Grocery Shopping!

Bob's first trip to the grocery store since 2010.

Well, this was a first for both of us. Bob's first trip to a grocery store since his stroke in October 2010. And my first experience taking him to a grocery store!

I have never attempted to do this before because it seemed like it would be a big pain in the you-know-what. I mean, how does one push a wheelchair AND a shopping cart? Not only that, there's the getting Bob ready for a trip, getting him into the wheelchair, scheduling the transportation etc. etc. and all that work just to shop at the grocery store seemed unthinkable. So, normally, Chris comes to sit with Bob once a week, while I run to the grocery store, run errands, etc.

But two weeks ago, when The Green Machine refused to start in the parking lot of the post office when I was out on my weekly errand run, I had to get the car towed over to Bubba's. Fortunately, the grocery store was in walking distance from the post office, so I hiked over to the store, got Bob's prescriptions filled, grabbed a few items and called a taxi to take me home. That ride cost $20.00.  So talk about an expensive day, as the tow truck charged me $65.00. yikes.

Then, when Bubba told me it might take weeks or more to fix The Green Machine, I debated ways to get back to the grocery store for supplies. The taxi was way too expensive, it would cost me $40.00 to get there and back. And a bus, well, how much can one carry onto a bus? And I needed some heavy items, like cat litter... The big grocery store is too far away to walk to -- we have a smaller store in walking distance but they do not stock things like cat litter. So, I decided to do the unthinkable: take Bob with me. That way, we could ride the wheelchair transport and the cost would only be $4.00 each way. 

I still didn't know how I was going to push the wheelchair and a shopping cart at the same time! But I figured, I'd play it by ear and if nothing else, park him in a corner somewhere while I did the shopping.

When we got to the grocery store, I stopped at the Customer Service desk and asked for help. Customer Service paged an employee to "assist a customer shopping". So I pushed Bob and the employee followed us with the cart, all through the store, and the wheelchair van driver helped me load and unload the groceries and it actually all worked out surprisingly well!

As Bob used to always say: Life is an adventure!