Distracted Shopping

I was putting away groceries late at night last week when I noticed that I had a lot of eggs. Eleven dozen.

Eleven. Dozen.

132 eggs. And there were still a few in the fridge.

We go through eggs like crazy (the boys will both eat them and they’re inexpensive protein), but that is … that is many, many eggs.

How does one load up the cart with eleven dozen eggs without noticing, I hear you asking, and this is a good question. I didn’t load up my own cart. I’ve been using the Walmart app and doing pick-up. It’s fantastic. You order in the app and pay for it, and they load it right into your car. It’s not perfect. They use too many plastic bags. Way too many. But it is saving my life right now.

It’s gotten popular at the store where I pick up, and I need a slot immediately after work, so I have to reserve it a couple of days in advance. The only way you can truly reserve a slot is to have a completed order in there. But they’ll let you make changes until 1:45 AM the day you are picking up, so I have a system. I’m wily like that. I add things to my cart as I know I need them, and when I have at least $30 worth (the minimum order), I place the order and reserve my slot. The night before I’m picking up, I add to the order. (That part is always a lot more than $30. My children are as a plague of locusts.)

The way the app works is that if you try to add something that’s in your cart, you can see that it’s already in your cart. So you can increase the number needed if you want to, or you can say, “Oh! I already have mayonnaise in there and I don’t need more. Cool cool cool.” The app doesn’t tell you what is in the order you already placed. Why would it? No one would need to know what was in the order they already placed unless they were gaming the system. Right? So I check my previous order to avoid duplicate items.

Except when I don’t.

This week I fear I may have done three separate orders, because eleven dozen eggs is a lot, unless you are feeding a team of sumo wrestlers just before a big match.

As I stood in the kitchen looking at 132 eggs piled on my stovetop, I began to remember little snippets from earlier in the day that hadn’t made sense. “Do you want everything in the back,” asked the nice lady who usually loads my stuff in the car, “even all the eggs?” All the eggs? Awfully judge-y there, friend. I have two growing boys, I’ll have you know. I have to feed them something. I know not everyone needs four dozen eggs, but yeesh. I don’t need the commentary.

Ha.

Later, as the boys were schlepping the stuff from the back of my car to the kitchen, Levi said, “Mom, did you really get three gallons of milk?” And I thought, well, no, I don’t remember ordering three gallons of milk, but whatever. We’ll drink it eventually. (Elias doesn’t like milk. If he did, three gallons would disappear in no time flat, believe me.)

There was not a glitch in the matrix, my people. Three gallons of milk. Eleven dozen eggs. In real life.

After all the groceries were inside, it was time for bed and there was yelling about toothbrushing and Elias hadn’t done his homework and then everyone was in bed and I was so relieved that I sat down for just a minute and accidentally finished a book, which is how it happened that I wasn’t putting anything away until after eleven when I discovered the egg surplus.

I thought it was hilarious. We’ll eat them eventually, as I said about the milk, and it’s not like they were ruinously expensive, and my life feels a little farcical a lot of the time anyway, so what’s eleven dozen eggs? Happily, we have an extra fridge in the garage for overflow.

And then I discovered the bananas. So many bananas.

Shortly after that, I remembered that I had ordered everything I need to make my chili recipe. It makes 48 cups, so it’s a bunch of beans and tomatoes. A BUNCH.

And I started to wonder what my friend, who loads my groceries into my car most Thursday afternoons, was thinking as she lifted all this onto a cart. Eleven dozen eggs. Allllllll the bananas. Around twenty cans of beans and tomatoes. So many granola bars.

I was laughing so hard I had to sit down. I had just gotten my breathing under control again when I discovered the bell peppers I had ordered. All fourteen.

I don’t seem to have the ricotta cheese I need to make lasagna. I was sure I had ordered it, but at this point I don’t think I can accuse anyone else of having forgotten anything. Maybe ever again.