My Morning Marathon

All right, so it wasn't really that long of a thing, but I did go to four stores in a row. Okay, fine. I just wanted all the words to start with "m." Once I had "My Morning" up there, it would have been disappointing to say something like, "My Morning of Shopping at Four Stores."

But, you'd like me to get on with it?

First we went to Walgreens. All we did there was buy a paper. Perhaps I'll tell you about the paper delivery woes later if I think it's interesting enough. I'd hate to bore you. Paul was fine. He didn't even need a cart.
$0.88

Next we went to Publix. That was also fun since they had a "vroom, vroom" cart available. Those deals are here, and Publix is cool.
$5.67

Then we hit Aldi. All these places are like 3 feet from each other, by the way. (Okay. I hope you noticed the exaggeration. But they are really close together and close to my house. I could actually walk to all of them, but the frozen stuff would melt on the way home.) Aldi was still Aldi. Same guy who reminds me of this guy I know from California rang me up. He's my favorite cashier, I think, because, like James in California, he really knows his stuff. He exudes confidence in his realm--which in his case is groceries, inventory, and cash registers. Someone asks him a "backroom" question every single time I see him there, and he fires off the answer the way my mother-in-law would rattle off the Tarheels' starting line-up. Unlike James, he probably doesn't make like half a million dollars a year. I guess that's the difference in being an expert in groceries versus computer programming. But I really like the guy. I'd pick his line even if it's got the most people. At Aldi, it really doesn't matter how long the line is. By the time you get your stuff on the conveyor belt, you're racing to shove your cart next to the card keypad so the ringer-upper might be talked into putting the groceries in your cart instead of the one in front of you so you don't have to transfer your toddler in order to haul stuff to your car. But I digress. By the way, the other ringer-uppers are very nice too. I wouldn't want to give the wrong impression. I just feel like I know "James." But I still digress.
$18.55

Bi-Lo was the last stop. They advertised ground beef for $1.99 a pound. We haven't had ground beef in the house for weeks because I was waiting for a sale, so I decided I really owed it to my husband to make spaghetti this week. "I'll get one pound." I told myself. "I'm sure it will go on a better sale later." But after seeing that Publix and Aldi were both a whole dollar more, I started to look forward to getting "just one pound." Well, duh. They don't sell one pound of meat for $1.99. The one-pounds were $2.49. You had to get like five-ish all packaged together to get the $1.99 price. But I was well under what I was planning to spend for the week, and ground beef was all I had come to Bi-Lo for, so I got it. And boy was I glad. Paul had been good in all the stores, and when we checked out at this last one, the Bi-Lo lady gave him four stickers and a balloon. I was ever-so-grateful. Paul loves stickers and balloons.
Bi-Lo: $8.97
Paul's refusal to let go of the balloon string in the van: Priceless.

Grocery Total for the (hopefully) week (that is to say, not counting the newspaper, which was on the gift card anyway): $33.19

I'm nowhere near Keren's mad skills, but I'll content myself with the knowledge that I did not forget the coffee filters at Aldi.