Supplies hard to find

I think we should invent a new game.

Upon entrance to a store we should be issued a card sort of like a Bingo card. The aim will be to guess the items the store will be out of such as the entire section of vitamins at a local store recently. Fill so many correct spaces to get a raincheck for the next time the item is somewhere in the store but not where it is expected to be. The cards would be time and date stamped so that they must be redeemed on the same day they are issued. There should be a time limit of maybe one or two hours. Maybe that would help alleviate some of the frustration at not finding a particular item for weeks and weeks at a time.

An alternate game with similar rules would be a scavenger hunt. The trick to that one would be that at least one item on the list should have been discontinued.

Before the pandemic, I don’t remember finding any empty shelves at any store. I would wait until we were almost out of something before I bought another one. Now, I have multiple boxes or containers of the stuff I purchase on a regular basis, such as cereal or tea.

I do not understand the repeated shortages of this or that. One week peanut butter is not to be found. The next week we are buying enough toilet paper to last a year or two.

When empty spaces began appearing at random at the stores we frequent, we were told that it was the pandemic’s fault. Too many workers were ill and that was adversely affecting the supply. After all this time I would expect that the powers that be would have figured how to get the job done. Nope. Not going to happen.

It used to be that I preferred one brand over the other. Now, I take whatever brand the store has. In an effort to save a few pennies I have tried store brands. I have yet to find one that measures up to the name brand.

Now that I have finished my rant about the supply chain, I had a birthday over the weekend. Every year I give myself the present of calling my daughter and talking as long as I want to. When she answered the phone I could hear the entire family singing happy birthday to me. This was the first year that they omitted the line that goes, “you smell like a monkey,” or something similar.

That was the conclusion to a nice, relaxing day. I finished the book I was reading. I made some brownies for myself, and we went out to eat. Plus, the restaurant gave me a free blackberry cobbler to take home. Life is good.

The other good thing was that my daughter did not tell her sister that we would take a couple of dogs. She had called me a few days earlier to ask if we wanted two older dogs in need of a good home. I told her no. Thankfully she listened to me and didn’t put them on a plane anyway.

All in all it was a good birthday. Now that it is over, maybe I can concentrate on viewing shopping trips as just a game to be played instead of an exercise in frustration.