grocery shopping the audrey way

I once received this piece of advice from a friend: never, ever use a shopping cart when you have to walk home with your groceries. Oh, would that I had listened! Not until I began placing my selected item on the conveyor belt did I begin to think that they looked a little...massive.

Sure enough, carrying it all home seemed a little comical and somewhat painful. My arms were strained and sore from moving the day prior and my hands were scratched, blistered and bruised. As I stumbled home along the rather busy four-lane road, I wished that I could just look enough like a bag woman that no one would pay me any mind. Oh, just don't look at me, I prayed. Embarrassingly enough, I had to stop and re-situate the load once or twice under the stares of passing motorists.

Humiliation never did seem to peak. In my parking lot a bag ripped, spilling cans and bottles at my feet. What sort of bagger puts all the cans in one bag and leaves another bearing only three ramen noodles?! I placed the expelled groceries into my purse and continued on from there, while two very able-bodied boys watched from where they stood talking by their new sports car.

For one heavenly moment I placed all the bags on the ground while I unlocked the pedestrian gate into my complex (and yes, I have a complex now), but as I hoisted the load I stepped onto the lawn, sliding my flip-flops through slippery new mud. Crash! Down I went, breaking the strap of my new purse and my fall, by landing on my recently acquired food. Did I land on the eggs or the tomatoes, I asked myself dryly. The eggs.

As comfortable as flip-flops can be, there is a downside to them. When they get dirty, so do your feet. I stomped the last fifty yards to my door with a clump of black clay clinging to my toes. I unloaded my groceries on my porch and bound my feet in the plastic bags before entering. Plastic rustled with each step I took, back and forth from the door to the kitchen putting away groceries. Between fits of tears and giggles, I washed my toes and thought how very much my style that whole afternoon had been.