Into the Breach Again

Today was another retail excursion after two weeks of being sequestered. That's about our interval, based on the last two forays. Again, prescription refills triggered our trip into town.

This time we were short on chicken and fresh produce. We have plenty of everything else for the most part, except for a couple of deliveries of paper products that are en route. Overall, the only things we're lacking are disinfectant wipes. They seem to be impossible to get these days. We can't even get put on a waiting list anywhere. It's very frustrating.

The stores were not as tapped out in certain of the aisles, though the usual suspects (again, paper products, bread flour, pasta) are MIA. The stores weren't too crowded, but I would say more than half the people in the five stores we went to wore masks. The rest, well, just let's say they are dumber than dirt and that insults dirt...in other words, covidiots.

Why wouldn't people (perfectly healthy, mind you) not wear face masks unless they were so dense or so arrogant that they don't care whether they may be infecting other people?

Today was the last day we used improvised face masks. We bought a couple of cloth ones made by a lady in our community for five dollars each. And talk about well-made! She has a nice little studio in her golf cart garage where she does all her sewing and such. Quite a set-up, my wife said.

Now we're set for our next retail excursion, which will be in a little over a week when my wife has to go get her blood test. Being a cancer survivor, she has to routinely make sure her cancer markers aren't off. While they're not a perfect indicator, they are definitely an important part of her diagnostics.

More than likely, she'll do a teleconference with her oncologist to go over the results instead of going in. That's currently scheduled for a week after her blood test. After that, we'll probably make a stop or two, but it won't be a major shopping day.

Yours from the front,

Michael

True Confessions of a Flour Buyer

We did our twice-monthly shopping trip into town yesterday. With our bandana face masks on our faces and surgical gloves on our hands, we stopped store after store to get all the items we would need for a couple more weeks.

We couldn't find many paper products, particularly toilet paper. After more than a month of this, I've concluded that some covidiot is hoarding it all. With any luck, they'll be stuck with it until the end of their days, though more than likely they're selling it on the black market for 10x what it cost him/her.

Think about that. Toilet paper unavailable for over a moment. It boggles the mind.

At one store we went to, a downscale store that caters to the Spanish-speaking community, we hit the jackpot. I was in one aisle, my wife was in another. She hurried to find me to tell me that they had a lot of all-purpose flour on their shelves!

Excited, I followed her and sure enough, there were several bags sitting there. I took a look to make sure there were no signs and picked up three bags. Then we went to check out.

As my masked cashier rang me up, she narrowed her eyes disapprovingly.

"Only two bags," she said.
"Two? There was no sign," I replied. I turned to my wife. "Did you see any sign?"
"No, there was no sign."

The cashier just shook her head and rang us up anyway. I apologized profusely, but I don't think she believed I was being sincere.

Do you know that bothered me for the rest of the day? This is a small store. The same people work there all the time. Save for the fact I was wearing a mask, this cashier knows me. I'm so embarrassed, I don't know if I want to go back there again.

Of course, that's silly. We love that place (the prices are great and they have a wonderful selection of produce). But still, I feel bad even though what I did wasn't intentional.

Okay, now that I've confessed my sins to you, gentle reader (👋), I'll move onto the rest of our trip.

The summary we were able to score chicken, steaks, and ground beef, along with fresh produce. No TP, as noted. No Excedrin, but there was a manufacturing issue before the COVID-19 pandemic broke out (we ended up getting the store brand from Walgreens). No Chlorox II, for some reason. No hydrogen peroxide, either.

So, reviewing all this, I'd say we did pretty good. Now in a couple of weeks, when prescriptions need to be refilled, we'll be going back out again.

Yours in retail bliss,

Michael

Silkwood Shower

There was a film back in 1983 called Silkwood which was inspired by the life of Karen Silkwood, a "nuclear whistleblower and a labor union activist who died in a car collision while investigating alleged wrongdoing at the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant where she worked." The movie starry Meryl Streep, Kurt Russell, and Cher.

In the movie, if one of the workers became radiated in their work, they were dragged (usually kicking and screaming) into a shower and scrubbed down by hard-bristled brushes by two workers in full protective gear. At least two scenes demonstrate this (both on women) and it was both humiliating and excruciatingly painful to the affected person.

Here's a scene:

After two weeks of sheltering in place, we had to go into town to pick up prescriptions and necessary supplies. This time, we wore both surgical gloves and masks made from bandanas as we negotiated our way around the stores we visited.

Once home from that long odyssey, we then wiped down everything we bought with disinfecting cloths before putting them in their various storage locations.

Then we took our Silkwood showers to rid ourselves of any traces of the virus as best as we could. I use a shower brush head anyway, so my skin is used to a brisk scrub. I can only imagine how folks with sensitive skin would react in the same circumstances.

The problem with any/all of this is we have no idea if we were sufficiently careful through any of the stages. The virus is a tricky bugger. It could be anywhere, including the bottom of our shoes. Are we tracking it in? If so, I can see scenarios where it could enter through our eyes, nose, and mouth once inside our house.

Hopefully, we have enough provisions to last us for at least three weeks. If we could get our prescriptions by mail order (see an earlier post for that nightmare), we could ride it out here even longer.

By the way, I still can't get flour anywhere. It's become quite frustrating. Soon, I'll be out of it and will have to buy store-bought bread, if I can get that.

Yours in cleanliness,

Michael

Monday Thoughts: Drug Stores, Shopping, Life

We haven't been into "town" (that is, haven't made a retail run) for two weeks today. In fact, we wouldn't be going except that I was unable to successfully shift from pickup to delivery.

My drugstore (which shall remain nameless, but it's a big chain) was supposed to reach out to my doctor to transfer my prescriptions to their online pharmacy, a separate entity from the in-store locations. After almost ten days, I found out the refills were stalled somewhere along the chain and I just gave up.

No big deal, though, they have a drive-thru.

Naturally, we'll be going to the grocery store to restock on some things we're running low on. We'll likely be going to multiple stores again because we'll not find everything we need in just one place, just like that last time.

This will be the first retail run we'll be making wearing makeshift masks. Despite the earlier assurances none would be needed (like less than a month ago), now the CDC is basically telling everyone if you're in a place with a lot of people, wear a mask. We fashioned no-sew masks from bandanas using info we found online, so I think we're good to go (we already have surgical gloves).

Never will we take for granted full shelves in grocery stores again. Nor will we be as unprepared as we were for the next pandemic, whether it's COVID-19 or it's successors, and mark my words, there will be those. We're already carving out space in our closets for our "zombie apocalypse" supplies and when life returns to normal, we'll buy the items we don't already have.

Never, never again.

I've reached out to old friends to check in with them. Some replied to assure me all is well with them, others I haven't heard back from yet. I'm trying not to worry. I'm sure you're feeling the same angst.

Yours in the midst,
Michael

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.

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.