It was comforting to hear that so many of you are also having shipping woes. I think it’s easier when everyone knows it’s happening to pretty much everyone, and this way we can all start prepping everyone that their gifts may be late. I emailed Paul’s sister and sent her the tracking number so she too can stare at it sitting twenty minutes from my house.
I went to the grocery store this morning. I’d been intending another curbside pick-up, but the curbside grocery store is still claiming not to have ground beef or chicken, and they say they have milk but last time didn’t have it when I got there, and also last time they forgot to put my freezer bags in the car so I had to drive over an hour round-trip to go back for them, and anyway I just went in person to my local grocery store instead. I do think it makes sense to use even patchy curbside in order to reduce the time spent breathing grocery store air, but on this particular day the hassle of building an online cart, putting in all the comments, driving an hour, and STILL having to go in person as well—it seemed like too much.
Still almost no regular cleaning supplies, though they DID have Clorox Clean-up spray, but I already have enough of that so didn’t buy any. Oh! That reminds me to tell you: when I went to pick up Edward’s prescription at Target, they had LYSOL SPRAY. Like, the tall linen-scented disinfecting spray cans of it, maybe ten or so cans just sitting there on the shelf like no big. I stood there, frozen, staring, stunned, and then my brain actually started saying fussily “Oh, but the caps are chipped” LIKE THAT MATTERS, and I overrode my brain and bought one. I brought it home and put it on the counter so I could gaze at it for awhile before putting it away.
Back to the grocery store. The only thing I wanted but couldn’t get was cherry jam, and that is not something that’s consistently in stock even in normal times, so I just put it back on the list for next time. Oh, and I looked for Ben & Jerry’s Cinnamon Roll ice cream because a friend mentioned it’s her favorite and I wanted to try it, and they didn’t have it, but this was not surprising because she’d mentioned it in the context of not having been able to find it for ages; I bought Oat of This Swirled instead: brown sugar ice cream with oatmeal cookies, OKAY!!
They had THREE kinds of holiday tea! I didn’t buy the gingerbread one because I don’t normally like things that are gingerbread-flavored, but I bought the peppermint bark and the egg nog kinds. I have low expectations, but I love having Holiday Coffee/Tea even if I don’t actually like it.
They also had Reese’s peanut butter chips, which I hadn’t been able to get in-store OR curbside/shipped from Target. And they had Grape-Nuts, which I hadn’t been able to get curbside or shipped from Target. They had the little red grapefruit fruit cups Edward likes. They had plenty of ground beef and chicken and milk. They had Cabot Pepper Jack cheese, which they haven’t had on my last two trips. Butter was on sale so I got four pounds, in case I suddenly start doing some holiday baking.
Lysol in 2020, miracles do happen! I need to know from the Swistle commentariat hive mind: Is there a shortage of Christmas tree Little Debbies? I’ve been casually looking for them for the past two weeks, and I keep trying to get them in my online order to no avail. I need them!!
I have been looking for them to have delivered or pick up for curbside, but have not had any luck. I haven’t actually been in a store since early November.
We have plenty at my two grocery stores. Maybe they aren’t as popular here.
Ditto – they’re available for delivery at Walmart in Our Not Large City, Oklahoma. (and if anyone wants them but is okay with waiting until the post office gets itself unsnarled in January, we can probably add them to our post-Christmas order and ship them to you?)
My Aldi hasn’t had our favorite turkey bacon for weeks. And as of two weeks ago, they didn’t have any varieties at all. Weird.
I use instacart app, it may not work for your grocery store but the best thing about it is that remembers my comments and preferred replacements for all the items I buy regularly
My local grocery store (Vons/Safeway) is already out of candy canes! Unacceptable!
I have shipping news! I read comments on yesterday’s post saying that people signed up for tracking notifications on the USPS website, and they received their packages soon after. It worked for me! I had a package sitting at the hub in the big city next to me for two weeks. I turned on notifications yesterday and my package showed up in today’s mail. So thanks to those commenters–try it if you haven’t already!
I, too, stocked up on ingredients for Christmas baking, in case my energy levels were suddenly much higher than usual. Maybe post-26th baking is more likely, much like we will complete our advent readings after advent. So be it. I sent out texts/emails with the photo collage I made for our Christmas ‘card’ that never got printed, so it’s all good!
You had to make another whole trip back to the store to get your freezer bags?!?! I mean obviously you HAD to and of course it was just an accident, but OMG what a PAIN!
Favorite part: “I brought it home and put it on the counter so I could gaze at it for awhile before putting it away.”
By the way, thanks to you and your commenters, I bought the much-recommended Bengal Spice tea for my husband, and he really enjoyed it!
Lol, I bought it for my partner based on the comments/recommendations and he was Not Enthused.
I need to place an order for a bone in turkey breast (Christmas dinner) at Whole Foods, but the bummer is that for some reason, you cannot get holiday food orders like that for pickup. So I’ll have to go in the store and then likely make a separate pickup order.
I can’t get food items into a Target cart for shipping to save my life. My Mom, though, ordered me a lamp from Target as a gift sort of last minute, and it looks like it will indeed get here in time for Christmas. As others have surmised, presumably retailers are prioritizing shipping for gift items instead of pantry items.
Still no bagged frozen spinach at Target, and since I always forget to look for it anywhere else, I am down to my last 1/2 bag (which I got at Trader Joe’s and which honestly seems to be way more heavy on stems than any other bagged frozen spinach brand). Organic milk in the gallon jugs, which had been absent for the past two trips, was back in stock at Target, but I had already purchased it at the typically more expensive grocery store I shopped at first. But HA, the milk turned out to be unexpectedly cheaper at the grocery store (same exact brand, possibly it was on sale? Because Target is usually pretty good price-wise on things like eggs and milk). Otherwise, I didn’t have trouble finding what I needed on this last, mini trip, but I didn’t plan ahead much for Christmas Day cooking. I have just about decided that Christmas Day will be take out this year, since we will not be gathering with my in-laws, but it’s tough to imagine not spending half my morning making appetizers, desserts, and side dishes, so I still FEEL as though I’ve forgotten some important grocery elements.
Oat of this World is my household’s favorite ice cream EVER. It is ridiculously good! But…it has been unavailable here for probably 4-5 months at both of the grocery stores where I shop. I had convinced myself it had been discontinued, but this gives me hope. Thanks for giving me some hope in 2020–will take what hope I can get!! :)
I, too, signed up for updates from the USPS and 1 of my packages is now moving again. It took my package 2 days to go from my small town post office to the big regional sorting center 30miles away. But then it moved from the regional sorting center to the state it needs to be in to get delivered to the recipient in almost the same amount of time! They may actually get it before Christmas! Hopefully I haven’t just jinxed it.
As for groceries, my first time back to curbside pick up a few weeks ago went well. The substitutions they made were good and I got everything else on the list. The next one had several items that weren’t available and a couple of substitutions that annoyed me. And then the next list had some items on it that I knew I would want to pick out myself. But then I remembered this chain has a Shop and Scan feature on their app! So I tried it out. I scanned all my stuff as I shopped. I got to use my canvas shopping bags (woot!). And then checking out took 5 minutes because all I had to do was scan the QR square on the self check out screen, wait for the attendant to come and scan a few items to confirm the transaction, run my card through like normal and off I went. The scanning part does slow down my shopping a bit. But I feel like I spent a little less time in the store because I wasn’t waiting in line to check out. I used the Shop and Scan feature Saturday morning. I had a huge list because I was finishing up my Christmas cooking/gift list plus the usual for the week. What I did this time is scoop up items and put them in the front “seat” part of the cart, then I would find a somewhat out of the way spot to scan the items and sort them into my bags. And I discovered that they have some check outs dedicated to Shop and Scan customers so again the only waiting was for the attendant to confirm the check out. And that was only a few seconds. I know I’m still one more body in the store and curbside would cut down on that. But this feels like a good compromise for me.
As for what was/wasn’t available…. I didn’t need any cleaning supplies so I didn’t go down that aisle but there was a large end cap filled with the large canister store brand disinfecting wipes. The coke products were, once again, lacking. No coke zero cherry or diet caffeine free. Plenty of regular and diet coke, though. They were out of funyuns, my son’s favorite snack. But the rest of the chip aisle looked to be well stocked. The canned and frozen vegetables seemed to be back to normal stock. Same for canned tomato products. I have had issues with finding peas. So I grabbed an extra bag of frozen peas and an extra can of peas.
Here’s a holiday coffee to add to your list of ones you might not like: Target’s Good and Gather peppermint coffee. It tasted like it had spoiled milk in it, which it did not–I tried two different creamers in, both brand new. Ick. I’m currently at this moment drinking Starbucks’ peppermint coffee (the ground kind in the bag, not a fresh one from a Starbucks) and it is not the greatest but if I’d had a little chocolate syrup to add to my half and half it might have been nicer.
We’ve been looking for 409-forever! I love it for the grease cutting properties, but we haven’t seen it since March. Now I’m wondering if they even make it anymore-probably should check that.
Diet Sprite-a mixer for our holiday cocktails is gone!! This might put a crimp in our Christmas celebrations. Still have a few days, hoping for a restock!