Wowzers!

  I was out of town for a couple of weeks visiting Maria, Justin and the kids in Los Angeles:

    And so it had been a while since I'd technically been to Krogers, though in reality I just switched locations;  I'm sure I more than satisfactorily made up for my absence from Kroger's by my presence at Ralph's, the Los Angeles cousin of Krogers.  (Any Big Lebowski fans out there?)


    Ralph's is the same as Krogers, except that Ralph's has palm trees, a red tile roof, and  cerulian blue skies.

    Anyway, yesterday afternoon was my first trip in over two weeks  to my home base stomping ground, the Gahanna Krogers at Rocky Fork.
        But when I entered the store, instead of being greeted by the expected seasonal items and candy display I saw:

    I did a double-take and thought for half a confused senior moment that I'd driven to the wrong store. 
    But no.  My Krogers, which had been hiding this part of the store behind a mysterious wall of plastic sheeting for the past few weeks,finally pulled back the curtain last Friday to reveal its new make-over.  It was a real wow  moment. All this stuff  at the grocery store!
    Not that there hadn't been lots of stuff in my Krogers before. But it was different stuff, home goods, like sheets and towels and furniture and art and rugs and toss pillows.  In fact, besides spending half my life in Krogers, my home is so full of stuff I've bought from there...

   ... that it's like I'm there even when I'm not there.

    But yesterday Kroger's was full of totally different different stuff:

Clothes!                                                                               Jewelry!

  Toys!                                                                                   Hats! 

                                                                     

Shoes!                                                                                  Boots!

Undies!                                                                               And - yay! - still some furniture!
   
    And it was nice stuff!
    Now, yesterday I'd only been intending to pop in and out of Krogers  to pick up ingredients to make a batch of stuffed cabbage rolls, but so mesmerized was I by all the new nice stuff that I just wandered the aisles checking out the wares.
    I even tried on a couple of things:
    These shoes. Aren't they so cute? Potentially comfy, but a little too big.  As I've previously moaned  (see posts from 3/12/14 and 4/25/14), I seem to be fated not to be able to wear cute shoes.

   
    I also tried this sweater:

     I ended up buying it but in the next size up from the above one, which was a large. Jiminies, I needed an extra large!  If all the clothes run as small as this piece then they're really going to have to tweak the sizing.
    But anyway, it was a pleasant  shopping experience.  There was a sales assistant  - two of them actually -  to show me to the dressing room and when the large sweater was too small one of the gals ran and brought me an extra large.  Very good service.
   And then I just had to buy these:

For these:

   
    So anyway, you figure here's me, just popping into Krogers to pickup a few ingredients for my stuffed cabbage rolls and sailing off to shopping Byzantium.  So to speak.   Multiply that by everybody who enters the store just to buy some groceries.
    Yesterday was Monday.  My friend who was working the self-check lane yesterday told me that the new section opened up last Friday.  And in those four days the sales at this Krogers has soared above the sales at all the other area Krogers's combined. 
    Draw from that fact what conclusion what you will, but the only conclusions I draw from the new Krogers are:
1.  I'm going to be spending a bunch more dinero there. 
2.  And I love it.
3.  But they really need to tweak the clothes sizes. 8)