I am not OCD

Well, I had myself all psyched up to go run 14 outside on Saturday. Ate a good dinner Friday night, laid out all my warm clothes before I went to bed, etc. But, it just didn't happen. I figure I have to draw the line between hardass and stupid at some point. And that line is somewhere north of 9 degrees. I woke up at 6 and didnt even pretend I was going to get up and go. I just shut the alarm off and went back to sleep. I did get up and go run 5 miles on the treadmill at the gym though. I would have gone farther, but the treadmill shuts off after you've been on it for an hour. Ok, maybe I wouldnt have gone farther. Running on a treadmill is one of the most boring things I can imagine.

Sunday I did the Groundhog 10K with D and a couple of other people. This was actually the first 10K I've ever signed up for. I've done 5K's, 4-milers, half marathons, marathons....but never a 10K. It was all in the underground storage caves, so the temp was in the mid-60's or so. A welcome break from all the outside running as of late. I did it in 1:12, which is an 11:15 min/mile pace. Not too bad for me. I'm used to being beat by 70 year old women, so whatever. What bugs me though, is all the volunteers. I'm ALWAYS at the tail end of race. I'm fine with it. But I cant stand it when us stragglers come through and the volunteers are like "you can do it! Keep going!". I know I can run effing 6 miles! I know I'm slow! Just shut up! It's pity cheering. You can hear it in their voices.

I have a routine for everything. I NEED routine. That is just how I am. Call it a character flaw if you want, but it's just something I need in order to function. I have a routine for folding laundry. I have a routine for eating my food. Everything has a routine. Everything is planned and thought out in advance. My routine for grocery shopping goes like this:
1. Get out all my recipes
2. Make menu for the week
3. Go through fridge and cabinets to figure out what ingredients I already have
4. Make grocery list
5. Go to grocery store
6. Start on the right side of the store and work my way down the aisles to the left side of the store (the produce section in all the grocery stores I use is on the right. I dont know what I will do if someday I go to one where the produce is on the left)

I HAVE to do it this way. And it all has to happen in one sitting. There is no making out the menu, then the next day going grocery shopping. No. It is one event. So imagine my delimma when I get to the grocery store only to discover......I HAVE FORGOTTEN MY LIST AT HOME! Oh. My. God. I nearly had an attack right there in the front of the store. I seriously stood there for a couple of minutes with my cart trying to decide if I should just get what I could remember, or if I should go home and get my list. I decided to try to shop without my list.

I should ALSO mention that I was not at my regular grocery store. I have gotten so fed up with the HyVee by my house as they have stopped carrying half the shit I need, and the last straw was when they stopped carrying the Farm to Market bread. That is the only kind of sourdough bread I like, I dont like the store bakery stuff. And since I was making baked potato soup last night, well, I needed sourdough bread. So I decided to try out the P Chop over at 95th & Mission. It's a lot nicer than the P Chop by our old house, so I figured I'd give it a whirl.

So there I am, in a new grocery store, without my list. AND, I was driving Dan's car. The Element is my grocery-getter, but he had taken off in it to go run some errands, and I didnt want to wait for him to get home so I could go to the store. This grocery trip just didnt not start out right from the beginning, my whole game was off. ANYWAY. One of the benefits of going to the store right after having made my menu and list is that it was all pretty fresh in my mind. So I could kind of go through my menu in my head and recreate my shopping list. Typically, I am able to just go down my list and cross things off as I put them in my cart. This trip required a bit more back tracking across the store as I remembered various other things I needed, that I had forgotten about my first trip down a certain aisle. But I did manage to get out of the store with pretty much everything I needed.

With a few exceptions. The good ol P Chop did not have regular pork breakfast sausage. I did not want maple flavored, or extra hot, or reduced fat (who uses reduced fat sausage??), I just wanted regular. They had the little price sign for it in the sausage freezer, but it was not there. I dug through it all. I guess everyone else wanted some too. It also took me a while to find the chicken. CHICKEN! The problem was that their meat counter is laid out different than the one at HyVee, and the chicken is in a different colored package than what HyVee uses too. But I did finally find it. BUT! P Chop packages their chicken 4 to a package. HyVee does it 3 to a package. I am used to figuring out how many packages of chicken I need based on the 3 to a package math. So this threw me off. I managed to find one 3-chicken package, so I got that and a 4-chicken package. I knew I needed 6 pieces of chicken for the week, so I dont know what I'll do with the lone leftover. I guess freeze it and hope that I can find another 3-chicken package next week to even it out.

So after having to stop every 5 minutes to try and re-figure what I needed, I made it out OK. I think I'll use this grocery store again, being that my experience was good despite the no-list issue, and wrong car issue. One downfall is that I do like the HyVee brand of a lot of stuff, but not the Best Choice generic brand that P Chop carries. So we'll see how the grocery budget comes out if I stop buying as much generic stuff.

Food is a big deal, people!