It’s supremely not cool that the love affair we have shared with Blue Bunny has been hampered somewhat by the seemingly sudden divorce of Blue Bunny from Super Wal-Mart stores. I had finally found Blue Bunny’s Sweet Freedom low-carb yogurts and was so happy I could have hugged an Olson twin and risked having my eye put out by a shoulder blade.
On a whim, I headed to Super Target the other night to procure some grass-fed beef. While generally I find Super Target to be annoying, what with its tall ceilings and myriad things I don’t need to buy but want to, I needed to make a run.
Until then, I’d been buying at Super Wal-Mart. While annoying in its ample size and sometimes very-low prices which brings me back despite the annoyances I face there with crowds some days, I know they generally have the one thing I want which none other had seemingly carried: Blue Bunny products and 20-ounce bottles of water, coupled with low-priced Crystal Lite packets.
This is where I rewind the machine a couple of frames and state that I have given up Diet Coke due to anxiety. Giving people with anxiety Diet Coke is like giving a nudist pasties and sending her out to a high-class function. Things go terribly wrong. The nudist is overdressed, and I’m back with the twingy arms and chest pains. As a result, I switched to bottled water, partially because I like the cold chill of winter in a container small enough to accept flavor packets– a new invention which is better than spray-on hair, in my estimation.
My husband came along with me to Super Target. He wanted to see how much their bottled water cost as a point of reference. First, knowing the Blue Bunny supply had dried up at Super Wal-mart, and knowing they no longer carry the stuff, I needed to find out if Target carried anything as whole-foodsy as the other food items they tend to carry. To my shock and amazement, in the dairy section, among the rows of brightly-hued yogurts, sporting various amounts of corn syrup solids I spied a portion of a row dedicated to none other than the Bunny of Blue. And not only that, but in flavors Wal-Mart never carried. I came home with Strawberry, Vanilla, Peach and Raspberry Creme. I was so excited that I pumped my fist in the air with the alacrity of someone who woke up from a bad dream and could breathe normally again after realizing that stirrup pants were no longer really popular.
I filled my cart with the various yogurt flavors, and we zipped down to the water aisle.
Water at Super Target comes in even bigger bottles than Wal-Mart. This is actually a boon to those of us who find the Crystal Lite packets to be a little overly sweet. The prices are the same for 24 bottles as they are at Wal-Mart, so I’m getting more flavorless liquid for less money.
On an endcap on the way to the produce, my husband said, “HEY!” Just as I was about to respond with the very philosophically high-brow response of “Hay is for horses,” I saw it: On an end cap marked at 30% off were glorious masses of packages: 3 boxes of Crystal Lite, buy two, get one free were marked down. At first, this didn’t trigger in me any sense of elation. Then my husband showed me that the “two boxes” they were selling had been $7.50 and were now for sale for about $4.00. Now, this I could be excited about. Usually a box of the Crystal Lite packets go for $2.49 each. That’s $.25 for each of the ten packets per, and fairly expensive, when you’re trying to convince yourself that after paying for water and the Crystal Lite packets, you’re still better off than buying a cheap 2-liter of the bubbly stuff.
Knowing we were going to be drinking this stuff for the long haul, I went ahead and bought up the flavors I felt we liked. We took all of the boxes, save for the fruit punch (I didn’t want to be a totally greedy slob) and a box that turned out to be empty.
In the end, I bought 96 boxes of Crystal Lite drink mix.
While a usual package of 10 is $2.49 at Wal-Mart, You can now buy 3 boxes (or 30 packs) for only $3.98!
I ended up saving $221.68 for 96 boxes!
OK, I recognize that might sound a little silly, and I know it’s a little drinkmuch, but the stuff is generally expensive enough, and I figure, I really like the stuff, and it’s cheaper and better than Diet Coke. So, I have 960 packets of Crystal lite in the kitchen all over the place in cupboards, falling out of cabinets where crackers and cereal boxes once inhabited.
Now I’ll probably forget where some of it is, but I’m sure in 10 years I’ll find it. When I’m no longer thirsty.
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