Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for April 08, 2021

“Shall we vacation in Deli or Bakery this year?”

My wife didn’t fall for shopping as escape, oh but I did.

I didn’t used to like grocery shopping so much but this past year I find excuses to go more often just to do something and see live people.

I have doctor’s orders to vacation at the drug store.

Spooky. That’s gol dern near the exact conversation we had last week.

Only additional thing is that with the unspent “extra” money we tend to throw more newer items into the cart.

“Let’s try this”.

“What’s it cost?”

“Doesn’t matter does it? We can use the money we’ve saved.”

Lot of truth here

Ain’t it the truth!

You save on sunscreen and fuel costs. You can’t avoid long lines. Anywhere. Anytime.

I’ve discovered grocery order & pickup. I’m never going back!

I used to do the weekly shopping by myself, but the last year my wife comes along and buys extra snacks. Lemon pies, lemon donuts, lemon frosting, lemon cake mixes; see a theme?

If you only pop in the grocery for a loaf of bread, then Arlo you are cheap!

I honestly thought he was going to say something about the wine budget. I know ours went through the roof. What we saved in dining out went right into the wine budget. Our recyclers always laugh when they pick up our recyclables. LOL

I’ve considered going to the grocery this past year a lot like venturing into Mordor

And the quality of my groceries has improved. It’s no longer just food; it’s also entertainment and the only means of celebrating occasions.

Mostly, I fast.

You wouldn’t want to see them where I go.

I’ve found I am spending less. I do miss going to movie theaters.

we get take out pretty often so haven’t saved a penny

Over the years since husband quit his job, we have started eating lunch daily at Wendys & eating dinner out 3 weekend nights. After lunch husband did not want to “rush” home. We food shop that for night, sometimes for 2 nights at a time. I had saying – “If we didn’t go to Walmart we went to Micro Center, and some days we go to both”.

Mid March 2020 he started to panic (he panics more & better than anyone I know) & we ran out to buy groceries. Shelves, meat, & cold almost empty – PANIC. He commented as we left the store he hoped we would have food for 2 weeks. I figured at least’s month’s worth. March 8th we had been out & he insisted we needed TP & paper towels (he did not feel a need to buy tissues). Never saw Costco with such large empty area – or any empty area before. He got TP & the paper towels in BJs. In January we started the TP & have not started the paper towels, use of same is greatly limited by him. Had everything in the house with spares & duplicates & also had everything in our RV spares there are also.

Did not go food shopping again until mid May. He ordered from Walmart – our Walmarts do not deliver and the food ordered came from warehouses across the country – New England to California. Much of it was dented of all sorts, some cans almost in half. Got a coupon from BJs & ordered meat and other items from them as no meat from Walmart. Only meat ended up getting delivered after they called with out of stock items was 7.5 lbs of, mostly fat, beef stew.

Since then we make monthly to more recently bi-monthly food shopping trips to a Walmart Neighborhood Market (our WMs here do not have supermarkets). I finally figured out to make 2 trips into the store each time – one for non-cold items and one for cold – select, pay, bag out to car and then back for the cold items. 16 bags + last trip. Worse when this ends we will have a lot of food in the house when all it opens up again & stop eating at home again & most will go bad.