Whiiiiiiiine

The grocery store is never really where I want to be. But today I wanted soup or something like it and restaurants don't reliably serve soup here and I felt too crappy to really go to a restaurant anyway. I've been feeling lousy for a few days now so I already knew that the smallish manageable grocery store across the street doesn't really sell soup. So I went to Mercadona, which is the closest biggish grocery store. I fucking HATE Mercadona. I can never find anything and the workers are usually mean and the other shoppers, of whom there are usually about 6,000, are usually angry. The exit from the main checkouts doesn't go to the street it goes to the parking garage, and that scares me. What if you can't walk out of the parking garage, what if you can only drive out of it? What if I got stuck in there?? So I always end up waiting forever in one of the super long lines at one of the two checkout counters that has an exit to the street. And seriously, I can never find anything I need there, even though it's big and appears to sell lots of stuff. It's like some kind of ironic breadline, with all the pushing and shoving and waiting and ill will, plus tons of actual products, just none that I want. Shampoo, check; conditioner, no. Giant boxes of weird-brand cookies, check; normal-sized boxes of good cookies, no. Broth, bullion, cream of pumpkin, every ingredient one might use to make soup (probably, not like I make soup), check; soup, no.

I get that normal people cook more than I do, especially outside of the United States in general and New York in particular. But is there really no market here for premade soup that comes in a can or microwaveable container? Other people must get sick and want soup and not necessarily have anyone around to make it for them out of raw ingredients. I'm sure I bought soup when I lived here before, and I definitely used to buy microwave lentils and garbonzos that would have served the same purpose. Fucking Mercadona. Fucking flu. Whine.