The Camel's Back

Perhaps you'd be interested to know what tipped the scales in the "I MUST start a blog NOW" favor? It's riveting. Hold on.


A couple of weeks ago Sean and I ventured to grocery store with Jordan for some Serious Saturday Evening Excitement. After gathering our total of eight - now this is important, EIGHT -  items, we ambled toward the front to purchase our wares. I don't know if we missed the memo about a) some kind of apocalyptic crisis sending shoppers in droves for their emergency stashes of toilet paper and vodka or b) Thanksgiving a few weeks early, but I have never ever ever seen grocery store lines the likes of what we encountered. A woman was holding up her iPhone taking snapshots of the chaos. This image popped into my mind:

We're all gonna die!!

When the store finally realized they were on the cusp of a riot they opened up another lane directly in front of me. Now, the woman who'd been standing in line ahead of us by all means had the technical right of way however her shopping cart was positively brimming over with what I'm quite sure was 1-5 of each and every item in the store. She definitely and most certainly saw that not only did we have eight unobtrusive items but ALSO a very unhappy fourteen-month-old camper about to pitch a tantrum-tent of fury sure to envelope everyone in a "I'm going to scream forever and you can't stop me" radius.

Naturally, the woman chose to feign ignorance to all of the above and started unloading her Mary Poppins carpetbag of a shopping cart, while I tried frantically to turn the Tom&Jerry-esque frustration steam that was piping out of my ears into beautiful butterflies emblazoned with "the first shall be last and the last shall be first........BUT I WANT TO BE FIRST NOW %$@*$" (so I wasn't super successful.)

Just to drive the point home: after we were paid out and our groceries were bagged (in one bag), we couldn't move anywhere because the bagger boy was still bagging this evil woman's groceries and her cart was blocking our exit. I snapped a photo of Jordan while we waited:

On our way home from the store while Sean was gritting his teeth in residual resentment and Jordan was basking in the aftermath of her meritorious meltdown, I thought to myself how therapeutic it would be to write about our adventure. There you have it. One woman's journey to self-expression via Vons Supermarket.