Simple Pleasures

I love living in a city. While I enjoy going home to the rolling hills of my little state now and then, nothing beats being young in a metropolitan city. I love that I've never owned a car, can walk just about anywhere I want to go, am surrounded by free stuff: museums, monuments, concerts, films, parks and so much more. It's great to be able to gather with girl friends on Saturday mornings for brunch in one of 100 different restaurants, to stroll afterward and pop into furniture shops, shoe shops, any kind of shop you want. I love the freedom. A lot of time I actually like the anonymity a city provides, because within the great anonymous place, you can create your pockets of familiarity with people and vendors who you frequent and enjoy. Almost everything in the city where I dwell is generally peachy...except for one tiny detail: the grocery stores.

I know. It seems strange that out of all the goods and bads that places have to offer, this is of particular annoyance to me in this city. But really. I've come to notice how frustrating the grocery stores in this city can be. Where I lived for the two years prior to my new apartment had almost no grocery stores. Certainly, there were none accessible without a car. We heard rumors and murmurings of this grocery store or that one "coming soon!" but it never happened, and I don't think it's actually going to happen for at least 5 more years.

But then I moved to another, more lively, part of the city this past year. I was thrilled to be a 1.5 song on my ipod away from a Safeway, and a 4-5 song walk away from Whole Foods. Heaven! I thought. I quickly learned that at Whole Foods it is somehow near impossible to walk out of the store with less than 50 dollars in groceries (and not that many groceries, I might add) and at Safeway you're lucky to find half of the items that they supposedly stock as most things you want are sold out (hence the loving nickname most residents have given this Safeway as: The Soviet Safeway). And the produce kind of makes me want to cry.

So, you can, by this point, imagine my interest when I heard that just a few blocks north of me a shiney new Harris Teeter had opened! At first I thought this was another urban myth, just like the Harris Teeter urban myth from my days in the sleepier neighborhood. Then I assumed that while the store may bear the name Harris Teeter, it's probably like the Secret Safeway over on 19th street that does not say Safeway anywhere on the outside, and is about 1/8 the size of a normal grocery store.

Well, after a lovely brunch today, my friend M and I decided to make a trip to this new grocery store, having opened its doors just a few weeks ago. We were skeptical. Very skeptical. And then, it happened. We walked into the produce section, then the fish, then up and down the aisles. And we realized: Holy Sh*t. This is a god honest, full blown, wide aisled grocery store with food stocked, produce fresh, lightbulbs working right here not 4.5 blocks north of us! We savored it. Positively strolling up and down the aisles. Stopping to stare at the array of cleaning products, cereal, baby food (no idea why) "ethnic food", frozen food, cheese etc they had to offer. It was nearly tear inducing.

While I have spent many hours creaively looking for ways to procrastinate during exams, this is by far the best one we've found. And thanks to this shiny new store, not only did it allow me to procrastinate while shopping, but now blogging about it as well!

God Bless Harris Teeter. God Bless every one of them.