Yesterday after my doctor's appointment, I had to go fill a prescription. Oh lord, yes, another joyous opportunity to drag the kids in and out of the car twice more...hooray!

Albertson's is a grocery store very close to my house, and it has a Sav-On Pharmacy inside. So I headed over there, put Adrian on my back, stuck Julian in one of those Shopping Carts with a Car on the Front, gave the pharmacist my scrip and my new insurance card, and was told, "Go do your shopping while we call the insurance company and set up payment."

OK, except I don't have any shopping to do, I can barely stand up, and besides (looking around)....this place is GHETTO.

Man, is it ever. Albertsons is the kind of grocery store where there is nothing to buy if you are a high-falutin', processed food-avoiding, organic-loving Trader Joe's regular foodie like me. Aisle after aisle filled with sodas and super-sugary cereals packed with artifical colors and flavors, Fritos, Doritos, and who ever knew that there were THAT many different kinds of malt liquor aka Booze Masquerading as Sody Pop? Not me.

The frozen food section is three aisles, with every sort of TV dinner imaginable. Interesting, in an icky sort of way. I head over to the produce department and the produce is LARGE AND IN CHARGE. There are Fuji apples as big as my baby's head, all exactly equal in size and shape, and waxed to shining, weird perfection. It's all Stepford produce. Looks gorgeous, but rings hollow. I wonder what kinds of noxious chemicals it takes to create this, and shudder. I ask for the organics section, and it's tiny. Nothing but apples and carrots.

There are some spooky looking characters roaming around too. The first pair that catches my eye is a woman with what looks to be massive burn scars over her entire face, and only one tooth. She has almost no nose left, just two holes. I hope Julian doesn't see her and say something in a loud voice...she's pretty terrifying-looking. She is pushing the wheelchair for a fairly normal-looking dark-haired man. He looks a little battered, but not too bad. Until he opens his mouth...then I see that he too only has one tooth!

Next, roaming the Personal Products aisle is...the Unabomber! No joke, I thought that guy was in jail, but here he is...shopping for deodorant at Albertson's! And talking in a very low voice on his cell phone...uh oh.

A clerk comes by and asks me if I need help. Ya think? Because I've been circling the grocery store for 30 minutes without putting anything in my cart. I say no, thank you, and note that he is obese and has super-bulgy eyes with glasses that are about an inch thick. Red hair too, in a U shape.

I'm definitely part of the freak show here today. Soaked in sweat, gasping for air, loaded down like a pack mule with a large baby on my back who keeps screeching "DADDDEEEEE!" and wildly pointing to everything that catches his eye, and I'm hanging on for dear life to a huge cart with a giant toy car on the front, where Julian is throwing himself around inside like a whirling dervish, I'm not sure why.

I'm sweaty and totally disheveled, with a matted braid, and I'm shuffling around pushing this car all hunched over because I don't know, I can't seem to stand up straight or walk normally since I got sick. Too weak, and my back is killing me. Oh, and honking my nose into a Kleenex every few minutes, then carefully examining the contents.

Apart from the food, I belong here. These are my people. Everyone is super nice (except the Unabomber, but well, you know). No one looks at me funny. The toothless guy in the wheelchair waves to Julian and asks him to honk his car horn. Beep beep!

Even the little crews of wanna-be gangbanger pre-teens are OK.

The funny part is that Trader Joe's and a fairly decent grocery store are right across the street, so it's not like there aren't other options. I know TJ's takes food stamps. We're not REALLY in the ghetto, it's just this one grocery store that seem to pull in a weird crowd. Maybe, like me today, they feel at home here, and the food doesn't really matter?