Skip to main content

Grocery Shopping with Children

In the 4 1/2 months I've been home I am forced to admit, I have only had one completely successful grocery shopping trip - yesterday, and that's because the shopping list was very short.

I can just imagine the snickers from other parents who do this...but I really do my best..but then things happen...I can't explain it.
Now, in my former, professional life, I could be on a conference call, doing instant message with a colleague and be working on a deliverable for my boss all at once, and still be able to respond to a question from the call or pick at something I heard without missing a beat. Foolishly, I assumed I would be able to transfer my focus and concentration to grocery shopping...I mean, surely, surely I could do this, right?

Yeah..well, I don't know what the issue is exactly, but it's different each time. First I made up my list, but then I would realize that I had already passed the aisle where the item was. For a parent trying to do a quick grocery run between nap and meal-time, those extra minutes spinning are agony. So I made up a new format - items roughly by aisle. That didn't prevent new mishaps from cropping up - I completely forgot items off my list - even though they were written down, I got the wrong thing in my haste (one time sugar-free maple syrup, another time it was sugar-free oatmeal). I have even bought the wrong thing...twice!! In my defense I blame it all on the shelf organization, designed to dupe inexperienced and completely stressed shoppers like myself, but to what purpose? I have no idea.

But I digress, I have forgotten to take my own cloth bags into the grocery, the ones that I expressly brought for groceries. I have also forgotten to give the cashier the coupons that I brought, the ones that I wanted to use that day because they were going to expire. I find them neatly tucked away in my bag when I get home and I am emptying my junk out.

And there's more. I have forgotten a bag of groceries, my receipt - each time having to be called back by an amused grocery attendant. I have misplaced my credit card and only realized it 2 days later, but found it after an anxious 30 minutes. I have also spent a good 10-15 minutes rolling the heavy shopping cart around the parking lot, with one hand, while holding the baby in the other, because I went down the wrong aisle and couldn't just walk over to the right one because of the divider. Aarrghh!

It is true to say that I approach each grocery trip with ambivalence now - will this be a successful trip? Or, is my secret, bad genie giggling somewhere at the prospect of tripping me up yet again?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Weeks 15, 16; Cycles 6 & 7

Another two-in-one post. I think this may be considered my "challenge" post.  The good news is that I have now completed 7 of 12 cycles, so I am looking at the end of chemotherapy. As I look back on my initial post , I realise that I had neglected a key piece of information about the kind of cancer I have.  Some women have cancers that are responsive to hormones, (quite simply, it appears that hormones make the cancer grow) and some women don't. I fall into the latter category - I am what is called triple negative. This is not a good thing. On my most recent visit with my oncologist we talked through "the numbers" that is, the survival rates and we assessed again how well my tumour is responding to chemotherapy (not as well as we'd hoped).  So these last two weeks have been quite a challenge mentally. It doesn't help that one of the side effects of all of this is a decline in disciplinary standards at our house.  Over the course of the summer I w...

Food as Medicine & Vitiligo Update

Before I talk about food, a quick: Vitiligo Update It still pisses me off that the hyperactive immune system that attacks my own pigment cells just let cancer sail right on through. Enough rant. Since my cancer diagnosis, my vitiligo has just exploded. It's spread from knees and elbows to legs, face and neck. It bothers me more now. Picture from 2009 Hands now  2016           The growing spread of vitiligo Treatments Topical steroids weren't working and while Latisse (the eyelash drug) worked on one spot above one eye, it does not seem to be helping with the other spot above the other eye. There is a pulsed light treatment I have yet to try, but before I go that route, I want to try the food route. Food as Medicine I've blogged previously as viewing Food as Fuel , the next step is to view food as medicine with the potential to heal some ailments. I've read a couple of books, It Starts with Food and The Paleo Appr...

Talking with Lucas on climate change

This is my post for Blog Action Day . This is an annual event where bloggers everywhere in the world post about the same issue on the same day to spark discussion around an issue of global importance. This is part of a conversation I had with my 8-year old. Mama : Do you know what climate change means? Lucas : I think it means when it is like 90F and it is hot.   And the change? It's when in the daytime it might be 90F and sunny and hot, and then you go inside for dinner and then right after dinner and it might have dropped to 70F Well, yes it is that in a way.  That describes what is happening in your area, but when people use the term "climate change" they really mean something more global, like affecting climate around the world Have you heard of the team "global warming"? What global warming is that it is made up of CO2 (carbon dioxide) and when they burn stuff the smoke releases CO2 and it's like a blanket covering the earth and if it k...