kill me. I'd hate to be alive and hear them say that.

"A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts" - St. Jerome

"A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts" - St. Jerome

My world-view has grown much smaller in the past few years. I used to be very deeply concerned about mankind, womankind, childkind, animal welfare, social politics and the environment. While I still feel the same, my brain chemistry has altered (or sumpthin) and I no longer experience the drive to DO anything about these issues. (Kvetch, maybe.)

I sorta hope that will change, but I'm like "meh" about it right now.

I've had two blogs for years and I don't use them at all. Once an uncorkable writer, I'm now pretty stretched to fill a Twitter (not that anyone is following).

But two days ago my youngest daughter, Molly, got engaged to her lovely boyfriend Matt. We like him. She likes him. He likes her. They are thinking about next May (2011) for a wedding. I guess that's fine. But it only gives me 9 months to lose about 50 pounds.

And that's as good a reason to blog as any.