SATURDAY, AKA THE DAY I SPENT AN HOUR AND A HALF AT THE GROCERY STORE

Well it's the weekend, and thanks to an ill-fated decision to sell pies to raise money for the charity at work, I am now charged with the daunting task of baking 8 pumpkin pies and 6.5 dozen butter tarts.  So I made a plan for Saturday.  First I'd make a list of all the ingredients I would require and once this list was done I'd go to the store and buy the items on said list.  I realize that sounds simple enough to most people, in fact many of you are probably saying "yes, this is what you do when you grocery shop." Not so for me.  You see I have perfected what I like to call "circle shopping."  Circle shopping involves not making a list of any kind and going around the store in circles when you're standing in the dairy section and remember you've forgotten something in the produce section.  Some people would call this ineffective and even a waste of time (by some people, I specifically mean my mother), but I say it is a rousing way to familiarize yourself with your local grocer and get some extra walking exercise in the process.  Today I attempted to break free of the circle shopping cycle and try list shopping organized in order of each section I'd be passing through in the grocery store.  I should, at this point, mention that I typically tend to shop during my lunch hour through the week.  So I headed out just before noon on a Saturday morning, list in hand, head held high.  Unfortunately for me, so did the rest of the populace who live in the greater Orangeville area or what seemed like the possibility of it being the populace of the great Toronto area.  There were more people there then I'm sure the store had capacity for.  I nearly expected to see a bouncer at the door with a counter.  As I am totally unprepared to deal with hoards of shoppers at the market, this threw me off my game in a large way.  I immediately reverted to the safety net of circle shopping which, you can imagine, is less the desirable in a store packed with everyone from infants to the elderly.  After several laps around the store with one very full cart I made my way to the checkout.  It was at the check out where i found the bouncers I'd been looking for when I arrived.  When I was in my early 20's, we'd stand in line, sometimes for hours, waiting to get to the head of the line, where a big burly man, perhaps named Lars or Steven, would take our ID, give us the once over, and then grant us access to the great booming building full of alcohol, dancing and, what would later be, shameful memories.  Now that I have surpassed that decade of my life, I found myself standing in yet another line waiting for Dolores to scan through what seemed like enough food to feed a small nation in the carts ahead of me.  After what seemed like an eternity, it was my turn.  Dolores rang through my groceries with the stealthy speed of a sloth.  I ask you this, at what point was it determined that the bag boy was unnecessary?  Now I find myself cramming my groceries into my bags totally unsupervised and with no plan other then just to to get them into the bags so that I could finally LEAVE the store.  After several minutes of hectically cramming blueberries in with corn chips, pumpkins in with laundry detergent and other things which were never meant to be paired together, I finally saw the lights of freedom in the form of two sliding glass doors.  I made it all the way across the parking lot to my vehicle, got the groceries loaded up and turned over the ignition. Imagine my shock to find I'd been in the store for an hour and a half!  I drove home, spent from the stress of my big day at the store, and so now I sit, blogging about my experience of normal human activity while the butter tarts and pumpkin pie remain elusively unbaked.  And that's why there's Sunday.

Incidentally, I should mention that I am very close with my mother, in spite of our differences.  She is my roll model and I truly wish I could be more like her in many ways.  Except for shopping...