Passing on Tradition (of OCD!!)

Sunday night, nothing would do Lane but to accompany me on my trip to conquer the grocery purchases. Knowing it was going to be a chore, not a zag thru the toy section, I did my best to encourage him to stay home but he REALLLLLY wanted "to go, Mom!" Off we went, list in hand. Hoping to ward off the dreaded experience of saying "No, we're not buying that" a zillion times during the trip, I warned Lane that he was to stay with me in the store, do his best to be helpful and to not, under any circumstance, lobby for cookies, ice cream or the latest kid-marketed product. He happily entered into this verbal contract, eager (whattt??) to be my helper for the evening. (Later I came to suspect that it might have been because he got to stay up well past his bedtime) He was, to my delight, an ENORMOUS help in the grocery store. So much so that I used the opportunity to teach him a bit about comparative shopping, store brands and all that jazz. He lapped it up eagerly.

It was also an opportunity for me to pass on something else to my precious offspring --- my OCD method of loading a shopping cart. I justify my obsession by saying that there is no way that we could force all the groceries we need into one cart if we simply chunked everything in. Truthfully, a random cart, makes me nuts. I took this picture of Lane just before we checked out. You can't quite appreciate the organization of the items with the last few resting on top, but trust me, there is no void space anywhere in the cart. In fact, this was $250 worth of purchases and we didn't purchase any meat other than lunch meat and hot dogs!

Before you ask, yes, indeed this obsession carries over to my pantry and fridge. Everything has its place and I cannot rest unless it is in the right place. No grocery run passes without my saying to my husband "you know I like to do it myself" if he attempts to put away the groceries. Of course, he knows where they go but it's not as important to him that they get there. Close is good enough. I've heard it said that men tend to do things poorly in order to get out of doing them at all. Hmmmmm..... What do you think, ladies? Care to defend yourselves, guys?