So. Went out on Friday for the weekly shop — both of us went this time. The local Wally World is just up the street a mile or so from us, and has the best prices in town, so that’s where we shop. When you’re on fixed incomes, every penny matters.
They had barriers all along the front of the Supercenter, with only the grocery entrance open, hand sanitizer available and an employee waving a small sign that said “stay 6 feet apart while shopping”. It wasn’t too crowded, though it seemed like there were a lot of people for a Friday afternoon, and many wore gloves or masks, or both. We did not — but I have masks coming from Amazon in about a week with replaceable filters that will last us about 2.5 months if we need them to.
Now, I usually do the shopping — unless we need a lot of stuff, then Mum wants to go too — and today was a restock day, it had been 2 weeks since our last real stock up. Plus Mum pays for the groceries, and never makes a complete list, so it’s tag team in the grocery aisles, sending me off for things while she gets others. Makes it go faster that way. I worry though, every time I go to the store — especially here in Louisiana, which has a lot of cases — will I be exposed? Will I bring it home to Mum? I don’t like that anxiety one bit.
We wandered the store and picked out our week or so of food stuffs — meat, lots of fresh veg, TP, Diet Pepsi, etc,. There were a lot of staff shopping for customers as well with their rolling carts full of bins and bags of items. We had considered trying the pickup/delivery service, but there never seems to be any open time slots — and the limit you to 2 2lt bottles per order, which just doesn’t cut it for us, since we buy for a week or more at a time.
We briefly looked at TVs — yesterday we changed cable companies to save some money and get faster internet — and we had moved the big TV to the sun room, which we use kind of like a den, so there is a spot in the living room where a TV “should” be. And they had some on sale at pretty good prices in the 60” range that were actually brand names. But we realized that we never use the living room, not even when we had the big TV in there once the sun room was built, and there was no point, we could just leave a smaller TV in there and put more art on the walls. Just as well, because I didn’t want to haul a giant ass TV around the store on a flat cart while we were still shopping.
Mum ran into a church lady she knew while I looked at sewing notions for elastic, but it was all bought up by people sewing facemasks. I even looked in camping supplies for shock cord that you use to repair tent poles — no luck. So I went back to where Mum was talking to her friend and waited until they were done and we checked our basket and our list to see if we had missed anything.
We love olive salad. The kind with the mixed veggies and green olives and spices in olive oil, we use it a lot on low carb pizzas (Quest brand, if you’re looking for a low carb pizza with an edible crust) and we had pizza for lunch today before we went to the store and emptied a bottle. Now, we have another bottle, because we found some at Costco, that were 2 for some ridiculously low price like $6 or something, but Mum said she used to make olive salad and that’s what we should do this time — because we always spend too much when we go to Costco. Damn them and their delicious massive sized bargains.
Now, they had olives at Walmart. We did not get olives at Walmart, because they are cheaper at Dollar Tree and Dollar General, both of which are close to the house. So after we finished at Walmart and put the groceries in the car we went to Dollar Tree. Mum wanted some Peeps for Peep jousting, and I needed aluminum foil pans for Passover baking — again, because cheaper at Dollar Tree.
There were no olives at all, just some random jars of pickled asparagus and pickles. The whole olive shelf was bare, there weren’t even any cans of black olives — it was just empty.
“Well, you can go to Dollar General after we get the groceries in,” Mum said, and I kind of rolled my eyes because I carry in all the groceries (and the cart had been full to the top) and I hate driving her car. But it is close to the house, so I agreed.
We get home, run the cat gauntlet of the driveway, where my outdoor cats get out of the way very grudgingly and demand scritches — they are a lovey bunch for mostly feral cats — and I brought the groceries in in about 4 or 5 trips and Mum started putting them away and cooking dinner.
A few more scritches of the indoor and outdoor cats and I went to Dollar Tree, which was not crowded, and seemed to have a lot more food than I remembered the last time I was in there — and there were no olives again. Where the fuck are all the olives? Why are they suddenly gone like TP was 2 weeks ago? Once again there were pickles and pepper rings, but no freaking olives. Not even black ones.
I did not have the spoons to drive back to Walmart for olives, and to be honest, even they were a bit low as well — just a couple of jars on the shelf of different sized green olives — and the restaurant at the end of our street is open for drive through only, and cars were lined up around the corner. I had to take a detour just to get home. So my vote is we just get more when we go to Costco, we’ll be out of almond milk by next week anyhow and need a case. But today’s battle cry is now “where the fuck have all the olives gone?”
On Sunday I am driving down to New Orleans to get some kosher for Pesach food I ordered online. The rabbi told me not to come, but I had already placed the order — and I would like to have some food beyond meat for Pesach, since I don’t eat potatoes. But they are pulling all the items for me and I just have to run in, pay and leave, then come back home. It’s about a 2.5 hour drive each way, but I’m determined to have some matzo ball soup, gefilte fish and some Pesach lasagna, and I needed to pick up some matzah anyway. I ordered some that was supposed to be Kosher for Pesach, but it’s not — I was highly irritated, and it can’t be used during the holiday. You would think they would know that, the shipping label said Kosher for Pesach, but the box does not. Oh well, now I have matzah for after I guess. My Mum thinks it crazy I’m driving 5 hours for “crackers”, but I don’t mind so much, I just wish there wasn’t a plague going on when we’re about to celebrate our freedom and talk about the plagues.
I’ll be around after 8PM central time to play “host”— after Shabbos ends. See you then.