Being Prepared

I hear tell of this thing called "stock piling". You know, where you keep like three gallons of peanut butter on hand, or 60 rolls of toilet paper. It may not even be quantities as large as that. It may be just keeping a tube of extra toothpaste on hand.



I don't do this. For one, it never really occured to me. Secondly, why buy two of something when I only need one? This my friends, is the kind of thinking that 1.) Leaves you in a position to run out of something you HAVE to have, and 2.) Leaves you in a position to have to run out to the grocery store at 9 pm on a Sunday night.



By the end of the week at my house, the pickings are getting a little slim. We are low on milk and just about everything else. I usually grocery shop on Sunday 'cuz I like to clip coupons before I go shopping. Digressing, digressing...sorry. So I get up Sunday morning and stomp into the kitchen when the most horrible catastrophy occured. Devastation was imminent. Lives were about to be in danger. I was out of coffee. Completely out. Not one little ground of coffee to be had. After I regained consicousness, I tried to decide what to do. Keri and Melissa were both still asleep and I hadn't had a shower yet. Leaving the house in that condition was not optional.



I used my newly acquired college education to formulate a plan. So I made hot tea instead. Is has caffeine in it, right? Maybe so, but it definitely does not give the same results as my coffee does. (Nor does it taste as good in my opinion) Of course a caffeine headache soon reared it's ugly head to plague me throughout the day.



Example number two of my refusal to keep extras on hand: Friday we were almost out of jelly. Everyone got a really skimpy serving of jelly on their PB & J.



My sister's birthday was yesterday. She got some money for her B-day and wanted to know if I wanted to go shopping with her. Like I am going to turn down a shopping trip. By the time we got home it was about 7pm. After I made dinner and we ate, it was getting even later. I realized that I STILL had not been to Wal-Mart and we had no bread, milk, jelly, muffins, almost out of sugar, no snacks for lunches, coffee or anything really.



I didn't want to go ALL the way to Wal-Mart so I opted to run into the local grocery store for a few things just to get us through. It was all I could do to bring myself to shop in that store. I almost ran out of there screaming in terror. The prices were OUTRAGEOUS! I don't support Wal-Mart coming into small towns and running all the small businesses out. Truly I don't. BUT....What's a girl supposed to do? I NEED to shop at Wal-Mart. I can't bring myself to pay 4 bucks for a box of cereal that I can get at Wal-Mart for 2.50. I can't bring myself to pay 80 cents for a can of soup that I can get for 60 cents at Wal-Mart. I only bought what I HAD to have to get through the day.

Having said all that, if I had a few extras on hand of some of the basic items, I would not have been forced to spend my hard earned money at that money sucking establishment disguised as a grocery store. Who is to blame here? Me. Me, me, me. I think I have decided that I am going to buy at LEAST one extra of anything won't go bad. A woman with no coffee on Sunday morning is a dangerous thing. It should never be attempted. Really.