Reflections on Grocery Shopping

Grocery stores are one of my favorite topics of discussion. I love to talk about the pros and cons of different stores. I like to sing the praises of Trader Joe's. Oh wait, that's not me, that's Myrrh.

Grocery shopping ranks just above Greek on the list of things I like to do. Well, and I guess just above starving. So I go.

And then there's communal grocery shopping. "Wait, if you're going to go grocery shopping, then I don't need to go..." I never understand why that doesn't work. Why do people want to go together? I'll say right now, grocery shopping is the least romantic thing I can think of. I would rather go dumpster diving with a significant other. Actually, that sounds like a lot of fun. My new dear-friend-in-law came sheepishly and somewhat proudly back from the dumpster with a book on Sunday: "Do you think it's alright for me to take this out of the dumpster?" It depends on the book.

Another, parenthetic, dumpster-diving comment: During my days in, how do you say?, the state with the most misguided ego, I was absolutely intrigued by the dumpster divers. These people had dumpster-diving tools. This is so clever. What sort of person has tools like that? I used to sit on my balcony (this was the one redemptive thing about my time in that state--there is nothing like a balcony [even if it overlooks a very ugly parking lot]) and watch them and daydream about interviewing them (an urge hungover from my journalism days, I suppose). I had a (reluctant) partner for this, who only agreed so that I would be safe, but we were never together when I ran into dumpster divers.

Anyway, I have in fact been communal grocery shopping on the rare occasion, and at least once it turned out to be fun (only because, to sweeten the deal, Frankincense offered to make me hot cocoa, but we got sidetracked, anyway, and never made it to the hot cocoa until weeks later; fine, the sidetracking was also a sweet deal, but that's beside the point).

The biggest problem with grocery shopping is, I think, the overwhelming selection and the fact that the whole process is an exercise in choosing (which I hope to remain bad at for the rest of my life, especially when there are too many choices, as I think we can safely say is the case in the typical American supermarket).

A good shopping trip for me, then, is a fast one. And I choose my grocery store on the price of the spinach (which just got drastically raised at Safeway [they took away the huge $4 bags] and I know that I must find a new supermarket, only I'm reluctant as a new store in which I can't find a thing is an even more painful experience than usual). What you imagine, poor Emily (or we can call me Lenore, which, I was reminded today, is sort of my favorite nickname), wandering the isles, once, twice, even four times seeking the marshmallows or the tahini (they never have it) or the wheat germ (where is wheat germ even found?) is the truth. I am utterly incompetent.

Today, when I was checking out, the dear, dear checkout gentleman said, "You choose well--did you get everything on sale?" Yes, it's true I did! And while his compliment may have been a variation on the, "Miss Hale, thank you for shopping at Safeway; you saved $13 today; do you need help carrying your bags to your car?" (to which I inevitably want to reply, somewhat miffed for no apparent reason, "No thank you--I'm a strong woman!"), I took it as remarkably flattering that the cashier, who must checkout hundreds of people a day thought that I was a remarkably good shopper (or at least a cheap, poor one) and wanted to comment on it to me. And he wasn't even the cashier with mesmerizing green eyes who hits on absolutely every young female customer who walks through his line and somehow has managed not to be fired for sexual harassment.