Harper Kingsley blog

I ordered groceries and once again it was a bit of a headache.

I had a budget of $250. That’s to buy groceries for the rest of the month (17 days) for 3 adults and 2 cats. (So that’s like $14 to live on per day.)

I ordered from Walmart and Safeway. Staples and such from Walmart, and taking advantage of the meat BOGO from Safeway.

The one thing I like about Walmart is that whatever the final bill is, that’s what I have to pay. I can pick out the substitutions and what-have-yous, then I agree to pay a set amount AND THAT’S IT. I know exactly what to expect because the amount I agree to is what gets paid.

Safeway though… Sigh.

Ordering from Safeway is very stressful. I agreed to pay $79.76, but got charged $91.04. That’s an $11.28 difference.

AND I’ve gotten VERY careful with making sure to set my substitutions or mark Do Not Substitute, as there was one time when they charged me $60 OVER what I agreed to because the grocery picker substituted like $50 meat and shrimp for what should have been a BOGO and $10 meat.

Every time I order from Safeway is a crapshoot. My budget is so tight, and it’s terrible that I can’t be sure whether I’m going to be forced over it. And like, they don’t allow changes or rejections, so once you order and the clock hits 11:59 p.m. on the day you order THAT’S IT.

So like, they pick out the groceries on delivery day, but you have no further say in anything. You can’t reject anything and if you call the Help Line the person will say they can’t do anything for you because the order is locked in.

All you can do is wait for the delivery guy to show up, then pick through the bags and find the items you want to reject.

As it is, I had to go back to my Walmart order and change the tip amount for the Walmart driver. I feel bad because George was a nice guy, but that $250 amount was a HARD limit. So while George still got a tip, it wasn’t what it would have been if Safeway was more upfront with their final amounts.

I agreed to $79. Why do I have to STRESS that they could charge me $10 or $20 or $60 or $100 more than what I agreed to? Why can’t they be completely transparent with their amounts?

It’s very frustrating.

And I know. Someone out there is like “If it matters so much, why don’t you go to the grocery store and shop for yourself???” Well, because whatever lies people tell themselves, we’re in the middle of a pandemic.

Me going to the store risks me being exposed to sickness, and if I’m sick, risks me exposing other people to sickness.

And also, me ordering from the store keeps the store people employed, and also provides jobs to the delivery people. I mean, Safeway uses their own trucks and employees to make home deliveries, but they get tips now so that’s extra money for the drivers and their families. Walmart outsources their deliveries, so that’s people that otherwise wouldn’t have a job being able to buy groceries and pay rent for themselves.

Me and my family need to eat. And I only have a finite amount of money to buy EVERYTHING for a whole month.

$500 for groceries and essentials for 3 adults and 2 cats for a WHOLE MONTH.

That’s food, toilet paper, paper towels, laundry soap, coffee, coffee filters, cat food, cat litter, bird seed, dish soap, shampoo, conditioner… EVERYTHING for an ENTIRE MONTH.

And this time I didn’t have enough to buy cat litter and I’m really regretting it because I’m going to have to figure something out as Lemon’s medication is making her pee an excessive amount.

Life is hard enough. Why can’t Safeway be more reasonable? It makes it so even when they have good deals, I don’t want to order from them because they could substitute for something ridiculous and end up with an overcharge. Boo.

~Harper Kingsley

• The Paypal: https://paypal.me/harperkingsley. Directly support the content.

• The Patreon: https://patreon.com/harperkingsley. Become a patron and receive access to Patreon-only content and bonus posts.

• The Amazon shop: https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0. See curated lists of items, and if you click an item but buy something else I still get money for driving traffic.

• The story site: https://kimichee.com. Just stories, poems, and reviews, no excess babble.

• The blog: https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog. The stories, the meta, the babble, the news; a broad spread of content.

• The Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/harperwck. Artwork, links, a way to support the creation of new content.

• The Twitter: https://twitter.com/harperkingsley0. Where the tweets live: part outrage, part flora and fauna pics, part babble.

P.S. A few weeks ago I got offered a discount W+ offer and I took advantage of it. $70 for a year seems reasonable to me, as ordering from the store costs $7.95 for a delivery fee, and I was ordering twice a month. So within 4-8 months, the W+ membership will pay for itself. Reasonable.

I am a little bitter that when I was given the offer for a year membership at $50 I didn’t have money at the time, but c’est la vie.

Being poor costs more money on the whole than being rich. It’s having to pay-as-you-go rather than being able to buy in bulk or sign up for money saving memberships. It’s not having the spare cash when you need it, so you end up going into debt for essentials, then having less money overall as you have to pay off debts you never should have had in the first place.

A universal basic income, people. It would help the economy. (They spend MORE money oppressing homeless people than they would spend housing the unhoused. Like, those cops getting overtime pay for trashing “homeless shanty towns”… like, it would have been more cost effective for cities to provide housing and essentials for the people rather than lining the pockets of oppressors. It’s RIDICULOUS.)

Missouri House Republicans voted to defund all the Missouri public libraries. And now the bill is moving to the state senate, which is also controlled by Republicans.

So basically Missouri is like “Fuck them kids! Fuck them poor people! Fuck everyone that uses the services of the public library system!”

Missouri public schools rank 49th in funding they receive from the state. They are ranked 26th in the nation.

And I know, some people without much life experience are like “But why would they do that? There’s no reason for that!” And it’s like, dude.

If you can’t learn certain subjects or read certain books in school, and now you can’t learn anything on your own at the public library… How are you supposed to learn ANYTHING outside of the bubble of your Christo-Fascists parents’ control? And if they’re home schooling you… My dude: You’re not going to pass the state tests and you’re not going to be able to go to college.

They are trapping kids in their “utopia”-vision which likely includes marrying their young children to old people for money. Like, religious prostitution.

It’s very sad and tragic and there’s going to be a lot of misery and death in the next 5-30 years.

Teenagers are going to become adults in a world they are unable to understand and they’re going to be ANGRY at the abuse they suffered at the hands of their parents. There’s going to be an adaptation period, and then those kids are going to be grown ups voting and sharing their opinions to the public at large and its going to be a big mess.

Like, there’s dudes today that are teaching younger men that sperm actually changes the DNA of women’s bodies. That if you have sex with a woman that’s already had previous unprotected sex… the baby that’s born won’t be your child, but the child of the man that “got there first.”

They’re trying to say loony stuff like having sex with a man will affect a woman’s point of view and interests. That if she has sex with a man that believes in aliens, she’s going to believe in aliens. That she will only be interested in reading if she has sex with a reader

There are some dudes that are really spreading the nonsense belief that sperm is MAGIC (hand wave, hand wave, spirit fingers).

There are stupid dudes that actually believe that their having sex with a woman will completely change her personality and way of life because MAGIC SPERM. They are THAT desperate to believe that they’re some kind of special.

And I blame homeschooling.

I blame people that never should have been allowed to homeschool their children raising adults that believe they’re the be-all end-all of human perfection. “All that misbehavior isn’t due to emotional imbalance but to the rightful expression of a wonderful star child!”

And then when those dudes are unable to find romantic partners because they’re NOT wonderful, they’re just weird and rude and unpleasant to be around… They get out their guns and start mowing down roomfuls of strangers. Because they are incapable of dealing with their own human emotions, and they were not taught to recognize that anger is an emotion.

They lack proper coping mechanisms. So rather than dealing with things like normal people do… They throw temper tantrums and vote to defund public libraries because “O noes, if libraries exist my children are going to read books and realize that I’m an abusive fuck that’s systemically destroying their every chance to succeed in life! They’re going to realize that ours is NOT the way the majority of people live but in fact the result of being raised within a cult and that their lives could have been so much better except I’m an asshole that did my best to help ruin infrastructure and destroy the public education system. We have to DESTROY the libraries both in and out of school! Down with education! Let criminal ignorance reign supreme!”

It’s sad and it’s pathetic and it’s a shame. And it’s scary because those weirdos are out there right now, breeding their “master race” of future mass murderers.

Oh, and we’re still in the middle of a plague that has killed MILLIONS of people and disabled many more. And there’s about to be another surge, that some doctors fear will be worse than previous surges. And they’ve stopped masking in doctors’ offices where people go when they’re sick.

And I just found out that n95 masks aren’t as effective as I thought they were, that if you’re in a room saturated with virus, 5% of that dirty air is making it through your n95 mask. So an n95 mask is only completely effective if THE SICK PERSON is wearing an n95 mask too so all their dirty breath is trapped against their own face.

And all those sick people are walking around, maskless and breathing hard. Because science isn’t real or whatever magic thinking they’ve embraced.

Man. I hope they offer the next round of free booster shots soon. I want to get a shot and give it a chance to start working before I get exposed to a virus that can kill or permanently disable me.

Anyways. I hope everyone out there is doing all right. I hope everyone is staying safe and practicing safe practices. And I feel sad for people in Missouri that will be completely without access to good books to read, because only the rich can afford to buy hundreds of books a month.

As a lifelong reader: I am sorry for all the people that won’t be able to satisfy their desire to read.

Because while children will still be able to check out books from their school library during the school year… adults will be left completely without access. And that’s so sad.

I wish people weren’t so evil.

(WARNING: Contains spoilers for the movie Train to Busan.)

I didn’t really enjoy the sequel, but seen as a standalone story, "Train to Busan" was a great zombie movie. To the point that if I was trying to explain that there were real life zombies running around I would say something like "It’s ‘Train to Busan,’ run!"

A father so wrapped up in his "very important" job that he barely has a connection to his young daughter who desperately wants to be with her mother in Busan. A son that relies on his aging mother to provide all the love and care that he should to his young daughter while ignoring her pleas to see his daughter and love her for himself. A formless mother figure and ex-wife that he in some way resents for having the daughter’s love that he himself refuses to cherish.

At its core, "Train to Busan" is not just a story of survival, but a story of love. Of realizing what is actually important before it is too late.

In his last moments of humanity, his dearest memories are of his daughter’s birth and the joy she brought him. He died with the hope that he had saved her. That he had done all that he could to give her a chance to survive in a suddenly hostile world.

It’s like growing up. There came a point in time where he no longer had the capacity to guide her steps and was forced to open his hand and let go. To hope that she would swim rather than sink, that she would live and flourish rather than become a monster like him.

And I think that’s why I didn’t enjoy the sequel as much as I hoped to. It lacked the heart and humanity of "Train to Busan." A zombie movie that really wasn’t about zombies, but the human condition, and what humans are willing and ready to do when it’s about survival rather than simply getting ahead. When all the extras and the luxuries are stripped away, and the only choice is live or die.

~Harper Kingsley

https://amazon.com/shop/harperkingsley0.

https://paypal.me/harperkingsley.
https://patreon.com/harperkingsley.
https://ko-fi.com/harperwck.

https://www.harperkingsley.net/blog.
https://twitter.com/harperkingsley0.
https://kimichee.com.