Musings of the Greenhorn Grocery Shopper

Maybe grocery shopping seems like a pretty mundane thing to be so fired up about, but once again its on my blogging mind. The greatness is again apon me, and probably will be about once a week for the rest of the summer, judging from the looks of things. That's fine with me. I never thought of grocery shopping as an art, but, hmm.

Anyways: Ethan came with me, therefore a stop at McDonald's was imperative. We got enough fries to spoil his lunch and make me incredibly thirsty. While he munched away at his calorie ridden potato sticks I studied my grocery list, which was mercifully short. I say mercifully because I had written it in Russian (a painstaking activity, let me tell you.) Since I know virtually no Russian yet, I had to look up most of the words (ok, all of the words) in my spiffy new Russian book (Learning Russian the Fast and Fun Way). Then I said them over and over to myself and gawked at them, and then put down each word, letter by letter, on my little scratch paper. The result was a delightfully cryptic column representing turkey, American cheese, two loaves of bread, bananas, a brownie mix, Pringles, and a watermelon. The word for groceries alone was 18 letters long. And just as hard to pronounce!

French fries duly accounted for, Ethan and I found a buggy and set off to conquer Walmart once again. By now I knew my shopping list pretty well by memory, and even in Russian, but I still glanced over it and clung to it like a blankie of sorts when I discovered that a whole watermelon was 5 bucks, even on sale. eek. After a little figuring I relaxed and felt ok, but left the watermelon till later. Ethan sat in the cart and "protected" the bread for me. I figured enlisting his manly protective instincts might discourage him from intentionally smooshing the bread, and it did :)

I noticed today that some of my grocery shopping anxieties have been assuaged...the choices weren't quite so overwhelming today. Still, the availability of 20 different kinds of cake mixes strikes me as crazy. The chip aisle is further lunacy...I mean, there is probably about eight feet of space from four or five shelves reserved for Pringles alone. Pringles are good, I grant you that...but do we really have to have pizza flavored ones? Why not actually eat pizza? Probably because there are too many topping choices. At least with the pizza flavored Pringles, you don't have to decide.

So yes, there was my soap box for the day...you may hear more in the future. I'm trying to learn to accept where I am and what God has surrounded me with so graciously...but getting used to real life is really...wierd. Hard. I'm just a kid, learning to do sort of adult things. Trying not to take life too seriously. Since school is over, I suddenly feel that these everyday things are my school, and figuring out the price of a sack of onions or how much it costs to make a meatloaf seems like a big deal.

Luckily, I managed to find a cake mix. Brownie, actually...on sale, 2 for $2...there was little choice about it since it was the cheapest thing on the shelf, though I wanted to be daring and try something else. Like lemon. Or European chocolate flavored (whatever that means!) The delimma is, I start thinking will my family like this? If Mom has never gotten it before, then maybe its because she doesn't like it. Do I dare? I know this sounds silly, but if you've ever shrunk under the skeptical glances of your family members as they peer over your shoulder with a chary sniff...you might know how I feel about it. I don't want it to end up like the neon green, mint flavored angel food cake experiment that languished on the counter for days while I slowly nibbled away at it by my lonesome. You could say I just don't trust my own judgement about what normal people consider edible. So, nothing but brownie mix. When I bemoaned my hesitation to mom later, she consoled me by pointing out that I had branched out with the Pringles- instead of sticking with original, I got the cheesy variety. Of course, Ethan picked them.

Eventually I finished, and it was time to pick up Mom and Mattie from their nursing home visit. I selected a voluminous watermelon, which looked really good, just dirty on the bottom. Once again, I had more than enough money, and everything on my peculiar little list was accounted for. I paid, loaded, and left, donning my imaginary Laurel Crown of Victory.