Holiday Dinners

The Fall Calendar.  Kitchen time for me.  My synagogue decided to sponsor a dinner the evening before Rosh Hashanah.  It's a good thing for them to do.  They get people to come and stay for an evening service whose attendance has dwindled.  My experience with congregational meals usually has me heading home regretting that I subscribed. Many reasons, most traceable to a Dominant Influencer culture that grates on me.  Also exclusion from the kitchen, one of my favorite places to be as a Food Committee gave way to Sisterhood, with its Dominant Influencer. Something I revel in at home, designing the menus, inviting dinner guests, executing the creation of an elegant meal using home kitchen resources.  My favorite place to be, even before I get to the dining table.  Going to a synagogue dinner registers as a form of deprivation.

Three key meals, multiple secondary ones as the Holy Days play out.  RH, Shabbos Sukkot, and since traveling to an event with my new grandson, I can assemble a Shabbos dinner from their nearby Aldi for the Shabbos before YK.

I've made the menu grid for RH and Sukkot.  As I did this, the RH structure with my family traditions popped out at me from the grid.  I make a round challah, two if Shabbos.  I've known how to make a round spiral for many years, but this past year I learned how to make a four-strand interior braid with the overall shape remaining round.  We have apples and honey.  The Sisterhood, those ladies who exclude me from the congregational kitchen irrespective of my skill and interests, sell honey as a fundraiser.  Expensive, but better honey than the stuff that supports my honey cake.  That goes with apples.  I've gotten away from gefilte fish.  We still try to get to services on time.  Too many dinner courses make that difficult.  Instead, I make a chicken soup with discounted chicken parts that can be harvested for other uses.  Add carrots, an onion, maybe a turnip, a stalk or two of celery and commercial kosher chicken broth, some peppercorns, maybe a bay leaf.  Pastina or orzo for serving.  My wife makes a special rice kugel, more sweet than savory.  I usually make chicken as the main course. Some forms cook easily, others with more elegance.  You can never go wrong with boneless, skinless chicken breasts, that blank canvas of an entree that can be seasoned, seared, and baked, poached with herbs, made in an Insta-Pot, or prepared in a variety of sauces.  Carrots are the preferred vegetable, having to do with a play on words in their Yiddish form.  I've made glazed carrots, but sometimes plain boiled has advantages.  Dessert is always Honey Cake.  It has a basic recipe with endless variants.  Since we need to head to services, I do not serve alcohol other than a swallow of Concord Grape Wine with kiddush.  Seltzer or herb tea does the job.

Sukkot meals get eaten in our sukkah as much as weather permits.  We try to have guests shabbos, usually people who do not have their own sukkahs.  We also usually get invited somewhere during the holiday, but I reserve Shabbos for serving as host.  Here the menu gets more creative.  Two braided Challot, one for the guest to take home.  I've learned to make loaf gefilte fish. It is poached in seasoned water while still frozen, then cooled and served as slices with horseradish.  Soup appears in the menu, often Middle Eastern harira, sometimes chicken. Salad of some type, always with a dressing that I made myself.  The main course has fewer restrictions. Chicken Cacciatore goes well.  So does a half-turkey breast or a whole roasted chicken.  Maybe Bastilla, an elegant chicken pie assembled with a phyllo crust.  Roast meat gets a kugel of some type.  Vegetable on sale.  Dessert is usually a pareve cake.  Apple, nut torte, baklava.  And wine.  Serving in a cramped sukkah with small square table requires its own planning.

While many American Jews center their religious life around the Holy Days, sometimes the only opportunity to leverage reluctant worshipers to fork over hefty annual dues that keep their congregations functional the rest of the year, the luster for me had long since worn off.  In college, I reconnected with friends I'd not seen that summer.  Services usually needed some juggling with school work.  Each year had a twist or two.  Adult suburbia has became excessively programmed. Large crowds.  People of entitlement, either to the same aliyah they've had forever, choirs that mean more to the singers than the listeners, gatekeepers at the door, an influx before Yizkor with a mass exit on completion, an increasingly politicized Bond Appeal.  A programmed Event.  I come as a spectator for the most part.  It is those hours of sifting through online menus, reading possibilities from my cookbooks, extending guest invitations, building a home sukkah from a kit, and challenging my skill in the kitchen that makes the season special.  It's worth my best effort.

Working for 15 Minutes

 
Two-Minute Rule. A staple of productivity.  If a small task can be done in two minutes or slightly more, just do it. Despite my assorted annoyances with my current low-end smartwatch, it has an easily accessible two-minute countdown timer.  In that time, I can wash all four of the coffee mugs that fit on the outer holders of my dish rack.  If I want to wash utensils, I can do about two place settings before my wrist buzzes.  Watering my aerogarden takes less time than that, even if I have to fill up the two-liter harvested juice jug with fresh water.  Refreshing the potted herbs outside my front door takes a little longer.

Indeed, I can time most any task.  Not how long it takes to do, but how long I am willing to work on it.  My semi-annual projects for this cycle include things that have a lot of steps.  Slow and steady wins the ketchup race, the commercial from my childhood taught me.  Repurposing my adult son's bedroom will take many hours.  Boxes everywhere.  Paper dating back to grade school. Crammed dresser and nightstand drawers.  A desk that he rarely used but was my pride to provide it for him.  Electronics long gone obsolete.  That gets fifteen minutes per session on my timer.  I shoot for two sessions per week, but if only fifteen minutes at a time, I could do more without feeling overwhelmed.  And with the ability to sort things that he may treasure, his awards, birthday cards, special clothing.  Fifteen minutes of sorting or washing or discarding at a time gets it done over about three months.

My own bedroom gets only ten minutes at a time, two or three sessions a week.  I've already been able to vacuum my half.  Surfaces have started to appear functional, sorting just a few sections at a time while discarding very little.

My Space only gets six minutes at a time.  Not that I am unwilling to allocate more of my attention, but after six minutes something stymies additional progress.  But I can see more than an end point.  I recently recaptured my beloved Lands End Canvas Attaché, an indulgence purchase early in my career.  The Eddie Bauer cloth attache sits next to my desk chair.  It holds recreational items, mostly art.  And next to that I store a leather briefcase, purchased for $60 with the intent of looking upscale professional.  It's rarely been toted anywhere.  The cloth ones with neck straps captured the market due to better utility.  The leather one with its dual handles lets me see what I once aspired to have.  Six minutes at a time will bring My Space to what I had envisioned as what I would really do with a personalized part of my house, right down to my display of collegiate coffee mugs from the many campuses I've visited.  My many diplomas sit wrapped and in storage.  My Space has no reason to morph into a monument to myself.

My projects also include expressing myself in various ways as I move into the years of limited anticipated longevity.  Can I write a 90K word book?  If I set my timer for 90 minutes and write 750 words, it will add up.  

Other goals, or really systems to reach those goals, do not adapt as easily to a timer.  My treadmill sessions have a count-up timer, 30 minutes.  I set the intensity.  Stretching has a program of 8 minutes spread over 16 half-minute exercises.  I plan to host three dinners to challenge my creativity, social skills, and kitchen expertise.  Pulling this off requires steps, some like stove or oven times dictated by recipes.  I guess I could surf or read cookbooks for soup or dessert options using a timer, but this type of task I tend to work until the step has been completed.  I like going on day trips, having done one of the three intended for this cycle.  The timer does not aid in completing this.  Rather, I pick a day, destination, starting time, and return time, then do it as a unified effort.  Once every November, I deal with my IRA.  This includes allocation to charities working with my financial advisor, then a few weeks later, depositing the rest of my mandatory withdrawal in my checking account or a different investment account.  The timer doesn't properly segment everything.

But a third of the way through this semi-annual cycle, I've done rather well, even on my manuscript.  The short bursts seem productive, not at all stressful. Visible progress appears.  It makes for a good system to bring difficult initiatives to completion, something that has chronically challenged me.

Scheduling Myself

It's been a good year, or maybe half-year.  My semi-annual projects appear on course less than two months into the current cycle, and did mostly well for the previous six-month block.  Some projects easy, sure things.  Others need slow but steady.  Those have done better.

There might be many inflection points, though not overt tipping points.  I enrolled as a research subject for my state's flagship university.  It required a measure of physical activity that I could not have completed a year ago.  Some intense exercises to my right quadriceps and brisk walking over a half hour.  What enabled this was my commitment to a treadmill schedule and YouTube stretching video.  I set times to do these things, essentially appointments with myself.  I know the scheduled days but left flexibility with the times. Now I have a fixed time, rarely violated in the absence of another conflicting place I need to be.  And whether OLLI, synagogue, or doctor visits on schedule for the morning, I make an effort to walk on the treadmill first.

My personal writing has done better, though acceptance for publication has not. I get more submissions.  Enough shots on goal will eventually get through the net.  I have a fixed time to sign onto Word.  I've also tapped into the wisdom of experienced writers who do the same.  One that I admire sets a daily word quota, another writes a regular column with a word target.  I use a timer.  My intent had been 90 minutes five days weekly.  I find that my mind only focuses for about a half hour at a time.  But starting at a fixed time most days has made all the difference. 

Even recreation and personal learning get timed.  I watch YouTube after supper, usually with one long video and a few shorter.  Curiosity Stream gets watched on my smartphone before retiring for the night. I question the wisdom of this, as the blue light screen may disturb the sleep that follows, but a Curiosity Stream video remains a second tier priority.  Even sleep times, really in and out of bed permissions, have gotten fixed times.  My smartwatch tracks sleep stages, really the surrogate markers of sleep stages.  Middle of the night wakening remains unresolved.

While comfortably adapted to the unscheduled life of retirement, I realize there are advantages to a work model.  For forty years I went to work.  I did tasks assigned and undertaken voluntarily, irrespective of how I felt, either about what I was assigned to do or my self-assessment of energy.  The clock ruled.  I met deadlines.  I had times to do payroll and pay taxes.  Hospital time took place at predictable hours as did patient office encounters.  I expected myself to leave the house on time and not return until the expected tasks that should not wait until the next day had been done.  Scheduling has become harder, or more correctly, easily postponed with little immediate consequence.  But as my exercise schedule yielded its benefits over about a year, those small but consistent efforts accumulated.  My YouTube videos, plant maintenance, shabbos observance, and monthly financial review have all done better when a time is assigned to do them. I've done less well with house upgrades.  They just don't have the same priority as my health and mind, but they are reasonably finite tasks, though large ones.  I follow a timer, just don't show the same performance consistency that I have with other personal semi-annual initiatives.  No barrier to adding these to tasks I schedule myself to do.  Small consistent performance.  Large projects progress to completion.

Landscapers

Ramit Sethi who made his fortune guiding people to handle their money in the most sensible way has some reservations about owning your own home.  When he runs the numbers on the true value of home ownership, he includes real costs, down payments, mortgage, taxes, upkeep, insurance.  It does not always give the best financial return.  Sometimes lifestyle prevails.  I like having a space that is mine.  Mortgage paid off long ago.  Only one other borrowing episode to replace asbestos siding with vinyl.  Other than purchase costs, and selling costs which have not yet happened, we still have those expenses that never disappear.  Insurance on autopay.  Taxes just boosted significantly following countywide reassessment.  Upkeep never ends.  Some outlay to the plumbers periodically.  And the pest inspectors who seem to do well at keeping us free of six and eight legged vermin, frustratingly incomplete with sending the mice on a one way ticket.  We have an electrical contract, about $30 a month.  They inspect our systems for us twice a year, tell us what is wrong, which is usually more than what really needs repair, then gives us an estimate for them to fix what they say we ought to fix.  We get a second electrical, plumbing, or heating estimate from reputable contractors that always undercut them, sometimes even advising us not to undertake the project yet.  And then there is tree removal.  Infrequent but costly enough to have a place on my spare credit card that gives 2% credit for my next airfare.

And then we have the landscapers.  Some things are simply beyond my capacity, others within my capacity that I really prefer paying somebody else do.  I still have several lawnmowers, including one that probably runs.  My lawn gets mowed weekly by a different, more limited landscaper. It gets fed a few times a year by Lawn Doctor so it will grow faster and need more mowing.  But twice a year, the forest primeval that has become my yard needs control.  Trimming hedges which brush my head with dew or the previous night's rain when I walk out my front door.  A perimeter of plantings along the back yard.  I rarely go to the back yard, but look out the window frequently. My garden disabled a few times with herbicide.  Gutters that have sprouted their own vines in the growing mixture that settles there.  No shortage of things to do.  Impressive bill each time, but our grounds appear well tended whenever they finish multiple tasks.  Just something the hangs at the interface of needs doing and want done.  Either way, beyond my level of skill.  In my senior years, my physical capacity to do these things has long passed.  

Portions for One

It's been a while since I lived alone for more than a few days.  Approaching my 48th wedding anniversary.  We've been apart for a few days at a time, mostly business trips.  Even our hospitalizations have been few, local, and brief.  Over that time, raising kids brought transitions.  They were around, then they weren't.  Sleep away camp for each, first one, then both.  College.  First one, then both, never to return as part of our daily household once they as they pursued their careers.  Now their children, one arrived, one soon to arrive.  One a five hour drive, the other a five hour flight.  Our daughter needed Mom's assistance and support, as a sperm bank mother who also lives alone.  

I dropped my wife at the airport, anticipating a five-week separation.  I will visit the other coast with them in about three weeks, but the logistics of her apartment require me to stay somewhere else each night.  Still, we can eat our meals together while we share newborn care that week.  Safe arrival of wife with daughter confirmed.

That leaves me living by myself for a few weeks.  I started immediately upon returning from the airport by making our bed.  My wife usually does this.  Tomorrow night I need to put the garbage bags and recycling in their proper bins, then wheel each to the end of our driveway.  Another wife task.

My experience living alone is considerable, just not recent and never in a spacious suburban house that can absorb me with chores.  Unlike my student days, I have few pressing deadlines and no externally imposed exams.  I also have little desire to seek recreation as an escape, or maybe supplement, to assigned work.  My semi-annual projects get pursued whether or not my wife occupies our house.  Some of those initiatives, though, move through stages better with the assistance of a second person.

The list of twelve lies to my left on a whiteboard held to a file cabinet with a magnet.  Writing to create and submit.  Might consider a day trip.  Not going to invite any friends for Shabbos dinner, though I would consider an unlikely invitation extended to me.  Exercise, sleep hygiene, and prudent eating continue, though the eating part may need some decisions.  And household upgrades, those decluttering or restoration projects, do not need a second person's help at their current stages.  My wife's car could use some attention.  I can do that.

Food will likely require some adaptation.  Supermarkets do not focus on sole occupants of homes.  Bread comes in loaves of more than a pound or as rolls or bagels in packages of six.  Maybe move half of each package into a separate bag which can go in the freezer.  Eggs come as a dozen.  In recent years, I have only made myself one at a time, but I could expand to two.  Or I could use four as a quiche or as a cake.  Veggie burgers or Beyond Beef can be separated into individual patties.  Frozen vegetables are easily apportioned.  While I usually buy potatoes or onions in a sack of 3-5 pounds, they are sold individually.  I have the option of buying one or two.  Same with apples, oranges, and bananas.  I've not seen milk sold in an 8 oz carton in a long time.  I use almost none.  Snacks, those munchies the doctor prefers I not consume, come in big packages.  So does cereal.  So does the ice cream that I buy.  A 48 oz carton will last a long time.  It may pay to spend a bit more per ounce and opt for a pint of Ben & Jerry's. Or buy a package of Klondike Bars or Sandwiches instead of a carton.  Cereal, another munchie rather than breakfast food, comes in a big box.  Coffee, my most common beverage, has many single serving options.  K-cup by far the easiest, but I also have an individual Melitta cone and a one-cup French press.  Oatmeal now comes prepackaged as individual servings.  I know how to portion pancake mix to make a single large flapjack.  I won't go hungry.  I won't waste.  What I create in the kitchen still needs clean-up.  That does not change much whether I cook only for myself or for a couple.  I very rarely eat out, though I did that more often as a student.  My kids' generation orders take-out and delivery.  I rarely do.  Might I go out for a slice of pizza more often, or go to a coffee house, or the brew pub?  Not on the plan, but it would not surprise me to default that way.

I know surprisingly few people who live alone.  My wife's in-laws are widowed, her sister never married.  Some folks from the synagogue, mostly widowed.  We once had bachelors, though most have passed away.  Almost no divorced people.  They seem pretty self-reliant.  Never asked any of them if people invite them over for Shabbos or even Seder and Thanksgiving.

On day 1, I foresee the challenge of self-reliance.  Not having my wife with me at supper or in bed will not be devastating, knowing she is alive, active, and being infinitely helpful somewhere else.  Our modern communication devices keep us in touch.  I don't see myself compensating for a few weeks of relative solitude by doomscrolling on the cell phone or laptop.  I have a firm concept and a realistic commitment to pursuing my semi-annual projects.  I'll probably make more of an effort to find some people time each day, whether at a store or synagogue, to make myself more interactive in my wife's absence.  But I really do not need significant surrogates to animate my empty house.  Just some minor adjustments to living by myself as I once did successfully.

On the Turnpike

My car has offered me freedom since I first acquired my own in my mid-20's.  At the time, I lived far from my relatives while attending school.  My univercity's city had vestigial public transit, only a bus system.  The rail line would appear decades later.  To visit my father in one city, my girlfriend in another, and my future in-laws at their home in another, would take me two days as a solo driver, though a marathon through performance with shared driving.  By myself, I would only drive long distances in daylight or not much past supper during winter's darkness.  That remains true today, after 47 years of marriage, as my wife defers the driving to me.

My car has remained my freedom.  I go anywhere and everywhere around town at whim.  Commuting during my working years got bundled into my work.  Adjacent cities, maybe a radius of 150 miles, get visited with little planning.  I've also done longer trips, those needing an overnight stay, though never two overnight stays.  This task offers a challenge.  I have destinations.  A resort, different city, wife time someplace where we've not visited before, the National Parks with auto rentals, wine country east and west.  

Until recently, as I reached my senior years, the territory traversed often captured my interest more than the arrival to a destination.  Crossing into states I'd not visited before.  Mountains.  Farms.  Roads that have no route numbers.  I've stopped for coffee at convenience stores, wondering why somebody or their ancestors opted to settle in an isolated place.

Interstates have become the mainstay of destination connections.  There seem to be two genres.  Some states, particularly NY and PA, have created dedicated turnpikes.  The NY State Thruway and Pennsylvania Turnpike each came about by intentional design. Not always what everyone regards as intelligent design.  The Highway Departments determined where the exits best belong, often scores of miles apart.  These connect to smaller roads, also operated by the state, to let visitors get to attractions or rural state colleges, often located a considerable distance from the limited-access highway.  Tolls support them.  So do franchise fees paid by businesses to market their travel services at designated rest stops.

The other format developed in a less planned manner.  Roads already existed connecting places that travelers were already visiting.  These thoroughfares received federal dollars for improvement.  The upgraded, high-speed roads include more frequent exit ramps.  Instead of dozens of miles, their town connections are usually a few miles.  Towns each have their history, but most came as a consequence of federal land parcels, towns created by railroad construction, or land grants to establish educational institutions.  These have an element of free enterprise cooperating with government.  As a driver approaches each off-ramp, the Interstate Highway System posts a sign with where drivers can find a place to eat, stay, and refuel as needed.  Most of these services come from regional or national corporations which either own or franchise the individual businesses.  As a driver, I could get a sense of what convenience stores operated over that region and gasoline that sells regionally as well as nationally.  The hotels are nearly always national, but occasionally an independent inn in a more remote area will pay a fee to have its motel on the interstate sign.

The hotels have figured out that motorists overestimate or underestimate how much distance they can safely cover.  Reservations can be made by cell phone from the convenience store or gas station before the anticipated stop, or we've just stopped and asked for a room. Sold out rarely happens.  Drivers need little more than a bed and some coffee to enable the next day's drive.  Since most interchanges have multiple gasoline options, the price stays regionally competitive.  Along the way, signs indicate attractions.  I've found a few wineries or distilleries to lightly sample as I stretch. I've made spot decisions to stop at a university I've seen play sports on TV.  The wineries in particular often situate their vineyards a few miles from their interstate, enabling a few minutes of leisurely motoring without traffic or teamsters getting their rigs as far as possible before union or ICC rules force them to drive off to where they can sleep in their modern truck cab for the required hours.

As I get older, my tolerance for time behind the wheel has ebbed.  To attend a vital family event, I drove five hours along the Pennsylvania Turnpike, coming and going.  I found the drive tedious, probably a consequence of central planning that the less planned interstates avoid.  Monotonous scenery.  State rules limit billboards, which often provide quick visual respites that benefit drivers.  Few buildings to see from the roadway.  Tunnels, four of them, offered welcome relief.  Since the Turnpike connects secondary roads, I exited once time in each direction to find a place for lunch.  These regional centers, small towns that function independent of metropolitan areas, each had convenience stores and familiar name restaurants a short drive from the interchange with easy access back.  While the state franchise fast food at the rest stops, it does not sponsor lodging.  Most of the regional towns will have the familiar motel chains or motorists can identify them online by either exiting or letting a passenger access the options on the cell phone.

I found the driving tiring, something I had tolerated much more easily during my school years, driving a similar route and beyond.  The thrill of getting there, those stops at wineries or shopping malls instead of regional convenience stores, did not happen.  No family eateries like I encountered often at Interstate Exits, which I drove from the airport to the western National Parks.  No bridges with gorges, no railroads running parallel to the interstate.  Just a conduit to get me to where I wanted to be as quickly as a car can cruise control at speed limit.  Something planned by bureaucrats and technocrats.  Functional.   Beauty and meaningful visual interest not included in the plans.

Weekly Circular Store Shelf Mismatch

 

Grocery shopping did not go well.  As a kosher consumer, Rabbi of my shul, the Orthodox one, two Rabbis ago, now some 25 years ago, cashed in some friendship favors with the head of a local supermarket chain.  One store in the Jewish population center would create a kosher meat department, deli, and bakery.  As a result, those of us who once schlepped 45 minutes to independent Kosher butchers in our magnet city's Orthodox neighborhood, filling our freezers to capacity every couple of months, could now buy what we needed mostly for supper in a much more convenient way.  Supermarket business is notoriously competitive and at low profit margins. Having all the people with kosher homes shopping there to the exclusion of other grocers, made the friendship pay off for everyone. Well, not exactly everyone.  As local Kosher oversight committees around America made similar arrangements for their observant Jews, the independent kosher butchers closed their shops in all but the places of highest Orthodox presence.

I also had my transition, as did my Jewish community.  We have become older.  Parents of late teens and college kids at the start of the project became empty nesters.  Rabbinical transitions and animosities among key players took its toll.  Kashrut attracts older people.  As actuarial realities and sunbelt migration play out, there are fewer kosher consumers.  But those who remain, continue our personal loyalties to that particular store, despite a selection of beef and poultry far less diverse than it once was.  The misdeeds of Rubashkin's Agriprocessors ended economical kosher beef.  Its substitute suppliers keep us afloat with ground beef, cubes, and minute steaks.  I've not seen liver in years and briskets only near the Festivals when people make big dinners for extended families.  The deli has become a pawn as key people who truly have not been treated well by dominant local Jews, protect their turf.  Yet our loyalty to that store in that location remains firm.  I seldom make a purchase from the deli, deterred by expense.  Same with the bakery, which rarely offers anything baked in store for what I am willing to spend.  Indeed, the store's hechsher has the logo of the departed Rabbi, not the current mara d'atra of my synagogue.

What I seek out as specialty kosher for my basket, though, is a pittance of what I put in my cart each week.  The economics of food processing has made available every imaginable mass-produced edible with a factory-applied kosher insignia from one of several international supervision agencies.  My full cart has kosher, but not locally supervised.  The same packaged stuff available anyplace.  But I shop at the place where I can also purchase kosher raw beef and chicken, though I rarely prepare either other than for Shabbos and Festivals.  Even my kosher Thanksgiving turkey I buy someplace else.  My Rabbi and his supermarket CEO chum called it right.  Kosher brings loyalty.  So do better prices, which this store seems to have.  And top tier employees, where they seem to struggle.

Every Wednesday, the postman delivers a packet of supermarket advertising.  It contains circulars from about a half dozen competing markets, each of colored newsprint, about eight pages long.  I extract the one from my grocery, recycle the others.  I take it to the desk in My Space, extract a page from one of those 8.5 x 3.5 pads that I harvest from periodic non-profits solicitation envelopes, take out a pen, most commonly a red Flair pen, and begin my review of the coming week's supermarket promotions.  The page from the pad has a logo with lines for writing on the front, blank white on the right.   On the front, I note what I definitely will purchase. Either it's a deal too good to pass up, or I need it.  Typically that fills a little more than half the sheet.  On the blank reverse, I write those items that I will consider as I shop.  That list fills an entire column, then a third or so of the next column.  After I am done, usually two sessions spread over a half hour to get through all eight pages, I write on the front what must get because I am running low, irrespective of its inclusion in the weekly sale circular.  The circular and shopping list then get clipped together with a home on the far reaches of my desk until ready to drive to the supermarket.

Short essential list:

1. K-Cups; House Brand #36
2. Stovetop Espresso Maker
3. #2 Pencils which I buy each year
4. Papermate stick pens, which did not write last year
5. Spiral Notebook purchased each year
6. Chex Mix
7. Tastykakes

Essential has a context.  I have enough stationery.  My doctor thinks I snack too much.  Have enough coffee pods to last a while.  But my stovetop espresso maker failed some time ago from a deteriorating gasket that I cannot easily replace.  Essential becomes things I will eventually use which can be obtained at a price low enough that I will not anticipate a similar bargain in the near future.

 

I entered the store expecting to purchase little more than this, as I did not want to spend a significantly greater amount of time there to explore the much larger number of items on the back side of the sheet.  This store puts its advertised circular bargains right near the front entrance.  I put two boxes of Tastykakes in my basket.  Usually they have sale K-cups there, but not this week.  I wheeled my cart to the coffee aisle, taking a box of 36 for my cart.  School supplies just entering the Back to School season, though school will not reopen for another six weeks.  I found a minimal pile of spiral binders, wide rule 70 sheets each, my usual Back to School annual purchase. I put one yellow and one red cover in my basket.  No advertised pencils or stick pens.  A sign pointed to a supply at aisle's end.  None there either.  Looked at cereals and snacks without finding Chex Mix.  Wouldn't even know where to find the espresso maker, the one item that would add to my enjoyment.

Near the front door they keep a customer service area.  In this computerized era, the clerk can type in a number and find it.  I waited my turn, a short wait.  The young man greeted me, though he looked like his coffee break might have gotten overdue.  I asked him to get me a circular, then I circled from the ad what I could not find.  No pencils or pens in stock.  Chex Mix with the snack aisle, where it was not when I went back to look for it.  He did not even have the espresso maker listed in his store's computerized inventory but he told me which aisle it would be in if and when the store stocks it.  Rainchecks for pens and pencils.  No Chex Mix to be had.  And the Espresso Maker exists only on newsprint received by a few million households in my metro area, not in the store or even in the inventory of what the computer can affirm as present on site.  Rain checks have to be generated by their computer as it includes a UPC code to scan for the discount.  Phantom items like my desired stovetop device have no way in modern grocery retailing of providing me the discount, even if the item appears on their shelves past the expiration date of the weekly circular.

So basically, the best and brightest of the grocery world lured me into their store expecting bargains that they were not able to fulfill.  In my younger years, the 1970s or so, an age of emerging consumerism where people read Consumer Reports and watched interviews of Ralph Nader on talk shows, we called this Bait & Switch.  Advertise an item at a low price, not have it, consumer gets similar item at full price or does other shopping in store.  It was at the time part of strategy to squeeze a few dollars from each shopper.  Most merchants offered rain checks, handwritten vouchers to purchase the advertised item at the sale price later, but it required the consumer to wait her turn at the customer service desk.

Unavailability of advertised items still occurs, though no longer part of profit enhancing strategy.  Replacing it seems more the growth of businesses to massive proportions with centralization of shared tasks, dependence on technology which never runs glitch free, multiple satellite outlets, serving millions of consumers, all in a competitive but oligarchical environment with a few similar enterprises trying to make their branch store the one I find most attractive.  My grocer has hundreds of stores, but rather than being centrally owned, they are regionally owned and franchised by a central distributor.  Somebody has to decide what will go on sale in what region each week, tell that to the staff that advertises those decisions who prints and mails the weekly circulars.  Then somebody else has to secure a supply of those thousands of different products, obtain them from suppliers in an era where expected distribution does not always happen, bring the products to the individual sites, and record it for the clerks who interface with the customers to call up each individual item by current supply and location in that store.  Plenty of steps to break down, and as I learned, they do break down.  There was no Chex Mix even though the computer said there was.  

Sometimes the merchants can anticipate iffy supply.  The circular will say "where available, no rainchecks."  That way they can advertise Kosher Chicken everywhere but only stock the stores which have enough Jewish customers to buy enough of it.  Back to school, Valentine's Day, and Christmas have seasonal items which will run out and not get restocked as the targeted events pass.  But the items I wanted, especially the espresso maker, did not have that restriction.  Still, I could not be assured that my store will ever have it or that I can receive the advertised discount if it ever appears on their shelves.

Retailing in America, at least stores, have earned the shopper's skepticism.  They invite you to get something at a good price that you cannot have, after making an effort to drive there, bring your own shopping bag, and looked on the store's shelves for more than you came for.  Electronic shopping doesn't have that albatross.  Circulars from Amazon do not arrive.  Even unsolicited pop-ups are rare.  People sign on when they know what they want to purchase, though the browsing options are ample and easy to use once a category gets selected.  Shoppers learn of discounts once ready to select.  A blue shirt may have a different price than a lemon yellow shirt.  I looked up the espresso maker, known in e-tailing as a MokaPot.  No shortages.  But not at the price my grocer advertised, either.  I guess, like some of our political candidates, they dedicate themselves to they/them but rarely to you.