Shopping

Goodness, I didn't realise it has been so long since my last posting. Let me see if I can put up some of the ideas I have had in the past weeks - I had the ideas but not the time!

There are certain things that make me feel old and also that remind me I am not living in a place where my accent is native. This latter means I am not always understood when I am in a shop. And since shopping is not a favorite pastime for me I can get frustrated.

Our family has a custom of having a Sunday brunch, cooked at home, and often involving scrambled eggs. For this we crack eggs into a bowl and then get out a hand cranked egg beater to mix them up. When I was away from home in April the egg beater fell apart and had to be thrown out. I thought it would not be a problem to replace it. Wrong.

We tried a number of stores. First there was the puzzlement as to what I was wanting; "you mean the liquid in a box, right?". Well no. Then when we got that sorted out it was either "oh no, we haven't stocked those for years" or "I think we have them, let me help you find where they are" which turned into "no, we don't seem to have them any more".

I know the common thing these days is "oh, go online and get it from Amazon" but I like to support the local stores and every purchase made through the internet is one step closer to putting the local stores out of business and the employees out of work. I did go online and I could have bought the item from a few places but the shipping and handling was going to cost more than the item to begin with.

Finally, after trolling up and down the aisles in a hardware store (no, not the big orange one) we found one, this one, on the shelf. Since one was all we needed we carried it in triumph to the cash register. The clerk was unimpressed.


It does not look like it will last for very long but never mind, we can beat up our eggs until then.

Meanwhile, I was away again for the weekend with some friends and I was bemoaning the lack of egg beaters. Now I must add that none of my friends seemed to have one in their kitchen but they all remembered their grandmother having one. On the way home from that weekend a couple of my friends stopped in at an area antiques and collectibles show. I got an urgent cell phone call with an excited "look what we found! Do you want us to buy it for you?" I gave the okay and they had fun bartering down the marked price. So now I also have this as a backup.


My third shopping story has a happier note. Sometimes when I go to New Zealand I bring back a pack or two of TimTams as they were a favorite cookie when we lived in Australia. They always get eaten up promptly (the ones carried home squashed in my luggage) but with no big fuss made. So this trip I did not bring any back as no-one had asked me too. But I did get asked, once I got home, "did you bring us any TimTams?" So I felt bad. Imagine then the happy surprise we had walking through the aisles of a local shop recently to see displayed on an end shelf with a big sign saying "new product" none other than packages of TimTams.


So now we are happy. We can enjoy our old fashioned scrambled eggs and our old favorites Tim Tams all because of careful shopping.