Day 68 - "Tuesday!" - A Grocery Store Book

Feeling a little silly today and so is the book. What can I say? I had a 4-hour jewelry class today and most of my creative energy has already been expended in that direction. But today's book is also a chance to vent just a ltitle.

I've mentioned our store before. It's a convenience/tourist/grocery store. We're small and very out of the way and none of the big wholesale grocery distributors will deliver to us. And that means we have to drive to town (27 miles each way) and buy retail to stock our grocery shelves. And I regularly ask myself a rather odd question: "What does it say about my life when one of the highlights of the week is the day the supermarket sales circulars show up in the  mail box?" Every Tuesday, we pick up the sales flyers at the post office, then sit down with pen and paper to make up the week's shopping list. It usually has things like "20 gallons of milk, 6 dozen eggs, 14 packages of cookies, a case of tomato sauce." Oh for the days when I went to the store to buy two apples, a loaf of French bread and a round of goat's cheese.

How have I come to this? I'm a fairly adventurous soul. I have lived in several countries and spent 20 years in New York's Greenwich Village. I've shopped in the open markets of Paris and Mexico and love browsing the aisles at Trader Joe's. I DO NOT like buying, shlepping, shelving and pricing 20 gallons of milk, 14 packages of cookies and a case of tomato sauce.

Well anyway, here's today's book, "Tuesday!" because it's Tuesday, the ads came out today, and I started the shopping list.

The book is a simple single-signature, pamphlet stitch book made from cut up grocery bags (what else!) Cutting up that heavy brown kraft paper felt a bit like being back in elementary school -- or perhaps in craft session at Girl Scout camp. I collaged the front with cuts from the store ads and in the center are two small signatures made from grocery coupons.

It's not serious, it's certainly not archival, it's not precise. It's just silly.