Cuts so deep

i went grocery shopping last nite. it was a trip like all others, complete with a stop at a market for produce and a 2nd to the king sooper's (that's kroger to my midwestern friends) for the balance of my list. yes, i make a list. and i use coupons, too. it's all in an effort to reduce the amount of time and money i waste on securing sustenance so i don't die.

i'd gone out of town last weekend, so i had to rid my place of some of the older food. rephrase: i was completely out of everything. i knew it was going to be a pricey trip, and i'd prepared myself appropriately...or so i thought.

not only had i made out a list, but the list was prioritized to boot. i'd categorized which items would be purchased first, next, last or only if i could fit them into my shopping cart. look, everything in our lives has increased in price over the past ten years. i get that. gas is about $2/gallon for regular (unless you live in CA, chicago, or nyc. then you're screwed. sorry), when it was about $.77 back then. a loaf of bread now fetches upwards of $3 when it used to be barely a buck. and pizza, good god, $15 for a fucking pie? what happened to the $6 pizza days, let alone the *2* pizzas for that price (thanks little caesars)?!?! it's not shocking to me at all that i blew about $170 to restock my cabinets, fridge and freezer. that's about par for the course for me, since healthy food sadly costs much, much more than shitty food.

no, the startling development in all of this is that of the $170 spent, roughly 7% was spent on my face--that is, to buy FOUR, count 'em, 4 razor blades, which used to only run me about $4 max. the 7%could have been much larger had the "qty. 4" not been available. at that point, my choices would have been to buy $18 dollars (10.6%) worth of blades--for 8 of them--, the $24 for the "economy" pack of 12 (which, until last night i was unaware they made), or to just skip them altogether and grow my grizzly adams beard, a la jake plummer.

as appealing, albeit itchy, as it would be to be completely "natural," i don't think the company that gives me the checks i use to buy $12 worth of razor blades would much appreciate that look. sure, i use a higher end razor and could just as easily have gotten the cheapo bics. but then again, how would a mangled, cut, blood-speckled face be any better than one full of rapunzel-lenght hair? (note: due to blood thinning medication, knicks and cuts on me tend to bleed for hours, not minutes and, therefore, could somehow be potentially life-threatening. "killed by a bic." i can see the headline now).

my other option, i suppose, would have been to shell out $150-200 for an electric razor that won't give me the same baby-butt smooth face i've become accustomed to with a blade, for which would have required another/different rant entirely. for now, i guess i'll just have to grin and bear it, knowing that the titanium covered blades, the whopping 4 of them (4 blades heads, not to be confused with the 4 individual blades per head), have knicked and cut my wallet so badly that i couldn't afford the after shave face balm needed to maintain the softer side of my manliness. and that is the deepest cut of all.