Grocery Shopping

Effective grocery shopping takes strategy and skill. Make a list. Stick to the perimeter. Don’t go in hungry. Don’t look the Produce man in the eyes. I relate people’s purchases and grocery selection with their personalities, perhaps more intensely than I should. A man buying ribs and beer says so many simple manly things while a girl buying wine and ice-cream lends one’s imagination to an explosive breakup with a straitlaced fella that had no tolerance for her enormous nail-polish collection. Bagels and kombucha? Go back up north.

I even consider my own personality type when I go grocery shopping. I buy a lot of produce. Responsible and orderly. If I buy meat I buy it fresh, not frozen. Articulate and strategic. I adore dairy products of all kinds; down to earth. And on rare occasions I'll buy a box of crackers or tortilla chips that may suggest I’m laid-back or easily amused. What I want to hide from other shoppers are my reckless and immature traits -my compulsion to buy myself a little treat every time I go to the store. Sometimes it’s a minor thing, a candy bar at the check out line; spontaneous and whimsical  but other days I buy an entire bag of peppermint patties and a bottle of chocolate milk with a cookie straw: enduring mental warefare. I stuff these items down underneath my progressivist avocados and blatanly southern bundles of collard greens, shuffling around my pragmatic canned goods.

Sometimes people have such an odd mixture of things in their carts. I write them off as possible scientist/inventors of the food world. Maybe you're a soccer mom on snack duty this week, an angsty teen buying cigarettes or possibly just a delightful member of society. I try to figure it all out by the contents of your grocery cart. And at the end of my grocery store outing I pile my items strategically on the conveyor belt so that offensive or immature items are never at the start or end of my food pile. I can’t have the cashier reach for a box of cookies right away nor can I have someone behind me eyeing my goods and finding no redeemable qualities, I mean, food stuffs. I hide my bag of dark chocolate kisses; Future Fatty of America underneath some grapes and a bag of Indian food that might lead one to conclude that I'm an intrepid explorer. Somehow this makes me feel better.

But surely no one is reading into what I buy at the grocery store.

Anyways, here I am with my three favorite fellas back during our one cold week of winter. They kindly let me be one of the guys...until I talk about stuff that falls into the same category with things I notice at the grocery store. Then they're quick to point out that we're different. I don't see what the big deal is.

Bug Spray

To my great delight, I'm doing a wedding out at Boone Hall in two weeks. I've done countless weddings at Boone Hall but this one is mine. The first Lux wedding at my beloved farm - where my past and present mush together and the people I worked for become the people I work with. It just makes me so happy. Earlier this week I went out there to take some measurements so of course I drove around the plantation until I found some Mexicans to hug. Gilberto's big white smile recognized me from ages away and we bounded towards each other and wondered why so much time passes between visits. We chatted a while and got caught up but one thing took over the conversation. Last week I chopped off 14 inches of hair (I'll take a picture in a second) and the Mexicans are not happy about my haircut. "Oh no Laurita! Your hair!" They loved my long dark locks. I told them it would grow back and they only shrugged and looked down at their hands.
Later I was recounting all the great things about the place and why I love it so much and then I remembered a blurb I wrote about it in college.

                                                                                  * * *

As a nineteen year old white gal I took a job on a local vegetable farm. Had I known at the time that the country was on the precipice of the farm to table, eat local epidemic I would have spent more time bragging about it so that I might get credit for starting the trend. Prior to working on the farm I worked in a bakery for four years. It was an extremely girlie, pink-walled cupcake bakery and I was so tired of sprinkles and cream filled love cakes with whipped giggles on top that I needed man's work. I needed to be outside.

I agreed to sell the farms produce in a make-shift market that consisted of a tent and a table on the side of a highway. This remains the most delightful job I’ve ever had. The farm was that of a true Southern plantation’s way back when. It is one of the few working plantation farms that still exists in the country and while thousands of tourist visit the plantation every year, few of them realize there's a large jovial Mexican family living in the trees behind the information stand.

This happy family runs the plantation and tends to any and all requirements and demands of caring for such a place. They are silly and delightful and deeply love anyone who loves their family. They adopted me right away, saying I looked like cousin so-and-so and loaded up a hot plate of pork and corn for me to eat for lunch. How they could eat enormous, hot meals outside in the middle of summer was a habit I never quite picked up.

Working on the farm had a number of perks. I could take home "ugly" produce that wouldn't sell, could snack on berries right off the vine, and was entirely doted upon as a result of being one of very few females on the farm. My girly appearance was an unexpected delight to men-folk that stopped to buy fresh gruel. My vegetable tent butted up to the southwest corner of a large clearing that was divvied into acres and planted with berries and squashes and melons. While it often appeared that I was the only person around for acres and acres, there were usually a few of my Mexican saviors tucked away in the tomato patch or just moments away from driving a new load of crops past my tent and down the dirt road to the cooler. Erik, the farm’s manager was particularly dutiful in making sure I was properly stocked, hydrated, and safe. If he noticed any man loitering for too long, he would hop out of his truck and pretend to sort potatoes, prompting the fella to go home. 

Sometimes fellas would come to the veggie stand just to chat. They might buy some cucumbers or blueberries and then they'd just stand there on the other side of the counter and talk to me while I rang up other customers or unloaded melons from plastic bins. The other customers especially hated this as my attention was torn politely between them and my hanger-on. People would glare at the fella and then back at me and stomp off in a huff. Part of what made this job so fun was talking to the customers. This was partially because I was otherwise alone in a field all day but also, the kinds of people who will pull over to buy fruit are usually folks with something to say. I hated to be so rude and I put that hate on the loitering fella. As time passed and Erik and I got used to my having a chatty Charlie under the tent with me, Erik loosened his standards for worry and would drive by slowly and raise his eyebrows at me, silently questioning if I needed him to play bouncer. I would usually smile and Erik’s eyebrows would drop and his whole face would soften and he would roll his eyes and speed by. 

As more time passed and Erik began to recognize my fleet of suitors, he began antagonizing me. He would ask me about my "boyfriends", point out their nerdy characteristics, and worst of all he would sometimes stand behind them and pretend to fight them or imitate their body-language and movements as they told me about the time they spent in grad school. Sometimes I could not hold it and I would laugh out loud during their boring story and a look of confusion and an anxious smile would spread across their face. They would follow my eyes and turn around to find Erik stoically unloading tomatoes. On days when Erik was busy, he would simply drive by slowly, spraying an invisible can of bug spray to ward off my pesky admirer, making a “Ppffffftt” sound with his lips as he rolled by. Sometimes he would stop the truck and say, "Laurita! You need bug spray?" and then he'd laugh and speed away. "Bug spray" became our code word and all it took was a quick phone call to Erik, "Hey! Could you bring me some bug spray?" and within moments a dozen dark-haired heads would pop up out of nearby fields and stare down the nuisance until he got uncomfortable and left. 

The Mexicans always had me laughing and the job itself was so peaceful and stress free. I loved being outside and watching things grow and knowing a thing or two about nature. The days when I'd join in with harvesting goods, I'd be so tired and sleep so soundly and everything felt as it should be. My silly job selling vegetables on the side of the road surrounded by happy, hard-working people taught me the joy of simplicity and I haven't been the same since.

Speaking of which... 

The Papa Schnapps Wedding

My first ever Lux wedding came about because of Mr. Chris Union. The Groom was Dad’s caddy for a day of golf out with some friends and Dad and the caddy, Josh, got along well. When Josh told Dad he was getting married Dad said, “You gotta a florist?”

“I don’t think so.” Josh said.

“My daughter’s a florist. Here’s her card. Ask for the Papa Schnapps Discount.“

A week later I received an email from the bride, a really really really sweet girl who asked me a bunch of the usual questions and then politely found a place to awkwardly mention “Papa Snops?” I had to explain to her that Papa Schnapps is what I called my old man when I was a little girl and they were now entitled to the family discount.

The bride and I met a few times, planned out her décor, and signed papers to make it all official. The week of her wedding I wasn’t feeling well. I had a stomach bug that I first mistook as food poisoning and I waddled around my house waiting to throw up - to ruin my streak, to be scarred by the shame of vomiting. But I never did. Instead I moved about with a lurching stomach and the compulsion to gag when I thought about food. The day before the wedding I drove to North Charleston to pick up the flowers. I made Mom come with me because I was worried that I was too dizzy to drive. I danced around the flowershop while they packed up my flowers and printed an invoice. When we were back on the road, headed for home I realized I’d left my credit card on their counter. In my entire existence, I’ve never left a credit card anywhere. “You’re slipping up Big Lu!” I said to myself. We had to drive back out there and sheepishly pick up my card. This doesn’t seem so bad now that I write it but at the time I felt so awful I considered just leaving it there. “They’re nice people” I rationalized. “Surely they won’t use my card for evil.”

At home I unloaded my plunder and was dismayed to see that some of the pale pink flowers I had asked for were white and others were lavender in color. This is not the first time I’ve gotten the wrong colored blooms from this place and it only served to confirm my suspicions that someone at the flowershop is colorblind. So I got back in my car and drove to a floral supplier in West Ashley where I bought a can of light pink floral spray paint and then I drove home and had to spray-paint the flowers for my very first wedding.

Saturday was the big day. Mom came with me to help set-up, partially because she wanted to help but mostly because she likes to go in and look around the pretty venues. I thought things would go faster with a helper and this small wedding would be a good intro to wedding setup etiquette for her. I also worried I would be sick and not get my work done. Having Big Mama there would make me feel safe. Mom’s just have a way.

Setting up for a wedding is routine for most vendors and typically not difficult but it is understood that everyone take up as little space a possible, be mindful of the people you’re working around, and clean up as you go. There is also typically not a lot of cross dialogue or mingling with other vendors and workers. You’ve got to move quickly and stopping to chat clogs up passageways for other workers.

I tried to brief Mom on these things in the car and she laughed at me. She laughed at my file folders of information and the fact that I called it a “venue.”

“Are you paying attention? The garland is going to shed. Don’t drag it across the tablecloth. We’ll never get it clean.”

“Ok!” she said whimsically.

Upon entering the venue Mom greeted all nearby workers, commented on all the pretty things she liked, and managed to scatter her belongings throughout the main floor of the building. She took her coat off and tossed it there. Stuffed her purse in a corner there. She wandered around with innocent delight as I followed behind her picking things up as soon as she put them down.

“No. Mom.” I whispered. I didn’t want people to know I’d brought my mother with me. I’m a professional! “Pssst! Mom!”

She wandered off towards the dance floor though we needed to head to the reception area. I piled her things up on an empty table and corralled her to the back of the room where we set to work on the garland. Like I warned, the garland dropped delicate fern plumes all over the floor and the tablecloth. I’d planned for this though and brought a broom and dustpan. I didn’t’ think to bring a lint roller to dust off the tablecloth so we set to work, furiously brushing greenery around to little avail. Mom felt compelled to explain to the caterers what we were doing. “They don’t care Mom.” We had to do this four times with four huge garland pieces and after Mom would plop down the garland, she would push the garland box into any empty corner no matter who was setting up there. I would immediately go retrieve the box and put it with our pile. Mom laughed at herself each time this happened.

When it came time to bring in the flowers, Mom became very concerned about making sure my car was locked in-between carrying the flowers from the car to the reception hall. “Ok,” she said, “You carry that load and I’ll wait by the car. Oh or I’ll come with you and you can lock the car when we go.” The distance from the car to the building was about thirty feet. “Mom, I think its going to be fine.”

“You don’t know that. Anyone could just walk right up and grab your purse or steal the flowers.” I looked around the empty parking lot, sighed, and let Mom carry in a load while I stood by the car. When I came in from outside, flower boxes were scattered everywhere and Mom was telling the maintenance man something about the decorations. He looked confused and backed away slowly once I stole her attention.

“Mom. Stop talking to people. We’re putting three vases on each table. Pay attention to color and height. Don’t put anything too similar next to each other. Ok?”

“Yep!” and she set out to work, taking vases out of their boxes and carrying them one by one to the tables. We had 68 vases.

“You know Mom, you could carry the whole box and set them down as you go.”

“Ahaha!!” she replied, laughing at herself again.

I had her collect our belongings and take them to the locked car while I checked over the finishing touches. Things looked great and I sighed a sigh of relief and walked back to the car. Just then I got lightheaded, saw those awful twinkly faint-stars, and sunk down into my seat. “I’m going to faint.” I told Big Mama. We decided God let me feel healthy and strong long enough to carry all those boxes and set things up correctly so my first wedding could go off without a hitch- besides having Mr. Magoo as a set up assistant. 

I laid in bed the whole rest of the day, feeling puny, but then 9:00 rolled around and I had to go back to collect my vases and candles. This time Dad came with me. “I’m good for heavy lifting!” he said proudly and anyways, Mom already had on her pajamas. The caterers were clearing tables when we got there so we were able to walk right in and collect our things. That almost never happens. Dad gathered the glassware and brought it to me and I would pack it up in bubble wrap and boxes. It was a good system. We were 75% finished when I casually mentioned that this was Josh’s wedding and Dad’s face lit up and he barreled on into the reception, in a pair of blue jeans, to go say hi to his friend. I shook my head at my parents.

Dad couldn’t find Josh so he walked up to the bride and said, “I’m Papa Schanpps!” He came back to me, said “Couldn’t find him.”, and then got back to work. Just moments later we hear a booming voice say, “Papa Schanpps!” and we turned our heads to see Josh, standing with his arms wide open. Josh galloped towards Dad and they shared a hearty man-hug. “Fellas!” Josh shouted over his shoulder, “Come here. You gotta meet Papa Schnapps!” and so a gaggle of giggling groomsmen bounded towards us and Dad entertained the lot of them. They talked and laughed and slung jokes at each other and Dad’s blasting cackle at his own comments could be heard throughout the venue. After a few minutes the bride appeared and I was really happy to see her all dressed up. I don’t always get to see the bride on her wedding day and she looked so beautiful. I barely had a chance to say hello when Josh shouted, “Honey, have you met Papa Schnapps?”

Dad stole the show for those five minutes and finally they left to make their official rice-slinging getaway.

I slumped in bed that night, still a little queasy. Ellen called and said she was dizzy and had been throwing up all day. “I think it’s food poisoning.” she said.

“I thought that too.” I said “But it’s been three days. And I haven’t puked. Must be a bug”

“Hmm.”

“Hmm.”

“Did you hear about Papa Schnapps.” I asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did I tell you about Mom helping set up?” 

“Yeah. We really can’t take them anywhere.”

Hungry Hungry Tapeworm

When I was in high school I was convinced I had a tapeworm. While I’d heard of things like body image and eating disorders, nothing around could satiate Toby (my worm). Toby taunted me the most earnestly after dinner. I’d snack all afternoon, trying to fill Toby’s expansive innards. Dinner would roll around and I’d eat for the two of us. But after dinner, Toby would start a riot, demanding more and more goods and a sugary nightcap ending note in the form of dark chocolate and peanut butter.

I noticed that I was consuming more food than my friends. I’d sit quietly on the edge of the blob of us girls that gathered for lunch and I’d gobble up the healthy lunch Mom had packed for me. Then I would have to wait for all the other dainty, girl-eaters to pick through their food and decide what would “like, totally make them fat.” They would discard these items by pushing them to the edge of the ring where I happened to be waiting like a dog under the dinner table. I’d finish their French-fries, Sunchips, and assorted treats by lil Debbie. Then all the girls would place their delicate little hands over their empty bellies and say something like, “OMG I’m sooooo full!!!!” which I noted must be biomedically impossible. Meanwhile my fat fists were tearing through plastic packaging that was only a barrier I had to overcome by Toby’s demand.

I was larger than all of my friends. Taller, wider, and stronger. They had tiny, feminine frames and I felt like a real bruiser standing next to them. I became concerned about my girth sometime around sixteen and started running at night to ward off the effects of Toby’s appetite. The running did not make me smaller and seemed to only enliven Toby’s enthusiasm, forcing me to have a bowl of cereal before bed most nights. I assumed Toby would be with me forever, like a scar or a bad memory or that bit of shrimp I still have lodged deep in my left shin. So Toby and I loaded up and left for college where we were poisoned by school cafeteria food. (I’m not being dramatic. It later came out that our school food was being pumped with preservatives that the human body cannot breakdown.) Toby and I, and all the other art school nitwits, would come out of the cafeteria feeling hungrier than we did when we went in. Jared and I had a routine of eating the poison food as a base layer and then walking over to Panera and filling up on bread rolls so that we would not feel the hunger pangs as sharply when the school food finished it’s air raid on our intestines. The War of Lower Digestion took many a pounds from me, six of which, I decided, were Toby the Tapeworm. We lost Toby in combat.

Lately I’ve been really hungry right after dinner, just like I was in high school. It made me think of Toby and how I was truly concerned that something was wrong with my appetite. I even dared think that Toby has resurrected himself, a stronger, mutant tapeworm, patiently waiting for a nightcap bowl of cereal.