Stupid Fancy Grocery Store.

It's not the whole reason I'm blue, but part of the credit for my general malaise has to go to the fact that my grocery store closed. It wasn't the best grocery store, but it was My grocery store. It was a little dim, a little shabby and I'll be the first to admit that there was a bit of a freshness issue with the milk. Sometimes.

But it was close and so very very friendly. The produce guy and the butcher were chatty. (Did you know that the "color added" in farmed salmon comes from the feed? Neither did I.) My discordant children were handed cookies. I strolled like a bon vivant through checkout. If I was frazzled, they soothed. If my offspring were well-behaved, they noticed. Life was good, even when the milk had expired.

So now I have to go to the further-away newly-fancified grocery store with it's internecine parking lot and sphenic, hermetically-sealed melons and tantalizing crockery placed just at four-year-old fingertips. The aisles are too narrow, the lighting is weird and frankly, I don't want to grind my own peanut butter. Checkout pullulates with self-important professionals buying their bento box lunches and impatient five-dollar-juice-sipping teenagers. And do they carry totally useful fancy items like culinary lavender or morels? No! Stupid fancy grocery store.