I really should have known better. What transpired because I should have known better, was mildly embarrassing. Usually the weekly food shopping runs to between $100 to $130. I always have a minimum of $160 with me, and to augment that, in case the food bill runs higher which it rarely does, I carry another fifteen dollars in bills and change. There's always a total of number of items selected at the bottom of the cash register receipt and it hovers around the 50-item mark.

We don't like using debit or credit cards, vastly preferring to pay cash for things that we purchase retail, including our grocery shopping.

Yesterday I went a little bonkers, I suppose. Two things happened; I didn't bother taking with me more than the usual $160 in cash, other than roughly $6 in change. And there were quite a few items on sale I thought it best to 'stock up' on, along with other items that were expensive, but which we'd seemed to run out of. I ended up unheedingly shoving more into my shopping cart than I had cash for.

So when the total turned out to be $173 for yesterday's supermarket shopping, I was a trifle disconcerted. I knew that if I left the large bag stuffed full of tinned and packaged food that I always deposit for the Food Bank I'd have more than enough to pay for our week's groceries with me. But that wasn't an option. I wasn't prepared to sacrifice that weekly offering just because I was sloppy in my payment preparation for food.

So I had to leave my cart piled high with the food I'd bought, close to the cashier who'd accommodatingly run them all through, given me the opportunity to pack them into our three large containers that fit nicely into the shopping cart, and rush out to the parking lot where my husband sat awaiting my exit, keeping our little dog Riley company. Extracting an extra $20 from him I was able to claim the week's shopping, and deposit the food bank's offering from us.

And apologize to the patient cashier for slowing her busy day down and inconveniencing her as I had done. I complicate things for those cashiers as it is, having habituated myself to placing all the food bank items into a bag as I'm shopping, having them run the items through so I can be charged for them, and then obliging them to re-pack those items into the bag that I deposit into the Food Bank collection cage.

They're amenable and gracious, and as helpful as they can be.