narration.

I'm groggy and grumpy, but I promised myself a cup of hot chocolate if I just went to the grocery store and bought the things I needed, plus one bag of tiny marshmallows. And I'm here, looking like I didn't wash my hair and then slept on my ponytail, which I did. I pull up and get out of my car, and a girl approximately my age looks me up and down for longer than is polite, which makes me immediately self-conscious about my appearance, but then I notice that she's looking no better. I don't understand why she's looking at me like I'm sleeping with her man, and I'm half-tempted to call out, "It's not me, it's some other girl with awful hair!" Then I think it might be more fun to shout out that it is me, I am the other woman, but by that time, she's entered the Food Lion as the immigrant workers buff and sweep the floors, another trip to the grocery store a half hour before closing to buy only lottery tickets.

Whatever man she has, I'm certain that I do not want him.

I try to hurry down the items on my list, picking them out in numerical order of their aisles. One cucumber, a head of lettuce, tuna (name-brand on sale), cereal, tiny marshmallows, dishwasher detergent, juice, milk, cheese (fancy shredded). I pass a guy in the milk section who has clearly been sent to do a task about which he knows nothing. The selection of bovine juice baffles him as I slip in and quickly grab the store-brand purple milk with the latest expiration date. I feel no sympathy for him and wonder if he envies my familiarity with the dairy section, my command of the supermarket, my swift and smooth choice of the purple gallon which is a clear indication of months, nay, years of experience. Probably not, I realize, because that's just sort of a stupid thing to envy. I look at my cart - no basket tonight because of the milk and juice - and wonder if my situation is obvious, whether my groceries scream out "SINGLE GIRL" as clearly as a cart full of potato chips and condiments screams out "SINGLE GUY." I decide that my secret is safe just from the lack of low-fat frozen dinners.

I pay the cashier who I see here a lot and who once asked me if I went to high school with him. I'm always amazed that people might be fooled into thinking that I belong here when I'm really from somewhere far, far away, or maybe just a ninety minute drive to someplace that seems like light years. I drive my little blue cart out to my little blue car and unload my four plastic bags, one of them containing my purple milk. I can never decide how I feel about putting the milk in a bag, because sometimes they ask if that's how you want it, but I've never been able to tell much of an advantage either way. I drive the empty buggy, which is southern for "shopping cart," all the way back to the store rather than stow it in the designated area in the lot, because the extra steps make me feel like I'm making some sort of effort to exercise and take care of myself. I get into the car and drive towards home, all the time thinking about hot chocolate with tiny marshmallows and wondering why on earth I've got this inner narrator that takes a late-night trip to the grocery store and turns it into five hundred words on a web site in the middle of nowhere in cyberland.