Day 130: A Flurry of Shopping

Can you believe that I didn’t make my first pur­chase of the day until 7:46 pm and yet man­aged to spend a grand total of $239.70 in less than 1–1/2 hours in a total of 6 dif­fer­ent trans­ac­tions?  That’s got to be some kind of record for me — par­tic­u­larly astond­ing since I usu­ally avoid doing much after 6 pm.

The Son didn’t have a cello les­son tonight because his teacher’s cello fell vic­tim to our geo­graph­i­cal location’s noto­ri­ous fluc­tu­a­tions in humid­ity.  We’ve per­son­ally suf­fered two sep­a­rate instances of humidity-caused cello melt­downs.  I felt ter­ri­ble for the teacher because his cello is his baby, his liveli­hood, and a very valu­able thing of beauty.  The Son was not dev­asted to have to wait another week before return­ing to reg­u­larly sched­uled Wednes­day after­noon cross-town marathon of madness.

Because there was no cello les­son, we had the leisure of loung­ing about the house for an extra hour and a half before head­ing out for orches­tra rehearsal.  After pay­ing our dues at orches­tra (The Son with his cello, me in the music library cat­a­loging 27 years of sheet music), we planned quick stops at Costco and Barnes & Noble.  The best laid plans .…

We started off with a $2.74 feast of cheese pizza and a soda for The Son.  How could you not love a place that will leave a teenage boy sati­ated for a measly $2.74?

While he feasted, I shopped.  The first thing I found was a copy of The Audac­ity of Hope by Barack Obama for $8.69.  I’ve been want­ing a copy of this book for a good 9 months now but have been too cheap to pay hard-cover price and too for­get­ful to add my name to the wait­ing list at the local library.  The amaz­ing thing was that this sin­gle copy of the book caught my eye as I quickly scanned the book aisle.  I couldn’t find the stack from which that copy had come — but then, in all hon­estly, I didn’t look that hard.  I took it as a sign from above, stuck the book in my cart, and quickly moved on to the items on my shop­ping list.

That list included Gold­fish crack­ers ($6.49), a box of Nancy’s petit quiche ($12.99), a bag of sugar snap peas ($5.79), a case of 100% juice Capri Sun juice boxes ($8.49), a large pack­age of Frigo string cheese ($8.79), a box of kitchen trash bags ($12.99), a box of trash lin­ers ($8.99), and a box of Swif­fer dusters ($11.99).  Actu­ally, only the juice, the gold­fish, and the juice were on my list.  The rest of the items were “along the way” pur­chases — I saw them along my shop­ping route

My final, and most pon­dered pur­chase, was a Belkin iPod Car Kit.  It was the last pack­age of the older style FM trans­mit­ters and acces­sory pack­ages and it was dras­ti­cally marked down to $44.97.  I still haven’t opened the DLO iPod FM trans­mit­ter thingy I picked up last week at Mar­shalls so I’ll return that one and keep the Belkin.  The Belkin’s $5.00 more but it has two huge advan­tages.  One, it comes com­plete with some great acces­sories like both a wall and a USB charger.  The Daugh­ter and I both have USB charg­ers but I don’t have a wall charger and that has proven to be a P in the A more than once.  Sec­ond, the trans­mit­ter itself has a nice long flex­i­ble goose­neck that will be much more con­ve­nient to use in The Husband’s lit­tle Sub­aru than the more awk­ward, rigid, extend­able DLO transmitter.

The Swif­fer dusters aren’t some­thing I’d nor­mally buy but while my mom was here last week, she insisted on pick­ing up a pack of these dusters includ­ing the lit­tle plas­tic “wand” because she’s quite enam­ored with the prod­uct.  I don’t go out of my way to dust on a reg­u­lar basis (though I’m sure I’d be doing us all a favor if I did) and the idea of fill­ing the land­fills with dis­pos­able dust­ing rags offends me.  But, after the fur­nace fil­ter sit­u­a­tion, I fig­ured I might as well give them a try.  After all, my mom wouldn’t steer me wrong, would she?

All in all, I man­aged to spend $138.92 in Costco (not includ­ing The Son’s feast).

Before leav­ing the Costco park­ing lot, how­ever, we had a lit­tle more money to spend.  The Tank’s tank was just below half so it seemed pru­dent to go ahead and fill up.  I pumped 12.295 gal­lons at $2.719 per gal­lon for a total expe­d­i­ture of $33.43.  The odome­ter read 118,646.

Our next stop was Barnes & Noble but we left empty-handed because they didn’t have sin­gle copies of the books The Son wanted.  He was given a copy of His Majesty’s Dragon by Naomi Novik for Christ­mas and he wanted the next book or two in the series.  But appar­ently B&N, in their ulti­mate wis­dom, only car­ried in pack­aged as a set and not as indi­vid­ual books.

While The Son shopped at B&N, I went next door to Wild Oats in hope of find­ing a 1/2 gal­lon car­ton of Hori­zon choco­late milk.  My search was a fruit­less as The Son’s.  This par­tic­u­lar Wild Oats seems to only carry that prod­uct in quarts and I’m not will­ing to buy half of the amount I need at 2/3’s the price.  I didn’t leave the store empty-handed though.  I was starved and I lucked out at the sushi counter and found a veggi combo tray ($5.95).  I really wanted an Odwalla too but they weren’t on sale so I toughed it out and went drin­k­less.  I bought a nearly 3# pack­age of lean ground beef ($12.92) for tomor­row night’s din­ner and a pack­age of Apple­gate organic sliced turkey ($5.99).

After that we struck out across the street to Bor­ders.  They had what The Son was look­ing for and he bought Black Pow­der War and Empire of Ivory ($16.75).  Well, okay, I bought them but this pur­chase rep­re­sents the com­ple­tion of our exchange for his Gap gift card (a Christ­mas gift that I agreed to buy from him because he has no inter­est in clothes).

Our final stop in this marathon flurry of shop­ping expe­ri­ences was Tar­get.  Tar­get, bless it’s giant cor­po­rate heart, car­ried our cov­eted Hori­zon organic choco­late milk in 1/2 gal­lon car­tons.  I pur­chased two ($3.99/ea).  I also picked up a box of Tide Free while I was there since I’m about halfway through my last stock­piled box.

Whew.  What a frenzy that was.  Look­ing back, I think that tonight def­i­nitely qual­i­fied as a SWI (Shop­ping While Impaired) expe­ri­ence.  Not only am I feel­ing par­tic­u­larly hypo-thyroid and mildly Fibro tonight, but I was absolutely starved dur­ing all of it.

Related posts:

1. Day 179: Gas, Gifts, & More
2. Day 213: Woot, Lavage, Gas, Book, Star­bucks, and Bad News
3. $325.52
4. Day 87: Gas, Gro­ceries, and Gifts
5. Day 12