We have a kind of urban legend here at Waterside that we're a hostage audience and the prices in the easily-accessible grocery store here are higher than they are "downtown" in the stores along E. 23rd Street and 1st Avenue.
I have to say I've long believed in this myth, but time again again, I'm proven wrong. In fact, I've been burned, time and again! I'll *swear* that the Odwalla is more expensive at our Gristede's, when I see it for $3.99 at the Walgreen's drug store on First Avenue, and then I get home, and whoops, it's down to $3.49 at the Gristede's. I will absolutely swear that the Tostito Lime chips that I can't live without are cheaper at $3.89 at the Morton Williams and then whoops -- it really is only $3.79 at our Gristede's.
OK, I said today. Ima beat this thing. Surely the detergent at the CVS will be less (so much at CVS *isn't* less, you know? Except the Coke but who wants to lug it home?). So *first* I checked the All clear and saw it was $8.99 for the jug I usually buy, the 2x concentration. I like to get All because it is free of extra chemicals I guess, and I'm allergic to Tide and others with harsh chemicals.
Headed over to the CVS on E. 23rd and -- yessss! It was only $7.49 for the same bottle. Finally, a score! I was so excited I...left it in the store after buying it, and a bunch of school stuff. Back up on the plaza, I realize I don't have it -- no rest for the weary, back I go. Then to the Gristede's again -- and now I cast a weather eye on the All and...whoops, burned again. The *60 ounce* bottle at Gristede's at $8.99 is .149 per ounce...the same price as the pro-rated *50 ounce* bottle at the CVS for $7.49.
You would think I'd get better at this after 23 years. I'm reminded of Randall Jarrell, "That's all. I'm old":
Next Day
By Randall Jarrell
Moving from Cheer to Joy, from Joy to All,
I take a box
And add it to my wild rice, my Cornish game hens.
The slacked or shorted, basketed, identical
Food-gathering flocks
Are selves I overlook. Wisdom, said William James,
Is learning what to overlook. And I am wise
If that is wisdom.
Yet somehow, as I buy All from these shelves
And the boy takes it to my station wagon,
What I've become
Troubles me even if I shut my eyes.
When I was young and miserable and pretty
And poor, I'd wish
What all girls wish: to have a husband,
A house and children. Now that I'm old, my wish
Is womanish:
That the boy putting groceries in my car
See me. It bewilders me he doesn't see me.
For so many years
I was good enough to eat: the world looked at me
And its mouth watered. How often they have undressed me,
The eyes of strangers!
And, holding their flesh within my flesh, their vile
Imaginings within my imagining,
I too have taken
The chance of life. Now the boy pats my dog
And we start home. Now I am good.
The last mistaken,
Ecstatic, accidental bliss, the blind
Happiness that, bursting, leaves upon the palm
Some soap and water--
It was so long ago, back in some Gay
Twenties, Nineties, I don't know . . . Today I miss
My lovely daughter
Away at school, my sons away at school,
My husband away at work--I wish for them.
The dog, the maid,
And I go through the sure unvarying days
At home in them. As I look at my life,
I am afraid
Only that it will change, as I am changing:
I am afraid, this morning, of my face.
It looks at me
From the rear-view mirror, with the eyes I hate,
The smile I hate. Its plain, lined look
Of gray discovery
Repeats to me: "You're old." That's all, I'm old.
And yet I'm afraid, as I was at the funeral
I went to yesterday.
My friend's cold made-up face, granite among its flowers,
Her undressed, operated-on, dressed body
Were my face and body.
As I think of her and I hear her telling me
How young I seem; I am exceptional;
I think of all I have.
But really no one is exceptional,
No one has anything, I'm anybody,
I stand beside my grave
Confused with my life, that is commonplace and solitary.
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