Before stuffing envelopes last night, I needed to stop at the grocery store for a few things, so this round of gratitudes is courtesy of the Lakeville Cub Foods on Kenwood Trail. (Yes, I included the address for a reason: Lakeville is big enough now that it has three Cub Foods locations.)
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Cub Pharmacy. I’ve been buying my meds there since… I’m not even sure. Decades. It was Rainbow Foods when I first started getting my prescriptions there. … Now get off my lawn! … Anyway, I knew they had an order for me to pick up, so that was my first stop in the store.
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Yusef, the pharmacist. If I have medication questions or issues about a cold or pretty much anything health-related, he’s a great resource. He’s also fun to talk to when it comes to soccer, family, traveling… I would have liked to talk more when I was there, but I was in a bit of a time crunch.
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Pizza fixings. You like how I avoided using “pizza” as a gratitude? But that was the other stuff I needed to get besides meds: crust, cheese, pepperoni and sausage.
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Homemade pizza sauce. This gratitude is courtesy of our neighbor, Diana (Gratitude #4.1?). Her parents have a garden (Gratitudes #4.2 and 4.3?), so they gave her some pizza sauce that she then gave to us. It’s a pretty good reason for needing to buy ingredients for making pizza.
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Troop 261. It’s my Scout troop in Lakeville and they’ve been doing some fundraising for a trip down to Florida Sea Base, which in this case meant they were bagging groceries at Cub until 8:00 that night. (Thus, the time crunch.)
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My loud voice. I brought my groceries to the front, then stepped into a lane where a cashier started ringing me up. I looked toward the exit and saw a few Scouts standing around a table—there weren’t many people in the store, so they didn’t have much to do. As would be expected from me, I said in a not-yelling-but-still-really-loud voice, “COULD ONE OF YOU NICE YOUNG SCOUTS COME OVER HERE AND BAG MY GROCERIES FOR ME?”As would be expected from them, they heard me. They also recognized me, so two Scouts came over to help.
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The cashier who rang me up. I’m especially grateful for him because I only bought four items, so he subtly put them in a plastic bag next to him while I was busy talking really loud. After I told him the Scouts were from my troop, he laughed, then took my groceries out of the bag and put them on the conveyor belt so the kids could put my four items in another bag.
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Having cash in my wallet. On the table they were standing around, there was an empty ice cream bucket with a hole cut into the lid. (Technically, it wasn’t empty—they’d already received a bunch of donations.) I got out my wallet, opened it and took out what I had: a $20 and a $1. “Which do you think I should give you?” The dad at the table pointed out, “Well, you did have to yell to get their attention…” It was a good point, but I gave them the $20 anyway. Sea Base is a great trip (I went three years ago), but it’s an expensive one—I figured they could use the money.
