Munchies for Nothing

If you didn't know this about me already...I don't cook. There are reasons for that. I'll give you the simple one. Imagine yourself trying to cook your dinner from a sitting position with heavy weights strapped to your arms. That's about where I'm at. I cannot lift my arms, really, at this point in my life, and can't really stand up, either. Let's just say that it is really, really impractical, very taxing, and more than a little dangerous (not being able to hold up your arms is not a good thing when your arm is over a hot stove burner....). Fortunately for me, I live in the age of the microwave (woo hoo!). So if I'm not eating out or bringing something home for dinner, I'm a frozen dinner nuke-it man. And I like it that way just fine.

Also, I am not big into variety. This is true in some other areas of my life as well, but most obvious when it comes to food. I'll spare you the details (and you'll thank me), but experimenting with different foods is just not a good idea with me, and rarely ends well. Which, again, is fine. I like the foods that I like, and I generally don't get tired of or bored with those foods. When it comes to frozen dinners, I used to buy a few different varieties. After a while, though, I finally started to notice that there were a couple I could warm up and enjoy any time, and the others tended to make me regret buying them, particularly when I'd realize I'd eaten the ones I really do enjoy and those others were the only ones left in the freezer. I realized that if I was unhappy with what I was buying, maybe I shouldn't be buying them. So, at some point, I started buying just two different frozen dinners--chicken fettuccine alfredo and Swedish meatballs (with noodles). Know how Einstein used to have seven of the same sets of clothes in his closet so he'd never have to waste time and thought on deciding what to wear? I no longer have to sit staring at the freezer deciding what to make for dinner. Oh, and I also eat the same container of peaches and generally finish things off with one of two different yogurts I like (again, I used to buy all different kinds, but whittled it down to two).

I discovered online grocery delivery a few years ago and never looked back. I HATE the supermarket, and with my wheelchair situation, I was never able to just make one big grocery stop. I'd have to spread shopping over a couple or three stops during the week so I'd be able to carry everything. Doing something you don't like is one thing--having to do it two or three times in a row, particularly after a long day at work, sucks. So now I order my groceries about every two weeks, and get them delivered on Sundays, when I'm generally home, and only stop at the store if a special need comes up (there's another whole blog waiting to happen on how much I hate pot lucks at the office...).

Today was grocery day, and the guy showed up with my stuff and carried it in for me. I always have them just leave the bags on the kitchen floor, where they're easiest for me to get to. I signed the invoice and he went on his way, and I rolled in to start the unloading process. This whole arm-lifting thing comes into play with putting groceries away, too, but I manage. All my cabinets are down low, the fridge is easy enough to get into, and the only issue is getting stuff into the freezer. It's not so bad. I just have to do it in stages, as I can usually get about two dinners at a time up there (three if I'm feeling manly), which means--since I order seven of each of my two dinners each time--that I have about seven trips to make to get them from the floor to the freezer. Not a big deal.

Today, however, I went to get started and noticed something strange. I always start with loading up the chicken, as I put them all on one side of the freezer, then put the meatballs on the other side. This keeps me from having to wonder which meal I'm reaching for each evening (Lean Cuisine doesn’t put the meal names on the box ends, and since I’m always sitting down when I’m at the freezer (and pretty much every other situation, too…), I can’t see the top of them). The fettuccine boxes are slightly thinner than the other one, though, and this makes them easier to spot when I’m getting them out of the bags. Looking down, I suddenly noticed that there seemed to be more thin ones than the other. A lot more. Perplexed, I looked in the next bag, wondering if they hadn’t given me all fettuccine and left out the meatballs. No, the meatballs were there, too…and there seemed to be more of them as well. That’s when I realized that there were a couple more bags than normal. Confused, I checked my receipt.

Turns out there just happened to be some kind of store promotion going on with these two meals of mine…a buy one, get one free type. One would think, at the store level, they would have just cut the price in half. But apparently, they thought the better solution was just to double me up for the same price. So I was now looking down at twenty-eight frozen dinners total.

Sure, that meant fourteen trips to the freezer. And it meant that they all barely fit into my freezer (mine isn’t that large), but fit, they did. But it also meant that I had just made two shopping orders at once, without even knowing it. I now have a month’s worth of dinners (if I eat in every night) in my freezer, and don’t have to bother with the process or cost of another order for twenty-eight days, minimum.

When you only eat two different frozen dinners, and it just happens that both of those are on a buy one, get one free promotion? That, my friends, is called having a good Sunday. That’s one of those odd little moments in life that make you smile and make you appreciate the little things, the tiny miracles, the low-level but unexpected surprises that add a little extra gratitude to your day. You cherish those moments. And you’re thankful for your good fortune. Maybe everything else in your life isn’t perfect, but if you’ve got twenty-eight dinners looking down at you from the freezer when you only paid for half that number, maybe you aren’t doing so bad. At least not today. And today, some like to say, is really all we have. And for the next month of todays, I’ll have a little smile whenever I open the freezer door for dinner.

Now if only my fantasy football team had pulled it off today, it might have been a PERFECT Sunday…