SHOPPING FOR FIGS

All was calm, all was bright....until today.   Readers know I have teeny, tiny stress and Scrooge issues around the holiday season.  I always participate, often grudgingly, in all the traditional hoo-hah.  But I mostly just keep December 26th in view, ready for the checkered flag.

But this year, I've been...dare I say it?  Relaxed!  Happy!  Not stressed or resentful or overwhelmed or exhausted.  It's all seemed pretty easy-breezy.  As I said in a previous post, I've cut way back on many of the usual activities of the season and that likely helped.  So yay me!

But today.  Today I tackled the grocery shopping chore of the season.  We do a Christmas Eve Buffet and a Christmas Dinner for the family.  It's usually the same food every year and I'm frankly sick of it, so I decided last year that this year would be different.  I got on Pinterest and found some really cute and easy "finger food" ideas for the buffet, including a dessert that features figs!  Figs!  Just like the song!  Cool, huh?   We are having a different menu for Christmas dinner too.  I'm excited about both.

But it would be hard to overstate how much I HATE to grocery shop.  I mean I truly detest the whole ordeal.  Hub does 90% of our food shopping.  But he is working Monday thru Wednesday this week and we have our grand-girls with us Wednesday and Thursday too, so there was literally no time for him to hit Costco and the regular grocery store in time to have the ingredients here to prep.  So off I went this morning.

Costco was a madhouse by 10:30 a.m.  I drove around forever looking for a parking spot and finally got one a day's hike from the entrance.  Let me say something about shopping carts at this point.  I think we need to institute a cultural norm that when you exit your car and see carts in the parking lot cart coral, you grab one and push it into the store.  I did that this morning and was glad of it because people were literally milling around outside the entrance waiting for someone to bring the carts in from the parking lot and replenish the cart area.  Really?  JUST GO GET ONE!

But most people must not have been in much of a hurry because once inside the store, jammed with  shoppers pushing their Costco-giant-sized carts, one would think the ventilation system was pumping out sleeping potions.  Every single person seemed to move in slow motion in every aisle.  And "keeping right" seemed to be a pie-in-the-sky notion because people generally moved down the very center of the aisles, sometimes two and three abreast, literally coming to a dead stop at frequent intervals to check their lists, chat with an acquaintance, or abandon their cart altogether to head for ubiquitous food sample tables.  Please!  JUST PULL OVER!

I finally made it out of Costco and through the parking lot again where cars were at a standstill waiting for parking spaces to open up.  I should have taken bids on mine, in spite of its distance from the store -- I had three people jockeying for position as I pulled away.

I then had to go the "regular" store, also jammed.  As I headed in, I found myself in the crosswalk in front of the store where pedestrians ALWAYS have the right-of-way.  But as I crossed, a big blue Oldsmobile came bearing down on me.  I really and truly hate to say this because I am a proud and vocal anti-ageism proponent, but the woman driving appeared to be well over 80-85, could barely see over the steering wheel, and had absolutely no intention or thought that she should maybe be stopping for me, even though I WAS RIGHT IN FRONT OF HER as she coasted (thankfully!) to within about a foot of my right leg.  I yelled, "JESUS!  STOP!" and jumped out of the way.  She just kept creeping along, foot never touching the brake, as I turned to watch her proceed at a snail's pace through the parking lot.  I am grateful she wasn't gunning it.  I'd have been a goner.

Here's a pet peeve:  grocery shopping is so inefficient.  I lift the items off the shelf and put them in my cart.  I push them around the store like some precious fragile cargo, then I stand in a long line, pick them up again and put them on the conveyor belt where someone else picks them up to scan, and yet another person picks them up to bag.  Then they are returned to me in my cart, where I wheel them gently to my car and pick them up again (at least now nestled together in bags) and put them in my car.  We drive home, where I pick the bags up yet again (!) and lug them into the house where they are plopped on the counter top and picked up AGAIN! to be put away.  By now I think we've developed such a meaningful and long-term relationship that it's no wonder I don't want to disturb them to pick them all up again to actually cook!  Ugh!  There must be some way to get that food from the store to my kitchen via quantum physics parallel universe convergence or something.  There's far too much touching and lugging.  And I don't even like to cook, so half the time my good intentions come to naught and the perishables perish before they are even put in the pot.

But that won't happen this week, because it's Christmas.  So bring me some figgy pudding...and bring it right here!

At least, that's the view from here....©