Grocery store schizophrenia.

(September 26, 2006)

Did you know you can get Mozzarella cheese for less than eight dollars? Because I didn't. What a revelation at the Giant Eagle. I've been buying the eight-dollar Belgioioso variety because I seriously didn't know you could get blocks of cheaper Mozzarella.

I'm kind of dumb. But I knew no other way.

So I guess this is the end of my cheese splurging. I can't really justify it since I already splurge on coffee, whole wheat pasta, and seafood. I get really nebbish and paranoid and unbearable to be around in grocery stores (and most other places, too, but always in grocery stores).

I should probably look into psychotherapy to get at the root of my hatred of grocery shopping. I suspect it has a lot to do with other people's children, and that episode of 20/20 about the bacteria on cart handles. I hate grocery stores so much that I don't want to stand around for hours looking at ingredients, but I'm also dumbstruck by the unhealthiness of virtually everything, so I usually freak out and end up with a schizophrenic cart full of Kashi, soy milk and Stouffer's macaroni and cheese.

I'd like someone to just tell me what to buy because, aside from raw vegetables, I don't know what to get. I honestly can't tell anymore what will give me high blood pressure, what will give me cancer, and what will begin many years of living in lonely misery after I reach the point of weighing as much as a Yugo. I have a lot of disjointed food facts memorized (Flavored yogurt has a lot of added sugar; whole-grain and organic products are generally stocked on the bottom of shelves.), but no real plan of attack.

So, if you run into me at the grocery store, don't feel obligated to say hello. I'll probably just mumble something incoherently spazzy about unbleached flour and then run toward the wine aisle