This is something that's been bothering me for a few weeks.

In the summer of 2015, my dad had cancer, and the members of my family that lived next door to us were being completely unfair about our rent (this all happened before we moved across town). Because of those things, we weren't doing great financially (or at least, I was pretty sure things weren't great), and my mom started doing the grocery shopping at Dollar General. I assumed it was because things were less expensive there, so I didn't complain. At the time, it didn't really bother me.

More recently though, I've grown fucking sick of her still shopping at Dollar General. They don't carry anywhere near as much product as a real grocery store. I've also become suspicious that they sell expired product frequently, because mom's come home twice with expired Double Stuf Oreos. The first time I noticed it because they tasted weird, and I checked the date to find they were like a week old. The second time I made sure to check the date before I even opened them (even though this pack had been bought like two days before I looked at it), and the date had been about two to four days earlier.

Now, for the last two years I've been assuming that she continues to shop at Dollar General for our food because we're still broke. I don't even know that we are broke, we probably aren't really anymore since she's promised me a chunk of pocket money for the convention I'm going to in two months. Anyways, I guess two years ago I got used to hearing "we can't afford ______" or "I don't have the money," and just got in the habit of never asking her for anything.

However, within the last month, I've found out that she doesn't shop at Dollar General because we're still struggling financially and things are cheaper there--she shops there because she hates grocery shopping that much. She hates big stores so much that she's apparently willing to go to this shitty little understocked place that is absolutely not a real grocery store. I told one of my friends about this and he agreed, saying "yeah, DG is the place I go when I forgot one or two things, I'd never do my actual shopping there."

This just pisses me off so much. Like, bitch, you're going to this thing that barely even qualifies as a store and getting barely enough groceries just because you hate grocery shopping? How are you even qualified for adult life at all? It doesn't help that my eating habits are still pretty weird (that's another post entirely, but basically I've been eating french fries and junk food all my life, up until meeting my current boyfriend. He's been trying to help me eat more actual food, and we've made some good progress in the last year and a half together) and that I rely on her to get sweets and things to keep me going until my next real meal. If she gets, say, a pack of Oreos, my thought will be something like good, that's enough for at least a few days to a week. If she gets a few boxes of sweets I like, I'll feel like I just hit the lottery and happily eat my fill for two weeks, if I'm lucky. I know that's not good, but there were points during that summer my dad was sick that junk food was almost literally all I had. I can't really explain my weird relationship with food, but suffice it to say I try to keep track of what I can eat in the kitchen even if it's junk, and how long it might last me.

But anyways my thing with food isn't what I'm here for. Sorry, I got off-track. It just irritates me immensely that she shops at shitty fucking Dollar General just because her personal preference of hating grocery shopping apparently outweighs my desire to be stocked up on lots of food (whether it's junk or some form of Real Food that I like). I miss the days when my parents would go grocery shopping and come home with bags upon bags of all kinds of foodstuffs. Granted, it was mostly junk foods like Cheetos and chips and Fudge Rounds or whatever, but that was basically all I ate at the time and I loved it. I loved knowing there was so much junk food that I could eat whatever I wanted in as much quantity as I wanted. Now I'm lucky if she comes home with even one box of a sweet that I like.

Part of Adult Life includes doing things we hate sometimes. Like, my boyfriend kind of hates his job, but does he stay home and not go just because he doesn't like it? No, he goes to work and earns his own money anyway (something I almost dream of doing one day in the near-ish future). You better believe that during the semester there are mornings I wake up and just do not want to go to school, but do I stay home and skip? Nope, not unless I'm either going to my yearly nerd convention or celebrating our anniversary with my boyfriend. Grocery shopping is something we all have to do whether we like it or not because that's how pretty much everybody in a first-world society gets food to survive, and here she is doing the shittier option that takes less effort just because her sensibilities are apparently too delicate for Real Actual Adult Grocery Shopping. It must be too haaaarrrrd or some nonsense. Arrrgh.

It just makes me want to go to her and say "look, if you really hate grocery shopping that much, I will do it. Just pick me up after work, give me your grocery money and tell me what we need, and you can sit in the Walmart parking lot and play on your phone for an hour while I do the shopping. Just please stop going to Dollar General." I would seriously not mind taking an hour or two out of my day every week if it meant I could eat as much as I wanted and not worry about how much food is in the kitchen.