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June 25, 2007

1208: "Mister Goddard, is it?"

I hate, hate, hate going to the grocery store.

If left to my own devices, I would live off cold cereal for the rest of my life. Honestly. It's not that I'm some kind of "picky eater" or something. It's just that I'm the kind of apathetic eater who considers Saltines a perfectly acceptable meal. I used to live on Diet Coke and candy -- a diet I inexplicably managed to force on some of you during college, and for that, I apologize. Did you ever have lunch with me and not need to lay down on account of a stomach ache afterwards? No? I'm sorry.

I haven't had a drop of Diet Coke since 2005, which is -- if I may -- quite an accomplishment considering I was up to eight 20 ounce bottles a day (!) before quitting. I gave it up as a New Year's resolution, and to make the transition a little bit easier to handle, I bought myself a pair of shoes I have worn approximately twice since -- but that's another story entirely. Let's just say that I am not cut out to be your dietitian nor your footwear advisor. I buy food only because I find the sensation of being faint from hunger really annoying and I buy shoes because I think they'd look cute in a fashion spread, but not so much in situations where you have to walk more than three feet. But if you stick to my diet, you're not going to be doing that much walking anyway. You'll either be laying slumped on the floor in a state of stomach-cramping nausea after coming down from that sugar high or you'll be too frail to be mobile. That's why you need the Diet Coke, y'all. You're gonna need that energy!

I'm not picky about food -- I'm just disinterested. If I didn't ever get hungry, I might just not feed myself. (Is that weird?) I just can't get excited about food; the only exceptions to this being black bean tacos, about which I am unnaturally concerned, and candy, which I love more than life itself. A sub-par, pseudo Tex-Mex dish is the worst and if you don't dig on meat, burnt, oversized slabs of veggies shoved in a tortilla does not a vegetarian meal make, amigos. If I'm picky about any kind of food, it's that. Opening a menu to find that there's only one or two pitiful non-meat options is a disappointment -- particularly if one or both are fishy. Fish swim in fish waste. Do I have a little Howard Hughes problem? Maybe. Whatever. Don't take this as an open invitation to be like, "Yeah but (insert type of food I prefer) is totally nasty..." and proceed to tell me about all the ways in which my food is infected with germs and death and blah blah blah.

My disinterest in eating, naturally, carries into the experience of food-shopping. For some people, shopping for food is a real passion -- not me. If I didn't have a boyfriend and a rabbit to shop for, my cart would only contain milk, cereal, and sweets. That's it. Actually, there might be some cheese in there every now and then. But when it comes down to it -- I'm not big on going to the grocery store.

This issue is further complicated by the fact that we live in NYC, where we don't own a car, and are the kind of people who will carry things rather than having them delivered. I can't tell you the number of times total strangers have commented on the size of the load (generally a combination of laundry and groceries) I'm carrying versus the size of... me. But that's how we roll and it's a point of pride to see the look of surprise in the faces of other, weaker couples when we come stomping by like champs. I fight the urge to scream, "I may curl my lashes, but I'm more of a man than your boyfriend is!"

As much as I can haul, I'm still built like Ed Grimley and without Pete's help, sometimes I have to take multiple trips back and forth between our apartment and the grocery store. It's a blessing when Pete's able to help me out, and sometimes I totally delay heading to the store in the hope that Pete will be home shortly to help with the grocery-carrying. It's the only thing that makes going to the grocery store bearable for me, actually, because I like his company and he makes the whole thing less stressful. I know it's not Pete's favorite thing to do on a weekend, especially after he's had to put in some time at the office, so I have a suggestion...

I shall do my grocery shopping with some Antz:

Posted by ashley at June 25, 2007 05:52 PM

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