A Shopping Breakdown

Today I decided to go bike hunting--I went to four different stores, three of which had no used bikes, one of which had no used bikes under 700 euros.  Require new plan immediately, preferably one that results in a bike, pronto.  I'm borrowing my roommate's extra one at the moment, which is giant and purple and roars like a dragon when the headlamp is turned on, but I'd prefer to have my own.  I'm terrified of this one getting stolen on my watch.  Although granted, if it did get stolen, I could theoretically just sit on a street corner in the dark until I heard the dragon roar, and then pounce on whomever was riding it.  And scream "full movie experience!" just so they'd have something to go on next time they watched a movie involving dragons.

Yesterday I got hit on by a random Sri Lankan guy in the supermarket of all places. Was highly entertained.  Was happy to talk to somebody about something other than why I should get off the grass.  

I was super productive yesterday and found my way over to campus, where I hooked myself up with my student ID card, email account, and all that jazz.  The fun thing about the ID card was that you have to take your own pictures for it using their handy dandy machines, which turn out horrendous because they're bad cameras, and I'm me and can't take a decent picture to save my life.  So I came out looking like a whitewashed zombie with mismatching eyebrows.  Luckily there's an "automatic improvement" button, which I hit, only to discover that all "automatic improvement" does is the darken the picture enough to make you look like a zombie in mood lighting, but does nothing for the eyebrows.  Then I had to attempt to explain to the poor guy at the desk why my name is spelled one way on my application, one way on my Portuguese ID card, and one way on my American driver's license, which totally didn't confuse him at all.  Ding ding ding, was that the sarcasm bell?

According to couchsurfing.org, there was a meetup in Göttingen at a local bar.  Being the highly introverted hermit crab that I am, I had to psych myself up for about two hours before hand, only to get there and find no one.  Or, if they were there, they didn't connect my awkward loops around the bar staring at people with someone looking for the couchsurfing group.  So I went food shopping instead.

A note on food shopping:  I am the queen of weird eating, this we know.  When people ask me what I eat, I generally say "everything," because no matter what the situation, I will always find something I can eat...I just don't always eat it the way it's meant to be enjoyed.  But I've gotten older, and my tastebuds have started dying, so I really am way, way better about food than I used to be.  However, this doesn't stop food shopping from turning into weird, aimless, rambling through the supermarket, avoiding some aisles like they'll give me AIDS, and spending obscene amounts of time in others.  Broken down, my food shopping habits look like this:

Step 1:  Wander into vegetable aisle.  Stop and do mental evaluation of whether I'm feeling extravagant, ambitious, or have just watched Ratatouille.  If the answer to any of these is yes, buy onions, broccoli, spinach, potatoes, and carrots.  Know it will take me a year to eat all of them.  If the answer is "no," remind myself that one day my body will stop doing what I want it to, and I will require vegetables to fit into my pants. Wonder if I should start getting in the habit now.  Decide I still have decades.  Move on.

Step 2:  Walk past the bags of lettuce.  Locate caesar dressing, be really excited, pick out a bag of lettuce, but only if it's only dark leaves.  Realize caesar dressing in hand is actually yogurt dressing.  Hate everything.  Put salad and gross dressing back.  Move on.

Step 3:  Find self in fruit aisle.  Buy berries and/or oranges.  If these are not available, mentally tell the fruit aisle to suck it, you stupid non-berry-carrying fruit aisle.  Feel superior to fruit aisle.  Move on.

Step 4:  Bread aisle.  Stare at carbs.  Love carbs.  Pretty carbs.  Buy white bread. Drool a little.  Move on.

Step 5:  Get lost in the alcohol aisle.  Become distracted by all the attractive bottles. Feel the pull of advertising and imagine myself being a wine connoisseur and boring people to death with talk about oak barrels.  Remember I hate wine.  Wish Jean were here to mix me cocktails.  Decide my personal happiness requires Jean and a bottle of Everclear.  Have neither.  Move on.  

Step 6:  Find self in the organic aisle.  Stick chin out in protest.  Decide to be indignant.  Look at prices, and be indignant about spending three times as much on things that go in my stomach.  Briefly think about healthy living.  Remember indignantly that I have money-saving principles.  Remember indignantly that I have money-spending priorities.  Remember indignantly that I require a certain amount of MSG in my food to taste it.  

Step 7:  Wander through the frozen foods aisle.  Buy either fish sticks, or dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets.  Briefly consider growing up.  Decide against it.  Move on.  

Step 7:  Milk products aisle.  Stop, freeze, stare in wonder at the plethora of delicious things I could possibly eat.  Thank the gods my brief affair with lactose intolerance was purely a result of my anxiety.  Walk slowly along the wall, examining every single product.  Turn around, and examine every single product in reverse.  Go back and stand in the middle of the wall.  Look at everything from far away.  Get close.  Think. Back up.  Think.  Repeat.  Do another lap to clear brain.  Consider carefully.   Buy the same products I always do.  Variety may be the spice of life, but nutmeg is a hallucinogen in large quantities.  

Step 8:  Get to check out line.  Spend less than twenty euros for the week.  Feel smug.  

Step 9:  Arrive home.  Eat yogurt to celebrate successful shopping trip.

And that, my friends, is how food shopping works when you live in my brain.  Yay!

Adios!