Frustration A La Shopping Cart

My husband had an immense lapse in judgement the other evening and told me that I stress out too much about meals. The exact nature of the conversation is still fuzzy, but I remember at one point I was speaking in tongues. After the exorcism I explained to him how feeding everyone was much more complicated than he thought.

To understand my point of view, first wrap your mind around this: I exist solely to make sure the rest of my family survives the week without starving or sustaining permanent brain damage. The latter really is a piece of cake, with the help of knee pads, helmets and cancelling our cable. It's the former, this problem of malnutrition, that screws me up.

As you know, meal preparation isn't just unthawing a freezer-burned roast or picking out the wilted leaves from a bag of salad. The labor-intensive part is going to the grocery store. There's probably nothing I hate more than having to hunt down and bag up the ingredients I need to create something edible. In fact, I'd gladly scrub your toilets for a year or two if you would take my voracious spawn grocery shopping for one afternoon. Don't forget the coupons. I've got two kids, so that means you'll have to steer the giant, double-occupancy, molded plastic trolley that weighs about as much as a Buick down the aisles. This lasts about 2.5 hours.

No takers?

Grocery shopping is similar to any full-body contact sport. If I'm on top of my game, I'll have a list prepared. If I've trained well I have coupons in hand for the majority of the items on my list. Some people poo-poo the idea of using coupons, but on average I save about 10 percent off my subtotal. This is enough money to buy a set of Bumpit's hair volumizing inserts, earplugs and a six pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon.

So with list in hand and coupons in pocket I settle the kids into what amounts to a careening, cash guzzling caboose and take off. The only dialogue that takes place mostly contains the word "no." Like, "no, we're not buying a candy today" or "no, we're not done yet" or "no, you can't put that produce bag over your head." After explaining the finer points of asphyxiation, I blow the bag into a crude balloon which eventually gets popped with accompanying tears and grief-stricken wails of "nooooo!"

Do I want to cook tonight? Noooo!!! Hand me that bag...

Every aisle we pass has some new, character-endorsed pricey snack that grabs the attention of my offspring.
"Can we get the Spongebob popsicles??" they plead.
"No honey, the doctor told me you were allergic to Spongebob, but you can get the Shopper's Value ice pops there on the bottom behind that wall of frost. Here's my keys - have at it."
By the time we've made our way through the produce, dairy, meat, cereal and baking aisles I feel like I'm Satan incarnate single-handedly destroying my children's tenuous hopes and dreams.

Defeated and dehydrated I arrive at the check-out. I decide to make peace by allowing the kids to help me unload the cart. Big mistake. Have you ever seen the kind of hematoma that erupts on a 4 year-old's toe after a can of sliced peaches hits it from three feet up? It's ugly, and it will require a visit to the doctor who inevitably will announce that no one is, infact, allergic to something that lives in a pineapple under the sea.

I do most of my shopping at a store which offers lower prices in exchange for bagging your own groceries. This is a farce. I know for a fact that there's a secret room full of clerks gulping fine microbews and laughing at the sweat dripping down the bridge of my nose while I'm lugging 20 pound bags of potatoes like a contestant on Supermarket Sweep. I've got the last laugh, though. I double bag everything - even potato chips. That ought to cut into their beer nut fund.

You'd think after 2 hours in unflattering flourescent lighting, normal children, like bears awaking from hibernation, would welcome the sun and fresh air. Not mine. As soon as we hit the black top they start howling, "It's hot outside! I wanna go home!" I want out of this cart!" "I need to poop!" So I pop them in their seats, throw my rapidly thawing perishables in the back of the van and drive home, where I find my husband conveniently absent for the unloading.

At the end of the afternoon, bruised, tired and bordering on mentally incompetent, I check the time. 4:45pm. What are we going to eat tonight? Enter famished husband who overhears me muttering about meat thermometers and expiration dates and casually says, "you just got groceries - whip something up." The room starts spinning, I'm seeing red. I say to my husband, "You're right, babycakes, why don't you just grab my magician's hat from the closet, and underneath the white rabbit you'll find a piping hot lasagna." That didn't go over well.

Apparently hungry people have absolutely no sense of humor.


(c) 2009, Kelsey Robbins