All or Nothing

You can get by pretty well here on the island with the few stores that exist. But every now and then, when our food’s getting low and we’re starting to pay way too much for the basics at the local store, it’s time to devote one whole day to ferrying across the ocean and stocking up.

I know it’s time to pay the $33 crossing fee when the kids are taking the exact same lunch to school for two or three weeks straight – i.e., the only items we have left from my last trip to Burlington in between some cheap Naked Bread.

What a shocker it is to walk in a gigantic store like Fred Meyer or Costco when you haven’t been in one for three months. The internal conversations begin. If I buy a bunch of produce on great sales, it will only last a week. Then we’re back to paying – no, more like mulling over and ultimately deciding not to pay – Orcas prices ($3.99/lb for green beans, for example). If I want to stock up more often, the next question is one of storage. Should we get a second refrigerator? What will be more costly in the end – paying the ferry fee more often for cheaper food so I can keep it in a fridge that costs a load of dough to buy and hikes up the electric bill? Not to mention sacrificing more full days in order to cross the sea and shop.

The wonderful thing about shopping locally is not being tempted by the mass consumerism just waiting to dazzle us island folk whose lack in luxury items can leave us more vulnerable to the sparkle out there – the really cute, cheap earrings; the nice jacket that would cost an arm and a leg even on Amazon but is a mere $15 at Costco; the beautiful towels that would look so good in the bathroom to replace the ones that never seem to fully dry in the cold, damp air. Staying local is great for kids, too. There just aren’t many places they can blow their money. Until the one time you take them to the mainland with you and it’s akin to Six Flags – oh, what excitement to live like the other half do. Well, the other 99.999999999%. Did you jaded mainlanders ever realize just how exciting Fred Meyer really is?

It isn’t until I hit the big stores that I realize how island-y I’ve become. Here, I wear the same “uniform” every day, mainly to stay warm and be ready for any sort of spontaneous walk or hike – black jeans, a thick fleece-lined flannel, and running shoes. It reminds me of this Jim Gaffigan clip if you fast-forward to 1 minute, 30 seconds because it’s so true:

Were I to ever dress more nicely, I’d have nowhere to go. Function is everything here, at least for me. We live on dirt roads, the car gets muddy, and so do I at times. How I dream of dressing like this…

…but I wouldn’t get out the front door and past the cobbly-stoned pathway leading to our mud-and-moss driveway. Orcas isn’t a well-paved place of concrete and engineered wood. It’s clumpy; rocky; stumbly; squoodgy – overlooking stunning ocean vistas. Precisely why we moved here! In normal times, a date or even going to church would provide a somewhat-dressed-up outlet, but that’s not possible right now.

The habits of simplicity and making do here mean you can really let things go compared to mainlanders. It wasn’t until I tried on some new black Nikes while off-island that my eyes were opened to the state of my own shoes here – how run-down could I get? Actually, I see that as a plus normally – I think it’s good to make do until you absolutely can’t anymore. But I must say I’m walking on clouds now that I finally bit the bullet and just bought the darn things (I’ve mulled them over since the last time I ferried over months ago!).

Then I feel things about the state of our car. We don’t keep it in the garage, and were I to keep it in tip-top shape, I’d either be cleaning it off every day or hitting the little car wash here weekly. So holding out until the rains end in June means it just doesn’t look so great. I like neatness, organization, and cleanliness, but I don’t care for doing the same job over and over for nothing (I already do enough of those kinds of jobs as a mother). I don’t feel much on Orcas about our dirty car – I’m a nature girl; an outdoors type. I blow it off. Then I go to the mainland and drive mudless concrete roads, and wow. I’m not even a skilled female version of Crocodile Dundee from the outback in a sea of pristine Teslas. I’m just dirty looking and they’re all clean. Time to wash the car.

The next existential acknowledgment is the fact that only certain things are on sale at any given time in any given store. This time the citrus family is on sale? Alright, oranges, clementines, and tangerines it is. And blueberries – $3 for a container over a pound – yessss! I’ll take five. Almond milk is $1.99 for a half-gallon? Cool. Six please. And I just happened to time it right for yogurt and prepackaged salads that are just about to turn? Woohoo!

So far I’ve got salad that will last a day, blueberries we’ll mow down in an instant, almond milk, yogurt, and oranges. But where are all of the other deals – you know, like there were when I was there three months ago? I walk the length of a football field through the store. You mean today is the only lull in between all of the Fred Meyer “Mega Event” sales? Alright. Off to Costco for some deals on cinnamon and artichokes. And that’s exactly how it can be sometimes. You can come home with a lot of side things, having spent plenty of money, with not much lasting food to show for it.

Luckily the stop at the used furniture store had been first on the list. The much-needed shelf for one of the kids cost only $10 and got the backseat of the car all to itself before the food moved in. But the unexpected boon of good books staring at me nearby got more attention than expected. I don’t collect anything. Not books either. I read them and return them to the library. But a change in me has been formulating in the last few days. I want some books by my bedside to choose from. Books that don’t have to go anywhere soon. Enough to cater to whatever mood I’m in before hitting the hay each night. I bought 25 for $1 each. So not me to buy books. Yet so me to live all or nothing. I can’t stand spending money, so that was a big departure from my norm.

The car gets packed, sometimes like a perfect puzzle and sometimes haphazardly, depending on how much time you give yourself for each store. Are you gonna hit two or go for broke – literally? Hit five and you’re moving like a madman, the backseat a jumble of randomness.

All day, you live in a weird fog of consumerism. There are times inside Costco when I’ll think, ‘Wow, there’s actually nowhere to go but another store. Every moment of today is about buying things.’ It feels obscene for the psyche to spend so much money in one day. When you catch the 8:55 AM ferry and come home on the 7:10 PM ferry, your entire existence from sun-up to way past sun-down has entailed purchasing. It’s like being in a Twilight Zone episode.

It’s a relief to get back to the ferry landing and sit down for awhile to wait for the boat. To be thankful. To think thoughts unaccompanied by dollar signs. To take the foil off the Chipotle bowl I hurriedly bought before zipping back to Anacortes, or peel several Cuties and open a bag of Boom Chicka Pop. A lot of us are sitting in line eating and playing music, our cars packed to the gills with foodstuffs, furnishings, construction parts, and gardening elements.

• 

• 

• 

Then we get home around 9 or 10 o’clock to unload sometimes hundreds of pounds of acquisitions. And wake up the next day to mountains of newness.

Crossing the Sea to Costco and One Hour Equals Twelve are two other posts I’ve written about the whole experience.

No offense is intended to our local market regarding pricing; I know they need to charge what they need to charge due to costs incurred from trucking and ferrying food across the sea.

Photo of couple by cottonbro from pexels.com, a free stock photo site