We are working on adapting to our new situation of not leaving Mom alone for very long periods. Actually since her hospital escapade last week we are afraid to leave her alone at all until she shows that she has recovered a bit more than she has thus far. It meant I had to make our WalMart run by myself.
Now that was a weird experience. Oh, I did it while Chris was living with her Mom and caring for her, but then I could take the bachelor approach – go when I needed something in particular, get it, and leave. The typical hunter approach to grocery shopping. It's a bit more difficult when you are given "The List." Now following a list sounds easy, doesn't it? And it should be. Find the item, into the basket, check it off, move on to the next one. That would work fine if the list was written in the order that you come across the items on the shelves. Start with milk, move to breakfast foods, then cokes and chips, then paper goods. Hey, I've been more than a few times with Chris. I have the order down. We have done some of our best talking and planning while grocery shopping. You can't yell at each other in public, and most people are so focused on what they are doing that you can slide right past them if you just keep talking. Or you can choose to invade their world and say hello, which often leads to some great conversation.
Back to my trip yesterday. My approach was a combination of tactics. I read through the list carefully so things would be in my mind as I passed them. Then, when I put something in the basket, I scratched it off the list. It was working quite well until I remembered that Chris had also given me her coupon envelope. It only had a few coupons in it, so I assumed that meant I was supposed to use them. About midway through the tour I checked for coupons. And I discovered that I did indeed have the item, but for the coupons to work I had to have three of them, or two of them. And the thing on one of the coupons was not on the actual list. Ah, what a conundrum. Do I get it on the basis of coupon presence? Or should I pass until it makes an appearance with the rest of the required goodies? Not willing to take a chance of incurring the wrath of the spurned user of the goods, I chose to match up all the coupons. Two bags of Cheetos. Two muffin mixes. Three packages of bake-able cookies. All good choices, I guess. They will certainly be used in the near future. The only thing I had a problem finding was the birdseed. Chris really likes to put out some of that generic seed for wild birds. Most of it ends up in the gut of black birds, but sometimes we get to see some very pretty oddities. We even saw parakeets one time. I thought it might be in the pet food section, but all that was there was some specific stuff for named birds – parakeets or parrots or finches or love birds. Very expensive stuff. I ended up in the garden section for the wild bird stuff. Much less expensive, but it sure looked like the same stuff. Gotta be a lesson there somewhere. Maybe something about God seeing that the birds of the air get enough food …
Matthew 6:26-27 says, "Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they? Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life?"
Father, feel free to direct your little birds to our feeder if that will make it easier to fulfill your promise to them. Even the black birds. Amen.
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