You know what gets me worked up? Shopping. Grocery shopping.
It's not the fact that I go to The Real Canadian Superstore which is so wonderful in many ways but so annoying in others. Superstore has cheap prices, cool kids clothes, kitchenware, and loads of other interesting stuff to look through. On the other hand, the produce there is pretty bad (I can't wait for the summer when I can get produce at farm markets!!), the store is so big that it takes a lot of determination to go waaaay back to where I started if I forgot something, and the lines are always really long. They have about 20 checkout lines, but for some reason, there are usually only 4 or 5 open. It's rather a challenge to find the shortest line.
It's not the fact that I have two kids with me. Plava is pretty good when we go shopping, but if she gets into that mischievous toddler mood, she starts poking and prodding at (usually) sleeping Pito, grabbing the list and the pen from me, and wanting to change positions in the buggy for the umpteenth time. Pito is usually sleeping, or at least quiet, but some days (like today) she was back and forth between sleep and being annoyingly awoken by her big sister. What did that produce? A cranky baby.
It's not the fact that I usually leave far too late in the morning to get back by lunch time. Usually I'm trying to get the job done quickly so we're back in time for lunch and nap, and so that Plava doesn't get too squirmy, but more times than not I'm out the door at 10:30, with precious little time to do it right.
No, the thing that makes me agitated is that after all this work getting the kids into the car, buckled up, list and pen in pocket, getting a buggy and loading it up with food and gear that we need, talking Plava out of tantrums and sticking Pito's soother back in 50 times, pushing around a buggy that feels like it weighs ten times as much as I do, and then finding the shortest possible line that ends up still having four buggies ahead of me, I HAVE THE ARDUOUS TASK OF DECIDING HOW MANY BAGS I'M GOING TO NEED.
I know. It's a little ridiculous.
But really, it stresses me out! I mean, I'm no expert. I'd like to be able to examine my groceries on the belt and say that, yes, this is precisely 6 bags worth of stuff. But I can't. I'm never right. Sometimes I have two too many. Sometimes I need to ask for more. Really, the last thing that I want at the end of the shopping trip, knowing that I have yet to load the kids and groceries into the car, return the buggy, drive home, unload the kids and bring them upstairs, make three or four trips back down to the car to lug up the bags, unload it all into the cupboards, and then figure lunch out, is to have to decide how many bags I need.
All I ask is that the woman looks at my stuff and says, "I think you need seven bags today, Laura. Does that sound good?"
Then, I would sigh and reply with a tired smile, "Yes, that sounds fine."
4 comments:
I like superstore. It's fun to look at all the little gadgets and gizmos on the shelves and check out the cheap clothes. But i would NEVER in a million years buy groceries there. Not because they're bad groceries. More because they are horribly organized, have very bad produce and i'd have to fight through the multitudes of people. AND the line ups are stupidly long. I once saw people fighting over the bags of rice.
I prefer grocery shopping at Save On, but there isn't one near my house. So safeway, it is.
Superstore certainly has its charms. One thing that I've found to be great are the cloth bags from Safeway. They're huge! I can put the equivalent of 3 of superstore's plastic bags worth of groceries in one of the safeway bags. It makes it really heavy, but I *always* buy more than I think I'm going to. Mind you, the last 5 times I've bought bread, it's come home squashed, so I should probably just bring more bags with me. I don't like the superstore bags because they're really flimsy and tend to break (probably because I over-stuff them) so I can't re-use them for other purposes.
I took my little meaper shopping there yesterday, and let me tell you, he really screamed, and one of the best things about superstore is that it's so big, a baby can cry and others don't really pay much attention. Yep, the produce is pretty bad. I've found one kind of apple I like there and everything else is like, icky.
I heard recently that Superstore lowered their produce a grade to compete with Walmart prices. Sucks.
Then I thought to myself, "Does Walmart sell produce?" Anyone know?
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