Since this is one of my favorite rants I decided to write it up and give Everyday Hogwash a shot. I have enjoyed reading the rants there so much. Kelsey, over at Holy Mama, first turned me on to them. Give them a gander.

Sorry. Tomorrow we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program.

Ack! Just got back from the grocery store. I’m exhausted and my brain is numb.

I needed shampoo today so I jauntily wheeled my cart into the hair care aisle. Ugh. I was faced with 27,859 different kinds of shampoo. Shampoo for permed, straight, oily, dry, young, old, gray, dyed, thin, thick, or normal hair. What’s normal? After half an hour I decided to buy shampoo for dry curls and I thought I was done. Oh no. I still had consider size, brand, and price. Exactly one hour and forty-eight minutes after entering the shampoo aisle I exited only to find myself in the…in the…argh! I was in the paper products.

A friend of mine recently said we could be thankful we’d been born after the invention of toilet paper. I laugh in the face of such naivete’. He obviously doesn’t shop. Should we buy the four-pack, the twelve-pack, or the mega-pack with twenty-four rolls? At least all of those are divisible by four. It used to be that with an eighth grade education you could figure out which package of toilet tissue was cheaper. Then some genius decided to offer the nifty nine-pack! And do you buy single ply or double ply? Or maybe single ply, but double rolls? Is 635 square feet of double ply at $5.99 a better buy than 918 square feet of single ply at $7.49? Now you need an advanced degree in mathematics to figure it all out.

I don’t know about the rest of you but by the time I make it to the condiments, I’ve been in the grocery store 18 hours and the on-site security guard is dogging my steps wondering, I’m sure, why the women in aisle 8B–the one with the flecks of foam on her chin–is talking to herself and cursing at the mayonnaise.

Need we discuss long distance calling plans? Let’s face it. We have way too many decisions to make every day.

It makes me long for the days on the frontier. Grandma may have had red, chapped hands from washing clothes in frigid creek water, but at least she didn’t have to choose between fifty-six brands of laundry detergent. Borax 20 Mule Team was all the general store sold and Grandma was free from the worry and guilt that decision making lays on the modern woman.

But I don’t want to be a total bummer. Take heart, sisters. Your lives may be too full of choices but at least you have help. Experts abound. Kind people willing to instruct you in how to survive in your modern world. They write self-help books. You’ve seen them, I know.

Yep, two aisles down from the toilet paper. There they ALL are. Take your pick.