Grocery Shopping

For over 30 years I managed to do the grocery shopping for this family (and for 14 years in our first family life) – and mostly ALL BY MYSELF. Sometimes I did have to drag children with me, but that was mostly disastrous, so I tried to avoid it at all costs. When Mamie and Igor were in the obnoxious pre- and teen years, I would gather my list, coupons, purse and keys and announce, “I am going to the store. I’ll be back shortly.” Their standard response was, “Well, you sure won’t be back TALL-Y” heh-heh-heh. Yes, it’s true I am a squatty Wombat; but it was the snottily gleeful tone of voice from my loving children that really made smoke come out of my ears. And by the way, that word “squatty” is a top contender for #1 on my list of ugly words. Hmm….an idea for a Ten Things Tuesday list. Anyway, nobody seriously starved or went without as a result of my solo shopping.

The point of all this is that now that GolfGuy is accompanying me, I suddenly do not seem to know what I am doing. (Did I suffer some sort of brain cramp nobody told me about?) My choices are constantly second guessed. And unplanned items keep mysteriously jumping into the shopping cart – he’s worse than the kids ever were about that; and it encourages ME to toss in impulse items. I seem to be lacking some self-restraint here.

We generally go through the self-check line. No matter how hard I try to keep things sorted as to what goes in the pantry, the refrigerator/freezer, the laundry room, or back to the bathroom, he tosses items into bags willy-nilly. ALL the canned goods into the same bags; ditto all other heavy objects – no weight balancing for him! During the months of medical treatment when my participation in the shopping activity was limited to leaning on the cart as I shuffled thru the store, indicating which items to grab, GolfGuy did the scanning, bagging, car loading and toting into the house. A practice that continues to this day (I’m not totally stupid – those tasks are WORK). Once the bags are actually in the house, I do sort things out and put them away – otherwise we would NEVER find anything.

I see other couples in the store – wandering closely together, sometimes holding hands, seemingly in harmony on what they’re doing. Meanwhile, we seem to be engaged in a titanic test of wills. Could it be that we are both control freaks and actually deserve each other?

In fairness, I am just as big a pain in the butt when I accompany GolfGuy to a home improvement or electronics store. I can gaze at bins of sprinkler fittings or piles of some electronic thingie for only so long before my eyes glaze over and start to roll back in my head and I go into whiney toddler mode.