This is one of the mini-shopping carts at Kroger, but it wasn't my cart from today's grocery shopping.

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Since Mother won't eat any of the food at the nursing home, one of us four kids goes out there every day to fix her a lunch that she will eat and then we fix her a supper plate before leaving.  This morning I was at Kroger with a shopping list of things to buy for those meals.

After picking up my last items, green grapes and purple grapes from the produce section, I was stopped by a woman as I headed towards the checkout section.  This youngish woman, probably somewhere in her early to mid-40's, told me her name was Jackie.  There was only a split second to fantasize that maybe my diet has been so successful that women would start trying to pick me up at the grocery store.  After that split second, she said that she sees me walking at Parham Bridges each morning.

That's when I recognized her and I introduced myself.  She did mention that I had obviously lost some weight and I told her my results were now 23 pounds lost in 11 weeks.  Then her husband walked over and she told her husband about how we both walk in the morning and how I had lost a lot of weight.  Maybe she was being subtle in trying to encourage him to get out and walk a little--he wasn't too much overweight, but there was a bit of a spare tire.

After this brief encounter I headed off to pay for he groceries and then headed out to see Mom at the Orchard.  It wasn't until much later in the afternoon that I realized something rather humorous about talking to Jackie and her husband at the store.  The topic came up twice about how well my diet was going and I wonder if either of then noticed what was in my shopping cart:

---green grapes and purple grapes
---two 8-packs of regular Sprites
---three bags of Hershey's Kisses
---three boxes of Little Debbie's snack cakes
---two bags of Chips-Ahoy cookies
---one package of mini-Oreos
---one box of chocolate covered wafers

If either Jackie or her husband did notice my food selections, then they must have had a heck of a conversation on the way home as they tried to figure out just what kind of diet I am following.  And in case you are wondering why we don't fix a more nutritional meal for my mother, we tried that in the past with little success.  She stopped drinking all supplements like Ensure, she has gotten to the point where she doesn't eat things that need a fork or spoon, any fruits other than grapes basically go uneaten--at some point we just had to stop worrying about nutrition and start worrying about having her eat enough to survive.  It's not ideal, but we are doing the best that we can do.