A Grocery Trip Tale

I did my giant monthly grocery trip last week. I do this trip at a large grocery store (where you have to bag your own stuff...ugh).

A typical monthly grocery trip goes something like this (with only a few slight exaggerations :-D...)

Park car. Give self pep talk and gather supplies necessary for trip. Grocery list. Menu Plan. Loonie for cart. Calculator. Flyers for price matching. Reusuable shopping bags (Got to be thrifty  green because paying 5 cents per grocery bag is really not conducive to a frugal lifestyle  I don't want a pelican to accidentally choke on a plastic shopping bag that will end up in a landfill sometime. Load giant cart full of groceries. Include large and heavy things like 20 pound bags of potatoes and flour. Steer giant boat cart throughout the store. Pile it higher, higher, and higher. Smile and wave when groceries fall off of piled-way-too-high-cart. I would make a terrible engineer. Mumble to yourself how you are saving money in hopes of taking a 10 year anniversary trip next year when people start to stare. Believe me, people stare. Try to ignore the fact that said staring people are likely thinking one or all of the following:
    A) You must have 10 + kids and/or a wolf for a husband
    B) You are a hoarder
or C) You live in the middle of nowhere, a thousand miles away from civilization and only come to town once a year.

None of which are true. Except for maybe the hoarder part. Oh, and maybe the thousand miles away from civilization part. That's up for debate.

Steer the ominous grocery  ship  cart up and down the aisles. You are as strong as a lumberjack. Load it with things you would never consider buying such as bleu cheese because, hey, when it's 7:30 pm and you've been in the store for 2 hours already, even moldy cheese looks crazily scrumptious. Load piled-way-too-high cart of groceries onto grocery belt. Bag groceries. All of them. The ones you can fit, anyway. Load ridiculous amount of groceries back onto cart. Remember where you put the cartons of eggs. Oh no. Can't fit it all back on the cart. Must push and steer massive cart, boat ship (yep, it's now a ship) with one hand while lugging huge package of paper towel in the other. You are a strong woman, strong. People stare. Again. Smile and wave. Again. Never Mind. You can't wave. Your hands are full. Unload groceries into car. Drive home in a stupor. Stumble into the house carrying far too many bags. Show off your incredible grocery-bag hauling ability Politely make small talk to the neighbours. Remind yourself you are a strong woman when your arms start to give out. Okay, maybe you are not so strong. Kind husband takes pity on tired, exhausted, and verging-on-grumpy wife. Said wife must now find a place to store a month's worth of groceries. Husband picks up bleu cheese, raises eyebrows, and questions wife. Tired wife just smiles and nods. Smiles and nods. Husband is unconvinced that moldy cheese can taste good. I'm sure Pinterest can come up with something that can make even bleu cheese taste good. Right? Please tell me I'm right....

Exhausted, put the kids to bed, turn on a semi-interesting documentary, laugh about how the psychologist who is spewing ridiculous psycho-babble looks exactly like your university english prof, and eat the only reasonable thing a person can have for supper at 8:30 p.m. A coke float.