Day 12: Grocery shopping: Check

Grocery shopping has become the biggest ordeal, ever.

First, I have to travel via bus to the grocery store with one of my children. My husband, a newsman who promises to work days but never delivers, could watch both girls, but it’s helpful to have the extra-long double stroller available for stacking lots and lots of groceries and taking an empty, giant stroller on the bus is frowned upon, probably. And so what if I have to breastfeed Penelope on the curb of a parking lot littered with cigarette butts. Riding the bus is fun!

Anyhow, there’s something satisfying about the taste of a pork roast carried home in a backpack.

But that’s not all. The next day, it’s downtown shopping, which is decidedly more fun and less bus-intensive. There’s the college book store/corner store/Hallmark store kind of place. There’s the Garlic Press, where I bought homemade croutons and a hilarious gigantic calculator for my grandfather’s 91st birthday (take my word on it, it’s hilarious). There’s the ice cream shop and the farmer’s market where, thanks be to everything green, corn is in season.

While in Ace Hardware, where I now buy my cleaning supplies and paper products, my husband called to make sure it wasn’t me who had been hit crossing a particularly bad intersection near our house. He heard about it on the scanner.

Walking home, crossing that very intersection, was the first time I had considered the safety issues of not driving. I thought walking was much safer than driving.

Wrong.

The National Transportation Policy Project studied that question and found walking to be the most dangerous mode of travel. The most!

Good grief. Something else to worry about.

And I thought the bus was scary.