– In which Dorn ventures out of the house again.
faced death! That claim might have had more punch it we weren’t all of us facing death from invisible microbes every day now.
My particular death-defying feat today was to go back to the grocery store. I’m in that high-risk group known as “old”, and Kathleen is immuno-compromised to boot, so going out isn’t just risking spread in general, it’s facing bad consequences for us if we don’t do it right.
My curbside grocery pickup yesterday was a success, as I mentioned (here). Yesterday from the safety of my vehicle, with virtually no contact between me and anything in the outside world, I had managed to score almost all of our most vital grocery supplies.
“Almost” is the key word. One thing that Safeway could not supply was frozen green beans, which Archie eats every day as part of a healthy (for him) lifestyle. Last night we tried giving Archie a different green vegetable for supper as an experiment, but it resulted in serious discomfort to him (and to anyone else in the same room). So green beans it is!
Minimal-risk options for getting some were weighed and discarded as impossible, which left only one real path forward. Giant Food had frozen beans, but their version of curbside delivery had more or less collapsed from all the unpredictable shortages. But, they said, store patronage was pretty light right now, so I could come shop in person if I wanted.
Some rapid risk-assessment/risk-management calculations were in order. Risks varied by the hour: the later in the day I went, the more likely they would run out of beans, and the more people there would likely be in the store.
Waiting longer seemed only to increase the danger: each day the number of local cases of coronavirus went up, and they will probably keep going up (and even accelerating) for longer than our meager bean supplies will last. If I am going to go out in person, I should go out right now!
(from A Christmas Story)
We did a quick check for other essential items I could get, consistent with the plan to spend as little time in the Red Zone (the store) as possible.
I suited up in layers (so I could strip off the outer layer outdoors when I got home and still be decent), got a hat and a face mask we had saved from a doctor’s office visit a month ago, grabbed my home-made hand sanitizer, and practiced some dry run germ avoidance and field decontamination moves. Then I set out for town.
Prince Frederick was different even from what I saw yesterday (not surprising, as yesterday there was no statewide lockdown order and today there is one). The store parking lot, probably filled on the lighter-than-average side yesterday, was definitely emptier today.
I saw maybe a dozen people in the store, and of these, I saw two people in face masks, one staffer and one customer (two customers if you count me). Yesterday, there were no masks. I predict the face mask is a fashion trend that will catch on big here—at least as big as the supply can support, especially as more and more people figure out that those countries with face-mask-wearing cultures are doing much better against the virus:
Our Giant has those hand-held scan guns so you can clock your purchases as you put them in your bag. This always seemed to me at best a minimal time-saver, but today it was the reason I elected to shop at Giant. It allowed me to assure no one at the store had contact with my stuff after I picked it off the aisle.
I got my frozen beans (yay! Still there! I grabbed six bags), then did my quick circumnavigation for the other almost-as-essentials on the list. I mostly avoided the temptation to do any browsing, but I confess I did throw a carton of non-essential ice cream into the bag while I was in the freezer aisle.
I checked out without going near anyone (easy to do at the self-checkout because I was already scanned and bagged), and made my escape. It was pretty nerve-wracking, but I felt I was in as much control as I could be, most of the time. When the need arises, I could see doing this again!
HOARD-O-METER:
Velveeta
Toilet paper
Coffee
Broccoli
Green peppers
Milk
Frozen green beans
Twizzlers
Thanks! May your hoard-o-meter be showing all green,
Dorn
3/30/2020