All Lost in the Supermarket

I mentioned earlier today that I had forgotten the joys of grocery shopping with three small children. What with school for the older two full time, and play dates I am not obligated to attend pre-school for the GFYO a few mornings a week, I can pretty much manage the buying of food (no one will eat) all by my lonesome.

Today, since we honor Veterans Day here in Massachusetts by taking the day off from organized education, and since the cupboards were really pathetically bare (stale Triscuit anyone? limp carrot?), off I went with the Short Drunk People for an hour or so of public drunkenness at the local food store. Thankfully, we saw no one we knew. 

It is not that my children are any worse or more spazzy than other kids in grocery stores. It's just that they are mine and so I get to highlight their shenanigans because I consider it my RIGHT and my DUTY.

For instance, those coupons dispensed in those little machines are not coupons but tickets and for some reason, the more tickets you get the better. Tickets to what? to where? Who the fuck knows, but they want them and must have them.

Also, produce baggies are not so much for say, um, brussel sprouts or broccoli, but better used as blow-up whacking instruments. I know this because for a good twenty minutes Rory* and the GFYO blew-up and whacked. Creative play? Perhaps. Utterly annoying? For sure.

Three children under the age of ten can discuss the merits of different types of "fruit" flavored gummy snacks for longer than your average senator can filibuster. The fish department on the other hand elicits gasps and speed walking, and also from Bridget*, a kind of stunned silence that a mother would even consider "making" her children eat something so "gross."

The word "gorp" (you know, the trail mix your mom probably made with peanuts and raisins and M&Ms) resulted in what will forevermore be known as the Gorp Song. It included many made-up (or misused) words, some lame beat boxing, some attempts at break dancing (in aisle 6), and the scorn of other shoppers.  

The good news? The cupboards are less empty and we made it out of there, all four of us, with a dollar to spare for the (I mean, really: it's NOVEMBER) bell-ringing Salvation Army guy. We loaded the goods in and then they loaded them all out. We put the food away, divided up crackers into ready-for-school-lunch individual portions, discussed how we would not eat all the "fruit" flavored gummy snacks in one gluttonous feast when in fact, we have REAL fruit to gluttonously eat, and we marveled at our accomplishment. Well, actually, I marveled; every one else went outside to play.

The bad news? No booze section in that grocery store which puts a little damper on the one-stop-shopping, you know what I'm saying?

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* Oh yes. I am leaving the initials behind (except for the GFYO because I just dig that little moniker of his) because "B" and "R" never sounded like them to me anyway, so there you have it.