grocery shopping: the city experience

every time that i go grocery shopping, i end up carrying more bags home than i should. and my little arms feel strong for a few minutes, and then i start thinking that i am building lots of upper body strength just by carrying groceries home.

i honestly try to go with a list because i think that at least that will cut down on my customary grocery store wandering and thus, i will end up with just the right amount of groceries to carry home.

but since the grocery store is one of the places where i can spend money semi-freely (thanks to food stamps and being just one mouth to feed), i tend to spend a lot of time wondering if i should buy organic oranges or regular oranges, vanilla soymilk or regular skim milk, or if i should try something new from the wild harvest section of the store. clearly, these aren't choices i should be making on food stamps -- i should consider myself blessed enough that i can buy food--, but since i spend so little of them, i feel like i can give myself the luxury of that option to feed myself well at least a few nights a week.

other nights, when i get home late because i accidentally got on the T in the wrong direction (inbound instead of outbound... like tonight), i just eat an orange for dinner. or sometimes i find a mango in my cupboard that i bought a week ago and that begs to be eaten in lieu of dinner.

today in the grocery store it dawned on me that i should do two things:
1) invest in one of those rolly-carts that real city people have
2) buy reusable grocery bags to minimize my impact on the environment

the two things that i thought about in my grocery store wanderings. and possibly why i couldn't focus and get out of there in less than an hour even though i only bought a little over 20 dollars worth of food. and cat food for timbs.