Pat's Paused Power Predicament

It's amazing to me how much we rely on electricity.  It's even more amazing to me that considering how much we rely on energy, Walmart (at least the one in our humble town) has not taken precautions to stay running for at least thirty minutes after a power failure. 

Since Madison was born and we decided to shop only once every two weeks, grocery shopping has become a big "E" Event for us.  We make a list, we check it twice, and then one of us gets baby doody (and duty, har har) while the other spends the next hour roaming the aisles of our local Walmart.  Well today was the big day, and Pat drew the short straw, so off he headed to the store.  About forty-five minutes later, our power went out.  It occurred to me that Walmart's power might have gone out as well, but I dismissed the notion, thinking, "surely they have enough backup generators to run the store during a power outage."  Sure enough, after another minute or so, Pat called to see if we had power. 

At first, we assumed he would be able to check out, but decided he had better put the cold items back since we had no way of knowing how long the power would be out.  Problem: the cold items were on the bottom of the shopping cart.  As he deliberated what to do moaned and groaned about what to do (love you, honey!), I heard (we were still on the phone)an announcement over Walmart's intercom.  Neither of us understood what they said.

Long story short, Pat ended up having to leave Walmart empty handed.  But here's the kicker: remember that list I told you about?  Yeah, well, he had filled all but four items.  Here, take a look:

Oh yeah, I also forgot to mention that we had nothing to eat in the house.  It had been two weeks since our last trip, and we had eaten even the last granola bar!  So he decided to stop by Little Caesar's for lunch.  No dice, closed due to power outage.  He went to Domino's and thanked his lucky stars that he had decided to get cash for groceries; if he, like usual, only had a debit card, that too would have been a bust.  So we ate our healthy lunch while we watched Madison watching the ceiling fan:

Pat was still a little upset about the huge waste of time and energy, but Madi helped him feel better:

A few hours later, Pat decided he wasn't going to let Walmart defeat him, so he went back for more punishment to show them who was boss.  And he came back victorious!

 The only downside:  Pat had, on the first trip, gotten all ten of my new favorite yogurt flavor (strawberry lemonade) and the last of my favorite body wash.  Of course, they weren't restocked by the time he went back, so I'll have to make do with blackberry pomegranate yogurt and just hope my current body wash holds out until they get a new order in.  Otherwise, I'll have to try something new, and I'm not really a fan of change.

What do you think?  Have you ever finished filling your cart, only to have to leave it all behind?  Are you as surprised as I was that Walmart couldn't sell us groceries fifteen minutes after the power went out?  Do you shop once/week, once/two weeks, every day, or somewhere in between?

-Kelli