Grocery Angst (a rambling story)

I am totally breaking up with coupons. I don't know how people save enormous amounts of money with coupons. The Coupon Queen does it. She makes it look easy and makes you feel shameful for NOT using coupons. Being summer I figured since I had the time I would make a valiant effort to embrace couponing. I clipped, got my binder organized, printed coupons from the internet. So today, grocery day. The ads came in the mail, we checked bargains at all the major stores. Made a plan. Let's, for a change, not go to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart owns us. We normally shop at Wal-Mart because it's the only close store and you can comparison shop. I felt optimistic, maybe this time, things would be different and we would beat Wal-Mart by spending the same or less amount of money shopping somewhere else. We were wrong. Anyway, since we were not in hurry we decided to take the extra time to drive to South Tulsa. We decided to do the majority of our shopping at SuperTarget then hit Reasors, Food Pyramid, and Whole Foods for various items on sale. First, three kids no matter how you shake it is just stressful in a grocery store, even if there's two adults. Addy is in full monkey stage and the other two, well are just loud and busy. We ended up spending about the same amount at Target as we do at Wal-Mart but still lacking several items. Reasor's was ok, we just bought a few things that were on sale. Then we headed across town on Tulsa's terribly awful in-construction streets and finally made it to Whole Foods and FP. Blaked grabbed a Rotisserie chicken with a free side then I went into what I thought was going to be my saving grace, Food Pyramid. Now, I had never been into a FP until last Saturday. I was impressed with their natural and organic selection which motivated me to go online and print healthy coupons (like organic yogurt). The FP I went into Sat was a different one than the one I went into next to Whole Foods. The store, of course, was arranged entirely different than the other one, the few things I could not find I just didn't get because three kids and Blake were waiting in the car. I could have swore they had the type of yogurt I wanted and had printed several coupons for, but they didn't. I learned as I was walking in that they don't double coupons over 50cents. Boo. I was totally pumped that they had organic blueberries for $2. That was the main reason I wanted to go. Only 6oz for $2 - not the pints we're used to! I'm sure that was in the add but I'm still not blaming myself! ha. To make things worse I even bought things I forgot I had a coupon for and a few things that Blake had bought at Target that I didn't see him throw in the cart. So total fail. Just a long, hot, frustrating afternoon. Hey, but we did get milkshakes from Steak and Shake for all of us for a total of $5 with coupon and happy hour combo. Not bad! I just wanted to feel like I was getting a deal today but we ended up spending about $60 more than we usually do. Oh well.