STRANGER THAN FICTION; HI HO, HI HO, IT'S OFF TO SHOP AT GROCERY STORE WE GO

If Heidi has $5 and her husband has $3, how many packs of generic toaster pastries can they buy?

When did grocery shopping become such a nightmare?

Everything about it is complicated. Finding a parking space. Getting a cart without that one catty wampus wheel. Shoving past people who take 15 minutes to decide whether they want self-rising or normal flour.

Sure, you COULD be in some foreign country dickering with a toothless, lice-infested man over the price of a live chicken. But is that really worse than standing in line with feminine hygiene products, pimple cream and two chocolate bars only to notice that guy you were crazy about in high school is right behind you?

It's that sort of thinking that keeps our kitchen cabinets bare and our refrigerator empty except for the vast array of never-ending condiments. For some bizarre reason, the same bottle of ketchup and jar of mustard have been gracing the refrigerator door since we moved here. There's also that lonely looking box of baking soda The Other Half put in there months ago, hoping to absorb unpleasant refrigerator odors. It makes him feel good to see it.

When I see it, I just wonder what sort of meal could be made from ketchup, mustard and baking soda.

Being raised in a home with a refrigerator full of good eats at all times, Mr. Half gets a little upset when our cupboards are bare. "Swweeeeeeetie," he whines. "There's nothing to eeeeaaaaaaattttt!"

"Good lord!" I usually reply. "Do you not see the box of rigatoni and the can of kidney beans? Now quit whining!"

When he really insists, we load into the Mitsubishi and head for one of our local grocery stores, hoping it's not the kind that bleaches the old meat and just piles the new potato salad over the rotten. These days, you never know.

The only thing that makes grocery shopping bearable is going late at night, when Mrs. Jones isn't fighting with little Johnny over a pack of gum in the checkout line and wishing she were at home with a bottle of Valium. There's also entertainment provided by weirdos, or should I say OTHER weirdos, out at that hour.

My favorite is a stocker at a store I'll call Whole Lotta Chow. You pass her the first time, and she says, "Can I help you find anything?" We always decline. Then she says, "Okay. Well, thanks for shopping at Whole Lotta Chow."

You pass her again, same deal. Pass her a third time, same deal. Apparently, it never registers that there's only one gargantuan Amazon woman and one shorter, more preppy dude in a Polo shirt present in her store.

There's little deviation in our grocery store routine, because there's little deviation in Mr. Half's chosen diet. We head to produce for bananas, romaine lettuce, potatoes, carrots and grapes. I get tomatoes for myself. While Mr. Half will eat ketchup, chili and spaghetti sauce, a raw tomato never has passed his lips. Go figure.

Then comes the cereal, canned goods, meat, yogurt, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Then comes the shock at the cash register. Do you know we spent $104.53 the other day for a lousy week's worth of groceries? Thank goodness I pulled that 50-cent coupon out of the shelf dispenser! How do two people possibly eat more than $100 in groceries?

I'll tell you how. Once we've got that much food in the house, we lose our minds. Yesterday for dinner, Mr. Half had ice cream, baked potato chips, honeydew melon, a "lite" generic toaster pastry and a turkey-and-cheese sandwich on sourdough bread. I only wish he'd look at me the way he looked at that sandwich.

Anyway, we bought that $104 in groceries on Friday, and half of it's gone already. It's really upsetting.

Guess I'll console myself with a bowl of corn puff cereal and some frozen chicken nuggets. There's still $52 worth left.

~Heidi Nieland is a former staff writer for the Southeast Missourian who resides in Pensacola, Fla.