In the Grocery Store

Last night, I'm in my tiny neighborhood grocery store and I'm working my way through my list (apricots, apples, eggs, butter....). I go up and down every aisle (multiple times) and I can't find the spices. I really can't.

I'm really good at missing things that are right in front of me, so I go up one aisle, wheel my cart around, and down the next. Over and over. I pay special attention to the baking aisle and the ethnic foods aisle and I even check out the gluten-free section. Nope. All I find is salt. And meat tenderizer.

I give up and go to the cash register. I've unloaded maybe half of my groceries when I think to ask the cashier. He says, oh sure, the spices are in Aisle 1. Another cashier is nice enough to go get me a bottle of cumin.

He brings me -- I swear to God -- a bottle about the size of a quart of milk. He's found the cheapest cumin, which is considerate, but I am not bulk buying cumin. That is not an option. I will never, ever use the whole thing.

We powerwalk to Aisle 1 and he shows me the full display of spices, stacked above the frozen chicken (I maintain that this is a strange place to store spices). I pick out a small bottle and then I realize, oh, I never found the baking yeast either. We go to the baking aisle and we're both pacing up and down and going in circles. And we can't find the baking yeast.

So we head back to the cash register, where my ever-patient cashier is still waiting, and he swears the yeast is in the baking aisle. It's not. It's really, really not.

Five minutes later, after management is consulted, the baking yeast is located. In the dairy aisle.