Tag: Groceries

Off the pot

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 11 Comments
Working the breadline.

Tuesday is a good day for chores.

It’s quiet around El Rancho Pendejo. Herself races off to the Lab at 5:30 in the a.m. and it’s just Your Humble Narrator and Miss Mia Sopaipilla manning the battlements. Cat’lments. Whatevs.

Sometimes I’m up before The Boss hits the door running, sometimes not. This morning I managed to see her off and then got down to brass tacks, as the kids don’t say anymore.

Miss Mia must be greeted, loved up on, given a second round of food and drink, and her litter box unburdened of its dark freight.

Then the Winter Palace is to be prepared for Her Majesty, after which I may offer myself a little sumpin’-sumpin’: coffee; toast with butter and jam; either oatmeal with dried fruit and nuts or yogurt with granola; an apple or mandarine; a scoop of crunchy almond butter; maybe a mug of tea.

The news is to be scanned but not dwelt upon lest it hamper the digestion.

OK, so I missed a few needles. I blame management.

This morning saw the last slice of bread slide down the rathole so a new loaf was in order, and I set that machinery in motion.

Next I congratulated myself for taking a moment yesterday to rake up the pine needles scattered across the lawn by last Thursday’s window-rattler, with the goal of restarting the irrigation system for a quick spritz this morning, when I noticed our bird feeders were getting low. So I filled those up. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

This short detour threw a slight hitch into my gitalong. The next items on the schedule were exercise and grocery shopping. If I hadn’t stopped to pat myself on the back I could’ve squeezed in a quick trail run before the sprinklers came on (I wanted to be around to make sure nothing had frozen up during our short cold snap).

Running afterward would put me at the grocery noonish, which is not optimal; the amateurs scuttle out of their holes and get in everyone’s way at noon and 5 p.m. I like to do my shopping between 9 and 10, or sometime after 1, when only pro hunter-gatherers are working the aisles and the registers don’t look like The Big I at rush hour.

Thing is, the meal I have planned for tonight is a slow-cooker deal that wants four hours in the pot.

So, yeah. Here I sit, muttering to myself (and to you) while I update my grocery list, avoid the news, and wait to see whether the irrigation system erupts like Vesuvius.

Possibilities

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 25 Comments
Possibly rain.

Partly to mostly cloudy. A stray shower or thunderstorm is possible.—The Weather Underground forecast for The Duck! City

The gods are pulling my chain again.

Actually, they may be peeing on it.

We just got more than a half inch of possibility in about 15 minutes and Your Humble Narrator beat the deluge home by the chromoplastic skin of his mudguards.

I hadn’t intended to go for a ride. The original idea was to drive to Dick Missile’s Galaxy O’ Grub for a couple hundy worth of disco vittles.

But about halfway there I realized I was short one wallet (mine). So I pulled a U and in a cloud of blasphemy motored home, where I swapped the Subie for a Soma.

Some explanation is in order. I like to buy my groceries early, when most people are working, schooling, or riding their own damn’ bikes. This has the effect of broadening product availability, widening aisles, and shortening lines at checkout.

By forgetting my wallet I had squandered my chronological advantage over the Little People, so I thought I might as well go for a ride instead. Which I did. And it was very pleasant, thanks for asking.

About an hour in I noticed the clouds bunching up and darkening. As I looped around High Desert en route to El Rancho Pendejo things looked positively moist down by Four Hills.

“No worries,” I thought. “It never rains before noon, when it rains at all. Plenty of time.”

Uh huh. I felt the first few drops just off Tramway at Manitoba, and on Glenwood Hills Drive they were bucketing down in quantity. I had fenders on — all the Somas have fenders — but I had to mind my manners in the corners as I slalomed home at a quarter ’til noon, just in time for lunch, if I had any food.

“If only we had some ham we could have ham and eggs, if we only had some eggs.” You said a mouthful, brother.

Pumped

~ Patrick O'Grady ~ 31 Comments
I found a bargain at my neighborhood station.

The gas is mostly $4.19 in these parts, up from $3.59 a week or so ago.

Still not nearly enough. But it’s a start.

Based on what I could glean from a brief, unscientific survey this morning, the rising prices haven’t stopped Burqueños from speeding, running red lights, or idling away a few minutes (and gallons) in various fast-food drive-through lines.

This last is why I restrict my motor trips to grocery-shopping. Once you bring home the bacon, you don’t gotta go nowhere else, watching your fuel and patience needles march toward “E” as you endure some faux redneck’s loudly farting diesel. You cook it up and eat it.

And once the weather settles down, who knows? I may leave ol’ Sue Baroo in the garage even more than I already do, invest a portion of my beans and rice in getting more beans and rice. There seems to be a lot of bicycles around here for some reason.