I had the best trip to the grocery store this morning.

In the baking aisle I conferred with a woman about whether she should do the canned pumpkin pie filling or just the canned pumpkin (we studied the cans and the instructions and decided the canned pumpkin was her best bet – and I tipped her off on the magic of brown sugar). In the soup aisle I held half of Clare as she climbed up to a top shelf and reached waaay back to get a woman a bag of her favorite noodles.

During checkout I helped the woman in front of me figure out her baking schedule so that she could indeed get a manicure with her visiting daughter on Wednesday (make the pumpkin bars on Tuesday night – nobody will know, right?). The woman behind me helped empty the back part of my cart that I was struggling to reach from where I stood.

And then the checkout woman told me all about her clever hat, which a friend of her grandma’s knit for her. It has a hole for her ponytail to stick out, “so I’m never cold!” Everyone was so open and friendly and funny, I came away feeling a little better about the world. May your grocery store excursions this week have a similar dusting of charm.