We all need some sort of fix.

With the advent of online shopping, I rarely do my grocery shopping at the supermarket. I leave my visits to the grocery store for small trips for staples and for items not found online. It's not that I hate grocery shopping, I actually love grocery shopping. A mega supermarket is an OCD girl's dream. It's also a nightmare for the spouse of OCD girl. I make a list of all the items I need but I'm compulsive and need to drive my cart down every aisle, even the aisles I don't need. There really is no need for a city person to drive down the summer bbq aisle, yet, I feel I'll miss something if I don't. My husband finds this grating and is quite reluctant to go grocery shopping with me. When he gets antsy, I usually send him to the deli to wait online. With the advent of deli kiosks, he’s stuck playing backgammon on his IPaq while I check out assorted jams and jellies.

Since I buy most of our groceries online, it leaves us with some strange grocery outings. Last Saturday we went to the grocery store for our bi-monthly stock up on Diet Peach Snapple Iced Tea. My husband is addicted to this stuff. It’s like crack except my husband prefers to call it, Nectar of the Gods. We need to go twice a month to keep my husband's addiction at bay. Each trip brings back at least 3 cases of the Sweet Morphine back to our pantry. I wasn’t joking about his addiction.

Since I don’t want the checkout girl to know my husband’s dark secret, I usually help myself to the self checkout counters. I like these self checkout counters because they remind me of the old Fisher Price cash register every child had as a kid, except it’s more complex. You don’t just get Flintstone sized coins anymore. You've graduated. You now get a scanner, blinking lights, a coupon slot, a computer generated voice directing you and a slot to scan your super adult credit card. What they don't tell you as a child is adult credit cards come with crazy interest rates. Plus, self checkout allows me the opportunity to pack my groceries, correctly. I have a method to my packing madness that every checkout girl in the tri-state area fails to understand.

Well, this time around my husband didn’t want to wait at the self checkout line. I was extremely reluctant but gave in. The cashier must have thought we were junkies. In our cart were the following:

3 cases of Diet Peach Snapple

1 package of Hershey’s Nuggets with Almonds

1 package of Hershey’s Nuggets with Raisins and Almonds

1 3-pack package of Dentyne Ice, Peppermint

1 package of Lifesavers, Wild Cherry Flavor

1 package of Kellogg’s Cereal I blame Darren for this one.

Now, in my defense, the candy wasn’t all for us. I planned to bring it to work for my candy jar. Plus, if you think about it, we did have our essential food groups, sort of. Still, if Lrudlrick and I were both 40 lbs lighter, we’d probably look like prime candidates for a methadone clinic.

Now at the checkout, my husband donated money to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering fund and won a scratch off card good for Clorox bleach. Of course, this was the one thing I forgot to get and I yelled out, “Great! We need bleach too. It’s the one thing I forgot.” The cashier looked at me with a look that could only mean one thing, They have a Meth Lab. I’m not sure if Bleach is needed to make meth but I can only gather something bleach-like is needed for the chemical reaction.