Saturday, December 24, 2016

Holiday Shopping

Yesterday we needed to head over to the grocery store to pick up some items for the next few days. The local supermarket here is Wegmans. Probably the most awesome grocery chain in the US. In fact they were voted just that. Rochester is the home of Wegmans. There are a lot of the stores here. They need a lot more apparently because I could not even get into the parking lot when I arrived. When I finally drove into the lot it was coned off in sections to prevent chaos. It took me about a half hour to find a parking spot.

Because I am smarter than the average bear I pulled a cart from the return before entering the store. Good move. There was cart chaos happening as I pushed past. When I got through the door and into the store I was stunned. Holy shit look at all the people! The first thing you see is the produce section. It's awesome. It's crawling with people. I could not even get to the asparagus. I parked my cart near the brussel sprouts figuring it was safe there (who eats those?) and tried to walk to the asparagus. Oops, better throw something in the cart else someone will steal it. I dumped some potatoes in there and made my way over to the damn asparagus. It was impossible. I ended up buying the trimmed asparagus in bags cause I could get to them. No matter where I parked the cart (easier to get shit without pushing it around the narrow aisles) it was always in someone's way.

I parked the cart by a bin of whole walnuts. Some dude pushed it into the aisle so he could get a bag of walnuts. WTF. I could have parked that cart by a cooler of frozen Lake Ontario eels and some knob would be buying some. Crazy.

People eat a lot of cheese on Christmas Eve. People take their time selecting cheese. I thought I was in Georgetown Exumas and the French arrived at the market. The seafood counter was a little too slow for some folks. Nobody wants to buy frozen so they wait while the dude in the white hair net calls numbers. You people know it was frozen when it got to the store right? The guys on their way home from work are the worst. Impatient assholes were plowing their way through the store all agitated, mostly because they didn't know where shit was. I'm guessing management based on their attitudes and clueless wandering.

You could tell I was a retired guy because I was whistling away to the holiday music and examining weird stuff on the shelf. I didn't even get flustered when I couldn't find the hand soap. I found dish soap and laundry soap but the hand soap was on the other side of the store. Keep the soaps in one aisle! Most retired people got this shit done earlier. I was in the wrong crowd.

A few times I was wandering with my head in the clouds when I realized someone was waiting for me to come back to earth so she could get by. I apologized a few times. One woman laughed and the other growled I think. I told one gal to just tap me with the cart and she said she may just do that next time. There was one other cloud based individual prancing through the aisles whistling and singing but she looked a little too happy. Kind of a hippy chic my age and she gave me the big grin as we passed. I saw her later practically dancing behind the cart. I think she hit up the liqour store first.

After several hours in the mad house I exited a bit poorer but full of holiday cheer until I popped the trunk and it's full of empty bottles and cans I was returning. God Damn it! I was so excited to get a parking spot that I forgot about the bottles. I put everything in the back seat and lugged the bottles to the return machines to find a lovely couple returning a MILLION FRIGGIN WATER BOTTLES! Seriously? You pick now to do that? Turn the damn faucet handle, this isn't Flint! Oy. What's up with bottled water? Some company fills bottles with your tap water and then sells it back to you for a couple bucks. Dumb. I should design a portable bottling machine and bottle this water whenever we come up. I could truck it down to Florida and sell it as Pauly Springs Northern Pure. I would make a fortune selling filtered water straight from the icy depths of lake Ontario. Idiots.

Anyhow, another machine opened up and I was able to return the bottles. I used the money to buy ice cream for the apple pie. What good is apple pie without French vanilla? On the way home I cranked the radio up and avoided death by deer or truck. My coughing wife was there at the door.

People get weird this time of year. They are either really happy or really angry or really sad. Maybe we should go back to the pagan rituals and just eat drink and be merry. No shopping, gift giving, no worship, no TV, no Facebook. I am willing to bet we would be happier. Then again, we are only human. We can't all be equally happy. Someone would always have to be the happiest or at least happier than you. So it goes.


posted from Bloggeroid


  1. This hit my inbox just as i was getting up and preparing coffee. Perfect timing! We did our food shopping yesterday at Costco. There was a ton of holiday spirit there which we survived. The cashier was dressed as an elf, so that made it all worthwhile. If you could arrange to post every morning about this time I would appreciate it. Reading your blog is much better than reading the news.

  2. This is why we go off sailing.
    Merry Christmas you guys.

  3. This is too funny! I can just picture you starring in a Christmas film - "Pauly Goes Shopping for Festive Asparagus" or something like that. It would be an instant classic. Kind of like Monty Python and Chevy Chase take on things. Happy Holidays and enjoy that asparagus.