W(t)F

I have to say, the weather out here has been so bad this past week, I can barely stand it. My hubby Brian gets to go to San Francisco for the week for a conference. . .and I get to stay here, cooped up in this condo while it rains. . .some more. No fun. I'm feeling extremely in-between right now, between houses, between locations, between jobs, between exams and dissertation, between semesters, between buying and selling. . .it's all very unsettling. I'm looking forward to being rooted down somewhere, anywhere, really, for longer than a few years. Feels very much like what I imagine purgatory is suposed to be like.

I don't have a whole lot of interesting blog-worthy things to report, but I did have a terrible trip to the Lakeview Whole Foods store today. I think I may have been there once when I was pregnant, but I don't usually shop there. BUT, Eliot's recent obsession with Goldfish (which my pediatrician called "junkfood" and told me to go to Whole Foods and buy him hotdogs. . .yeah! For real!) has pushed me over the edge. Because Brian is out of town, I have the car, so Eliot and I ventured out. First of all, it was raining (no kidding, it has been for a week!) so I decided that parking in the garage was the best bet (yes, it's a big city, and most grocery stores have garages). We parked, took the elevator, grabbed a cart, and hit the aisles. Well, this place is tiny. There is barely room for two abreast, even in the produce section. We ended up doubling back for tomatos on the way out because there was, literally, no way to get to them without waiting for like 10 minutes for people to get out of the way. And I'm not really the kind of person who minds waiting (another of the 100 reasons why I don't belong in Chicago) but Eliot has a patience span of about 8 minutes, so shopping needs to be quick. In a new and unchartered store, this was a challenge.

The aisles were so thin that I had a hard time passing other people if they weren't pressed up against the side of the aisle. Traffic jams everywhere. Lots of women with babies, but all of them were rude and at least three of them huffed at me for looking at the cheese for too long. I wasn't aware that there was a time limit. Yes, the food is healthy and it's nice to know that mostly everything you pull off the shelf is not going to rot out the insides of my child. But at what price? My sanity? It was terrible.

Then when I checked out, I asked about taking the shopping cart up in the elevator. "Not allowed" they said. We bring to food to you. What kind of car do you have? See you in a minute. That was it. I assumed they brought the food to your car. . .I didn't have any other information to go on, not to mention Eliot had expired long ago and was screaming. So I forgot to get my parking ticket validated, went up to the car, and waited for the grocery guy.

So there I was waiting, Eliot having a great time running around a mostly empty floor of the parking lot (I had a hold of his hood, of course. . .) waiting, waiting. Then I realized I didn't get parking validated, so we went back inside, down three flights of stairs, to the Customer service desk. "I'm waiting for my groceries" I said. The guy (also white) looked outside at the curb. Is your car there? he asked me. Where? Out there in the loading zone. No one told me there was a loading zone. Oh, he said. There is. Right there. He stamped my ticket. Back upstairs we went to drive back down and finally get my groceries (which I paid a fortune for, by the way. I don't think anything in that store is actually on sale. . .). I pulled up and loaded up. "We thought you went home" the bagger/loader said. "I wish" I said. What a nightmare. I'll never go there again.

What I also found interesting is that we have almost the same assortment of organic foods at my Jewel store down the street (which I can walk to, by the way). What a rip off. What a token city experience. I hate this place.