The worst place on earth

Can we just talk about how hard grocery shopping is? Is grocery shopping hard for anyone else? Yes, I’m a 50 year-old woman who has been grocery shopping for over 25 years now but I still dread it. Why am I so bad at grocery shopping? I didn’t even know it was possible to be bad at grocery shopping. Is grocery shopping a talent? Did I just invent a new thing to be bad at? I hate it! I’d rather go to the dentist. Well that’s not fair because I love the dentist. But that’s a story for a different blog post.

I can never find anything in the grocery store! I even go to the same grocery store so you would think I would know where things are, but I still have no idea!

Why can I never find peanut butter or honey? Why don’t they have a sign above the aisle that says peanut butter or honey? I know the signs above the aisles are helpful but what about all those other things you’re looking for that there’s no sign for above the aisle? Why isn’t there a sign for honey? Or peanut butter? Or pine nuts?

The only thing I do know the location of is the taco stuff. That’s because, if you’ve read my blog, tacos are the only thing I can make successfully. Although lately my kid has not been eating them. But at least I know where taco things are in the grocery store. In case anyone asks me, I can seem knowledgeable. If you see me in the grocery store, please stop and ask me where the taco stuff is just so I can feel like I know something and can be helpful. Taco seasoning, taco shells, I’ve got it, and then after that, I’m lost.

Does anyone else lose their cart in the grocery store? It happens to me all the time! I can’t be the only one. I remember telling a friend about it who looked at me like I was crazy. Do you know when you’re pushing your cart and you realize you’ve missed something? Which is pretty much how I grocery shop. Do normal people shop so efficiently they don’t miss one thing? When this happens are you really going to turn your whole cart around and push your whole cart all the way back to get that one thing? Or, wouldn’t it be more efficient, to leave your cart there and run back to grab that one thing? So much more faster! That just seems more sensible and logical to me so I do it but when I come back, I can’t find my cart. It’s not where I left it. Or maybe I forgot where I left it, but I think, most likely, it’s not where I left it. I think there’s someone who follows me around the grocery store and moves my cart just to make me feel crazy. (Probably hired by my ex husband. kidding…)

Also, why do all the carts look the same? It’s so easy to lose my cart if they all look exactly the same. Shouldn’t they switch them up? Different colors or something? That might help. “Oh, I lost my cart but I know it was pink. Let me look for a pink cart parked randomly in the middle of an aisle,” I imagine myself saying.

Oh! Or what about those wine charms! You know how you go to a fancy party and everyone’s glass of wine is the same so they have those cute little wine charms that you hook to your glass so you don’t you lose your glass? I don’t have any of those wine charms but I think they’re adorable and I feel so fancy when I go to a party and someone hands me a wine glass with a cute little wine charm. They need those for grocery carts. Grocery cart charms. They should keep them by where you get your grocery carts. You pick one and you clip it to your cart and that’s how you know.

“I’m sorry, sir, that is not your cart. It has the brown teddy bear charm on it and that was my charm. Good try, thief,” I imagine myself saying as I grab my cart back from a little old man. And then roll two feet away to realize it’s really not my cart because there’s salmon in it and most likely there’s more than one teddy bear cart charm. OK, I still need to perfect the grocery store cart charm method, but I really think I’m onto something. Wouldn’t grocery shopping be so much more tolerable if the carts were fun? Maybe I wouldn’t lose mine so often.

Grocery shopping has always been such an ordeal for me. I don’t know where anything is, I don’t know what I need, I buy too many things I don’t need and nothing that can actually make a meal, and I spend way too much money, and come home to realize I didn’t buy anything I actually needed!! And then I need to go out for essentials like toilet paper and stuff. After I was just at the grocery store. It’s exhausting. I’m tired just thinking about grocery shopping.

I know, I know, you will say, “Brita, have you ever heard of making a grocery list?” Yes yes, I have. I make grocery lists all the time. I either lose them, forget them or don’t write important things on them. Is it just me or do you think of something really really important you want to write on your grocery list and then by the time you actually have the list and the pen you have no idea what you were going to write? Does that happen to anyone else? So grocery lists are really a great idea unless of course you don’t put the important stuff on there. Or you can’t find it when it’s time to go to the grocery store. Oh I know, there’s a thing called the phone, and a thing called the digital list, but I’m not a technologically-advanced girl. I still get my Mary Englebright planner for Christmas every year and write everything down with a pencil in my planner that I keep on my desk. Maybe someone should try to teach me how to use technology. But it sounds too hard. And I was going to say if it’s not broke, don’t fix it! But maybe it is broke? Shouldn’t it be broken, not broke?

If you’ve been reading my blog, you will see that I really have been trying to cook. I look up all these recipes. I write down the ingredients, I go to the grocery store but seriously, how am I supposed to find the ingredient if I don’t even know what it is. What the heck is xanthan gum? Where is it? Is it gum? Would it be in the candy aisle? Arrowroot flour? What the heck? Lupin powder? Grass fed butter?!?! Does butter even eat?!? And if it did why wouldn’t it choose something more appetizing than grass?!? How am I supposed to know what these things are? Do I have to Google items before I put them on my grocery list to see what they are? That’s so much work!

I dread going to the grocery store. There is nothing worse! I don’t know how people like it. Do you know that scene in Three Men and a Baby when it’s Tom Selleck’s turn to change the baby’s diaper and he’s on his way to work and he says, “I will give you a million dollars if you change the diaper?” Or something like that? And he’s completely serious? That’s how I feel about grocery shopping. I would give someone a million dollars if I had it before I would step foot in a grocery store.

That’s why this online ordering has completely changed my life. When I do it right. The other day I did it and I know I ordered three cases of water and when the nice grocery lady brought out my groceries, they weren’t in there. I asked about it and she said well we should look at my receipt together since she was there and sure enough I didn’t even order them. I know I ordered them but then I thought I got the wrong size so I tried to erase them and put the right size, but maybe I erased them all together. So I went through all the effort of ordering online so I would not have to go in the grocery store, but yet I still had to go in the grocery store because I forgot my water! Well, that’s disappointing.

What about those people whose job it is to grocery shop for people?!!? Could there be a worse job?!?! I can’t think of one.

Also, grocery stores are so chaotic and confusing they make me feel all emotional and vulnerable. One time, a couple years ago, I went to the grocery store when I was having a really tough day. And also, I couldn’t find the tortillas. Why are they not with the bread? Wouldn’t that make sense?

On this day, a man stops me and introduces himself. He says he’s my neighbor and he lives up the road and he sees me walking my dogs all the time. And then he asks me how I am? I mean really sincerely asks me how I am. Although he could have just been being polite. Well, I don’t know if it was just the stress of the grocery store or my failure to locate the tortillas on my first try, but all of a sudden, I just started bawling. I started crying hysterically to this stranger in the grocery store that I didn’t even really know! He just stopped me in the grocery store to say hello. I just couldn’t help myself. Feeling stressed, emotional, and lost in the grocery store and someone asks how I am? I fall apart! Poor guy! I bet he sure learned his lesson. Never stop someone you know in the grocery store and say hi.

I can picture him from now on with a baseball cap pulled low so he can’t see anyone while he’s pushing his cart really fast in the grocery store, just trying to get his groceries and get out of there as fast as he can. He’s probably traumatized from that one time he was trying to be polite and say hi to a neighbor.

Come on, am I really the only person who has cried to a stranger in the grocery store? I totally blame the grocery store. If someone stopped me in the library and asked how I was, no matter what kind of day I had been having, I would’ve been filled with positive things to say because, you know, it’s a library. Not a grocery store. I feel all Zen and stuff in the library.

How are you?
-random neighbor in the library.

Great! Because, well, books!
-I’d say while gesturing to the walls of books around me.

Libraries always make me feel better. Grocery stores never do.

If I ever win the lottery, the first thing I would do would be to hire someone to do my grocery shopping. Not just do my grocery shopping, but also to read my mind and know exactly what groceries to get so I don’t even have to think about groceries ever again. My kitchen would just always be full with exactly what I want without me doing a thing. Like magic!

Most people would pay off debts if they won the lottery or buy a boat. I would just ensure I never had to think about groceries ever again.

Until I win the lottery, I guess I will have to continue dealing with the worst place on earth.