Shopping is not easy

We live on a small hobby farm in the middle of nowhere.  Honestly, we're waaaay out there.  The nearest major store is Wal-Mart, and it's 35 miles.  The nearest big city is over an hour and a half away.  Our entire county has only 3 stoplights.  I'm telling you--Middle of Nowhere.  But we love it.  We love that we're off the beaten path, we know our neighbors (who may live over a mile away), we can go for walks or horseback rides and everyone waves at us, and the people in town know us by name.  It's great...unless you need to go shopping.

Last week, I needed to go shopping.  Bad.  Like 25+ items on the list.  We needed everything from bread and eggs to laundry detergent, with a little of everything in between.  Now usually, I do my weekly fresh shopping at our small grocery store in town.  That's where I get our bread, eggs, produce and anything that looks good in the sales ad or that I need in a pinch.  Our milk and cheese we buy right from the local dairy co-op's store.  When I have a large list, I go to Wal-Mart every 3 weeks or so.  But every so often, we make a run into the big city for Sam's Club.  This was one of those times.

Scrat and I left home as soon as Brainiac and Picaso got on the school bus and we arrived at Sam's just 5 minutes after they opened.  I grabbed one of their gigantic carts, reminded Scrat to stay right next to me and away we went.  Cereal, tuna, tampons, Ibuprofen, hot chocolate mix, crackers, laundry detergent, garbage bags, frozen vegetables...you name it, it was probably in our cart.  It was heaping and I kept having to shove stuff in.  I spent over $300.  I told you we were out or low on almost everything.  It was crazy.  And then, since it's Sam's and they don't do bags, I had to find room for everything and didn't I tell you?  We drove the truck because that's our family vehicle right now.  Oh, and it was 15 degrees out.  So I buckled Scrat into her seat, then froze my butt off trying to get everything into the rest of the backseat or in the cooler in the truck bed.  (Side note #1--we need to get a cover for the truck bed just like Full Man Grown wants.  Now.)

Please tell me I'm not the only one to do this.  I can't be the only mom/wife that lets her list get so crazy long and out of control.  It doesn't happen all the time, but I was kicking myself so bad with everything I had to precariously perch on top of the cart.  Sure, we still make periodical trips to Sam's if we're in the city but this trip was just plain insane.