Shopping: for pasta, canned tomatoes, and true love... Miss Edith Gets Sentimental...

In the mid-1990s, maybe it was more like the late 1990s, on into the early 2000s, my dear college pal G. and I emailed each other at least ten times a day. We were in our twenties, mostly unattached in romantic terms, and we had a lot of time on our hands. I worked something like 20 hours a week, and G. worked at home writing children’s books. She was in Mississippi, and then Virginia, and I was in Connecticut, but we were in touch so frequently that no aspect of the other’s life was unknown to us. It was sort of insane, I suppose, but that’s what it’s like to be a girl in your twenties, I think; there’s one girlfriend who you tell absolutely everything, and she is your lifeline. That is, if you’re lucky, that’s how it is. We complained to each other about everything, but we also amused the hell out of each other.

G. comes from a huge family in Pennsylvania and her parents owned a restaurant; she grew up cooking because of this, mostly Italian food. I come from a small family in Connecticut by way of Manhattan and my parents were not especially interested in cooking, to put it mildly. But when I was in my twenties, I had no money – I mean, no money – because I preferred to work this crazy job instead of getting a proper salary at a normal job. And because I was often without a romantic attachment – one of my rules about romantic attachments was that they should either be skilled cooks or able to pay for restaurant meals all the time – eventually I had to teach myself how to cook. G. was very good company in this regard. As the mother of a young child, she was good at advising on time-saving, effort-saving tricks in the kitchen. As a single mother supporting her family on basically nothing, she was in the same boat as I was (well, worse off, really, but she lived in places where the cost of living was much lower), so we could compare notes on cost-saving cooking enterprises ad nauseam, and we did.

G. and I spent hours and hours emailing each other about what we were cooking, what we were thinking about cooking, and what we would never cook because we thought it was stupid. We fantasized about sushi meals we couldn’t afford and we discussed the numerous ways to gussy up boxed macaroni and cheese so that we could eat it with a relatively clear conscience. Among the many ways we compared notes in this vein was that we would painstakingly copy out for each other the receipts from our shopping trips. I mean that every single time we went and bought groceries – even if it was just picking up milk and a can of tomatoes – we’d email each other to say what we’d bought. We had an elaborate system involving asterisks and other symbols to indicate when an item had been bought with a coupon or was on special at the store. We’d discuss total dollars spent, what money had been saved, what had been a splurge, and why some things were justified splurges (artichoke hearts: a necessary luxury) and others were just insane splurges but necessary at the moment in order to maintain morale (smoked oysters – which were stocked up on in a big way if they went on sale, which they hardly ever did, believe me).

I was reminded of these emails, which I wish I’d printed out and saved (though I’d’ve had to have been crazy to do this; the amount of paper involved could never have been amortized no matter how many coupons I clipped), when I was in the library and noticed a new book on the shelf. Entitled Milk Eggs Vodka: Grocery Lists Lost and Found, I knew right away that even though it was a big heavy book I had to take it home and read it straight through.

Apparently the author of this book, Bill Keaggy, has been documenting for some years the grocery lists he has found or that people have sent to him. He has a website, www.grocerylists.org, which I haven’t looked at yet but I gather that it is sort of the pure, expanded version of this book. The book is either a totally moronic waste of time or a delightfully funny waste of time, depending on one’s perspective. Notarius, when he saw me curling up with it on our wonderful upholstered couch this evening, practically scowled with disgust when I showed him what I was reading. This is not a book for the high-minded, let’s say. On the other hand, when he heard me belly-laughing at what I saw, which I did several times, he clearly softened a bit: the book has to have some value if it can make me laugh out loud like that.

I know there’s little justice in this world, and that books seldom receive the level of attention they deserve (i.e., the books that everyone’s talking about are almost always crap and little gems like this fall by the wayside – but I must add that 99% of the books out there are crap, even that so-called literary fiction that I’m supposed to take so seriously but refuse to on moral grounds). But if I were still a book buyer for a bookstore, I would make sure to have this book in stock: there would be a stack of five of them, prominently displayed. I would sneak it into people’s hands, and say, “I know this is silly. I know. And I know you’ll think less of me for recommending this book. But really – look at it. This thing is hilarious.”

It may not hit in hardcover, but if I had my druthers, this book would be a successful book come Christmastime, if not in 2007 then at least in the future, when there will be (I hope) a paperback edition priced in the neighborhood of $14.95. Though to be honest this hardcover is only $19.99, which isn’t so bad. Look for it. Laugh. Buy it for the person who was your best friend in the whole wide world when you were 28. I’m assuming you’re still close. G. and I are….