Food Fight

I told you last week I had finished my Christmas shopping. Which I had. The gift part, that is. Today wife had lined me up to accompany her for the dreaded Christmas grocery shopping trip.

I had forgotten how absoloutely tedious and tiring that annual quest can be. My job on this annual sabattical to the grocery store is mathematician. We could use a calculator like normal people I suppose, but I happen to be quite good at math and at keeping numbers in my head. So my job is addition.

One item is $2.49, and the next is $5.88, and so on. And when we have $250 worth of food, we get $30 off the total. I like to carry a buzzer or blue light with me and set it off when we hit $250, thereby signifying with great gusto that I can now go home.

Except that every other family who plans to eat around Christmas day is also out. In the same store. With the same coupon promising $30 more food if we just hit the magic $250 mark.

Have you ever ridden the bumper cars at the fair? Well, picture that ride with shopping carts, only there are no wide spaces. No, it's Mad Max's death match played out in the narrow aisleways of a Supermarket and overseen by blood thirsty clerks who refuse to wait on you until you can show the "get out of jail" coupon.

And then there's the demo ladies. You know these folks. They're the elderly ones who have a new lease on life in a career in gourmet service. One that requires careful, and slow, opening of the samples, discarding of the wrapping around the samples, heating of the oven that will make the samples edible. Some sample ladies are not charged with wares requiring preheating, but instead busy themselves opening the box of chocolates or candy and carefully cutting the contents into quarters, setting out the paper wrappers into which said quarters will be placed, and then ever so slowly and carefully distributing the morsals. These girls seem to love watching us as we drool in wait, absolutely oblivious to the fact that perhaps we have important business to get on with as well.

The checkout line is a hoot. Finding the one going at just the right speed to get you out of there as fast as possible is the first challenge. Followed by the one where great patience is needed as the person just ahead of you writes a check and needs Madge to authorize it, or uses a debit card that won't work, or presents the bulk of their order without bar codes. All this while you wistfully watch the line you would have chosen wisking by and out into the parking lot and home.

AND I wore heavy wool socks tucked into winter boots that were laced to the top, creating a veritable oven for my feet that cooked and sauna'd the appendages. These soles really were in hell.

Eventually I arrive home. With the car looking pretty cool since it's now lowered in the back from the result of the day's battles, I sigh a heavy sigh of relief just before I realize that I now must empty the trunk of its contents and trudge them into the house. And because the supermarket charges us 5 cents per bag if we want bags; and because we therefore choose not to add to the bill more in protest than because of the cost; I then must demonstrate my prowess and ability in carrying as many items as I can to keep the number of trips from the car to the kitchen as low as possible. A jar of jam, a bottle of pop, a bag of lettuce, loaf of bread, and a flat of liqueur filled chocolates. If I could juggle these I might be famous. But it's all I can do just to carry them, and then to do it again approximately 14 times.

Then it's really over. I come into the den, turn on the computer, and find MOG.

And eat.