I am easing back into wanting to go the grocery store. As in, on one of my days off, when there isn’t a time crunch or a huge list to be purchased, I will enter the store. Alone or with my husband, I am easing back into what was a huge part of my life for so many years.
I have written before about myself and grocery stores. My last two trips to the store have been with my husband and almost a month apart. Both very different experiences. One got me a “talking to,” and the other, after following preset parameters from the “talking to,” got me a good dose of the stink eye.
The first time I wandered off with the cart. My husband was the list master on this venture to the store, and I was in charge of the cart. I wandered ever forward through the store when he stepped back to get something we had mistakenly bypassed. When he returned to “where he had left me,” I was gone, and his overburdened arms burned until he found me many aisles away. What had captured my attention escapes me, but the “talking to” started there and then. Too painful to remember; let’s move on with the story.
When the new parameters for my behavior with shopping carts was agreed to by both parties, I instituted them on the very next visit, which was last Friday. When he said he was “circling back” for something, I looked him clearly in the eye and stayed put. Bored easily by the sliced and packaged cheeses – and keeping one hand on the cart – I turned and found lovely canned tomatoes. An entire rack of them! Their labeling design, coloring, and stylized script held me for more several minutes, and I quickly found my camera to capture the magic. That pale blue is elusive and held me in its sway as I committed it to memory in my camera and in my own mind.
“Where have you been?” the cook said when he returned with the elusive pumpkin muffin ingredient in hand.
“Right here. I have not moved. Well, I pivoted.”
[Insert stink eye.] “Right here? I couldn’t see you from the other end.”
“Well. I am right where you left me.”
“I guess you were hidden by the end cap.”
Learn from me. There is no good answer when you have been hidden by the end cap. You let your flip, inappropriate, and argument-enhancing comment stay deep within your throat, and you go back to pushing said cart through the store. I choose to place in its confines things that catch my eye.
Like crushed tomatoes.
The important backstory: My husband is a wonderful cook. Together we can host one hell of a dinner party. I help design the menu and then set him free. Then I am cut loose to do the table settings and bar setup, which can keep my mind active and firing for days and days. His food is always delicious and plentiful when we serve. I like to think we both are lucky.
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I just bought a can of those tomatoes earlier today! Never underestimate the power of good design.
Frances:
The blue was indeed magical. And, your comments were dead on!
xoxo
– sloane
p.s. Thanks for reading our blogs!
tomato cans are beautiful. there are several brands i use to see in hoboken, at the old school italian delis that caught my eye……but that blue is the best.
P. Claire:
Truly magical things. I love visiting grocery stores and bodegas overseas. The color and design of things I don’t see every day blows me away.
– sloane
Hey, we need a sr. copywriter over here. And we need a new creative & contract/temporary recruiter (we’re losing our newest employee — she’s been here 5 years).
Landa:
Only if I can work with/for you!…..
xoxox
-sloane
p.s. Thank you for reading out blogs and commenting. I am touched every time.
Copy writer? I asked her the other day if she would run for president! Copy writer? HA!
(blush)
said Sloane to Lori Buntin.
I spend some of my days trying to find life’s end cap so that I can hide behind it, preferably with a book. (This is a beautiful piece, by the way.)
Darren:
Thank you for such a nice note! These two instances with Harl made me laugh inside so very much. Well, and outside as well!
xoxo
– sloane
I think shopping with your husband denotes a deep commitment to a continuance of a strong bond that ripples out to your community. “New Day Clevers,”….but then I date myself. Let me know if that comment escapes you. I also hate to be tied to a cart and made stationary…small price, I guess, when he pays you with gourmet cooking.
Deb:
My husband’s food – and the meals we dream up together! – are far from gourmet. However, they are delicious.
Thank you for taking time to read our blogs and taking time to respond. You are kind.
– sloane
That’s supposed to be gourmet cooking!
I love this. It also reminded me of shopping with my sons when they were little. Sometimes, we would go to The Merc (in Lawrence) where they happened to have KID-SIZED miniature shopping carts. My youngest always wanted to grab one of those and accompany me, while his two older brothers went to the kid’s reading area. Well, inevitably, the youngest would get bored. And he would abandon me and our groceries, to go join his brothers. And then, I, at six feet tall–would be left to somehow push a tiny shopping cart up to the check-out aisle! It annoyed me at the time. But of course, now that my sons are all pretty much grown, what I wouldn’t give for one hour to be annoyed with them at the grocery store.
Toni:
Annoyance is a funny – and fleeting! – thing.
So many sweet remembrances like yours run through my head all the time.
Be well.
– sloane
Brian only shops from the end caps – so we always get the eye catching new stuff – but rarely what we came to the store to purchase.
Catherine:
Your husband does have an eye for the new and bold. I still can taste some of the awful candy he brought back to the car occasionally!
xoxox
– sloane