Adventures in grocery shopping

Today was crazy busy with meetings up at the school, taking Elijah to pre-school, going BACK to the grocery store... yesterday I went to the grocery store to "pick up a few things" Translated: I did not have a long list, and I did not take much money with me. We only use cash here - which we get from our mission bookkeeper. Identity theft is HORRIBLE here and credit card machines are unreliable - you can never tell if they don't work because 1) the power is out, 2) they really don't work, or 3) the cashier is storing your number for his future use. :) Anyways, we only use cash, which is normally fine...

But yesterday I went to the store and noticed they were running low on stock. We are dependent on boat shipments here for everything and they can be sporadic, so when I wandered down the diaper aisle and it was bare (think the snack aisle on Super Bowl Sunday) I grabbed the last huge pack of diapers in Caleb's size (not a single diaper available in Ezra's size). The same for toilet paper, raisins (a staple in our house!) and oatmeal... anyways, when I got up to the register, I quickly ran $50 over what I had in my wallet.

There was not a thing I could do. No credit card to whip out; no check to write. And, thanks to the wonders (or lack thereof) of modern technology here, the cashier could not just "take off" the extra items. She had to cancel the whole transaction (which was finished by that point), take all my groceries out of the cart, out of their bags, and re-ring everything, leaving half the stuff behind. I was so embarrassed. I learned my lesson... even if I am only going to the grocery store just for a pineapple, bring at least $100. :)

So today I went back and got all the "essentials" that I had left behind yesterday - which included most of our food for the week. I had gone home with the diapers and toilet paper yesterday and left our food at the store. Good thing, too, because they got a shipment last night and the diaper aisle was still empty this afternoon, even though the instant ramen noodle aisle was overflowing with little yellow packets of MSG. :)

So my blog next week will be about "What are we going to do when the diapers run out?"