Costco Kid?
I have been a little too serious recently in my blog posts, so I am writing another "Fluffy Friday" piece.
I hate shopping. When I was a bachelor, not married until 43 years old, I shopped about once a month. I would get up real early on a Saturday morning and head to the grocery store Redner's. Like a mole, my goal would be to get back home before the light.
Even though I could eat two meals a day at school, breakfast and lunch, I still needed food at night and over the weekends, plus other stuff. Ironically, I had a fetish for buying furniture polish but I never dusted. By the time I moved out of the townhouse into our married home, I had amassed 15 or so cans of Pledge. In cleaning out the townhouse, and its years of dust (literally), I used almost every can. So, it all came out even in the end. I think the dust reminded me of a serene snowfall.
With grocery shopping, if I waited until later, I inevitably got stuck behind a leisurely cart pusher and a gaggle of screaming and whining babies/kids. And, that stressed me out. Lina, my wife, I call "Costco Queen." She is in her shopping mojo when she gets to their warehouse. She knows what she wants, where to find it, and I am sure she does it faster and more efficiently than 99% of humanity could. No wasted motion of wide swings with the cart. Constantly thinking and monitoring faster, quicker, cheaper. Bionic shopper (she has another division, "Air Lina", where she typically cruises at 8o in her Passat on the freeways and interstates. She one time went from Princeton to Boston in 3.5 hours, averaging 80 or so mph).
You would think since she is the "female" gatherer par excellence, that I would be the hunter. In addition to intensely disliking shopping, I really have strong negatives with guns and killing. I prefer to delegate others to those things and tasks (i.e. killing) . With the ground hog menace in the garden the last few summers, my neighbor with a 22 is more than glad to pull the trigger. A Hit Man.
I do enjoy hunting for new free apps for my I-Phone. Does that count? Probably not.
In my House-husband role, I am doing all things domestic this year. Cooking, cleaning, bill paying, and etc., I am your man. I have been holding out on Costco though. Every time I have gone there with Lina in the past, it is as busy as Hershey Park in the summer. But, since we needed some more fruit and vegetables, I set my face like flint and went to Costco.
I like the Costco quality and economy balance. K-Mart, Wal-Mart (and any other store with Mart in its name) might be priced well but sell to the lower-end of quality. Other places, such as Williams-Sonoma (or any other store with a hyphen in its name like a law firm or a married feminist) have quality goods but at a high price. Costco, the Platonic Ideal of excellence with Aristotelian Pragmatism of affordability. That is what Ancient Greece needed, a good Costco. There are only a few things I don't like from there: Jar Peanuts, Coffee, Sushi. That is it. Costco does a great job of finding great products and bringing them to market. But, I still hate shopping.
So, as I entered the Costco with fear and trembling, making sure that I had my Costco card like an ID to a secret shopping paradise ready to flash, I decided to act like I knew what the hell I was doing. Fake it till you make it. "OK, great, got by the security checkpoint, no sweat." I decided to methodically go in and out of every aisle in the store so I could get a lay of the land and get stuff that I needed because I had no idea where they were stacked. I also counted it as my aerobic workout for the day. In the store were only other Senior Citizens like me. Although slow in pace, the older crowd was low in number.
I found everything we needed: Got it! Food on left, hard goods on right, clothes, music, books, DVD's, and other assorted stuff in the middle. It was like an adult Easter Egg Hunt. I was having a reasonably satisfying shopping experience but then began to think, "What if my card expired?" I am not sure I have even used it before. I remembered that Lina said that she had done the renewal but I wasn't sure if it applied to me. The picture on the card of me must have been 15 years ago (I had gotten it in my singlehood but never used it).
Fears of getting in the cashier line kicked in. "Sir, your card is expired." I also wondered if I flashed the Costco card first and then ran my American Express through next. I coolly peered around to see if I could see what other shoppers were doing. At least I knew enough to not hand the cashier my Discover Card...faux pas (means false step) for certain. The place would have screeched to a halt.
All went fine in line. Looking over my quarry, I had amassed enough goods for quite some time (and goods come from God, the giver of all good things). When Lina reviewed what I had purchased later, she noted that I had found things that she would have missed (like the organic milk) because she has her established locations determined of what to buy where. Since I had no clue of where things were, I saw the shopping experience with fresh eyes.
Walking out of the store, I knowingly handed the gate checker my receipt for her to make sure that the purchases were all accounted for. Like a gunslinger of old who had a name for his exploits like Cool Hand Luke, you can call me the Costco Kid. I whistled to my car.
I hate shopping. When I was a bachelor, not married until 43 years old, I shopped about once a month. I would get up real early on a Saturday morning and head to the grocery store Redner's. Like a mole, my goal would be to get back home before the light.
Even though I could eat two meals a day at school, breakfast and lunch, I still needed food at night and over the weekends, plus other stuff. Ironically, I had a fetish for buying furniture polish but I never dusted. By the time I moved out of the townhouse into our married home, I had amassed 15 or so cans of Pledge. In cleaning out the townhouse, and its years of dust (literally), I used almost every can. So, it all came out even in the end. I think the dust reminded me of a serene snowfall.
With grocery shopping, if I waited until later, I inevitably got stuck behind a leisurely cart pusher and a gaggle of screaming and whining babies/kids. And, that stressed me out. Lina, my wife, I call "Costco Queen." She is in her shopping mojo when she gets to their warehouse. She knows what she wants, where to find it, and I am sure she does it faster and more efficiently than 99% of humanity could. No wasted motion of wide swings with the cart. Constantly thinking and monitoring faster, quicker, cheaper. Bionic shopper (she has another division, "Air Lina", where she typically cruises at 8o in her Passat on the freeways and interstates. She one time went from Princeton to Boston in 3.5 hours, averaging 80 or so mph).
You would think since she is the "female" gatherer par excellence, that I would be the hunter. In addition to intensely disliking shopping, I really have strong negatives with guns and killing. I prefer to delegate others to those things and tasks (i.e. killing) . With the ground hog menace in the garden the last few summers, my neighbor with a 22 is more than glad to pull the trigger. A Hit Man.
I do enjoy hunting for new free apps for my I-Phone. Does that count? Probably not.
In my House-husband role, I am doing all things domestic this year. Cooking, cleaning, bill paying, and etc., I am your man. I have been holding out on Costco though. Every time I have gone there with Lina in the past, it is as busy as Hershey Park in the summer. But, since we needed some more fruit and vegetables, I set my face like flint and went to Costco.
I like the Costco quality and economy balance. K-Mart, Wal-Mart (and any other store with Mart in its name) might be priced well but sell to the lower-end of quality. Other places, such as Williams-Sonoma (or any other store with a hyphen in its name like a law firm or a married feminist) have quality goods but at a high price. Costco, the Platonic Ideal of excellence with Aristotelian Pragmatism of affordability. That is what Ancient Greece needed, a good Costco. There are only a few things I don't like from there: Jar Peanuts, Coffee, Sushi. That is it. Costco does a great job of finding great products and bringing them to market. But, I still hate shopping.
So, as I entered the Costco with fear and trembling, making sure that I had my Costco card like an ID to a secret shopping paradise ready to flash, I decided to act like I knew what the hell I was doing. Fake it till you make it. "OK, great, got by the security checkpoint, no sweat." I decided to methodically go in and out of every aisle in the store so I could get a lay of the land and get stuff that I needed because I had no idea where they were stacked. I also counted it as my aerobic workout for the day. In the store were only other Senior Citizens like me. Although slow in pace, the older crowd was low in number.
I found everything we needed: Got it! Food on left, hard goods on right, clothes, music, books, DVD's, and other assorted stuff in the middle. It was like an adult Easter Egg Hunt. I was having a reasonably satisfying shopping experience but then began to think, "What if my card expired?" I am not sure I have even used it before. I remembered that Lina said that she had done the renewal but I wasn't sure if it applied to me. The picture on the card of me must have been 15 years ago (I had gotten it in my singlehood but never used it).
Fears of getting in the cashier line kicked in. "Sir, your card is expired." I also wondered if I flashed the Costco card first and then ran my American Express through next. I coolly peered around to see if I could see what other shoppers were doing. At least I knew enough to not hand the cashier my Discover Card...faux pas (means false step) for certain. The place would have screeched to a halt.
All went fine in line. Looking over my quarry, I had amassed enough goods for quite some time (and goods come from God, the giver of all good things). When Lina reviewed what I had purchased later, she noted that I had found things that she would have missed (like the organic milk) because she has her established locations determined of what to buy where. Since I had no clue of where things were, I saw the shopping experience with fresh eyes.
Walking out of the store, I knowingly handed the gate checker my receipt for her to make sure that the purchases were all accounted for. Like a gunslinger of old who had a name for his exploits like Cool Hand Luke, you can call me the Costco Kid. I whistled to my car.
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