Tony At 10: SHOPPING FOR GROCERIES; BLOG #2129; FRI. MAR 23,2018

THE MESSAGE:

For our family, I did the grocery shopping for the week. This task used to take me to an uptown grocery store or a downtown one. Each week my wife would present me with a list of items to buy. I always examined the list and decided on which location I would visit.

Both stores were located near an liquor outlet and it was easy to visit that store and stock up on Wine, Scotch, Limoncello and Baileys after shopping for groceries. Each location had free parking.

Over the years I became familiar with the location of each grocery item in each store; however, I used to enjoy walking up and down every aisle twice. This habit provided me the opportunity to get a bit of exercise and to literally and figuratively 'bark' at kids who were acting like spoiled brats and wailing about what they wanted their moms to buy. I would growl and bark at them and they would immediately stop whining.

AFTER THE GROWL AND BARK

GETTING READY TO BAWL

The mothers or fathers were amazed and always appreciated the intervention. Seldom did the little imps return to their howling ways. On the rare occasions when I was accompanied by my wife or one of my grandchildren, they would always turn away, embarrassed by the barking and pretending not to know me.

Another benefit that the several trips up the aisles provided was the opportunity to pick up special items that were not on the list but were favourite treats of my wife, my grand kids or myself.

THE BLURB:

I enjoyed collecting the groceries but hated the rest of the experience. There was no way around the pain in unloading the cart at the checkout counter, seeing the inordinate cost of my selections and then loading the bagged items back into the grocery cart.

The next step involved unloading the bags from the grocery cart and stuffing them into the back of the SUV, which always contained golf clubs, fold away chairs, blankets, umbrellas and other stuff.

Next came the trip back to the condo where I was required to unload the bags from the SUV into our home-made cart which looked like an old person's bag cart. I had removed some of the wire sides and fashioned three or four hooks from them. (I often wondered why I did not leave the wire container intact and used wire coat hangers instead. Duh!). I named this cart 'Elsie'

The next step involved pushing the overloaded Elsie through the security doors and into the elevator. It never failed that I would be required to drop the bags that I was forced to carry, as there was no more room in 'Elsie. I had to rifle through my pockets to find the entrance fob and often realized that I had left my key chain in the car. This necessitated returning to the car and hustling back to the groceries.

The last part of the nightmare involved unloading Elsie in the condo and stuffing it into an overcrowded closet.

SALVATION!

Along came a service which allowed the beleaguered condo man to shop on line from a local store. They would deliver the order right to our kitchen island. The food was always fresh and the choices were almost unlimited. When I returned to the closet to rid myself of Elsie, I noticed a few tears had welled up in my eyes. No matter, Elsie had to go!

Now my exercise consists of walking the corridors of the condo building or a weekly trip around the block. The corridor walk is boring and there are no moms with brats but the walk along the downtown streets is interesting.