Grocery List: Can YOU Make It Through The Store Without Losing Your Shit?
1. 2 half-gallons of 1% milk, even though you don’t drink milk and it weighs a shitload and it means you’re going to have to pay for double-bags or remember to bring a cloth bag from the trunk of your car, which is unlikely since you’ve forgotten to bring shopping bags with you almost every time you’ve gone to the grocery this year.
2. Corn Chex or Cheerios or sometimes Post Raisin Bran because he won’t eat Kellogg’s Raisin Bran and he’ll only eat Post Raisin Bran during those moments of brief and unaccountable whimsy when he’s tired of Chex and Cheerios but you will definitely buy cereal of some kind because he eats it constantly with the 1% milk you are buying, and he will only eat it when he is standing up or walking around the kitchen and sometimes also at 2:00 in the morning when he cannot sleep, although he does periodically buy boxes of these cereals for himself but only at small corner stores where they are ridiculously marked up in price because for some reason it’s okay to spend too much money on cereal even though it’s absurd to spend it on organic produce.
3. Tropicana orange juice, a large bottle, even though once again you don’t drink it and it’s a pain in the ass to find but he claims that all the other kinds are made from concentrate which is stupid because you can clearly read on the labels of at least three other brands that they aren’t made from concentrate either, and also he doesn’t like it when calcium has been added because he says added calcium is bad for men and you’re not sure why that is but men are always terrified, terrified that something is going to damage their precious selves, and if you do get another kind of orange juice that isn’t Tropicana he might drink a glass or two then leave the rest sitting on the top shelf of the refrigerator until well beyond the use-by date and then you will have to pour the juice that used to be perfectly good down the drain.
4. One bunch of organic bananas, on the green side, now that you gave him the article from a newspaper he doesn’t think is outrageously biased or edited by morons that says waxy-skinned fruits absorb toxic pesticides during cultivation and so now he agrees that you should spend the extra money to buy organic apples, pears, and bananas but still believes it’s ridiculous to spend it on berries, lettuce, and any other produce item that he argues can’t credibly be said to have a skin at all.
5. A dozen eggs, large, AA, and organic and you don’t care what he says about this because his refusal to eat the yolks renders his opinion irrelevant.
6. Steak, and why are you still making steak for him when he has two advanced degrees and can cook the steak for himself which is obscenely easy to do although a pain in the ass to clean up after you fry it at very high heat in a galvanized pan the way Sam Sifton tells you to, and also you really don’t like steak except for the time you had some in Osaka after ten days of hiking the Kumano Kodo Trail and eating nothing but rice and eggs and you would have eaten anything at all after that, but what’s his excuse?
7. Onions, shallots, and scallions even though he claims they give him heartburn because you think that’s idiotic and they are the only thing that add flavor to most of the stuff you cook because he doesn’t like to cook so you are the one who does it even though you’re not very good at it and every recipe that sounds appetizing to you and requires minimal mise en place requires either an onion or its superior.
8. Smucker’s seedless strawberry jam for peanut butter and jelly sandwiches because he cannot eat peanut butter without jelly when you know very well that peanut butter is best eaten on its own or perhaps with very excellent honey, but you dislike co-experiencing his distress so you buy the seedless Smucker’s whenever you see it in the store.
9. Bread for yourself, and he can go out and buy himself the tasteless Orowheat whole wheat kind he eats because he hates whole grain or bran or bagels or the other breads you love and eat all day long, but interestingly enough he will eat sourdough and focaccia at restaurants but only if the server brings him olive oil and balsamic vinegar but only balsamic because all other vinegars are unacceptable with bread.
10. Soppressata and cheese and crackers because you have friends coming for appetizers and you need to prepare two different trays and place settings and beverage assortments that you and they will consume on the deck at a respectable distance apart which might not work because the deck is too small but you and he are going nuts without company although he likes being entertained more than doing the entertaining so he might have forgotten to buy the wine and beer.
11. Gasoline, which isn’t at the grocery store, but is right across the street, where you will use your debit card instead of going inside the little office to pay cash even though there is a $1 fee for using your card and he would never do that so you just won’t tell him about it, and while you’re filling the tank you decide to sell the house after all because right now any and all change sounds good and you’re exhausted by the leaves and the lawn, the septic and the well, the rodents and your children, who seem to think that you should keep the place forever because they are emotionally attached to the land, whereas you are emotionally attached to your sanity and you now dislike having to go downstairs to let the dogs outside at 6:00 in the freezing fucking morning or weeding the grass on your smack-talking knees or trimming the citrus hedge with its shark-teeth thorns, and it’s been seventeen years of this stuff and also now there are fires.
12. One pint of salted caramel ice cream, which you will have to go back to the grocery store to buy after you finish being too lazy to pay cash for gas, but this is a completely uncomplicated decision because ice cream is so delicious.
