Usually when we go as a family to the grocery store, I am the only family member who makes it into the store while everyone else waits in the car. This group strategy affords me the chance to zip up and down the aisles alone and actually be able to see what I am buying, without having to worry about driving over tiny toes.

Even before we had children, Greg sat sipping his coffee in the store parking lot alongside the other 80 plus year old husbands while their wives trickled out the doors one by one as though a human pez dispenser had magically presented them with their favourite treat when it was their spouse’s turn to pop out the sliders.

I shouldn’t be surprised then when I send Greg into a store with a grocery list, that he returns with something in a similar family, the adopted nephew perhaps and not in fact the actual line items from the list. He simply hasn’t had enough practice.

I asked for “natural” peanut butter and he exited the doors of Costco with a five gallon pail of “organic” peanut butter and a smile from ear to ear, so proud of himself. “Organic” does not mean natural. It just means the peanuts are grown organically and then could be ground together with other ingredients, “organic” fats, organic, cane sugar, organic additives. “Natural” peanut butter is “just peanuts” which happens to be the name of the jar sitting right next to the jug he purchased.

I asked for granola bars, treats for the kids when we hit the beach this summer. I specified “no chocolate or marshmallows” because they make for a gooey mess in the hot sun. I suggested he look for something with almonds, cranberries, knowing the sugar content would likely be the same, just more apt to hold their shape.

Again, the beaming grin as he flashes a case, A CASE (it is Costco) of Nutri-Grain cereal bars. Costco is fantastic for buying in bulk but your mistakes are also proportionate to the size of the box you are balancing and in this case, gargantuan.

“I thought you would like these, they’re healthy.”

What about an elongated fig newton is healthy? Don’t they sell those in the cookie aisle? I now have 1500 “bars” of dough that certainly have no cereal-esque qualities, with some kind of jelly-like substance oozing from the middle. I’m now wishing I had some chocolate and marshmallows for wiping off the jam.

I asked for salmon, he bought sausage. Both start with “s” but very different foods.

Apple “treat” is not apple sauce.

The word cocktail by its very definition suggests it is NOT juice, but rather a mixture of several sweet ingredients to be served at a party with adult friends, not in a sippy cup to children.

For all of his mistakes, nothing compared to the one I made yesterday, a rookie move, shopping while hungry. I ended up with something called Pasadena wheels. I’m thinking for all of the wonderful things that come from California, this was not their best representative to send. It is a pinwheel of soggy tortilla wraps, filled with orange cream cheese and corn salsa. I’m assuming the wetness comes from the leaking salsa so when you attempt to eat them, it tastes like your sandwich after sitting on a plate shared with some runny salad dressing at a family barbecue.