Sunday, April 28, 2013

What's in your cart?


We’ve all been there. 
You are at the store, a few unmentionables in your cart, when suddenly you run into someone you know in a casual or (worse yet) professional way. You cast a furtive glance down to the items in your basket and try covering them with your jumbo bag of chips bought just for the purpose of camoflage:  Tampons, a box of L’Oreal with a girl half my age on it, an E.P.T. (it’s for a friend), bleach for that  ahem-- facial hair, hemorrhoid cream, and other assorted ”feminine hygiene” doo-dads that I would do well not to mention. (I can only imagine the fate that awaits one purchasing adult incontinence products.)

Okay, so maybe one wouldn’t pick all of these sundries up in one fell swoop—especially not with that new chatty old dude they just hired at Walgreens as a checker.  But still, you know what I’m talking about.

One’s shopping cart tells many tales, and those checkers must know us very well, mustn’t they?  (Not to mention the Big Boxes in the sky which track all of our purchases.)  The checkers know if we’ve had a bout of the flu, are picky about our organic produce or let our kids gorge on pop-tarts.  They are the ones who know if we’re buying things on food stamps or purchasing yet another bottle of cheap wine or a box of Trojans.  (Note:  Do not buy those two things together.) 
I wonder if their tongues wag in the break-room or if there is some type of code, like doctors, which keep them from telling tales on the customers.
 

 
 
I recently wrote a shopping scene in my WIP which kindled a thought.

What’s in your hypothetical cart at the local Walgreens for Writers? If you were just popping in to pick up a short list of acoutrements necessary for the writerly life, what would those items be?  In my basket I’d have a few superlative, organically-grown adjectives; a really kick-ass thesaurus; a killer metaphor that everyone would, like, totally understand (without it being too obvious of course); a gynormous eraser the size of my head, and a “How to Land an Agent: touch-up kit”.  (It was a buy one get one kinda thing.)
Oh—and a cheap bottle of wine.

Would love to hear your grocery list of must-haves.  Go for it.  I won’t tell.

22 comments:

  1. Just shopping for ideas...
    And thankful I no longer need to buy certain items for my wife.

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    1. Hi Cap'n. Thanks for stopping by and your a champ for shopping for your wife!
      ~Just Jill

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  2. It's hard to add anything to such a complete list...hmmm...maybe two bottles of cheap wine and a doughnut cushion for my very own writer's hemorhhoids.

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    1. Dear Helen,
      Glazed or powdered?
      ~Just Jill

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    2. white icing with sprinkles....

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  3. I need to pick up a big carton of writing discipline and a bottle of Organize-Your-Life. I'm heading to the store now.

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    1. Ha! Thanks for playing along Rosi!
      ~Just Jill

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  4. HA! Yeah... it's a good thing I'm fairly shameless. My husband is our primary cook and shopper, so when I go, I don't even have a bunch of normal stuff to balance the embarrassing stuff. I tend to buy the girl stuff my teen is embarrassed to put on her dad's list, oddball things only I use (flavored coffee, tea) and liquor. Yeah, it's not pretty.

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    1. Question: Have you ever picked up a neutralizing item, merely to "fluff" up your purchases?
      Thanks for stopping by Hart!
      ~Just Jill

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  5. I'm always amused that the birth control in my favorite grocery store is located directly across from the diapers.

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    1. Ha! Do they keep the wine there too?
      ~Just Asking

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  6. It seems like they never carry Time at Walgreens.

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  7. Pens! Notebooks (never mind that I have about five hundred around the place in various stages of use or disuse, one nommed by a departed cat) reams of printing paper... And a small bottle of plum wine. You know - the type from Japan with the little green plums in them. They are perfect, nicely chilled, to celebrate finishing a chapter...

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    1. Exquisite dahling. If only Walgreens would carry such delicasies...
      ~Just Jill

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  8. Forget the wrinkle cream and skin bronzer... how about a product to make the skin a little thicker to help protect us from any painful reviews? Oh, and wine and chocolate, of course.

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  9. Ah yes. A skin thickener is a capital idea! How about an anti-rejection cream too?
    ~Just Jill

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  10. Time, definitely, and de-addler for tired brains! Great post!

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    1. I tried to buy two for one time the other day but the coupon was expired.
      ~Just Jill

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  11. I had a moment today where I needed to purchase lady items. Other half needed to go to B&Q (next door) I of course was finished long before him and had to spend half an hour wandering round B&Q with lady items in a see through plastic bag.

    Also bought one other item - a Pen. Can't go shopping without buying some form of stationery item.

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  12. That made me smile. I was in the super market once buying a box of tampax, a bottle of wine and a bar of Dairy Milk (the big kind, not those piddly little single bars.) I also managed to choose the checkout with the pimply teenage boy on!
    At the minute I'd pick up some privacy at the Walgreen for Writers. And maybe some sparkle. My prose is kind of flat of late.

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  13. Hi, visiting from the IWSG, I like shopping, though buying certain items make me wriggly, but they have to be bought ;)

    Rachna Chhabria
    Co-host IWSG
    Rachna's Scriptorium

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Please use your words and comment freely! We really should meet!