Like a Sack of Potatoes

Twenty-pound bags of potatoes were on sale at my local supermarket this week for $3. Now I know a good price on potatoes when I see one and I wanted those potatoes. A 20-pound bag is too big to fit in the back of my stroller, however, and I haven’t had the time recently to do a big shopping with the car. I was afraid I was going to miss the sale.

Flash forward to this morning when I was catching up on emails and assorted business at a local cafe. (What? You don’t call Facebook business?) I suddenly realized I had to be home to relieve the sitter — I love you, Mom! — and get Colum to the school bus in 25 minutes. That was hardly enough time to warrant opening a word processing program, but it was exactly the perfect amount of time to swing by the grocery store to get my potatoes. Granted, I still didn’t have my car, but without the kids carrying a 20-pound sack the five or six blocks home shouldn’t be a problem, right? What’s 20 pounds anyway? Babies weigh 20 pounds and I carry them around all day, all the time.

The sun peaked out from behind rain clouds as I made my way over thinking about what I would do with my potatoes. Potato leek soup would be perfect and, actually, I could really go for a carrot ginger soup, too. So I picked up some carrots, ginger, leeks and onions on the way to the potatoes. Holding my basket in one arm, I hoisted the giant sack of potatoes up with my other and held it against my body. I walked around the display. Not bad at all; I could totally manage this.

By the time I finished checking out, the sun had long gone and it was raining again. Oh, did I say rain? I meant to say torrential downpour, an apocalypse-worthy gushing from the heavens, some serious cats and dogs, my friend. So I slung the reusable shopping bag my laptop computer was in  — didn’t I mention the laptop? — and my corduroy purse that contained a cell phone, an iPod Touch and a camera over my right shoulder. I dangled the plastic shopping bag full of carrots, onions, leeks and ginger in the crook of that arm and held a boy’s dinosaur umbrella with my hand. Then with my left arm I held the potato bag horizontally against my side, just like I’d tried out in the store, and strode out into the deluge.

By the time I got half-way across the parking lot I wanted to cry.

Instead, I reasoned with myself. If I could keep walking like this for another block I would re-adjust my grip on the potatoes which would, in turn, give me the stamina to continue. So I kept on. For four more blocks I pushed forward against the wind and the rain, shifting the lumpy paper sack this way and that, gripping my purse and praying that all of my expensive, electronic gadgets wouldn’t be ruined all at once so I could save a buck on potatoes.

I turned the final corner onto the two-block-long home stretch just as the rain picked up even more. I could barely see and had to lean forward against the gale thinking that if I could only make it to the railway underpass, then I could put everything down and readjust. Of course the underpass was a veritable wind tunnel and whenever I tried to set the dinosaur umbrella down it was picked up and carried away. So there I was soaked to the bone scrambling to catch a child’s umbrella because I had promised Colum that I would return it unscathed if only he would let me borrow it for the morning and still needing to transport 20 pounds of potatoes plus carrots, onions, leeks, ginger, a laptop, a cell phone, an iPod Touch, a camera and my sanity another block through a practical monsoon.

I briefly considered leaving the potatoes there and maybe coming back for them later. A more reasonable person would have left the potatoes. But $3 for 20 pounds! I’d already come this far and I was going to finish what I started.

The final block of my journey involved crossing four lanes of heavy traffic, a serious hill, circumnavigating a portion of the sidewalk that was closed off for repairs and climbing the couple dozen steps to my front door. I would tell you how I did it, but I seem to have repressed the memory.

I came in and dropped the potatoes in the front hall and immediately set about ensuring that the hundreds and hundreds of dollars worth of technology I had on my person was not completely water logged. By some miracle of Fatima, it was all fine and basically dry, but I dabbed at everything with paper towels anyway and set it out to air dry some more.

Finally, just before heading back out into the newly sunshiny day to take Colum to the school bus, I picked up the soaking-wet, 20-pound, paper sack of potatoes (for only $3!) to bring into the kitchen and it gave out. That’s a lot of discount potatoes all over the floor, let me tell you.

In other news, that Blogher swag just keeps on giving.