Grocery frustrations

Let me start this by warning those easily offended by strong language expressing reverse gender stereotypes. Those uneasily offended may continue with this thought: Real men do the grocery shopping. Not because it “helps out the little woman,” just because it’s a man’s job. We’re providers. We should do the provisioning. Also, we’re better at grocery shopping. Or, at least, I am. Others may hold other views, and that’s fine, as long as they accept that those views are, as sociologists would put it, “wrong.”

That said, and with about 25 years of grocery shopping in all kinds of stores at all kinds of hours behind me, I’ve had a couple of issues lately.

• First, you would think that by now people would be completely accustomed to other people dancing around the grocery store, perhaps singing along a little bit, especially when the song on the iPod is the Indigo Girls knocking “Tangled Up in Blue” out of the park. But you’d be surprised at the looks you might get. Try it.
• As if it were amateur hour, I accidentally picked up 1-minute oats instead of the regular oats. I last made this mistake, by my estimation, in 1984. They make for grainier bannocks.
• If I start writing cheesy spy novels, my nom de plume will be Grainier Bannocks. The Times Book Review will then refer to me as “Mr. Bannocks.”
• After its zillion-dollar upgrade, the Hannaford has a fabulous organic and natural food section, but doesn’t any longer carry Ghirardelli hot chocolate mix. What up wid dat?! Damn!
• Some weeks there are shelves and shelves of Polar Diet Tonic, the only brand of diet tonic I’m aware of. Other weeks, there’s nary a bottle. Is there some kind of wave of diet tonic demand, and if there is, should I be joining with the other people in that wave? Obviously, we must have something in common.
• Nutty Nuggets (the store version of Grape Nuts) have changed. Slightly, almost imperceptibly. Almost. But my highly trained taste buds (and texture roots) (and color branches)(stop this now) cannot be fooled. Besides, Lee told me they had changed. We hoped it was just a bad box, but alas, the other boxes seem to be changed as well. And what was a perfectly adequate for Grape Nuts at nearly $2 a box less is, now, not.
• Okay, where are they hiding the pine nuts?