We’re going shopping today. A big shopping trip. If we drive about an hour, we can find a Super Walmart and a Safeway. Unfortunately, the Super Walmart isn’t that super. Much of their shelf space caters to their regular clientele, which is not me because I don’t eat a lot of Hispanic foods. Their produce section is appalling. What kind of store caters to the Hispanic population but doesn’t carry fresh cilantro? On one fateful trip, the Safeway was out of cilantro and I was out of luck.
But today we’re driving an hour and a half to the Tri-Cities, specifically Kennewick, where we can find all the familiar and comforting stores that I’m used to shopping in. They have our bank, so we can do some banking. And they have a mall, a Costco (a necessity when you live this far away from civilization), a Target (oh, how I’ve missed you Target), and a Winco. They even have a Walmart and a Safeway and hardware stores and probably anything else we might want. The Tri-Cities area is home to more than 200,000 people, which didn’t used to sound big, but is approximately 2,000x as big as where I live, so it’s pretty amazing.
The drive is hard on my little girl. She usually naps on the way home, but that is hours past her naptime, so she’s tired and cranky and often inconsolable by that time. I hold onto my secret weapon snack, mini marshmallows, until she’s wailing in the last store. The drive there also isn’t too fun. She does pretty good for a while, but an hour and a half is just a long time for a toddler to be strapped into a car seat. I feel bad, but there’s no helping it. My child needs diapers so my child has to sit through long drives to get those diapers.
Speaking of tired and cranky, that’s a long drive and a lot of stores for an adult to get through too. We have at least four stops today, not including lunch and gas. It would be impossible with one parent, but by the end of the trip, two parents have to watch themselves so they don’t start snapping at each other. And I know we both wish that we could be the ones napping on the drive home.
Did I mention that I love Target? When I lived in Utah I only went to Target when I couldn’t find something at Walmart because the Target was so much farther away (ten minutes seems insignificant now). But then I moved to southwest Portland and the closest Walmart was a good half an hour longer drive than it was to a Target.
Why hadn’t anyone told me how much better Target is than Walmart? Often cheaper, sometimes a few cents more expensive, but the atmosphere is well worth a few cents here and there. And once I had a baby, I fell even more in love with Target, especially their clearance racks. I’ve gotten baby clothes for under a dollar on many occasions. Sometimes I paid two or three, and the only things I haven’t had to wait for clearance on are shoes and winter coats—which are still reasonably priced and cute too. So yes, I miss Target. It’s familiar and comforting and it doesn’t matter where you are, if you find a Target, you know what to expect. (It’s really quite funny seeing this ode to shopping come out of me, I normally hate shopping, but I don’t hate shopping at Target.)
My husband’s work commute is twenty minutes or under. Most of his co-workers have a commute of more than an hour. It’s not only nice for him, but a blessing for us because if he had an hour commute, we really wouldn’t see him on his ten-hour work days. I would have to keep our daughter up past her bedtime just to see Daddy during the week.
But living up here is not without its sacrifices. One of the biggest being that it is a huge production to go shopping and I can rarely do it alone. When he got the job up here, we knew there would be sacrifices wherever we chose to live. When we decided to live in Bickleton, it was a decision between my husband and shopping. I chose my husband. I’ve teased him that if there had been a closer Target, it might have been another matter. But I know that I still would have chosen him over amazing clearance racks.
(I love you, honey.)
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