Personal shopping

It should come as no surprise that I am exhausted most of the time.

First, I’m out of shape. Second, I have three jobs. Granted I love two of them and they keep me off the streets and from living in a box under a bridge so yay!

Third, I have two young adult children coming and going, a husband, a dog, a cat, two goats and numerous friends I try to stay in touch with. I also do laundry and dust. The latter hardly ever but I felt it was still list worthy.

Busy

All this to say that like 99.99 percent of the population, I consider myself a busy person. As a person with three jobs who sometimes dusts, I’ve found that the one responsibility that seems to fall to the wayside consistently is shopping.

Oddly enough, I used to LOVE shopping. When I had to haul myself and two small children, babies even, I still found it interesting and fun.

I enjoyed going out and about and running errands for the most part. It is only in my later years that I have become a total hermit. Not to my house, but to the region.

I am perfectly content to make a loop from farm market to bakery and deli, then stop by the hardware for cleaning supplies as needed and back home.

Basically, if I cannot purchase what I need in those four stops within a few miles of home, I’m going without or we are going to have to order online.

I’m all about buying local or online. It’s the big box megastores thirty minutes away I cut out of the loop. Sorry, big supermarket.

I’ve found that today you can subscribe to almost anything. Paper towels, peanut butter, coffee (oh life-saving coffee), kitty litter and dog food can all arrive on the porch at predetermined intervals. It’s kind of like having a personal assistant.

We haven’t run out of toothpaste in the year since I started subscribing to household products. I consider that a major coup.

We do, however, have a serious backlog of razor blades since that subscription went rogue on me.

My delivery schedules are a work in progress. It’s also entirely possible I am not shaving my legs often enough.

I used to feel guilt over my subscription service addiction. It didn’t keep me from “adding to cart” almost any toiletry we needed, but at least I had the sense to feel bad about it. Was I really “saving” us money?

Recently I actually entered a mega store to purchase shampoo and came out $87 later with a host of other items. I am now convinced having shampoo and toilet paper delivered is the best idea for curbing impulse buys.

Deliver

All this to say that if someone, anyone, would just deliver fresh foods items to my house I would be grateful. The one thing I cannot yet order online for delivery is fresh foods.

I love food and you would think I would love going to purchase food but alas you would be wrong. When I finally get home after 8-15 hour days (which I love!) I am not inclined to run out to the store for a few things.

I am inclined to lay on the couch and eat cereal or potato chips or whatever I can find in the cabinets that doesn’t take more than 15 minutes to prepare.

This, obviously, is not good for the soul or the waistline. Since I live in the country all these amazing new-fangled things like Amazon Fresh Foods or Grocery Store Delivery are not available to me.

Entering my zip code just leads to a series of question marks. I think that is the information parsing version of “is this even in the United States dude?”

Why must I live in a rural region not served by fresh and frozen food delivery? #DarnThisPioneerLife

Fortunately, GirlWonder recently had an afternoon off and she and her best friend ran off to the grocery store. Bless them both. She sent me a snapshot of she and Beautiful Bestie shopping which she captioned “we are actually middle-aged moms.”

I really think some enterprising college-age folk should come up with a grocery shopping service. I would pay for that. Like an Uber for food?

You pay spry young folks to shop and, once background checked, put your food away for you.

They could hit all the local stops and with proper background checks even unload it in your home. If someone runs with that there is a big tip in it for you to start in my neighborhood.

I’ll even spring for candy and gum for you at the checkout and a quarter to ride that mechanical horse out front of the store.