Adventures in Grocery Shopping

I have found as I get older, I really don't enjoy shopping as I once did. I used to relish a shopping trip, even just a quick jaunt to pick up an item or two, and I would be in heaven to spend most of the day at the mall. Now, I find myself having to force myself to go to the store...and even then, we have to be pretty desperate (and I have learned that the best way to shop is just me, it tends to be the cheapest that way)

Our town's grocery shopping consists of an always busy Super Wal-Mart and small local grocery store that's part of a small chain. Typically, I only go to the grocery store for produce, and suffer out the rest at Wal-Mart in the crowds. Not to sound snobbish, but I would give anything for a Trader Joe's for groceries and a Target for all the rest!

This evening I went to do our grocery/toiletry shopping for the week. Unfortunately, due to our liking of fresh fruit and veggies, we have to go weekly in order to have what we like. It took me an hour and fourteen minutes from parking lot to loading the car. I hate crowds. Now, granted this trip took two phone calls and a picture message to my husband to decipher the items he put on the list, and I spent about five minutes paroozing the books, but the rest was spent in my methodical system of navigating the aisles (non-food items, non-perishable foods, produce, meat, cheese, and milk) with my categorically organized shopping list.

Many of my pet peeves roar their ugly head at the grocery store...people that won't stand to one side or the other, friends/families walk carts side-by-side blocking the whole aisle, and people that walk in front of you and stand there when you are just about to grab your desired item and move on with life.

Then there's the checkout...oh boy. As a savvy shopper, I always have my coupons, and if I have done any corps shopping, our tax exempt card ready--half the time the cashier will put these off to the side and forget to scan them before completing the transaction, meaning they have to void the sale and re-do it. Okay, so some stores it's not as much of a hassle as others...but sometimes that means re-scanning a whole cart full of food. Now, I know you may be thinking--just use the coupons next time, but that's the difference of $10-20 on any given shopping trip. That's an ice cream date or a movie with my husband! Heck no! I'm never rude about it, but I do nicely ask that my purchases are rung up correctly, and make it a point to thank them for the effort.

I try my very best to be polite to cashiers, I know their job is hard and they deal with a lot of poopy people throughout their day. Butttt....that doesn't give them the excuse in turn to hate the world. Granted, my line of work is vastly different--but I deal with a lot of poopy people too, and I find that the day goes faster and generally people respond better when you're not a jerk to them in return. Just a thought.

Ugh. Now that I've ranted...

Great day of worship with our congregation. Lots of prayer for our congregation and their families, fellow officers, service corps, and our world services campaign (ugh, I need some more ideas for "making it personal"--totally not getting through to people, the first few weeks of people's personal testimonies were cool, but I think the emphasis was totally lost). Husband preached a really good message on the 3rd Commandment (We're preaching through the 10 Commandments right now). Some interesting insights that totally expanded my view of what it means to misuse the name of the Lord.

Busy week ahead, looking forward to some fun on Saturday in the mountains. Friday is one week until the Third Day concert we have tickets for!!!