The Biggest "Sacrifice"

That title is tongue in cheek, of course. There are no greater sacrifices being made during this pandemic crisis than those of our health workers and first responders who are trying to save a tsunami of sick and dying people in the hopes of preventing a total overwhelming of our hospitals and other facilities.

So when I read or hear people complaining about the few sacrifices we have to make to reduce the spread of this disease, I get a bit miffed, to say the least. Case in point...

I live in a planned community where many snowbirds come for the winter. While there are renters, the vast majority of these temporary residents own these second homes. Unlike us year-round homeowners, they migrate with the seasons.

If you're not familiar with Nextdoor. com, it's a website that allows neighborhoods to connect online, providing message boards as for each community to interact. We joined ours when we lived in Glendale, CA and we belong to the one servicing where we currently live, too...

You wouldn't believe the amount of complaining, whining, and general nastiness our neighbors exhibit online. Talk about a bunch of whiny babies! And most of the whiners are the snowbirds, all of whom take umbrage at the fact that most of our amenities are closed down for the time being. It makes me embarrassed for them.

All of us have to make sacrifices during this time of international crisis. We'd love to be able to go to the gym we have here but realize we can't as long as it's closed and more importantly, there's nothing we can do about it anyway. As noted in another post, sure, we'd love to be able to go out to dinner sometimes but are happy to stay away from crowds until given the all-clear.

What I'm trying to say is people should sit down, shut up, and be thankful they have what they have. Grousing about being cooped up isn't doing you or anyone else any good. You're lucky you have enough food in your larder to weather this storm. Some go hungry every day; some die of starvation every day.

We're all going to get through this if we follow the guidelines and keep a cool head.

Cooking Extravaganza

I love to cook. Absolutely. I love all aspects of it...the prep, the cooking itself, the coordination of all the dishes so they're done at the same time, and yes, even the clean-up afterward. My wife gets mad at me because I won't let her even wash or dry the dishes. It's how I relax, I keep telling her.

Yes, I'm weird.

There was a time when my wife did most of the cooking while I worked outside the house. Even though she's a good cook, she really didn't like it. That's similar to my mother, an Italian born of immigrants who is probably one of the best cooks I know (surpassed only by her mother) and only recently discovered she really never liked doing it.

Talk about messing up my childhood.

Anyway, I must've learned something watching her over the years or maybe there's something to the truth that cooking has to be in your "blood" (or DNA, if we want to modernize the myth a little bit). Whatever it is, once my wife and I moved from L.A. to Phoenix, I took over the cooking duties and never looked back.

My wife is a big fan and she (by her own admittance) is a picky eater but she raves about what I serve. Perhaps I cook specifically to her tastes and preferences, and though I like my own cooking as well, I don't consider it rave-worthy.

Though I mostly only cook for us, I've occasionally done so for others, too, including my mother. To my surprise, I've gotten rave reviews, so I guess I'm doing something right.

The only time I don't cook is when we used to go out to dinner after one of our retail forays. My wife, always complimentary, would enjoy the outdoor food but insist I've ruined her for restaurants forever.

Naturally, this self-isolation we're undergoing is keeping me in the kitchen more frequently than in the past and I'm loving it. It's given me a chance to experiment more, oftentimes with my wife as a muse as she finds recipes that look good to her. I don't mind her input at all...it gives me ideas of what she would like to try.

Besides writing, cooking gives me a creative outlet like no other. I'd invite you over, but we should all shelter in place.

Yours from the kitchen,
Michael

Mega Shopping Trip

After spending ten days at home and building our grocery list to the point where we were low on a few essentials, we decided to make for town (twenty miles away) to hit a couple of stores. My wife has prescriptions to pick up, too, and since they were already at Walgreens, we decided to stop there, too.

Before we left, my wife agreed to the following...or should I say I agreed and she nodded along. 😀

1. We'd only go to two stores, no more. This would limit exposure to other shoppers.
2. I would be the only one going in, she could stay in the car. Neither one of us wants to get sick, but since she had influenza-B already this year, I didn't want to risk her getting sick again--especially since I never got the flu myself despite my taking care of her, allowing me to (perhaps falsely) believe my immune system is pretty strong right now.

Well, it didn't turn out that way. After the drug store, we went to Sam's Club and she told me in no uncertain terms she would be going in with me. I told her fine, she shouldn't touch anything, to just point to what she wanted. To this, she agreed.

I wore surgical gloves before grabbing the cart. Now, before you get all upset about my buying products that should be in the hospital, these are gloves I already owned for cooking purposes, purchased months ago.

My wife held to her promise and pointed, I picked up. We then went to several more stores--breaking rule #1. We really didn't get much of what we needed in the first couple and so went to three more to fill in the gaps.

What I couldn't get I absolutely need -- yeast. I bake bread and I'm low on yeast. So I went online and ended up purchasing it from Amazon, along with a few other things I couldn't get. I also ordered from Costco and Target, too. Thank goodness for free shipping!

One funny story worth sharing. Our Fry's grocery store is in the same strip mall as my wife's hairdresser. We were walking to the store when we saw her coming out with a 12-pack of toilet paper clutched in her hands. She looked so excited and happy, waving it around like a trophy.

As it turns out, we wanted to get TP, too, so I hurried into the store and almost ran to the paper aisle. Along the way, I kept passing people with their own 12-packs. By the time I got to my destination, there were only a few left on the pallet. I snatched one in my greedy hands and hurried to the front of the store to show my wife.

It was like finding gold!

Remember when grocery shopping was a mundane experience. Not anymore in the Age of Corona.

Yours from self-isolation,

Michael

Grocery Trips, The Early Days

We live about twenty miles away from the closest grocery store, so our pre-pandemic norm was to drive into town about twice a week for groceries. Being the cook in the family, I kept multiple lists of items needed in each store we would need to go to.

The last time we made a retail run was a week ago today (on March 13th). We went out later than usual with the brilliant idea that we'd avoid the crowds. Even though we heard of empty shelves at our usual places, we felt certain that the staff would've had the time to restock the shelves after the mad hordes had left.

Wrong.

We ended up going to five grocery stores and we were only able to get three-quarters of what we deemed as necessary. Fortunately, we had plenty of paper products to begin with and most everything essential, including pasta and tomato sauce. I stupidly failed to buy ground beef at our previous Costco run and didn't find any at any of the stores we stopped at that night.

Right now, we have plenty of everything we need and are able to stay here for a month or longer if we need to without rationing. However, we do have to go into town to pick up prescriptions, though we plan to shift to a delivery system right after we pick up this load. While out, we'll make a stop in a couple of stores to see if we can get the few things we'd like to have on hand (again, ground beef).

This is the new normal. We're slowly coming to grips with that sad fact.