This morning started out like most cold, damp, dreary mornings. I pretty much had to throw myself out of bed to get moving, prayed that there was at least a half a cup of coffee left (since caffeine has now become my dad's newest vice instead of smoking), and instead of working out because I was in too much pain, just going through a simple set of stretches before I left to pick up my mom. Of course there were the few "what the hell?" moments. Like finding out my income tax return STILL hasn't been deposited. (The IRS website initially gave me a date of April 5th, which came and went, then said the 10th, which also came and went, but now simply shows my return as "processing" the bastards.) And dealing with the worlds most pathetic mutt as I'm trying not to lose what's left of my mind while trying to find my car keys. At first I thought about calling my dad, since he did use the car on Easter, which meant he'd of been the last to use them, but wait.. it's Wednesday, not Monday--d'oh! Finally I found them and kept trying to get out the door as the mutt was constantly underfoot, looking from the door to my car, to the basket where her harness and leash are, to me, and back again with this "please take me, I wanna go" pout on her face. She must've overheard the conversation mom and I had about going to Petsmart yesterday. Initially, after I picked her up from dialysis, we were going to go to Yankee Candle (since I had 3 buy 1 get 1 free coupons that expire this week) to replace the Christmas scented candles upstairs, go to Petsmart for bird and dog treats, then go grocery shopping (groan). I suggested we put off the Petsmart trip until Friday so that we could bring the mutt with us. It is one of her favorite places, after all. I don't think the mutt heard that little change in plans, though.
So my mom got her candles, I got my car freshners, a box of tea lights and a medium jar candle, and it was off to the grocery store (double groan). It's not that I really hate grocery shopping, I just prefer being given a list and sent on my own. I go in, I leave my phone in the car to avoid the inevitable dozen phone calls "oh, by the way, I forgot to add" (which always happen when I'm on the opposite side of the store, naturally), I pay, I leave, and it's done. Taking my mom, however, makes it a process. Sure she has her list. She gets everything on the list, unless the store is out of stock of an item, but then there's always the stuff that's either on sale that we can always use and the stuff she forgot to put on the list. And we can't forget reading the labels of 99% of the stuff she buys, even if it's the same product we've been buying for decades. Granted, some things now have iodine added to them, but that's generally meal replacement/supplement items. It's that whole fear of nuclear war/nuclear fallout thing, except both of us are highly allergic to iodine, so if either scenario does happen, we're definitely screwed. Then there's my favorite part--going up and down EVERY aisle in the store. EVERY TIME! Doesn't matter if that aisle has nothing on the list. It might have something she forgot to put on the list, or something we can always use that's on sale that wasn't in the circular. I think by aisle 12, with an overflowing cart, while she was comparing cupcake wrappers, I was fighting the urge to just meltdown and cry. It was a tossup between being in incredible pain and the thought of having to bring a carload of groceries down the stairs into the house and put them all away. Normally, if it's more than 2 hours late, I don't bother to take the latest pain medication in my arsenal since it's a twice daily thing. Today it was more like 4 hours and I just didn't give a damn.
But I can say I learned a few things grocery shopping with mom. The first is I can't deny where I get some of my ideas and attitude from. As we were in the last aisle, I waited towards the end while my mom went to read the labels and pick up some shredded cheese and pizza dough (or something like that, by that point, I have no idea, I was just trying to keep things from hitting the floor) and a middle school girl caught my attention when she yelled out "shut the front door!" for no particular reason. Her younger brother replied "shut the back door!" I doubt neither one had any clue what they were talking about, but that's probably a good thing. What I did notice, though, was that this girl, 12 at the absolute most, had on skin tight, butt lifting, slow slung flared jeans with a long sleeve t-shirt tied at the back in a knot to expose a bit of her lower back. Her mother, dressed in super tight jeans and an LBI sweatshirt and baseball cap (like any respectable spa dwelling NJ style soccer mom) almost bumped into my cart and made an offhand remark about how "wow, someone's really grocery shopping today!" Well, yeah. No one in my house hasn't actually done any real grocery shopping in about 3 months except the pick up what we need and one or two extra kinda deals. I just blew her off because mom finally made her way back and we headed to the checkout line. Mom was putting the stuff on the belt and I was filling up the reusable grocery bags like any good environmentalist does while trying to keep up with a cashier who seemed determined to bury me in a cart full of groceries. As the bags began to fill up, I had to set a few on the floor until the cart was empty. No big deal, really. Until I heard "Really? Are you freaking serious?" And a few other things along that line. I glanced up from my frantic bagging to see none other than the soccer mom face to face with my mother. Uh oh. I had no clue what was going on, but whatever it was, the soccer mom was obviously in line behind us and just my mom's body language alone let me know my mom was more than just a bit pissed. I had several heavy bags of groceries and a shopping cart between my mother and me and there wasn't enough room to go around them should this now psycho soccer mom really start trouble. Then I realized 2 very important things, well 3: my mom has a bit of a temper (with a mouth to match..sound familiar?), especially when she isn't feeling great and I knew she wasn't given today's weather. she also never backs down. and not a single item of produce had been rung up yet. All I could do was hope like hell the psycho soccer mom stopped doing whatever she was doing so we could just get out of there without incident. It turns out that even though the woman saw we still had a lot of groceries left in the cart to ring up, she started putting her groceries on the belt. All my mom did was keep pushing her groceries back so that we could finish up our order and get out of there and the woman got pissed. Okay, after the third time my mother pushed the woman's groceries back asking her "what, are you fucking blind?" probably didn't help matters any. But still.
When we got to the car I asked mom what happened and she explained to me. I started laughing and told her about my concern because not only did I not have a direct route to get to her, the cart still had all the fresh produce we were going to buy in it, leaving her too well armed. She stopped and looked at me for a second before she calmly replied: "Why would I risk bruising perfectly good produce before I paid for it? I had an entire cart full of canned goods!" Now THAT would have been interesting!
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