She was, in fact, a very silly cake!

Grocery Shopping 101/January 13, 2007

(Note: This is one of my favorite entries from my Myspace blog)

Dinner has become an issue with Erik and I. Every night it's one problem or another. Either our mothers haven't cooked a meal (and we're too tired to make anything), or we opt to cook our own dinner, but there is nothing to make anything with and we end up having to spend money on crappy fast food. Furthermore, our parental units get upset when we devour all of the newly bought groceries within one day. So, I presented a solution: We do our own weekly groceries. Every pay day, we will set aside a small budget for a few items we can have for dinner and we'll cook everything ourselves. No more bugging our mothers about food.

Erik liked the idea, so last night, we hit Walmart for a crash course in Grocery Shopping 101. I now have more admiration than ever for my parents. Grocery shopping is no picnic. Between dodging countless shopping carts, looking for certain items that aren't listed on the aisle signs overhead and trying to decide which brand to purchase, it's a wonder they haven't gone insane yet. I was literally stomping around like a pissed off dinosaur, as I pushed my cart in front of me at a speed of 160 mph. Erik had trouble keeping up with me.

Some of the exchanges that took place:

#1:
Me: (looks confused)
Erik: "What's wrong?"
Me: (points to milk cartons) "This isn't lemonade."
Erik: (stares at me blankly)
Me: "Where do they keep the lemonade around here?"
Erik: (continues to stare at me blankly)
Me: (rushes off through dairy section, looking around wildly for Simply Lemonade)

#2:
Erik: "Let's split up. I'll go look for the trail mix and you get the cookies."
Me: "Ok."
(we split up)
...5 minutes later...
Erik: (bewildered) "Why are you foaming at the mouth?"
Me: (eyes glowing red) "Where the hell are the damned cookies?!"
Erik: "There's a whole aisle of just cookies."
Me: "I didn't see it." (runs over some poor bastard who got in way of cart)

#3:
Me: "You like rice, don't you?"
Erik: "Yeah."
Me: "Would you like this? It's instant rice. Cheddar and brocolli-flavored."
Erik: "I dunno."
Me: "I've had it before. It's good."
Erik: "Well, you've had it. I haven't."
Me: (getting exasperated) "Trust me. It's tasty AND it's cheap. Only 78 cents per packet. Will you try it or not?"
Erik: "Fine. I'll try it."
Me: (grabs 50 packets of instant rice in various flavors and throws them into cart)

#4:
Erik: "Man, I owe your parents a big-time apology."
Me: "Why?"
Erik: "These pizza rolls are expensive! No wonder they'd get so pissed when we'd eat the entire 160 count box in one day."

Yes, sir. By the time we reached the check-out line, my eye was twitching. Erik was preparing the straight jacket.

"That was good practice," he said to me as we exited Walmart.

How optimistic of him. I agreed with him of course. It was good practice... for the day I'm finally institutionalized!

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