Now Landing, Gratitude

I heaved the shopping cart around the market last night for over an hour. By the end of that hour, I gave serious thought to texting my husband and telling him to come help me tow the load to the checkout. I was exhausted. With two cases of water weighing down my painfully full carriage of groceries, I had lost my momentum and was now leaning into the load which was creeping towards checkout at a rate of 1LSPH (Linoleum Square Per Hour).  This is shopping for a family of 6 and 1 dog.  I felt like a Toyota pulling the space shuttle.  

I docked the space shuttle at lane 4. The nice young man bagging my order asked me three times if plastic was ok, and three times I said, “yes.” The nice young man asked me three times if I found everything I was looking for tonight. “Yes,” I replied three times as if my bulging cart wasn’t indication enough that I had found all that I hoped for and more. He continued bagging at a rate of 1BPH (bag per hour) while I multi-tasked between watching the register screen for accurate pricing and intermittently cherry-picking the delicate items being carelessly tossed down the conveyor by my cashier (serving me since 1983). Yes, I’m that lady.  

The nice young man was so far behind on bagging that my items were crunching, crushing and colliding into one another as they backed up into a mountainous, heart-breaking  pile. Finally, the cashier had to stop the belt and help him bag. I helped him bag.  I gave him the requisite stink-eye as I reached into the bottom of the mound for a bag of chips which was now certainly a bag of birdseed.

I resisted a second urge to text my husband. Help me.

When the nice, egg-breaking, chip-crushing, card-smashing  young man didn’t offer to help me out to the car, I tearfully dragged my cart through the black, crushed snow in the dark parking lot.  Bumping, skipping, sinking, and trudging through slush, the cart’s wheels became wedged with chunks of ice and I had to carry the cart on my back the rest of the way to the car. One of the bags broke under the weight of three bottles of sparkling cider and 9 cans of canned chicken.  Chicken bounced off my bumper and plunged with a splash into the melted slush between my freezing feet. Sparkling cider rolled to a stop against the tire of the parked car beside me.

I was instantly relieved the young man hadn’t helped me to the car or I might be shoving his body into my trunk along with 9 cans of dirty, dented chicken. Parked in my garage at home, I teared up at the tasks ahead of unloading and sorting my haul. Luckily, the husband could see it on my face that I had to sacrifice a courtesy clerk just to make it home with my eggs in-tact. He helped me unload and put away my freezer goods in the garage. Never mind that in the house, I had about two weeks of crusty Thanksgiving  left-over’s, uncovered, wilting fruit, and spoiled eggnog to dispose of before any of my new items would fit in the fridge. Every year I excitedly buy eggnog like it’s some kind of interior fridge Christmas décor and every year it sits front and center, untouched on the top shelf.

*toss*

By the end of my herculean grocery effort, I had convinced myself that I probably have some kind of blood disorder which is rendering me this fatigued.  “I’m just so tired. I feel like I’m tired all the time. I can barely lift my arms.” I whined in my head.  I suppose it has nothing to do with hauling the space shuttle around King Soopers for over an hour.

 Alas, I know I don’t have a strength-sucking disorder.  I’m just a busy, tired mommy.  I was tempted to reach for a crushed bag of birdseed chips and collapse on the couch with marathon episodes of Amish Mafia. Instead, I kissed the husband and surrendered to the day’s demands. I crawled into my freshly washed, freshly made, deeply warm and widely comfortable bed.  I was thankful for my bed. I was thankful for the sound of football on TV in the living room below. 

 As I fell asleep safe and sound, I was even thankful for a space shuttle full of groceries for my family.