Food shopping for a tugboat...or I have 23 children to feed.

for a three week tour is kind of a pain in the ass because too many people ask nosy questions. Others don't understand what is going on.

I used to sometimes have as many as six or seven full carts. 

The store was used to boat orders and would generally assign a single register to it and supply boxes, generally banana boxes if we called ahead.

I'd generally stuff the full carts into the assigned register and grab another and continue.

Sometimes people would ask why I was buying so much. 

Occasionally I would have people, mostly men, ask if I was shopping for a boat or a construction crew. I'd answer 'boat' and they'd nod and wander off.

Now the last thing I wanted to tell them is what I was actually doing which is shopping for a boat. If I told them I would wind up playing twenty questions with an idiot.

I actually had a woman say, "I don't understand why a boat needs that much food!"

I didn't want to bother explaining that there are no convenience stores off of the South Carolina coast so I simply replied, "That's because you are stupid." and left it at that.

People fail to understand that in one fell swoop a boat shopper has to get enough supplies to feed 5-7 men for 21 or more days. That means every single grain of salt, sugar, square of toilet paper and can of beans. If you miss something you will probably have to do without.

It all adds up fast and for seamen that comes out to a lot of chow.  Paper goods are also bulky and fill carts fast. 

A couple of times I explained I was a prepper and that something was going to happen and I was stocking up. Generally I'd throw out some kind of predicted natural disaster because it's nore believeable than a conspiracy theory. As for conspiracies, I generally blame them on the Irish because the Jews have been beaten up enough over the years but I digress.

My favorite excuse for so much chow got to be telling people who asked that I had 23 children to feed. A pretty good portion of them would ask me how I could possily have 23 children. Then it became my turn.

"Didn't your mother have a little talk with you when you were a little girl and tell you whare babies come from?"

It was funny watching them storm off.

To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY