Shopping Tips

Yin didn't finish her scoop of canned food last night, which was a good thing because what she left in her dish was all the Yin food I had left in the house. This morning I served up that last bite before I got ready to finally walk to the grocery store after rainy weather kept me home for two days. My list had grown so long during those two days, I knew I had to fire up the Old Lady Grocery Cart for the first time in Albuquerque.

One good thing about all that rain: the path beside my shortcut arroyo (a New Mexico thing- it's a paved drainage ditch that can contain flash floods through the city) that leads to the main road would have most of the dog turd land mines washed away. They're not a problem for walking, I can watch my step and be okay. But Old Betsy's wheels would be more problematic, as the path is narrow and the mines are usually along the edges.

I took my Old Lady Cart to the store many times in Massachusetts, along paved pathways and sidewalks all the way to the store. The biggest problem was that smaller items, such as cat food cans- did I mention I was out of canned cat food?- would fall out of the cart while shopping unless I loaded stuff into my reusable bags at the bottom of the cart. I'd been cogitating about this disasterous consequence these couple of days, and came up with a brilliant solution. Do you know those big, wide blue bags you can get from Ikea? Well, it just so happens that we have a couple of those. I lined the bottom of OLGC with one, and it fit perfectly! I tied the handles to the cart to keep it from collapsing, loaded my reusable bags inside and was off!

While the land mine situation had indeed improved since my last trip along the arroyo, there was another intermittent problem I'd never encountered in Albuquerque: mud! Usually any water that hits the ground dries the instant the sun comes out- but the sun hadn't come out yet at 7:30 this cloudy morning. But we persevered and made it to the store, my Old Lady Cart and I.

Starting with canned food and other structurally secure items, I filled my Ikea bag to the brim, topping it off with produce, eggs and a loaf of bread. I got to the checkout, and thought, "Hey, maybe I can just lift that sucker out of there and unload the cart in one swift fluid motion." This is what is referred to in literature as a best-laid plan. It was a motion, well, a series of herky jerky motions, accompanied by a lot of grunting, not a little cursing, and the little woman behind me in line trying to hold onto the OLC, which was flopping around like a big, ungainly rattletrap fish. I did get the bag out, though, and set it on the belt, a satisfied smile on my beet-red face.

The trip back was the same as the trip out, with the addition of fifty pounds of groceries in the cart. It sank in the mud once, and grazed a freshly supplied land mine, but we're home now, groceries are put away, Cat Juggler is almost posted. It's time to invent a South Beach Diet friendly pumpkin goo dessert! Life is never boring for a minister's wife!