Let me preface today's entry with the information that I love my husband dearly. That being said, there are times when I just have to shake my head at him. It's either that or put him up for sale on some online auction site, and the powers that be generally frown on such activities.
I am a list writer. I keep running lists for each and every store where I might need to purchase something. I have various "to do" lists floating around, for things needing to be accomplished both for and by each person in my household. Lest I be shunned for murdering oodles of trees to feed my penchant for list writing, most of those notes to myself reside happily inside an application on my cell phone. How they live there is a mystery to me, but that is where they are whenever I need them.
Any time I take something out of the pantry or a closet, I make a mental note of whether it was the last of its kind. If it is, I immediately write it down on one or more of my numerous shopping lists. I like having spares tucked away somewhere safe so that we never run out of the necessities. This method would work wonderfully if everyone in the household stuck with the plan.
Pig, however, believes that there is no need to actually purchase something until the very last iota of whatever it was is completely finished. So if he tells me he would like it if I would pick up an item from the store, this means we have actually been out of it for three days and counting. Knowing what he's like, I do try to keep an eye out for when we run low on certain stockpiles. I have no desire whatsoever to run out of soap, toilet paper, toothpaste, or my breakfast cereal.
It gets a bit tricky when I have to be the one to notice if we are running low on certain items. I am notoriously bad at paying attention to certain details. If my favorite cooking pot is put away two inches to the left of where it normally rests, I am almost guaranteed to not be able to find it. In other words, I do tend to buy an additional "spare" supply of things because I did not realize we already had one or more of them slightly shifted from where I expected them to be. Because of this issue, I tend to ask Pig to double-check to see if we are truly out of an item before I buy another. Sometimes, this backfires on me.
One day, we took the whole family out to the store. I asked Pig whether we needed mouthwash for the kidlets. I knew we were extremely low on our open container, but was not sure whether I just missed seeing an unopened one on the shelf. He assured me we had at least two unopened containers. I trusted him. Silly me. Upon our arrival home, we discovered that we were still down to just that minuscule amount left in the container. There were no unopened bottles at home. I might not have been so annoyed if this didn't happen at least once a week. You'd think I would have learned to just buy a spare item regardless of what Pig says, but apparently I have not figured that out yet.
Another fun game we play together is called "I'll tell you about something we ran out of, but not until you have already come back home from the one store where it is sold." We played a few rounds of this tonight. It's a fairly self-explanatory game, but I'll give you a paraphrased example anyway.
Me: I went grocery shopping today.
Pig: Oh, that reminds me. We need diet soda.
Me: Why didn't you tell me this before I went shopping?
Pig: Oh, I realized we needed soda earlier this week, but you told me you went to the grocery store already.
Me: I bought milk and meat earlier this week. I told you yesterday at the dinner table that I would be doing the rest of the grocery shopping today.
Pig: But I thought that if I told you we needed soda after you already went shopping this week, that you'd be mad.
Me: But if you'd told me after the last trip to the grocery store, I could have picked it up when I went today!
Pig: Oh, well I can drink water for a few days.
Me: Darn tootin' you can!
You get bonus points for the more items you add after each trip to the store. You lose points if your spouse catches on to what you are doing and makes you do the dang shopping yourself.
Anyway, it's fairly obvious that neither Pig nor myself is a perfect match when it comes to making lists. We are both pretty darn good at driving each other crazy with either having too many lists or ignoring them entirely. The good news is that we have yet to lose the ability to laugh about it. I figure if that event ever transpires, it will suddenly be Pig's job to do all the shopping. I will do my best to not smirk when I tell him that we've run out of something important and that he needs to drop everything to go out and buy some more.
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