Grocery Day: The Reason Walmart Knows My Name

It’s the Monday before grocery day. For some this wouldn’t be different from any other day, but for me it’s a day full of planning, looking at flyers and finding the right deal.  I’m willing to load and unload kids into 3 different stores, but that’s where I draw the line. I’ve tried price matching at Walmart, but often they don’t have the product I’m looking for or the brand I’m used to, and I think their ground beef sucks.

Which means every other Monday we spend about 3.5 hours “grocery shopping”.  Why is grocery shopping in quotation marks? Is it secret code for something that is not grocery shopping? Am I  quoting someone else who also grocery shops? Is it the title of a book I’m writing? I’ll let you know it’s the first one, it is a secret code for something that is not grocery shopping but kind of looks like it.  I watch others children during the week, so on some Wednesdays I have 3 extra kids and some Wednesdays I have 2 extra, either way I never shop with less than 5 kids.  That means most of this time is spend weighing banana’s 5 times, having each child put an apple into the bag and weighing the apple bag…5 times, wondering how I’m going to use up 5 bags of baby carrots, and that’s just the produce section.  This lovely time also includes pulling one cart while pushing another, so at least I’m getting my work out on as well.  It usually includes at least one child crying because I don’t need 5 boxes of crackers and apparently none of the kids can like the same shape of cracker, it also has me verbally reassuring them that while I am buying soup it is not for them, I won’t make them eat it, and to not worry about my soup purchasing so much, when they are an adult they can buy whatever they want.  And since most grocery stores have conveniently put the cereal and the school snacks in the same aisle I can also be heard telling everyone that no, no we are not getting a box of Dora the Explorer fruit snacks for $3.50 a box, and they only have 5 bags, that also goes for the Cars fruit snacks, and the Scooby Doo fruit snacks.

At this point we usually take a break in the electronics section and watch whatever movie is playing on the 15 screens.  We need to walk from one TV to another to make sure they are all “Quality Approved” by my kids, then we pick one to sit in front of which blocks any accessibility to anything else for other customers.  If it’s a cartoon I have to chisel their eyes away from the TV because animation is like eye glue for children, and we still have to hit up the household products and hopefully, at one point, eat something.  In the end we always hit up the toy section where my children fuel their dreams and fill their Christmas lists with all the toys we can just buy, with all that money we have, you know? They tell me we don’t need so many groceries and then there would be room in the cart for their toys, it’s too bad they never pick the “Grow your own garden” and “Husbandry for beginners” toys.

In the end, we finally make it home, make some peanut butter sandwiches and the kids watch TV because grocery shopping “makes me so tired!” while I lug in $400 worth of purchases, after pulling/pushing 2 carts, and repeating myself 5 times.  With all those groceries we usually eat out on Wednesdays, I’m just to tired to cook lol. 

Kel-Cie is a mom to three 3 boys, creator of Kookies and her writing can also be found at Red Deer Kids and Red Deer's Child Magazine.