Today, mom asked if I'd stop at the grocery store for her to "pick up a few things" (also known as a month's worth of groceries).
Since my work had been canceled for today and I didn't have anything else to do, I naively agreed. She handed me a shopping list, her debit card, and a few coupons. Nothing abnormal for a grocery trip.
Then I got to the grocery store. And looked at the shopping list. It had two full rows of items listed out. I figured it would take me a while to find everything but never guessed the damage it would do to the cart. My only thought was, "Heaven help me. Good thing I didn't have any other plans this afternoon!"
I decided to start at the back of the store and work my way forward. On the dairy aisle, I completely covered the bottom of the shopping cart. Eight two-pound blocks of cheddar cheese? Check! Five cartons of cream? Check! Four pounds of butter? Check! Check! And check!
I got this. I was finally getting the hang of grocery shopping in an orderly manner! Yay me! (Normally, I'll start at the top of the grocery list and work from there, zig-zagging and back-tracking across the store so being able to mentally categorize the items by aisle was a big accomplishment, in my opinion.)
Then I went down the produce aisle. Mom had written that all the produce had to be "organic." Searching every brand of berries available, I couldn't find a single carton labeled "organic." Maybe "always fresh" means "organic." Into the cart it and several other cartons of "always fresh" fruit went! (What the heck does "always fresh" mean anyway?!)
She had also mentioned we needed potatoes but they absolutely had to be organic. I searched the different varieties of potatoes (there were at least 10 different bags to choose from) but couldn't find a single bag labeled "organic." There weren't any "always fresh" potatoes either. You know what? Maybe we don't need potatoes.
That's when I noticed we also needed a 55lb bag of dog food. There was barely any room left in the cart for it but I shoved it in anyway.
The cart was starting to complain and get difficult to push around the store. It was extremely heavy and hard to maneuver. But I hadn't even gotten half of what was on the list!
Next was the baking aisle for vanilla extract. My muscles were straining to push the heavy, resistant cart around the curves of the aisle. Then I scanned the aisle for vanilla. No vanilla on the baking aisle. Why is vanilla not on the baking aisle?! I bake with vanilla! It should go on the baking aisle! The logic behind grocery store organization always boggles my mind. Maybe I'm missing something, but vanilla belongs on the baking aisle, not the condiment aisle (where I found it a few minutes later).
Just then I got a text from mom. "Can you also get 4 jugs of vinegar?"
All was fun and games in my very-full shopping cart until I saw the size of the vinegar containers. They each held about 2 gallons of vinegar. Gulp. (And before you freak out that we go through that much vinegar in a month, we use it in laundry. Mom says it helps cut any smells. I'm still doubtful about that, but whatever.) I had to rearrange the whole cart in the middle of the aisle to fit them in. At this point, I was muttering under my breath. "This cart is heavy. I can barely move the stupid thing. Mom keeps adding to my shopping list.The vanilla wasn't on the baking aisle. Vanilla is not a condiment. What are people thinking these days? I can't fit anything else into this crazy cart! Someone help me!" You know, the usual monologue of a person assigned to do her family's grocery shopping.
When I went to push the cart, it didn't budge. At this point, it had about 200lb of food weighing it down and it had had enough. Irritated, I slammed my body weight into the cart and it slowly began rolling. And it was a force of nature to be reckoned with. Nobody better jump out in front of me because there's no way this train was going to be able to stop!
Turns were atrocious. This shopping cart had absolutely no turning radius. At all. I'd have to pull with one arm, push with another, and put my whole weight into turning the lumbering machine. It still clipped a couple aisles.
By the time I got to the check-out, my muscles ached and I was tired from pushing this cart. The lady working at the check-out looked at the cart and silently mouthed, "Wow."
I could barely see over the top of the cart, it was so full. And it was a full-sized, humungous BJs cart! The type that you could fit a baby elephant into. It took the lady about ten minutes to ring everything up, it cost about as much as a semester of college tuition (not really, but it felt like it), and the receipt was about two and a half feet long. Then, she loaded everything back into my cart (and it looked a lot neater after she rearranged everything for me) and I strained against it to slowly start the train moving forward again.
When I finished unloading the cart and put it back into the cart return area, I patted it understandingly. We'd been through a lot today. Who knew you could bond with a shopping cart?
So anyway, I bought a month's worth of groceries for a family of ten today and got my work out in at the same time!
And yes, it was traumatizing enough I had to write a blog post about it. :-D
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