On the lighter side

I'm having a great time grocery shopping here in New England. Call me crazy but I've always liked grocery shopping. Out of the common add-ons to the stay at home mom job, grocery shopping is the one I don't mind doing at all. Once I get to know the stores, where I can find my staples, where I can find my deals, where I can find new and unique items, I am happy as a clam to go grocery shopping.

I thought it couldn't get much better until I saw that the big name supermarkets here all have self checkout. I don't think I've ever said this aloud but my secret dream growing up was to be a grocery checkout person. Especially back in the day before UPC scanners, I had this "thing" for the clickety clack of the register buttons. Whenever we'd go on MARATHON trips to Best or Bell (remember those showroom stores -- my parents would spend what seemed like hours there getting a vacuum cleaner or a new crystal bowl and it seemed even longer for our item to come careening down the conveyer belt), I'd just hang out in the typewriter section and pretend to check out groceries. Mind you, a lot of times the typewriters weren't even plugged in but all the better because those felt and sounded more like a grocery checkout register to me. Tack on the added expectation from my parents to always hold a white collar job, including high school summers, the grocery checkout clerk dream was even more elusive.

I was as excited to do self checkout as the kids so that I can scan my own items, although they always fight over who gets to scan next. But now there is no clickety clack, just the --beep-- of the scanner and the quiet touchscreen. I only go if I have a small number of items because I inevitably upset the system by not bagging at the right time. 

But now I believe we have experienced the ultimate in self checkout: Stop & Shop's EasyShop. I go around with a handheld scanner, a la bridal registry, and scan as I go. For produce, we use a special scale that will print out a scannable sticker. I bag as I go with 3-4 ready to go reusable bags open in my cart (the best bags are double paper w/ handles -- these puppies have lasted me for three months), testing my aforementioned bagging skills. I think it is the fastest way for me to shop when I have a big load. I solo tested the system while the kids were at VBS and then I took them for the first time last week with the self-scanning system. Granted with the kids, things took more than twice as long, especially because it was their first time. But boy will this keep them more than interested and occupied during grocery trips. They can learn a thing or two, like what the produce #'s mean, how to read money amounts (I make Tobey repeat the price back to me) and bagging items into the right bag (produce, meats, dry goods). 

The only downside to my grocery world right now is how hard it has been to get to an Asian market (drive into the city/almost or halfway around the highway). It's killing me to pay $3.79 for a small bottle of oyster sauce or $1.99 for a block of tofu. So I've heard the 99 Ranch equivalent here is Super 88 and my goal is to get to Super 88 sometime this week. I will stock up on sauce and lots of frozen convenient Chinese goodies that were a part of my cooking repertoire back in CA. And then my world will be complete.

Recent "down"

I mentioned the ups and downs of us having moved here. I think I'm currently navigating through a "down". We're amidst a negotiation (well, a lop-sided one, we are clearly not bidding high enough for the seller so it's almost moot) on a house in Concord. Since we had always been targeting Lexington as "our town", I am still getting used to our recent decision to expand our search to Concord. It has made be reevaluate aspects of picking a place to live that I didn't expect to, like ethnic diversity and proximity to errand shopping. I think I have come to a point for indecision for the two towns -- they both have different pros and cons that if we find a house in one town, I might at first feel disappointed that we didn't live in the other, but then I'll remember the "cons" and then be okay with living in the first. And vice versa. Maybe this is a good place to be because in my mind we can't lose. But there's also a weird feeling of we can't win either.

Through all of this is a fact that keeps hitting me square in the face: we have no friends. I make it sound much more pathetic than it is because we do have old friends around and have gotten together with some of them and for that I'm really grateful. It's just that without a routine and a permanent home base, there are no friends that I would see on a daily or even regular basis, like at school, a small group meeting, at the Y or at church. Especially for Concord, it's hard to imagine life there without knowing a single person who lives there. We know several people in Lexington and I figured if they live there, I could too. But Concord? I've only talked to a friend of a friend who just moved there last year. Otherwise, all other attempts to "hang out" in Concord have just left me wondering whether we'd fit in.

Maybe I really *need* blogging

Wow, I haven't been here since July 7? There have been many ups and downs and having just gone through a "down", maybe I need the outlet of blogging more than I think I do. Reading about the good times on our trip and anticipating being in our Newton corporate apartment makes me feel like that was ages ago. And yet it's a good reminder of how far we've gone and the promise of what's yet to come...