Kyle & Dori: Grocery shopping

[x-squirrel.livejournal.com]

Kyle and Dori go shopping for groceries. The day ends with doughnuts.

Kyle was remarkably organized about groceries, even when it was his turn to help get them for the entire mansion. he had his own list plus the larger one, a pen to cross things off, his shoes and ballcap dangling off one hand and the keys to the station wagon in the other. Even if the thing was like driving a sofa, it had cargo room and it wasn't a minivan. A minivan would just have been too embarrassing to drive anywhere.

He passed through the kitchen to double-check that no one had added any "out of bread!" "out of fancy bread" "out of super fancy bread that has 8,000 different grains and helps digestion and saves the whales" to the list, and also to find a helper. Because he was so not doing this alone. One, that was boring as hell, and two, finding someone he could bribe into helping meant way less groceries to carry. But mostly it was boring as hell.

The Peanut butter was almost all gone. Monkey Joe sat on the counter staring up at her as she looked into the jar, which was almost big enough to stick her head into, "Awww," she said. When she noticed Kyle passing by she held up the jar of peanut better, "Are you going shopping? If you're going shopping can you get some peanut butter? And some Reese's peanut butter cups? And some peanuts?" Things she could add to the list would go on and on and on. It didn't feel like she was being a bother if she asked Kyle.

"Yes, and now so are you. I totally volunteer you. I need a second set of hands." And someone to keep him from dying of total boredom in the grocery store. Kyle waved the keys in Dori's direction and jotted 'peanut butter, bulk' down on the list. "I'll buy you lunch or something for helping though."

"I can come?" Doreen said, pausing before perking up, "Yes! I'll totally come with and it won't be that bad," she said, stopping to put the jar off to the side and grab Monkey Joe, "Can Monkey Joe come too? He'll be good and he likes stores and I like stores..."

"Uh." Kyle wasn't sure. On one hand, he hated to tell her no. On the other, slightly hyperactive food-obsessed squirrel in the bulk food store. "Can you make him promise to stay out of sight and like, ride around in a open bookbag?" The last thing he wanted was the store kicking them out. There just weren't enough stores that they could get all the non-deliverable food shopping done at.

"Yeah, he used to do that all the time back home. Before I left he'd come into school with me," Doreen said, "It'll be okay, I promise. He can behave really, really well. So yeah," Doreen nodded, "He can do it. Promise."

"Okay. I'll even see if we can get him something from some of the free sample people. He can have any of the ones I can't. Well, the ones of those that are squirrel safe." Kyle figured Doreen would know better than he did. He just knew which ones were Kyle safe and that was pretty okay by him. "Go grab some shoes or something and we'll head out." It was really the only downside to being on grocery duty. Shoes. Bleh.

"Awwwww, we have to wear shoes?" Doreen asked. She had gotten very used to running around barefoot, but she supposed going out to a store she should wear shoes because they had those signs about no shirt, no shoes, no service. "I'll have to go get my sandals." Stupid shoes.

"They sort of like it." Kyle said.

--

He hadn't bothered to put his own on until they go to the parking lot of the warehouse-style grocery store. Driving barefoot was easier, and it made up for all the times he couldn't, like on the motorcycle, or in the winter. He'd been happily surprised to find that Monkey Joe was a good passenger, happy to curl up in Doreen's lap and stay put. But in hindsight he should've figured that the well-trained squirrel would've been used to cars by now.

"Okay, Kid Grocery Lass, the list, please?" Grocery shopping made Kyle happy and it showed in his mood and voice and willingness to be really -really- goofy about this.

"Right here, Captain Grocer," Doreen said, and handed over the list. Monkey Joe, with a little prompting, made it into her book bag and she put on a pair of sandals. Which thankfully made the shoe requirement without requiring much filing of the toenails. Which now that she thought of it she'd have to start doing again in the winter. It snowed out here in the winter, unlike back home.

"Let's go!" all that energy was now directed in heading to the front door of the store, "Race you!" she said, after she started, of course.

"Hey, that's cheating!" Not that he didn't run after her. but on two legs, Kyle couldn't keep up, and he was not about to go to four in the middle of a grocery store parking lot. That was just embarrassing. He also didn't grab a grocery cart, jump on it and ride it towards the entrance, even if he really wanted to. He was supposed to be the responsible one. Even if responsibility sucked sometimes.

Instead he just pulled the cart out of the row and made vroom noises, because if he had to be responsible, he was going to have fun with it, dammit.

"OOOOH, I get to ride in the cart!" Doreen said turning around and making a jump for it, which landed her right in the basket with a metal sounding thud, "WHOOOOHOOOOOOOO!" She exclaimed, with her hands in the air. If there was a way to goof off to be had, she was going to do it. That was what she did. Well, part of what she did, having fun was the other part. And talking to squirrels.

Kyle managed to steer the cart with one hand while clapping one hand over his eyes and trying unsuccessfully to not laugh his ass off. "You can ride it right up until we get inside and I throw a double pack of frozen chicken in it." He grinned. "Because I don't wanna suffer wrath of like, grocery manager guy, or the butcher who is actually kinda cool." He anticipated the sad face before it appeared. He was -such- a pushover sometimes.. "I promise I'll buy you a donut. Geez, it's like me in the grocery store with my mom when I was five..."

"So, if it's a single pack of chicken I get to stay inside?" Doreen asked, looking up at him, trying to get situated. She ended up with her tail off to her right side, her legs hanging over the edge and looking right up at Kyle. This was fun.

"Just one donut? I can eat like a dozen. And I like them when they're filled with that raspberry stuff, but it tends to go all over the place and is really messy but it tastes really good, you know?"

"One donut. I'm totally a starving college student, remember?" Not that Kyle wasn't planning on going to Count Donutula's afterward, but that was supposed to be a surprise. Because it was Count Donutula's and he wanted to see if he could convince Doreen to eat a shrimp cocktail donut. "And we've got 2 giant mega packs of chicken on the list." He dug the folded list out of his pocket and handed it over. "I think we're gonna be two carts in once we're done. We were the last time I did this."

Doreen looked over the list, "We should just go in and buy the store. It'll be easier. But I don't think the store will fit in the car. And then we'll get back. And everyone will be like, 'hey, where's the food, did you eat it?' and we'll have to be like 'No, it wouldn't fit in the car.' And we'll open the door and food will fall out everywhere and it will be like a big disaster. So I guess we can stick to the list....."

"Dude, did you breathe at all when you were saying that?" This was so definitely what it was like for other people to deal with him. Which is why Kyle liked Dori. It was like a little brown squirrely female version of himself. "Sticking to the list means the Prof won't give me the hairy eyeball if I go over budget. Not that he's mean about it or anything but you know. Not that we can't get a couple of fun things but mostly, it's the list. Peoples gots to -eat-." He was -way- too white and from-Montana to talk like that, really.

"His eyeballs are where the hair went?" Dori asked, wide eyed. Sure, it was a joke, but that didn't mean she couldn't be fun about it, "And I guess I had to breathe otherwise I'd pass out but I suppose we can see how long I can go without taking a breath. Though this is harder to do than just holding your breath, because you actually have to make sounds too and if you run out of air talking just sounds weird."

"I think the hair got eaten by his giant mutant brain. I dunno, maybe like old telepaths go bald or something." Nate and Haller weren't bald, but Haller had -weird- hair and Nate wasn't totally just a telepath. "Okay, so first off, veggies. Cause seriously somebody will like write Lorna a hate note if we're not all eating salad twice a week or something." Kyle liked salad, as long as someone dumped about half a can of tuna or a couple of slices of chicken in it. Or bacon. Bacon made everything awesome. He tore a strip off the grocery list, and handed it to Dori. "Gee-Arr-Why on the peppers means get the green, red and yellow ones. Also those cool purple ones if they've got those. Peppers are more fun if they're rainbow."

"Who's Lorna?" Doreen asked, she had the attention span of a gnat and the store smelled like wonderful, wonderful food. She breathed in deeply. Mmm, food, "My salad gets to be made out of eggs. And maybe potatoes. And coleslaw! Coleslaw is salad, right?" it did have some form of green vegetable in it. Which never really did her much good, but hey. It was tasty, she could deal with a bit of a stomach ache for that. She took her half of the list, "But they aren't as sweet as Skittles. They're all burny and stuff."

"Old cooking and nutrition teacher, and she used to do all the big meal planning. She went off to SoCal to do grad school or something. Green hair, magnet powers. Pretty cool, but man, she was like all Turbo You Will Eat Healthy Or Else." Kyle explained. "But. She made me meatloafs that looked like caterpillars, so she was cool." He tossed a couple of packages of mushrooms in the cart. "Coleslaw is cabbage. I can't eat it, it gives me the serious poots. And bell peppers aren't hot. We'll get some of the hot ones too, but bells are sweet. It's like vegetable candy. Uh. Sorta."

"Green peppers are okay, except for the heart burn and the oww," Doreen said. She was more of a fruit and nut person. Little bit of meat. And maybe a salad. And she still loved cheese. Even though cheese did not love her. Did cheese ever not love her, "Well, at least she didn't make caterpillars that looked like meatloaf, because that would've been really confusing. If she had magnet powers, could you stick things to her? Like paper clips?"

"Yeah, but I only tried that the once before she totally was not happy about it. She was cool though." Once the vegetables were in bags and in the cart, Kyle headed straight for the meat area, and the butcher, because getting 'like fifty pounds of ground beef' was easier if you could just talk to the guy and get it in big packages. "Four dozen eggs." He said, waving a hand at the nearby eggs-and-dairy section. "Or like 3 of those 18-egg packages if they have those."

Doreen sighed, it was to do something that was like work, but only not. "Hey, you know, we could totally make the biggest omelet ever out of that many eggs. What if I find a dozen of ostrich eggs or something, that'd be like... a lot of smaller eggs."

Oh yeah, this was exactly why Kyle and Angel had never been allowed to help Lorna -together-. "Dude, if you find ostrich eggs, get them too. I'll totally make you an ostrich omel... uh. I dunno if you can call it an omelet. Not a lot of 'lette' there, it's just an omel. It'd be huge."

"They have omels?" Dori asked, and then went in search of eggs. While they had a lot of different kind of eggs (was there even a difference between brown and white?) they didn't have ostrich eggs. Maybe she'd look them up online when they got back. You could, after all, find anything on the internet.

The next thing she did was pure inspired evil. While she didn't THROW the eggs, Doreen said the one thing you never wanted to hear the person with the eggs say. (After oops, that was.) "Kyle, CATCH!"

After a moment of panicked scrabbling that caused one foot to scrape claws against the tiled floor, Kyle just gave up and leaned against the cart, trying not to laugh. He was not supposed to encourage Antics, but in all honesty, the look on his face had probably been hilarious. "Dude, if I expire right here from a heart attack or start going grey from your egg antics, you are -so- grounded." He wasn't even sure if he could ground people. He'd find a -way-.

Doreen was giggling insanely as she put the eggs in the cart, "I so got you," she said laughing, "That was awesome." And totally worth being grounded, if he did. Which she didn't think he would. And if he did? Still worth it. "What's next!?"

"Rest of the dairy, since you're over there. Couple gallons of milk, cheese, uh, there's a list. Some of it's pretty wacky..." Kyle flipped the page on the list and tore off a section. "I swear to God, everytime it's my turn to do this, someone puts stinky cheese on the list." It was that French guy, Laurie's roommate. He Just Knew It.

"All cheese is stinky. Some of it is just more than others," Doreen said. Sure she had to go get the stinky cheese, "That's not even a real cheese," she said, pointed at one of the things on list, "Is it...?" she wondered looking around, "Ohmigosh, it totally is!"

"Dude, that's not even the weirdest thing I've seen here." Kyle had appropriated a plastic milk crate and was using for actual milk. He figured it was about a 50/50 chance that they'd make him give it back at the register, but either way, it was useful now. "And the Whole Foods? Dude, they're even weirder."

"But all foods are whole unless you cut them in half. Then they're half foods," it was attack of the logic. "I don't really care what food is as long as I can eat it."

There was no way on earth that she didn't know what a Whole Foods was. Kyle had known what it was and he was from the ass end of Montana. Doreen was from California. Kyle figured the whole place was full of Whole Foods. So she had to be messing with him. And it was a pun, so he was going to ignore it and hope it went away. Punning was contagious. "Okay, lesee. Bread and bready things." More tearing of grocery list, and Kyle sent Dori in the direction of the bagels and rolls, while he stacked loaves of bread into the cart.

Doreen came back with a bunch of bagged sweets as well, "Got it. Now what?" she said, grinning.

"Bulk stuff." Kyle half-tried to look sternly at the bag of sweets and failed. He'd done the same thing, and he'd probably -have- gotten some himself. Which was what the discretionary purchases part of the grocery budget was for. Basically bribing whatever poor suckers had to do all the shopping that week. "Pasta, rice, flour, sugar, all that stuff we make someone else dump into the bins when we get back because we did all the shopping so someone else can do the dumping."

Doreen just smiled at him brightly. She wanted to tear into the cheapie doughnuts now but they could wait, "You know, you'd get something really strange if you mixed all of that together with like spaghetti sauce," Doreen noted, "Should I get another cart? I mean, we need a lot of food, don't we?"

After a few moments of Grocery Cart Tetris - not that Kyle had played more than one or two games of Tetris in his life, ever - that didn't do much to help, he nodded. "Yeah, we're about to get to 'too full to push' on this one." It was certainly gonna get that way before they got to frozen food. Getting a second cart now would just makes things easier on the long run. "And dude, that's gross."

"I'll go get it!" Doreen said, taking off in that direction, "And no it's not. ...Okay, yeah it is, but you know someone would eat it and be like YAY THAT IS THE BEST THING EVER," she laughed.

She went to fetch the other cart and was riding it back like a scooter. Something Mom never let her get away with, "Coming through!" she said happily.

--

Two carts of groceries plus the couple of extras plus trying to keep Dori from getting distracted plus transferring the groceries into the station wagon and then into the mansion had Kyle sore, tired, and most importantly, starving half to death. Which is why immediately after the last bag of groceries had been put away and the paperwork thing that Kyle didn't understand for the school's account with the store given to the Professor, Kyle piled himself back into the wagon, with Dori close behind.

They'd destroyed the better part of extra-large lunches, and it was -almost- enough, but he'd promised himself a donut and despite her distractedness, Dori had been a major help, and Monkey Joe had been on his best behavior, to the point that Kyle had almost forgotten the squirrel was there until he started chattering what Dori had said were comments on the lack of candy in the bags.

He'd sent Dori in with a five dollar bill for Reese's cups after that.

So instead of walking down the block back to the car, Kyle waved Dori in the other direction, towards a storefront with a cartoon vampire chomping into a giant jelly donut. "Dude, it's donut nirvana. Count Donutla's!"

"Oh.My.Gosh," Doreen said, looking up at the sign, "Can we go in? So can we go in now? I wanna!"

"That's why we're here." Kyle said with a grin. "Angel bought me her weight in donuts for my birthday. Even I can't eat that much so I've been sharing. Today, you are the lucky winner!" The hand-drawn sign in front of the store promised that the flavors of the week were Caramel Apple and Shrimp Cocktail, complete with a drawing of an angry looking shrimp riding a pair of donuts like they were a bicycle.

"How can you put shirmp in doughnuts, is that allowed?" Doreen asked, pausing by the side. Caramel apple sounded gooooood.

Kyle shrugged. "Damn if I know. Probably cut up in little pieces or something." He was probably going to try the damn thing just for laughs but it sounded kinda gross. "They have bacon donuts sometimes. They're pretty good. And apple pie with cheddar cheese, which I thought was gonna be ass but it was pretty tasty."

"Wow, they come up with weird flavors. Are you going to eat the fish doughnut?" Doreen asked, on the fence about it. On one hand she could totally blog about that. On the other hand. It was fish.

In a doughnut.

"Oh hell no. I ate one already and that's the end of that." Sardine Donuts were not cool, even if it had meant he hadn't had to pay for lunch. "We should get a couple to take back though. Catseye might like 'em. " And if not Catseye, he'd just give them to Cammie.

"Let's get like twelve of the apple ones then!" Doreen said happily. Today was a good day.