Somebody stop me…

First, it was the Roomba. There are no words in the English language to describe the joy of vacuuming one room while kicking back knitting in another.

Then, it was a rice cooker. I love rice. I love it plain, I love it with butter, I love it cooked in chicken stock. Brown, white, wild, you name it. I despise making it, though. It always-always-always boils over or burns on me (possibly because I am easily distracted and tend to wander away while it is cooking). My rice cooker rocks the free world, because I can put the rice and water in there and walk away without another thought. It cooks and stays warm for hours, waiting for me to dump leftovers on top of it and pretend it’s a meal.

But now…people.

I think I need help. An Intervention or something. I am turning into a ‘getting something to do it while I do other things’ addict.

For lo, I have discovered…Safeway Web-Based Grocery Delivery.

Somebody stop me. I’m outta control!!!!!

OK, seriously? I got an email from MyPoints saying hey, they’d give me 1,000 points for ordering and free shipping blah blah blah and I said, “Well, what could it hurt? Free shipping and all…well. OK. I’ll give it a whirl.”

My time right now is precious beyond telling. I’m multitasking right immediately now, in fact, running procedures and so forth in the background, flipping back and forth from this screen to that. (Yes. At almost 9:00 at night, I am still working. **sigh**)

My children need baths. My own hair needs washing. A trip to WalMart would be very helpful for Denizen socks and tights and underwear. **sigh**

I’m not a big shopper. I don’t like it. I do not find it “fun” to go to the mall, and the very thought of hitting WalMart on a weekend will about give me hives. I buy as much as humanly possible online – the words ‘free shipping’ cause the same giddy emotion to rise in me that I suspect the mall-rats get from ‘No Sales Tax’ signs in the department stores.

The supermarket, though, doesn’t usually bother me all that much. Sure, I avoid the weekends and other times when my fellow man is out and about, because when people congregate in large numbers they tend to become stupid and self-absorbed, and this irritates me. I become increasing annoyed by such things as…people leaving their cart in the precise center of the aisle while they minutely examine the labels of canned tomatoes. Brand, or generic? Braaaaaaaand, or generrrrrrrrrric? Hmm, let’s memorize the freakin’ sodium content, shall we?! The screaming children, the weirdoes who want to talk to me at great length about nothing at all (how about them cereal boxes, anyway?), the getting all the way to the other end of the store and then realizing you forgot spaghetti sauce. @*^&@!!!

But this time of year those feelings intensify to the point of loathing.

By the time the fourth person crashes into me because they’re talking on their cell phone looking over their shoulder at their {friend, spouse, child, pickle-carrier} saying something like, “Granmaw says Davey don’t like argyle, I thought he liked argyle, didn’t you think he liked argyle, let’s go back to WalMart after this and check their argyle selection…”, I’m about ready to start burning Christmas trees down. The highest price they charge for delivery is $9.95, and I’m going to tell you what: Small. Price. To. Pay. And if you’re spending more than $150 (which, I blush to say, I can easily manage week after week after week), it’s $4.95.

For five bucks, I don’t hafta drive to the store, wander the aisles with a bunch of morons my fellow creatures, and then get home and discover I’ve forgotten the two things that made the trip absolutely, positively, without question necessary This Very Day?

Dude.

Ship it.

But I digress.

I had a grocery list all made out, waiting for me to motivate myself to the store tonight. (Bah, humbug.) It took me less time to click through their site putting everything on the list into a virtual cart than it would have taken me to drive to the store. I stuck to my list tighter than a barnacle, because…well, duh. There was near zero temptation. And no wandering around endlessly looking for anything. Put it in the search bar and bang! There it is!

I picked a two hour delivery window, and then I went on with my day. And then…without warning (well, other than knowing he was supposed to be there between 3:00 and 5:00)…out of the gathering darkness of impending rain…He arrived.

If you are sensing invisible light streaming down from heaven and violins soaring in the background, you are correct.

He was young and strapping and handsome and very polite. And, more importantly, he took all my groceries into my house, set them gently on the table, asked me to make sure everything was there and in good condition, informed me with the tones of a right jolly young elf that no substitutions had been necessary and asked me to please sign here if all was in order and no, thank you, he was not permitted to take a tip, have a nice evening, ma’am…

And off he rode, into the sunset.

Leaving me to put the groceries into the fridge and get back to my Christmas knitting writing of queries and producing of reports.

Which I take very, very seriously and would never blow off for something as trivial as finishing a chenille washcloth.

Please.

I am a professional, people.

And also, I am in love with the Safeway delivery guy.

How can I not love a guy who brings me pearl barley and frozen apple juice, on sale for $1.25…?