Paralysis in the grocery aisle

In the aftershock of the job-cuts news at the office, I found myself wandering around the grocery store on my way home from work this weekend, knowing I needed to pick up a few things and seeing the deals I would ordinarily put together -- the “plays I would make,” to put it in the ex-athlete’s sports terms I find myself frequently using in my head -- but somehow not being able to pull the trigger, so to speak. It was like my whole carefully constructed routine was falling down, and my little mind games I play with our grocery budget suddenly seemed silly. Irrelevant.

I made about five laps around the beverage aisle and the frozen foods section one aisle over, unable to decide whether to pay full price for a big package of chicken tenders or knock two dollars off by piling nine 2-liter bottles of pop into a cart. I needed the chicken for a Super Bowl party. It was the pop that was causing my walking paralysis. If I bought the whole ensemble, I‘d be getting our two mainstays -- Diet Pepsi for Bob and I, whose drug of choice in middle age is caffeine, and Mountain Dew for the kids, when they have friends over -- for just 79 cents a bottle. But in a crisis, the only beverage you only really need is water.

Was this a crisis? I couldn’t decide.

We don’t rely on my paycheck for our day-to-day living expenses. Our grocery budget isn’t threatened -- at least not yet. That’s what I kept telling myself as I circled the aisles, while in another part of my brain, my imagination was generating all sorts of creepy sideshows. Finally the message got through, and I “made the play.”

I paid for the bag of chicken with our grocery money, and bought the pop with another fund I call our Grocery Holding Company. That way we get the good deal, without having to sandbag this week’s budget. When we use the pop, I’ll pay the GHC, as I call it, $1 a bottle -- a good price, my target price, as a shopper. But the GHC will make a profit. And eventually those profits will help fund a weekend getaway.

Is that a silly little game? It doesn’t feel irrelevant to me.