Grocery Shopping ...

Grocery shopping, along with doing the laundry and the dishes, tops my list as being one the least enjoyable experiences that adulthood has to offer. These activities are a necessary evil in my opinion. They are monotonous outside of the occasional excitement from finding a five dollar bill in the dryer or dismay when I realize I unknowingly threw the baby's wet diaper in with his dirty clothes (yeah, that happened recently and the result was gross to say the least).

Today, I was left with a little free time because Grandma Linda took C and Sis for a day of adventure leaving me with just baby for company. These times without all three children are meant to help me get ahead with (or at least catch up on) whatever necessary and I appreciate it so much (thank you grandma) but I find it so ironic that I've forgotten how to keep busy without juggling a million things at once. I quickly realize I'm bored. "What I am to do with my time," I ask myself. Then I decided, what could be more enjoyable than grocery shopping? Off we went.

The process itself was typically uneventful. It wasn't until I made my way to the check-stand that my already annoyed self was greeted by a much-too-talkative cashier. I'm really not a very friendly person by nature. I try to be, but it's so much work to ask a perfect stranger how they're doing and try to act genuinely interested. I simply don't care enough to hear the truth about how their day is going, they'll likely lie to me anyway as I do when the question is asked of me so what's the point really? But this kid, he didn't ask me how my day was going, rather he was oddly intrigued with the contents of my grocery cart as I began to unpack it onto the belt.

He holds up a red onion and says "what is this?"
"It's a red onion" I said (seriously?).
He stared at me for a minute then said "how long have you been here for?"
Me: "I don't know, why?"
Him: "Because you have a lot of food in that cart, I wondered how long it took you"

I was silent.

Him: "did you go out of town or something?"
Me: "no, why?"
Him: "there's just a lot of stuff in your cart, I thought maybe you've been out of town or something"
Me: "I have a family of five, we eat a lot of food"
Him: "oh"

Him: "do you want drive-and-load today?"
Me: "no, thank you" (which is always my answer to this question because drive-and-load makes me feel like a fat lazy slob so I willingly pack my own groceries into the car even if I'm pushing one cart, pulling another and herding kids out of the store all at the same time)
Him: "you have a lot of groceries"
Me: "I know, I'll be fine"
Him: "it's free you know, we won't charge you"

By this point I'm irritated but keeping my cool and still being polite. So I agreed to the "free" drive-and-load and he triumphantly announced my decision to the bagger and gave me my total.

Him: "credit or debit"
Me: "debit"
He paused and looked at me again like maybe it was too much for my debit card to handle, "are you sure?"
Me: (staring back at him and inside my head yelling) "ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!"

The look on my face must have finally registered with him and I am sure at that moment I officially became the bitchy customer for the day which is unfortunate after exuding such self control.

I hate grocery shopping.