Day 4,152—Labor Day Shopping or 5-4-6—

 

I wish this hadn’t taken as long to write, but I was watching my kids just now and lost track of the thoughts I had earlier while running. I fell down and scraped my leg. My face healed days ago, which felt surprisingly fast—about four times quicker than my hands have healed before.  

        Sarah went shopping yesterday while I was running. She got a lot of things we needed but forgot apples, bread, and broccoli, and we still needed the “good” vegan cheese, which is how we refer to it in our house, or “Vivian’s favorite.” I started out going to Schnucks because they had the cheese. I went a long way around, running some on Watson in a direction I rarely do when there is more traffic, but this morning the traffic was mild, and I liked getting something done while running. The store was almost empty, and after grabbing apples and cheese, I went to the self-checkout. The cheese rang up a dollar fifty over the sticker price. Recently, this store has frequently not had any of the shredded kind in stock, and when it is, the expiration date is within a week of when we find it.

        It makes me wonder if someone is purposely trying to make this product sell less. It is weird, but for some, not eating cheese is like an attack on them personally. I imagine them all looking shocked and saying something like this: “WHAT?! YOU DON’T EAT CHEESE?! ARE YOU MAD!” Some people care so much about what you put in your body. It comes off as so insecure. “IF YOU DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT FROM ME?! I MIGHT FEEL STUPID! WHY AREN’T YOU PRIORITIZING MY EMOTIONS OVER YOUR NEEDS?!”

        When people do or say something that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, it can set me off. Especially when someone is so upset about someone else making different choices than they have, that have zero impact on the person who is upset. It is hard to be sympathetic to someone who essentially complains that others are different from them. Once, I remember talking to someone who insisted that he and his wife agreed on seemingly everything. It seems like such a bizarre need and simply exhausting in practice.

        Maybe this is oversimplistic, but I keep thinking it just comes off insecure because why care? Now, I am trying to imagine how I would act when someone else is making the opposite choices that I am making. One time, I was at Rush Bowl, and the guy in front of me insisted that whatever he got, he would prefer that they use whole milk. When they said they didn’t have whole milk, he loudly acted like it was an insane choice for a smoothie place not to prioritize dairy options. His opinion didn’t annoy me as much as his expectation that Rush Bowl has whole milk. It is just not that kind of place. I did 5 and went back home. I did 4 and went home and then did 6. I ran to two different stores and bought as much as I could carry.