To Remember This Time: Day 2

My two-day streak of blogging came to a halt, thanks to the germs my kids have passed around in the past couple of weeks finally catching up with me.  I have felt exhausted and have suffered from a terrible sore throat--nothing too serious in the light of all the truly serious things happening around us, but disagreeable enough to make me wish for bed at the end of the day, rather than a chair at the computer desk!  Ah well, here I am again.

Friday, March 13, was Day Two of the new way of living based on the impending threat of COVID-19, and it resembled Day One.  Jeff was gone all day at work, and I again felt urgency to prepare for whatever was coming.  I felt like this might be my last day of going out for a while.  As it turns out, I was right.

For a number of weeks, Tobin had been asking to go to Home Depot to get some supplies for a project he was working on, so that was our first stop on this shopping trip; if we were going to be confined for a while, I didn't want his request to be put off for weeks or months longer.

While there, we walked by the aisle where paper products are kept, curious enough about the toilet paper shortage to at least check, but not surprisingly there was none.  I got a package of those strong blue work paper towels though--never know when they might come in handy.  ;-)

 Tobin took his time choosing just the right color of stain for his wooden dowels, and I was reminded of other times when he has been shopping and taken a LONG time making his selection.  :)  It's a good quality to be thoughtful and careful though (and gives the rest of us an opportunity to work on our patience, which truly IS a good thing!).  :)

 At least Moriah and Benjamin had a fun cart to sit in while we waited!  :)

After we finished at Home Depot, we headed to the dollar store because Moriah and Benjamin had been saving up their money to go there and buy some little treats (mostly candy).  :)  Again, I felt like if we didn't do it this day, when would we?  It took the purchasers some time to make their choices; and although I was feeling some sense of urgency to get on to the "serious" shopping I still wanted to accomplish, I tried to still that instinct and just let my little ones enjoy the adventure of it all.  I think I (mostly) succeeded.  ;-)

From there, we headed home to drop off the boys and the purchases, and then Moriah stuck with me while we went to Walmart; she is a faithful companion to whomever is going shopping.  :)  Our experience there wasn't much different than the day before in Aldi--we went all over the store, finding almost everything on our list (no toilet paper though--because of course, we just had to check and see if they had any!) and adding in anything else that seemed like it might be helpful in a self-quarantine situation.  One thing I couldn't find was vitamin C; we had some at home, but I thought it might be a good time to stock up, just in case.  The shelves for vitamin C were absolutely bare, which I actually took as a good sign; the average consumer was thinking about more than just toilet paper--hooray!  :)

There were certainly other bare spots on the shelves, too (not much hand soap, for example, although I did get 2 bottles, and some food sections were wiped out)--certainly nothing like I've ever seen before.  The store was fairly crowded, the mood fairly somber.  People were generally considerate though.  One key difference between the Walmart shopping trip and the Aldi one from the previous day was the check-out experience.  Normally at Walmart, I do self-checkout; but since I had a full cart, I decided to go through a check-out line with a cashier (because it's hard to do self-checkout when there is no empty space in your cart to put the bags after you scan the items, etc.).  The cashier was an older man who seemed to be doing his best, but was very, very slow--a stark contrast to the amazingly fast cashiers at Aldi.  The customer two people in front of me was impatient and gave rather sharp directions to the cashier, which I could understand but which made me feel bad for the employee.  When the lady in front of me turned to me and started to say something in frustration, I tried to quickly lighten the mood; and it seemed to work.  When it was my turn, I made sure to speak kindly and thank the cashier for his help.  What made it worse was that when I was going through the line, there was only ONE checkout line open that was not self-checkout, so all the pressure was on that poor man.  I hope he made it through the day OK!

One last stop before we got home: the gas station.  I filled up the van with gas, then drove in the driveway, feeling like I had done everything I knew to do to prepare.  There was nothing more I could possibly do at that point.

Well, except for carry in the groceries and other supplies, find places for them, cook dinner (waffles with the choice of blueberry sauce, orange sauce, or maple syrup, as well as sausages--a special dinner for sure!), and enjoy the evening with the family.

It was time to hunker down, and I was ready.