Why I Hate Grocery Shopping

1. Getting past the bakery is on a par with Odysseus sailing past the island of sirens. My strategy is to hug the deli on the right, but I can see the donut case and hear the table of 2 for 1 brownies calling to me on the left side of the wide aisle.
2. Even as a “preferred shopper” at my local grocery store, which supposedly provides me with a substantial discount on my purchases, I spend a wad of money on a week's worth of food for four people and one zaftig cat.
3. I always forget something on my list and have to go back the next day. Apparently, pepper jack cheese is necessary to my husband's existence.
4. The bag boy calls me “Ma'am.” While I appreciate polite teenagers, the moniker makes me feel OLD.
5. Even though I'd rather have someone else put my groceries in the van, I always tell the bag boy I can do it myself because I need the exercise. Pathetic but true. Some days it's all the exercise I get.
6. Unnecessary items, such as People magazine, which I know I can read the next time I bring my daughter to the orthodontist, and those occasional necessaries (i.e. peanut butter cups which truly are the best cure for PMS) end up in my cart. I have no will power.
7. I buy lots of fruits and vegetables with the best of intentions to eat healthy, but some of them end up rotting in my refrigerator.
8. I have to clean out the refrigerator.
9. Other activities are far more appealing, such as checking my e-mail, petting my cat, or watching Oprah.
10. People can learn a lot about you from what's in your basket. I'd like mine to say confident, sexy woman, who likes filet mignon and red wine. My basket says middle aged housewife who can't give up her addiction to coffee and bread, buys cheap paper towels, and owns a cat who likes clumping litter.

American Idle

Okay, so maybe I'm married to an environmental scientist who refuses to use a sprinkler system in the hot Georgia summer. Yes, our lush fescue lawn is brown and crispy by mid-July. And maybe, unlike some people, we faithfully compost, participate in our county's recycling program, and capture any stray water we can find, be it rainwater from the gutters or shower spray. Yes, there are buckets in my shower. Thanks to marrying the man I did, I have discovered that's how one keeps a vegetable garden alive when one vows to conserve water by any means and refuses to use a sprinkler system, even though the house came with one. I'll even grant you that we are those weird kinds of granola-head people who don't turn on the air-conditioner until it's absolutely necessary, BUT I'm not asking you to live as I do.

All I want from you is a simple pledge to stop idling your car engine as you wait for your kid to walk out of a dance studio or run off a soccer field. I am amazed at the number of parents I see spewing hydrocarbons into the air when they aren't moving for, let's see, oh, fifteen or twenty minutes.

It's so simple. Just turn off the car when you aren't moving in the vehicle. If the interior of your car gets hot and stuffy while you're waiting on your child, roll down a window. It's what us pioneers did back in the pre-air-conditioning, only three TV channel days. If you like to read while you wait for ballet class to end and night is falling, you can buy an LED book light that clips right onto your thriller. If you need tunes to make the wait for practice to end bearable, borrow your child's iPod.

Show your children that you really do care about the planet. Turn that idling engine off.

Recently, when all I wanted was to purchase a blister pack of legal decongestant, I ran up against the roadblocks the state of Georgia placed in my path. Perhaps you have found that you can take one of the many medications left on the shelves that don't require interrogation, but I am not so lucky. Moreover, I'm not sure why I, a model citizen, must be treated like a criminal in order to gain access to a medicine I'd bought for colds and allergies for years with no hassle.

Yes, I understand that certain legislators are concerned that some people use these pills to create other illegal drugs, namely methamphetamine. But I am not procuring a hundred boxes. All I want is a twenty pack, so I, too, like the rest of my fellow Georgians, can breathe through my nose during hay fever season. Ask anyone who suffers from seasonal allergies, and they'll tell you that the pursuit of our happiness is tied directly to our sinuses.

Oddly enough, other over-the-counter drugs which cause an equal or worse amount of harm remain easily accessible and are prominently displayed from grocery to convenience store shelf. People can even throw them in their cart and buy them with the rest of their groceries. I wonder if what I'm facing isn't just overreaction to some people abusing my favored decongestant, but perhaps discrimination against those of us with over-stimulated nasal passages. The only thing worse than throbbing, plugged sinuses during hay fever season is being made to feel like a criminal.

In order to get unplugged, I must now schlep my grocery cart and the little card with a picture of the medicine I want over to the pharmacy drop off desk. This card, by the way, sits next to the wide variety of pills that either don't work for me or that have cough suppressants or some other ingredient I don't need added to them. I could blithely toss a pack of these “good” pills into the cart with my milk, eggs, and a three-pack of economy-sized tissue, and, believe me, I would if they worked. Once I gain the pharmacist assistant's attention, she glances at my card and tries to pawn another medication off on me. I then have to explain that I am certain I want the twelve hour Sudafed. I know it works. She claims XYZ will work just as well for some people. But I am not some people. I want to ask her why I should be coerced into spending money on something that probably won't work for me when I've done nothing wrong. I am tempted to rant about the last decongestant they took away from me, twelve hour Tavist D, may it rest in peace, which was pulled from the market because a handful of people had strokes. But all I say in a firm tone is that I prefer the Sudafed. It doesn't end there.

Next, she asks me if I am sure I want twenty and not ten caplets. Like I want to come back any sooner to go through this again? I want to scream, “Don't you see the pollen outside? Don't you know I've got another month of this crap to get through?” I merely say, “I need the twenty pack.” The assistant then asks for my driver's license, which I hand her. She takes it to a desk, looks at some list which indicates perhaps who is allowed to buy this medicine and who isn't. When she returns with my license and the clipboard I have to sign in order to receive my perfectly legal decongestant (People, we aren't talking oxycotin here), I am compliant. I walk around to the pick-up desk about twenty feet away where I must now write a separate check for the medication. I'm not sure why but suspect our legislators are afraid that some drug addict posing as an allergy sufferer might steal the Sudafed from my grocery cart before I get to the main checkout registers; these decongestant bandits will then, perhaps, turn my twenty pills into an illegal drug. Even though I'm admittedly irritated and embarrassed, I don't cause a fuss. After all, it's not the pharmacist assistant's fault that our lawmakers are forcing us into this silly dance.

What's next I wonder? Will crafters have to show their drivers' licenses and sign on the dotted lines to buy glue because some people sniff it to get high? Will we place cans of spray paint behind counters at the hardware store and create a spray paint registry database of known spray paint purchasers? Will this ridiculousness end soon, or will I be standing in some room of hayfever and cold sufferers saying, “Hi, I'm Maureen, and I like to breathe through my nose”?

Do You Know Where Your Decorations Are?

If your answer is outside, apparently, someone needs to give you this message: THE CHRISTMAS HOLIDAYS ARE OVER!

Now that you've drunk your fill of eggnog and have long-since grown weary of every recorded version of “Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree” playing nonstop on the airwaves from Thanksgiving until Christmas Day. . .

Now that you've sorted through the presents you received, creating three piles——the ones you keep and use, the ones you plan to re-gift throughout the year, and fruitcake. . .

Now that you've recovered from another New Year's hangover, be it food or champagne induced . . .

IT'S TIME TO TAKE DOWN THOSE ICICLE LIGHTS CLIPPED TO YOUR ROOF'S EDGE!

Yes, they MUST be removed and stored in your attic, basement, or garage. It's a law— Newton 's Law, in fact. What goes up must come down. And you can't fight the law.

My demand, I mean advice, may not be included in any feng shui book you purchase in the bargain bin at Barnes & Noble, and Oprah may not have included a similar entreaty in O Magazine, but I'm pretty sure she and Martha Stewart would agree with me. THOSE LIGHTS, BE THEY ICICLE, NET, WHITE OR MULTI-COLORED MUST REST TO SHINE ANOTHER YEAR.

Some of you may be wondering if there aren't neighborhood covenants ensuring that exterior Christmas lights be removed before Valentine's Day, which would render my friendly reminder unnecessary. For those of you fortunate enough to have lighting stipulations, the answer is yes; you can contact your homeowners' association and ask them to enforce the covenants. For those of you whose neighborhoods came into existence prior to the invention of the dreaded icicle light, which I have seen dangling from gutters well past the Fourth of July, the answer is no. We must find alternative means to convince our neighbors to comply with our wishes. Perhaps a brick, I mean a loaf, of fruitcake could seal the deal.

Yet, what if fruitcake bribery doesn't work? Well, I guess some of my fellow neighbors and I may be forced to de-foliate those houses ourselves, like the character Patty Campbell in the “Blinded by the Lights” chapter of A Day in Mossy Creek. Though quite sane, she was pushed over the edge by a man whose out-of-season sense of festive went beyond icicle lights and included failing to remove a faded wreath hanging over the toilet sitting in his front yard. I guess I can be thankful that Orville Gene Simple doesn't live in my neighborhood.

Don't blind me with your lights, take those decorations down!

In the past year or so, the beauty industry has noticed that we Baby Boomer women have aged, and since we have deep pocket books, they have come out with new products to tempt us and new spokesmodels to show us the way to ageless beauty, women like Susan Sarandon and Christie Brinkley whom we can all agree are maturing beautifully. We even warrant our own special line of teeth bleaching products to rid ourselves of the stains that make us look older. I fully admit to owning a box of those strips. I use them; they work. Try as I might to ignore the message as I cart my way through Wal-Mart to purchase essentials like Lactaid and my daughter's Smucker's sandwiches, I can't resist the cosmetics aisle.

Cover Girl's Advanced Radiance, Maybelline's Age Rewind, Revlon's Age Defying and Vital Radiance lines promise to rejuvenate and renew my skin, rewind and defy time with make-up, some of which, by the way, costs twice as much as similar foundation for the twenty-something set (Thank you very much). Must be all those “special” moisturizers and peptide complexes that will firm our facial skin. The cynic in me suspects the price has more to do with the fact that we boomers can and will pay higher prices for anything that promises to bring back a dewy glow to our skin.

Some women go beyond make-up and hair dye and try to turn back time with plastic surgery, botox and collagen injections. Oh, I've thought about it. I'm particularly intrigued by this pulley system that lifts the face. Some women are also getting their hands and feet done to remove signs of aging. In a panic, I pinch the skin on my hands. It's still elastic, and the veins aren't prominent. I look at my sandled feet. Not beautiful, but I can live with them. In general, I don't rate some procedures much higher on the scale than the anti-aging make-up. I've seen quite a few women walking around with unnaturally high eyebrows and botoxed foreheads that don't crease or show expression, transforming their faces into masks, which disturbs me, perhaps more than breast enhancements gone bad. You know what I mean, the implants that protrude from just below a woman's neck and are so big they look like they are going to rupture the skin.

Perhaps even more upsetting than overly enhanced breasts, if something can be, is labiaplasty. Yes, private part surgery. I'm not talking about the women who need reconstruction after having a ten pound baby tear their perineum all the way to their rectum; I'm talking about women who are having the surgery for cosmetic purposes only. Can THAT really make you look younger? Although I admit to comparing my chest to other women's chests and bemoaning what gravity has done to my once perky breasts, I can honestly say I never contemplated how my private parts look compared to other women's private parts. Nor have I ever bemoaned the shape of my labia or contemplated how time has taken its toll on that part of my body. Come to think of it, I have never heard another middle-aged woman say, “if only my labia were bigger, smaller, lighter, darker, perkier or rose-scented, Bill wouldn't have left me for Angela.” Angsting over your labia gives the expression “contemplating your navel” some serious competition. Okay, that form of plastic surgery is definitely not on my consideration list.

So how can I look and feel younger without resorting to plastic surgery? Notice I'm not giving up on the make-up or the teeth bleaching strips. The secret is not what I want to hear. There is no magic pill to swallow or spring in the middle of Florida to sip. It's diet and exercise, dadblame it! I happened to catch Oprah a while back and discovered that uninformed food choices not only make us fat, but they also age us. Yes, a steady diet of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, corn syrup, sugar, and enriched flour makes our bodies older. And if you don't think these things are part of your diet, take a gander at the ingredients listed on the foods in your refrigerator or pantry. Besides removing the quad squad of artery-aging foods and drinking more water, Oprah's doctor friends also suggest at least a half an hour of exercise a day. Makes sense, doesn't it?

Okay, so many of us have bought our anti-aging creams and make-ups guaranteed to turn back time. We've cleaned out our kitchens and are walking every day. Some of us have had our lips plumped with a little collagen and may be contemplating a breast lift—or at least a good expensive bra that makes us look like we've had the surgery. Isn't there something more we can do?

And then it hits me. Perhaps the complete answer isn't only in how we choose to spend the money in our wallets or in what we eat and whether we exercise. Perhaps the true fountain of youth is only a matter of manipulating numbers.

I'm not talking about the way many of us have manipulated our age in the past. I'm saying LIE that you're TEN YEARS OLDER.

Ponder the possibilities. A lady in her early forties with an extra fifteen pounds on her frame and a dependence on anti-aging cream gains little from telling people she's thirty-five. Half of them may not believe her. If, however, she were to tell people she was ten years older, they would go out of their way to compliment her on how youthful she appeared.

If I claimed I was ten years older, not only would I fend off compliments, I'd be ten years older than my husband, which would make him my boy toy! I'd be robbing the cradle! We'd be hip and trendy, like Demi and Ashton, and Cameron and Justin.

Don't take getting older “lying” down, ladies. Lie up.

Be a Good Neighbor; Crap in Your Own Yard

By neighbor, I don't mean the families who live in my cul-de-sac. My immediate neighbors are considerate. They scoop their dog's poop. I mean you, the guy who lives somewhere in my subdivision, who walks his big dog early in the morning and lets him crap in my yard and probably in the yards of many other people.

I'd been wondering who the owner of the large piles was. I saw you. Don't pretend we didn't make eye contact as I was waiting for my morning coffee to finish dripping. I'm sure you felt my ire through the glass pane of my kitchen window. If I hadn't been in my pajamas, I'd have walked down the driveway with a bag and asked you to pick it up and carry it away with you.

Why is your dog's crap in my yard a problem? Let's see. It's rude. Do I throw my cat's crap in your yard? Does the fact that I have a pet ever cause you to have to wash your shoes, your kitchen floor, your carpet?

Yes, this is an outright tirade. I freely admit it. But what happened to me Sunday morning sent me over the edge. It was a dark, dreary, rainy morning. The kind of morning that still feels like night. I had just returned from dropping my daughter off at our church for her religious education class, and I stopped at the end of our driveway to pick up the paper. Because it was so dark and rainy, I didn't see what I stepped in. Since it was raining, and had been all weekend, I assumed the mushy feel to the ground was that famous Georgia clay having turned saturated. I got back in the car and drove up to the garage to park. I walked across the breezeway, into the kitchen, to the den, etc. When I left to pick my daughter up from class, I noticed the smell of dog crap in my car, and it hit me. I'd stepped in it and trailed it through my garage, breezeway, kitchen and den. Yes, cleaning the floors of my house and the pedals and carpet in my van were the highlight of my Sunday.

Evidence to the contrary, I am a reasonable person. Many years ago, I accepted that the neighborhood dogs were going to lift their legs to my mailbox. Those repeated dousings killed the climbing rose I planted next to the mailbox. Rather than rant in the neighborhood newsletter and install something to shock those dogs (which my husband assured me I couldn't do), I pulled up the dead plant and found a climbing vine that neither dog urine nor drought can kill. Autumn Clematis produces pretty white flowers starting in August and blooms until the first hard frost which can be as late as November in this part of the South. It has lovely little green leaves throughout most of the year. The added plus? The pretty scent masks the dog urine.

All I'm asking Mr. Neighbor-With-Big-Crapping-Beast is that you bring a few bags with you when you walk it. We all shop. We all have those plastic bags from the grocery store. It's not like you have to spend any additional money to be considerate.

Take this blog as fair warning. Next time I see you and your dog stopping to make a deposit in my yard, you'll be making a fast withdrawal as well. If forced to do so, I will follow you, with your dog's crap in bag, and place it in your yard, so you, too, can share the joy of cleaning it off of your shoe and any surface that shoe touches inside your house.