Stupid Market- Getting the Grosseries

Last week I was doing the dreaded grocery shopping on an average

That's right!

Saturday morning.  Whilst I used to enjoy the experience of wandering along sizing up potential candidates of the food kind to gain entry to my trolley, these days I just want to make a quick in and out job of it.  So, I was charging through with list in hand, weaving in and out of all the other shopping zombies hoping that I wouldn’t get in anyone’s way and that they wouldn’t get in mine.

Still, I am a fascinated observer of people and their behaviour and there’re a few things that stand out to me while I’m rampaging like a mad woman through the food palace:

Some people get really aggressive.

It’s like they believe they’re the only person that finds food shopping to be annoying and everybody else is having a gay old time and trying to make them angrier.  I really want to say to these shunters and grunters ‘hey, you know we’re not having a party here either, we’re just managing our attitudes way better than you are arsehole’.

Mums and Dads with their kids look at me with contempt:

especially if I have a small trolley.  Their gaze and body language is like a loaded gun with a finger on the trigger.  I can’t blame them, they’re in the supermarket with children – there really isn’t anything much less enjoyable, or more stressful.  Anyway, as I freely saunter past looking relaxed, with my tiny trolley, I feel them shoot daggers into my back as if to scream ‘you don’t know what it’s like to have kids you bitch, wait till you end up like this’.  Jokes on them, I’ve been there done that, and that’s why I’m so free and happy now!

One thing I do find hard to understand is why anyone would do the groceries with their partner?! I mean it’s not like it’s a date, or an enjoyable outing of any kind.  Surely it would be about as enjoyable as cleaning the toilet together-yuck.  It seems like the couple’s grocery shopping thing might be all about insecurity and control.  The supermarket being such a great place to pick people up, I’m not so sure.

 I don’t think it’s all in my head though when I come round the corner with my trolley and straight into the path of an oncoming couple to find the woman glaring at me and the man nervously looking at his feet.  FFS! If you’ve got to keep your Man on such a tight lead while you bark and snarl off to the side you’ve got some serious problems.  If my husband was coming to the supermarket and wanted to run off with some chick doing her groceries then she’d be the one getting a shitty deal (I don’t mean he’s a dick head or a bad lover- he’s not) because she would have hooked herself an unfaithful man and I’d be free of one.

But last week, last week, oh my, this one took the cake!  So there I was marching around the supermarket and I’m in about the second aisle when I come across a forty to fifty year old couple with their trolley.  I hear him ask her ‘what are you after – Kremelta- or something?’ and she confirms that yes that’s what she’s after but that it’s probably not down this aisle.

 You see at the moment everybody is confused as fuck at the supermarket because they’ve done that super annoying strategy of changing everything around in order to make their customers disoriented, and keep people wandering around in there for longer.  In a situation like that a lot of people help each other out by asking and directing each other to the products they’re after.  So I made a mental note that that couple were looking for Kremelta so if I were to see it, I’d let them know.

I couldn’t remember what the woman looked like because the guy had been the one right in front of me.  He had a red cap on, jeans and a t-shirt and sports jacket.  He had the big, rounded, soft belly of a beer swilling rugby loving kiwi guy.  He also had a quite dated looking big bushy salt and pepper moustache.  

As I rounded the corner to the next aisle there he was right in front of me, and he had just found the kremelta.  I did what I thought was normal and smiled at him.

Just so you know.

Well, he looked at me with contempt and anger for my freely given smile, turned on his heel, made a beeline for his partner and planted a big sloppy kiss on her face- right in front of me.  As if that’s not kind of weird and creepy enough he then turned and looked straight at me while he was pinching her on the butt!  Well, I guess he showed me that I’ve got no chance with him!!!! What a shame, I was so looking forward to kissing a bloody Neanderthal at the supermarket. 

It strikes me that one could see all of this stupid market behaviour by watching a bunch of monkeys in the wild.  This is domestic animal jungle activity, I should have started scratching myself and pretended to eat fleas I'd just harvested off my body. Or perhaps a guttural monkey scream would have been enough, I'm bloody good at those!

Alternatively I could have really fucked that guy over by bursting in to tears and saying 'but you promised that you wouldn't kiss her anymore, you said that you were just waiting for the right time, I can't believe I made love to you in the toilets here just last week'! Yeah, I'd love to see the look on that dick heads face if I had unleashed that shit on him.

Maybe I’ll just get a supermarket t-shirt made that reads:

·         Hate shopping

·         Married

·         Got kids

·         Just want to get my groceries done

·         Not interested in your boyfriend

·         Smiles are free – no strings attached.

Then everybody can just calm the fuck down and do their bloody shopping!

More than Words...

 

I’ve been through the clichéd experience of ‘finding myself’

recently, but before you start thinking I made a choice to go through this experience- no - I was dragged, kicking and screaming.  And, my version of ‘finding myself’ was not a search for the meaning of life, or long restful days meditating, or travelling, or any of those quite nice pathways to finding oneself.  My version of finding myself was instigated by my life just imploding, and me actually trying to find myself out of the scattered remnants.

When one’s life is shattered it quickly becomes clear what is truly important and what drives one to despair.  My loved ones have the capacity to lift me up and carry me through hard times and the power to totally destroy me.  Sometimes strength simply must be found from within; no-one can or should carry you forever. 

I have learned how much I depend on my loved ones and how much they depend on me, but this is not the full lesson.  The full lesson is that while my loved ones have the power to wound me with unkind words, I too have the power to hurt them with mine.  So when I felt hurt by words and festered away on them and let them boil in my mind, I took the time to imagine someone dear to me feeling the same way about some words I may have said. 

When you know your own intent, and inside feelings it’s horrible to think that someone may be affected by your words in a way that you never intended.  Assumptions are made that loved ones know you so intimately that they know more than words, they know the 'inside you' so they could never misunderstand your intent.

So how can I avoid making people I love feel bad?  I don’t want to bruise anybody’s soul. I’m especially bad at talking first and thinking later,  but if I censor myself will I still be the same person?  And who am I really?  Am I who I think I am, or who others think I am?  For instance I've heard quite a lot that I am 'harsh' which makes part of my insides ache, but I have to accept having heard it enough times that that must be how I come across.  So this must be a word about who I am even if I don't feel like that inside.  

What can I do with the bad things said to, or about me?  What do these words look like all together?  It’s easy to fall into the trap of blaming others for hurting you, but by contrast, defending yourself vehemently when the finger of blame is pointed in your direction. 

In an attempt to be my own guidance counselor I decided to write all the words about me down.  Luckily I'm blessed enough to have amazing friends and family who also say nice words about me, better words than I'd use to describe myself.  I gave myself a reasonable amount of space on a big piece of paper and started writing.  At first it was slow going, I wondered whether I could successfully fill the space.  I wrote words I thought about myself, words other people had said to me, words that are labels applied to me, bad words about me, and good words about me.  By the time I was finished I realised I had filled the space but could have carried on. 

There are a lot of words about me, and I didn’t feel bad about them at all.  They are part of what makes me a whole and truly authentic being. Having just nice words about me would be nice, but it would be only part of the picture. Words can hurt, and words can heal, but they are just words. They are words about me that tell a story, and I’m happy with how my story is going.   

Letter to my Children

I decided to write this while I cried in the shower.  Two of my kids are teenagers and things haven’t been so smooth running lately.  We try and have really open conversations about things to sort them out and often we can, but one of the most heart wrenching things that often gets yelled at me in the midst of an impassioned argument is that I don’t care for, or love them. 

Enjoy those family moments.

Please don’t think I don’t love you...

My heart fused to your existence while I writhed in agony and bore you into the world, straight into our home, we lived through that together.  I met you for the first time and all my dreams about what my kids would be like were immediately exceeded.  I learnt about a new love that day, 

Please don’t think I don’t love you...

I spent days gazing at you and caressing your skin, spent hours awake at night holding your tiny body close and feeding you with my life giving milk.  My life ceased to be important to me once you were born, I knew in an instant I would die for you.  I still would.

 Please don’t think I don’t love you...

I’ve comforted you from your bad dreams, held you close to me in bed when you were too scared to go back to yours.  I’ve run to you and you’ve run to me when you were hurt, there was no-one else then that you wanted to help you, and I’ve held back my tears to be strong for you even when my heart was breaking. 

Please don’t think I don’t love you...

I worried endlessly about whether you were okay at Kindy and then at School.  Were people being nice to you, did you have friends?  Were you sitting all alone at lunchtime?  These things all seemed worse than when they actually happened to me when I was a kid.  What about play dates?  Are those parents trustworthy enough to look after my most prized possession?  Endless thoughts of how you could get hurt whirled through my mind.  They still do.

Please don’t think I don’t love you...

How could I predict when I was having the last time?  How could I know when my last kiss or hug at school was going to happen?  How could I savour the last time I would lie on your bed and hug you till you fell asleep?  How could I know the last time you would run to me crying looking for the comfort only my arms could offer?  How could I know that I would stop being your hero?

Please don’t think I don’t love you...

Now, how will I know when it’s our last family holiday, our last family meal, or when I’m no longer needed at last?  How at the age of 40 have I only just realised that my own Mum loves me this way too?  My heart still beats for you. When you’re sad I grieve, when you’re happy I feel joy, when you’re in danger I feel fear.  My love for you BURNS fiercely inside me.

Please don’t think I don’t love you, I will always love you, more than you can ever imagine.

Me and my Mum- she'll kill me for this photo!

Don't Lose Yourself into "Coupledom"

I'm a bit of a voyeur.  I like people watching, not that you'd notice since I spend very little time sitting still or being quiet- I'm no introvert!  But, I love people watching when given the opportunity, and I really think that even though I do engage in a lot of conversations(which I do really enjoy) my brain is really focused on human behaviour all the time- I just love it!  At the moment I'm noticing "Coupledom" and the "we" that people seem to transform into. I think it would be super amazing and highly unlikely that one could meet someone who thinks and feels exactly the same as them.  Why do so many people lose their identity in a relationship and become a 'we'?

My husband and 'I', 'We' disagree...

Have you ever watched a reality show where couples compete against each other?  This is the perfect place to see the 'we' in full effect.  Standing side by side and talking to the camera the couples say things like- "we really love neutral colours", "we are really competitive" or "we like reading" all the while glancing at each other with beaming smiles and nodding in agreement. 
Why are they doing this? Grouped together - the statement, the body language and the agreement seems like some sort of animalistic tribal dance of affirmation.  We're together, we like the same things, we're happy- see!  Is this affirmation for themselves or an outward sign for others- 'observe our indestructible force of togetherness, no one agrees more than we do, that's our intimate bond'! 

The thing is, before they were the 'we' they actually were individuals that obviously appealed to each other just as they were.  It's understanding that in the initial stages of togetherness they probably found all the things they had in common and spent a lot of time together, they probably spent less time doing individual things or fighting over topics they disagreed on while they were in the first flush of romance.  Is this what sets the scene  for the rest of the relationship?  Maybe the idea of truly being in-love and intimate is set down over this period and the idea of not agreeing or not spending all their time together now seems hostile and dangerous.  But without differences and individual pursuits what really is there to talk about?  How can your partner excite you if you have become carbon copies of each other.

My husband and I disagree on many topics, we are quite different, which is fine with me.  I like to know what 'I' think and not be scared to say it.  I don't think me having my own point of view makes my husband like me less either.  I also don't need him to agree with me.  It's not a problem at all for us to disagree and the bonus is that we get to explore all sides of a topic since we sometimes have different points of view.  In social situations I don't feel like I have to be a 'we' and choose one view point to defend as a couple, this is not tense or difficult, mostly it means in any social situation one of us agrees with someone else there at least.  It wasn't always like this though, I suspect we were a 'we' for a while there too, maybe it was immaturity... 

The most visual observance of the 'we' is at the mall or supermarket.  This is usually more a display of dutiful misery.  'We go shopping together because we are a 'we' so we do everything together even if it makes us miserable'. Why, oh why would you go shopping together?  Surely he is not interested in your recreational clothes shopping, and certainly not for more than thirty minutes!  I can't imagine how stressful it must be trying to shop while my husband wandered around after me absolutely bored to tears.  Leave your partner at home while you're shopping unless its a purchase that you both need to be present for, you can indulge your 'individual preferences' while you are alone. 
The supermarket shopping- hardly anyone enjoys this!!!!  Why double the misery by both going?  I have rarely seen a couple shopping and looking really happy together.  People hardly ever act kindly at the supermarket anyway and often the awkward people glancing can be a bit jungle like.  Did he just look at her??!!! Take a wide berth if you see a couple shopping together, they're probably so insecure that if you even glance their way you may be on the receiving end of an abusive tirade!

I think my main gripe with the 'we' is that it's just boring. Keep your relationship honest, alive and exciting and be an 'I'!