Any Given Sunday...

Just a quick post about something I was warned about my first week in Puerto Rico.  A co-worker on her way back to the States after her three years here said very gravely, “If you see something at the grocery store that maybe you don’t need right now, but might eventually want someday and it’ll keep, buy it.”  I didn’t think too much about it – this is, for all intents and purposes, America, right?

Wrong.  We really do take for granted the ability to get just about anything at any time of the day when living in the States.  It’s a land of 24-Hour grocery stores and convenience stores on every corner.  As long as we are willing to pay, there’s rarely a reason you can’t have something just as quickly as you can jump in the car and run up the block.

Not so here.  I’m not sure if it’s because of issues with importing to an island (do Hawaiians have these issues?) or just piss poor planning on the part of the inventory managers (I’m inclined to say the latter,) but if it’s been a particularly rough Sunday afternoon at the grocery store, I might come away with just half the items on my list.  Yesterday, it was white eggs.  Eggs!  Sure, there were plenty of crates of brown eggs, but for some reason I prefer white, and they were fresh out.  Last week it was lime juice.  And I haven’t seen macadamia nuts in months.  Man, I miss macadamia nuts.  Sometimes it’s the bottled water I prefer, or even the brand of beer I was hoping for.  You just never know how you’re going to do at the grocery store lottery any given Sunday. 

When I was in Dallas over Thanksgiving I bought some of the items I would need to eat Paleo – almond flour, coconut oil, etc.  And I stocked up on Extra spearmint flavored gum, which I have yet to see in PR.  I may need to set up a couple of exchanges to get the goods I want – Puerto Rican coffee in exchange for desiccated coconut!  (Every time my boss gets stateside, he has to pick up packets of Manwich for his wife.  We all have our vices.)

Hopefully, this will make me appreciate ‘home’ more – wherever that turns out to be on my return to the States.  But I’m sure I will quickly assimilate to being able to have what I want, when I want, and forget my years of deprivation. 

Off to St. Croix in the morning and St. Thomas on Thursday.  A little nervous about the little puddle jumper planes I think I am on, but glad to be seeing some new places and making my list of counties a bit longer (27 to date!)