The Essentials Of Life

[dragonlady7]

OK, I've been in Buffalo for a while now, and I had intended to write about it.
I've been bitching about where I live for so long that I suppose in order for any of it to have meaning I should probably throw in some of the positive stuff. I whinged about how awful everything was in Westchester, and I suppose it sounds unreasonable unless I explain how things are actually, indeed, better here.

So Dave and I went grocery shopping today. It was a major undertaking, that took up most of the morning, and yet, I was never frustrated or angry at any point. I think my worst moment was when there was an old woman standing in the middle of the aisle at Wegman's, an aisle wherein someone else had simply abandoned a full shopping cart at a haphazard angle, and thus I couldn't get through. But that's because humans are in large part morons, and is unavoidable in any habitat wherein humans live. I can't blame that on Buffalo. The store wasn't crowded enough for that to happen more than once. Unlike Stew Leonard's, which was one long experience of being stuck between the old lady and the asshat.

But I digress.

No, I had fun today.

A large part of that could probably be attributed to the fact that while I am unemployed, I am also spending almost no money at the moment, and so am in absolutely no financial distress. This weekend I will begin my job search, and in the meantime, I am actually enjoying living with my mother-not-in-law and Dave.
Another nice thing is that Dave is not working, and so is around a lot more. We can spend leisurely time together, and in his mother's beautifully-organized, well-laid-out, spacious house, rather than in the crowded, fetid hellhole that we never cleaned and called an "apartment". (That's uncharitable of me. It was a very pleasant shoebox, once we'd removed all our furniture and spent a day cleaning it.)
But I don't think that really accounts for all of it. Dave has been grumpy and taciturn lately, and while we've had a lot of time to ourselves, he's been under stress to sort out his student situation and the like, and it's not that we've been relaxing and enjoying ourselves instead of the high-stress life we led in Westchester. (I mean... also, we live with his mom. I like the woman a great deal, and admire her wit immensely, but if we didn't have Dave in common we're not the sort of people that would hang out. We haven't got a ton to say to one another, and I honestly can't tell what she thinks of most things. I've been doing dishes fifteen times a day, and have stealthily cleaned most of her house, including surreptitiously purchasing replacement cleaning supplies, because I am absolutely determined not to be a pest in my freeloading here. I'm sure she's been trying hard to be nice to me as well, though I can't tell what she thinks of most things, so I don't really know. She is cool, though.)

But, we went grocery shopping today, and it was awesome. It was a ball. Why was it so much fun? I don't think it's because it was something I could apply myself to with purpose, because I could also have done so in Westchester and yet hated it.
No...
It wasn't due to the miraculous power of Wegman's, either, because (gasp) we didn't do all our shopping at Wegman's.
No...
But it was *fun*.

First we went to the City Market in North Tonawanda. You're crazy if you get your produce anywhere else, Dave's mom said, and she was right. You have to be careful-- there are people there like that rude Italian guy who just buy their stuff from grocery wholesalers and sell it, and it's not local and it's the same stuff you get at Weggie's for about the same price. But there are plenty of local people there who sell mostly their own stuff, at very reasonable prices. I got some amazingly good strawberries, much tastier than the Wegmans ones I had for breakfast, and some really good-looking green peppers, and... You know. It was fun.
Then we went to Weggie's. I had a big list all organized of what I needed, and I went through the big super-Wegs on Amherst in Black Rock in no time. Found what I needed, picked up enough stuff to cook my way through half the Dinosaur Cookbook (buy that book, it's freaking awesome), and we were out, with maximum convenience.
And then, to crown the whole thing, we went three blocks down to Spar's, a European sausage shop (best to go on Thursdays and Fridays, the woman behind the counter informed us on a Tuesday long ago, because they have all their best stuff then and the really fresh stuff sells out over the weekend). There, we picked up a further $20 worth of meat products, and then we were on our merry way home.
And we had everything we needed. Unlike in Westchester, where I would bounce around between the A&P (in NEW JERSEY and consequently sans beer), the Food Emporium (it was like an A&P, only poorly organized, and lacking most of the goods, and what they had was more expensive), Stew Leonard's (which was like a circus, with animatronics, and also they didn't have things like, oh, sugar, or detergent; but if you wanted halr-gallons of heavy cream, there was a buy-one-get-one perpetually...), and the Hastings Prime Meats shop down the street, which had great stuff, but a very limited selection, and man oh man, it was ten bucks for a jar of pasta sauce.
Imagine!
There was not one thing on my list that I couldn't get.
There wasn't even one thing on my list that I had to ask for help in finding.
There was one thing I had to send Dave wandering off to get, because I'd inadvertently bypassed the counter. But I knew where to send him, and knew where to tell him I'd be when he came back.
But that's it. No wild goose-chases. Not like when Dave drove all over the county to try and find lard, only to never find it. (Three months later I discovered that Food Emporium does indeed stock lard, but they don't refrigerate it; they put it on the shelf with their ice cream toppings. !! I shit you not. Go to Hastings-On-Hudson yourself, go into their wretched little Food Emporium, and I guarantee you, that's where it is. Ask an employee, and they'll have absolutely no fucking clue. They won't know what lard is. Or, shaving gel. I couldn't find shaving gel. The cashier seemed not to know what it was. I found it eventually-- among the lightbulbs. Go figure.

But I digress.

Food, in Buffalo, is cheap, easy to find, readily available, and of good quality. Can you imagine? O you deprived Westchesterites, can you bend your minds to conceive of such a thing? Just think! On roads not overburdened by more traffic than they can handle, you can travel by a reasonably direct route, and get to a store, where there is adequate parking, and you can go in, and it is not absolutely mobbed. You can proceed through the aforementioned store, and find the shelves in good order. The store will be clean, and will not smell unpleasant. You will find that it is laid out in an intuitive fashion. Should there be something you cannot locate, an employee will know where it is, and, wonder of wonders, will politely direct you to it.
I went to more than one store because I knew that while I could get everything I needed at Wegman's, I knew that I could get cheaper produce at the market (and a different atmosphere), and I knew that I could get better, more interesting, esoteric sausages at the sausage shop. I know that if I want good stuffed pork chops, i can go to Federal Meats over by the Great Arrow plaza. I know that there are all kinds of local specialty shops around here. I could go to any of them and find cool things.
But I don't have to.
I went to all these places because I wanted to, because it was a cold and rainy day, because I was out for a ride with my boy, and because we like grocery shopping.
It was fun.

I haven't had that in a long time. It's nice to live in a city you like.
(I will not here address Buffalo's budget deficit, the current plans to merge the failing city government with the confused county government, or any of the attendant issues. These do not, at the moment, concern me. I will switch my voter registration over once I have an official residence here, and then I will concern myself with these issues. But, in the meantime, I'm going to write about how this is still a good city, damn it. It's just a nice place to live. And grocery-shop.)