You Can't Always Get What You Want

O.K. the long dreaded GROCERY STORE blog entry.  I have procrastinated on this entry because the whole experience caught me totally off guard.  I NEVER anticipated how important the grocery store would be OR how much of a challenge and stressor it would be in my life.   Here are a couple of different things that drive the stress factor through the roof.  

1.  I am planning for, shopping for, cooking for, and cleaning up for 21 meals a week (3 squares, 7 days a week).  There is no "Lance, on your way home can you pick up Anna's?" or "I think I'll just heat up those left overs from Red Bones."  No take out of any kind!  We are eating every meal of every day as a family in this house.  Now that has it's benefits as we are spending a lot of quality time together but it is also VERY time consuming (how did women get anything done in the olden days????)  On second thought, I stand corrected.  Last week we only ate 19 meals in this house as we went out to lunch with the kids on Saturday and Sunday (even lunch with 2 kids can be relaxing with une bouteille de rosé.)  

2.  You have no idea how time consuming it will be to find all the food that your small children  desire/require.  On our 2nd day in our new land we ventured to the Supermarché (more specifics in a follow up blog).  After having been there for 2 hours, each kid flipping out in their own unsafe shopping cart, we left feeling somewhat defeated.  Even though we had spent 225.00 dollars, I felt like we had nothing!  I said to Lance "we are in a culinary wasteland!" (quote credited to Jackie).  To which Lance in SHOCK (eyes bulging out of his head) replied: "What are you talking about???????"  Obviously, he is right if you're an adult; clearly for us we are in the food Mecca.  BUT if you are an American 3 year old or 16 month old kid - things aren't looking real great.  Lance's brilliant plan of "well they'll just have to deal, we're in France and I'm not buying processed chicken nuggets" only worked for like 2 meals because no body wants to deal with 2 hungry, displeased, and sleep deprived kids.  

So the moral of the story is that in the first 9 days we were in this country, the place we spent about as much time as we had spent in our new home was the Supermarché.  We went 4 times in 9 days!  And these weren't just quick in and out trips.  Everything about going there is time consuming.  It is not just that you are in a different store and you don't know where stuff is in the aisles.  It is more that when you FINALLY find the item you think you want, you then have to translate it to see if it is in fact the item you want.  One of many perfect examples of how difficult this can be is that I had to employ the 3 strikes and your out theory on LOTION.  The first time I tried to buy it I accidentally got bubble bath (OK - the kids are loving it).  The second time I got shower gel but, the third time by process of elimination - I got lotion!