never grocery shop hungry

there are many reasons:

a) you buy everything in sight
2) you rush because you're excited to get home and eat
d) you get cranky with people who get in your way

keep these things in my mind as you read below...

i left work at 5:30 today. unheard of! AND i went out in the middle of the day. doubly unheard of. and on top of all that, i didn't even go in until 9am. what a day!

i tried to press my luck. i ran home after work. yes, ran. i thought that if i changed quickly and ran downtown, i could beat the "trader joe's rush" and avoid waiting in line outside the store to buy my groceries. mission accomplished! i got to 14th street and the area in front of the store was clear. I strolled right in, grabbed an available cart and started with the veggies. my belly was only slightly rumbling at that point. one whiz by "grand sample station" where they were sampling gazpacho (ew) and i was ravenous. suddenly i was racing myself to see how quickly i could load my cart, stand on line, run home and chow down. and at that same moment, the rest of manhattan decided to join me in my quest for low-cost, healthy groceries. the major annoyances of the evening:

a) the fat lady who, instead of standing BEHIND her cart, decided to stand ADJACENT to her cart therefore blocking the entire walkway in the snacks aisle (don't even tell me that i shouldn't have been in that aisle because it's trader joe's and all snacks are healthy!)
2) the 20-something girls (can i say that disdainfully when i am one?) who insist on shopping with their earbuds in and music blaring, ergo preventing them from hearing when perfectly polite people say EXCUSE ME when trying to pass them in the aisles. do these twits not understand that TJ's is perhaps the most populated 1000 square feet on the island and shopping there requires use of all five (six?) of the senses?
d) the fact that TJs has reversed their packaging on me and now the canned salmon looks like the canned tuna used to look AND the check-out boy with the too-long dreds, who asked about every other item in my cart ("wow, girl, you eat a lotta yogurt, heh heh") didn't bother commenting on the fact that i was buying 10 cans of pink alaskan salmon.
5) the people who CHEAT and get on line BEFORE completing their shopping and continually run to get "just one more thing, can you push my cart?" NO, I CANNOT PUSH YOUR CART, I AM ALREADY PUSHING MINE. FINISH YOUR SHOPPING AND THEN JOIN THE REST OF US.

so what did we (i) learn today? that i shoudln't have grocery shopped hungry because i bought the most random things stuff (soy milk- i've never had that before!, fat free caramel corn, iceberg lettuce), i rushed (mistook salmon for tuna), and i was very cranky with the store-full of inconsiderate nincompoops (no, lady, take those headphones out, turn off your music and concentrate on your shopping, what? those aren't headphones, those are hearing aids because you're legally deaf, sorry!).

after a 1.5 hour excursion, i am home, recovering on the couch. please call me if you'd like 10 cans of salmon.