Tuesday, July 17, 2001

They say you can't go home again. Home I have no problem with. It's the supermarket I can't return to.

But return I might. I'm one of the HomeRuns.com victims, a fool who got hooked on something she knew was too good to be true, and now I'm paying the price.

Sure, little lady, we'll deliver two tons of canned goods and bottled water for free, refuse tips, and throw in little gifts - molasses clove cookies from Dancing Deer one day, a delicious pineapple another. And oh, you'll never have to worry about carrying bags up three flights of stairs again.

Now I know how animals raised in captivity and released into the wild feel. I've lost the ability to survive in the open market. My grocery-shlepping muscles have atrophied. My body can no longer tolerate the chill of the refrigerated-foods section. I've forgotten how to fight off predators moving in on my parking spot.

The Nasdaq dropping under 2,000 is one thing. Being forced to push a cart with a cranky wheel is another.

Mr. Greenspan - and all you venture capitalists out there - someone, please, bring back the bubble. We, the American people, were promised a virtual rose garden. A world where we'd never have to leave the house again. Where Kozmo.com would deliver a lone M&M to our McMansions at 11 p.m. Where Send.com would ship Champagne to our doorstep. Where we could buy toys from the comfort of our own dens, shopping in our pajamas, no less.

(To be honest, that last benefit never held much allure for me. On casual day at the Herald we can come to work in Dr. Dentons.)

So now that HomeRuns.com has closed, what am I supposed to do?

I could use the other online grocery delivery service, but I haven't heard great things about it. And besides, I read that it's giving priority to existing customers.

Without HomeRuns.com's regular delivery this past weekend, things at home are starting to get desperate. For one thing, we're almost out of water.

``If we don't figure something out soon,'' I told my husband as we fought over the last orange, ``we're going to have to drink from the tap.''

I guess we could start eating every meal out, and foraging for supplies where we can. Hmmm. Let's see. If I steal a few sheets of toilet paper from work every day, in a month or two I should have a complete roll.

And we could get our milk from Starbucks, pumping it directly from those thermoses into Hood containers saved from the good old days (last week, in other words).

Or - and typing this makes me feel sick - I could actually drive to the grocery store, pick things off the shelf, put them in my cart, place them on the weirdly wet conveyer belt (making sure to use the separation bar), pay, take the groceries out to the car, load them in the trunk, drive home (worrying that the ice cream is melting and the chicken is going bad and will kill my family), unload the packages from the trunk and carry them into the kitchen.

But hey, I don't want to be totally negative. I do seem to recall one nice thing about the supermarket: the impulse buy. No one orders a Milky Way over the Internet for delivery two days later. That's sick.

But there you are alone at Shaw's, or Purity Supreme, or wherever, caught in a line that makes the Cape commute look fast, enjoying a National Enquirer, and whoops! your hand reaches out, grabs a Milky Way, and you dine while reading about the latest alien weight-loss diet.

Maybe shopping isn't so bad after all.