Rewind back to Wednesday night. I’m leaving the office at 8:30pm to make the 8:49 train home. That should give me plenty of time to get home and still order a buttload of chinese food for delivery (dinner of champions comapred to what I usually eat). Of course just as I’m about to leave Suzanne asks if I could walk her through the alley of death. That’s our little pet name for a local alley where death lives. Some people call it the parking lot but they just don’t know the truth.
This is where late-night-math meets my inability to tell time on a non-digital watch. I miss my train and end up stuck in Mountain View for an extra hour. Time is easily killed pretending to work at a local cafe surrounded by 2 local knitting groups (btw, hot women love knitting these days and they do it as a group… wtf?!?), hipster kids talking about K-Y Yours+Mine and whether or not you should use the “his” on “her” and vice-versa, and 3 girls freaking out because they all put their iphones down at the same time and now can’t figure out which phone belongs to who. Can you hear the collective “OH MY GOSH!!!” 45mins and a 1/2 gallon latte later I realize I must now literally RUN for the train. This gets me home at about 11pm, too late for ordering chinese for delivery but too early for sleep. I spend the next 30min foraging for food. I think I ended up eating 1 tortilla, 1 chai tea, and 2 bananas, and 4 peices of candy. I vowed to never leave my freezer empty again.
Now let’s jump ahead to last night. Once again I find myself at the office late, this time leaving at 11pm. As I drive home I realize there’s a Safeway just down the road. This is obviously my chance to score some decent food as well as stock up for the next week or so. Now most smart adults will tell you to never go grocery shopping hungry and never ever EVER go grocery shopping hungry and sleepy. My basket starts off as follows:
- Torillas
- Salsa
- El Pato (because sometimes salsa just doesn’t cut it)
- Cheese
- Chorizo
- Cheese (yes twice… will explain later)
- Eggs
- Bananas
- Beer
The moment I grab the beer I realize I have a problem and take stock of my basket. I realize I have now somehow mixed the shopping carts of a stereotypical mexican teenager and a frat boy on spring break. This will never do. Breakfast or beer, never the both. 3 rounds of revision and 5 laps around Safeway later I now finalize my selections minus 1 critical item, cat litter. As I grab the cat litter I realize that I’ve now somehow grabbed 2 bags of shredded cheese and neither will do so both must go. I’ve very picky when it comes to cheese you see, especially cheese that is to be used in a quessadilla. I’m a quessadilla perfectionist.As I return to the cheese aisle it just now hits me that they have an incredible selection of mozarella but really no good goat cheese. Great, now I’m neither mexican nor frat-boy, I’m just a normal snob. Ditch the cheese, grab the kitty litter, and get the fuck out of dodge so I can eat some mac’n'cheese. Final basket is:
- 1 package tortillas
- 1 jar salsa
- 1 bottle El Pato
- 6 Hungry Man frozen dinners
- 4 Safeway Select Frozen Pasta meals in a bag
- 1 bottle Clear Eyes
- 1 smelly candle (wtf)
- 1 cat toy
- 1 bag litter
The cashier stops at one point to notice I’ve now purchased 9 frozen, instant, single serving items. She actually stops for a moment as if to ask, “is this a joke?” I look up to notice the pause in her elegant grab-slide-beep-toss action and mumble, “yeah uh, sorry.” Why am I sorry? Not because I’ve now cleaned out their selection Hungry Man 1 lb. dinners, nor because she’s on item #14 out of 18 in a 9-items-or-less line (not my fault)… not even because I added 2 more items at the last second. I’m sorry because I’ve now realized that I have absolutely no shame for my skillful yet random selection of groceries at midnight on a Thursday night. I’m sorry that I’m not ashamed. I’m just really hungry.
Oh and if you’ve actually been paying attention and read this entire boring short story… Yes, I’ve somehow fucked up and forgot the cheese. I’m so screwed.