Crazy Eights

I went shopping at the Jewel Food Store on Saturday without Mark. If I have to go shopping, it's best I go without Mark. It's much easier without him. Mark was feeling under the weather so he wrote up a list for me and sent me on my way. There are a few reasons why I prefer no Mark on the grocery trip. First of all, I don't have to follow him all over the damn store as he zips back and forth on one of those electric shopping carts. Also, with a list I know exactly what's expected. When Mark shops, he does not bring a list. "I know what I need." is what he tells me, and then we graze through the store buying this and that, crap and shit we don't need. He fills up both the electric shopping cart and the cart that I push behind him. The only thing that makes it tolerable at all is the liquor lady at the far end of the store. She hands out sample shots of all kinds of alcohol and isn't afraid to give me multiple shots. This week it was Jose Cuervo. Ole!

So I was shopping on my own this week. It was horrible. Jewel had a number of sales going on and Mark wanted me to take advantage of them. I don't think he has bought anything at the Jewel in three years that wasn't on sale. The list he gave me was quite complicated and buying the sale items all required some math skills. There was the 'Crazy Eights' sale, where you had to buy eight things to get all of them for eighty eight cents. Only multiples of eight, mix or match. So I had to keep count of what I was buying. One bag of salad, one box of pasta, five bottles of lemonade, and on and on. As long as it was eight, or sixteen, or twenty four, those things would be only eighty eight cents. Ah, but right next to the crazy eight products were the 'Buy One, Get One Free' stuff. They looked exactly like the crazy eight products, but were a different size. So I had to figure which sale saved the most money. Two cents here, five cents there, Mark would go crazy if I screwed up the crazy eights sale. I spent two hours in that store trying to get it right. I did make two trips over to the liquor lady which helped, but I was over it. I made sure I had my multiples of eight right and checked out. When I got home Mark discovered that the cashier had charged me twice for a bag of shrimp. Yes, he went nuts and I had to drive back over there and get his money back. But hey, I got the whole crazy eights thing perfect. Although, I don't know what we're going to do with eight bottles of lemonade. I suppose I could mix it with my vodka.