Atomictumor

So, with the kids on fall break, and GAC and I both out all day persuing the American Dream, we were left with a BABYSITTING GAP.  Thats an ugly thing to have in this grim year of 2006, and while I appreciate the wistful romaticism of the Latchkey Kid, I’m afraid that Pigpen is just too young and… volatile… to enjoy that distinction just yet.

MastaG, on the other hand (the kid that never gets his picture in the ‘tumor) makes a good LK.

I digress.

So, we needed babysitting, and we needed it now (then).  GAC and I, as is our procrastinating want, waited until the last minute to see if her folks could make the ardous trek from Knoxville up to the ‘Ridge daily to watch the boys while we did our thing.  They were OK with that, but they’d rather just keep the kids down at their house.

Hence, we have a very quiet house right now, because fleas don’t make noise.

Yep, those bastard cats of ours, those thrice cursed, horrible smelling, breaking-all-my-shit little monsters have up and gotten fleas, which I can only assume is some sort of divine and just retribution for some sort of slight the evil bastards have committed before convincing my family to feed and clean up after them.  The fleas of late have developed a taste for my upper sockal region and the tender flesh of my children.  Somehow, GAC seems to be immune from the parasites (the fleas, not the children), leading me to believe that she has something to do with the situation.

Did she bring the fleas in to torment me?

But these kind of thoughts have nothing to do with the story at hand, which somehow I’ve been managing to ramble all around in my coffee fueled delusions.

Yesterday, GAC and the kids were gone when I got off work, and I was starved.  There were two obvious choices: China Wok, or homemade spaghetti.

Well, spaghetti is certainly cheaper, but more importantly, was limitless.  Even on an all you can eat buffet, eventually they’ll come out to scare me away with their loud mongolian chatter, all directed inevitably on what a large, borish, lazy American I am.  It wasn’t the day for that kind of scene, what with the news of so many freedoms being taken away in the night.

Problem is, I didn’t have any parmesan cheese.  As any true spaghetti lover knows, the cheese is what its all about.  Having spaghetti without a healthy sprinkly bit of cheese on the top is not only uncouth, its downright wrong.  Those parms knew their cheese.

Anyway, a trip to the grocery store was in order, and I elected to go to the new Food City.

El Mercado Diablo.

 

Now, I’ve had my beef with the FC in the past, but that was before they decided to close down the two existing local stores, which were convenient for pretty much everybody, and put one store in the middle of town, in a parking lot famously paved by the drunkenest of monkeys.

The beef is now officially ranch sized.  After shopping there exactly two times, I can definitively say that the store is designed to promote some satanic Food City agenda.  The aisles are not made to accommodate the kind of traffic generated by consolidating two grocery stores, so by the time you make it two rows over, you’re so sick of waiting for the slackjawed plebes reading every label to make sure it contains Monosodium Glutamate while their buggy inpedes your progress to the beer aisle and ultimately to the food at your house that you so desperately need, that you are prepared to do whatever it takes to get them the hell out of your way.

Once you have them out of the way, you encounter the people milling outside the video store… wait, is that a video store in a supermarket?  Did I just fall back in time to 1989?  Food City is seriously putting a video store, in this small ass location, right across the parking lot of doom from a big shiny Blockbuster?  Evidently so.

All this means that a lot of the things, like the type of butter I get, are no longer here.  Gas stations stock this butter, but not Food City.  Sure, I could ask them to stock it, but I’m too busy waiting for a manager to show up and Code 7 my damn beer purchase that the only sounds that come out of my mouth are strung together consonates.
(”gggg.ttttttttthhhhh.fffffffffkkkkkkknnnnnn.kkkkkkkrrrrrrrr”)
Well, thats it.  I don’t remember what Kroger did to piss me off, but Food City has totally been added to the list.  As such, the grocery spectrum in Oak Ridge is crapping out, with Kroger, Food City, and a feeble little expensive poorly stocked Food Lion.  Do I need to start driving out to Karns to shop at Ingles?  They do have cheap gas…

Anyway, the moral of the story is that the house is way too quiet with the kids gone for a week.  And, evidently, I shouldn’t write on a coffee rush.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006 at 2:45 pm and is filed under Food, Rant, Local. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.