Shopping Jockeys and More

Hello, dear blog readers! So if you're anything like me, you try to avoid grocery stores on a weekend immediately prior to a holiday, but sometimes those trips can't be avoided.

Secondly: to all of you organized moms and other folks out there who run their lives like a well-oiled machine, I salute you.

This is how a pre-holiday shopping trip might go (if you're like me, for example).

You have a shopping list on the table all ready to go. If you're really on top of things, you even write it out in order of the aisles at the store to streamline your trip. As you get to the store, you realize that your list stayed at home on the kitchen table. Oh well. Onward and forward! As you start going through the shopping experience, you find that Holiday Cheer has rubbed off on most of the folks in the store. One woman is telling her husband (or boyfriend?) what a horse's caboose he is (only in perhaps a more colorful language). One husband is shoving his cart trying to push past other customers in trying to keep up with his lady. As you wait your turn to grab your needed item off of the shelf, you get stuck in the long aisle behind a couple walking tandem and refusing to move to either side of the aisle for shopping cart traffic in either direction.

At this point in time, you're trying to recall from memory all of the items on your list. The main reason you're here, after all, is that you starting making something and realized you were out of eggs. A little hard to find a substitution spice or other baking ingredient for those. You carefully jockey through the store, trying to avoid getting grumpy with people by deliberately looking at them, smiling, and saying excuse me. Facial muscles start to hurt and twitch.

Right about now, the accidental superficial nick from the kitchen knife the day before gets bumped, and along comes Mortal Wound. Of course while you're at the store, you do not personally own (yet) a box of band-aids, and you don't have any Kleenex on hand. You try to keep from touching anything with that particular hand, but inevitably Mortal Wound meets Nice Coat or Nice-Purse-That-Your Mom-Made. Oi. Now it's a race to get everything you need out of the store before you really make a mess. The restrooms are no help because they are for employees only.

At this point in time, your old friend Stretchy Maternity Pants decide to join in the fun and games. You notice that they are repeatedly (and progressively with more rapidity) sliding the beltline somewhere between your knees and hips. Mostly toward the knees, since Gravity likes Stretchy Maternity Pants. You can't pull up said Low Riders due to Mortal Wound having a hey-day. Thank goodness for Nice Coat, which at least has length enough to hide the fact that your pants want to hang around your knees.

As you go to the egg/dairy section of the store, you encounter all three of Horses' Cabooses, Grumpy Bumper Cart Husband, and Tandem Couple. Everyone is in a line around Tandem Couple as they carefully peruse each and every carton of eggs. Traffic continues to build like pressure in a volcano around the egg section, and eventually Bumper Cart Hubby erupts, running into the back of your ankles while you wait in line for your eggs. As you turn as politely say "Excuse me" yet one more time, you think in an un-Christlike manner about grazing Mortal Wound on the back of his coat, but that would not be very nice. This is, however, the last straw. You decide to go for milk and wait until the congestion around the eggs dies down.

As you get to the last of your groceries, you quickly head to the check-out lines to avoid Tandem Couple and Bumper Cart. As you pay, you find the shopping list that somehow managed to materialize in your wallet from the kitchen table. After you pay, you realize (as you're bagging your groceries) that your eggs-the one thing you needed-stayed behind. And let's not also forget bandaids. At this juncture, eggs and band-aids be hanged-it's time to get away from all of the Holiday Cheer, to hike up your drawers, and to apply a paper towel to Mortal Wound to assuage the hemorrhage.

Fortunately, if you're like me, you have someone in your life who takes pity on you and who will run to the store after you get home in order to help you in your time of need, which demonstrates a compassion far greater than that of Holiday Cheer.

All of that said, to those of you out there who are like me: forgetful, messy, and disorganized, I salute YOU for getting through the Cheer and seizing your day! Let the holidays do their worst, dear blog readers!