My plan hit a minor hiccup (for me, at least) when I noticed, while passing the grocery store on the way to the other errand, that a car had just had a run-in with a utility pole (things weren't looking good for either of them, really), and emergency vehicles were pulling up at the intersection. This meant that, if I wanted to re-trace my path and go back to my usual grocery store, I'd have had to go through the by-that-time-closed intersection.
No big deal (again, for me - and hopefully for the occupants of the car, as well), since there are actually three grocery stores all within a very small radius from the house. I simply chose the next closest store and did my shopping. The parking lot was pleasantly mostly empty (after all, it was barely 9am), and even though I was in a fairly unfamiliar store I was still able to get in and out and home pretty darned quickly.
But then I did the stupid thing and starting thinking about the dinner we're having on Sunday. And I was trying to figure out whether we had enough of everything to have a Holiday dinner. Christopher and I frequently have different opinions on "enough" when it comes to entertaining guests, but I had to agree with him this time that we were good to go.
Until I started thinking about olives. Because I really like olives, and they tend to be at "fancy" family meals in my family. And since the people we're hosting are being invited for pre-dinner hanging out, we need to have something to much on, so olives seemed to fit the bill. The more I thought about olives, the more I knew we needed to have them.
Which led me to 1:45pm on the Friday before Christmas and a trip to the grocery store. This time I went to the closest store (they have an "olive bar"), and the parking lot was pretty much packed. Got my space and headed inside, where every checkout lane was open with at least 3 or 4 people in line. Remarkably, though, I didn't get stuck in any crunches. (This morning, I got stuck twice in aisles where people were debating things and just standing with their carts blocking everything - but not this afternoon.)
When I got to the checkout, I hopped in an express lane and it was the first time in... well... maybe ever... that I've heard Minnesota shoppers tell other people that they need to move out of the express lane because they have more than 10 items. It was that kind of strange urgency in the store. But, even so, the cashier was still cheery and I was out the door (past the completely empty cart storage area) in what seemed like less time than my morning trip.
Even so, as much as I enjoy grocery stores (and I really really do - I even like going to Fairway in Manhattan), I really don't plan to go back tomorrow. If we need anything else, we're either going to have to find it at the local gas station convenience store, or Santa is going to have to bring it.
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