Our kitchen sink faucet broke. Paul has gotten pretty handy since we moved to his dream house, and he has fixed a few smaller problems with that faucet, but he evaluated this issue as crossing over into Plumber Territory—especially combined with the smaller issues, some of which had called for repeated fixing. We were without hot water in the kitchen for a day and a half (Paul had to turn it off to keep it from trickling steadily out from under the sink, which seemed fair), leading me to first feel some despair about figuring out cooking/dishes, but then to consider what other people in other times/places would think of me complaining that in my kitchen I had only COLD clean/filtered/sanitized running water, and that to get hot water I would have to walk SEVERAL YARDS to the half-bath, or else heat some on my ELECTRIC STOVE. A childhood of reading early-settler literature has really paid off in terms of adulthood contentment/perspective.
The plumber came this afternoon and, after our experience with the water heater guy, I was pretty fretful about it beforehand. I have a partial box of disposable masks left over from my job as an in-home elder caregiver, so we put those out on the counter, and planned to ask the plumber to wear one if he arrived without one, but I was VERY STRESSED about that idea: it feels very, very hard to ask someone to wear a mask when they’ve clearly made a deliberate decision NOT to wear one despite ALL recommendations. I wished that Paul had remembered to specify when he made the appointment that we had an immunosuppressed person in our household and could the plumber please wear a mask: that feels easier to do, because it’s ahead of time instead of on the spot. If some of the plumbers are It’s My Constitutional Right To Swing My Fists Wildly Without Regard For Your Face, then the plumbing company has advanced notice that they should send one of their OTHER plumbers.
But it was all moot because the plumber arrived wearing a mask, and kept distant, and everything was just fine. Except of course that I felt for awhile after he’d left as if the entire kitchen and all the air in the entire house was contaminated. But it’s fine! It’s fine! It’s statistically probably fine, despite that graphic showing how the virus moves in a restaurant on the air-conditioning breezes! And now we have hot water in the kitchen AND no water leaking onto the kitchen floor!
It’s going to seem as if I JUST went grocery shopping and now I’m already reporting in again—but last time, I wrote about it several days after a trip, whereas this time I am writing about it on the same day. Not that you are standing there tapping your foot waiting for an explanation before you enter it into the Justification Log. But just if that sort of thing is ALSO as interesting to you as it is to me. (“LAST time I went ELEVEN days between trips but THIS time it was EIGHT days because LAST time I only filled ONE cart whereas THIS….”)
Today marked an important milestone: the very first sighting of hand sanitizer since This All Began. It was sold in what looked like disposable water bottles, and it was an unfamiliar brand, and it was limited to one per customer, and I absolutely bought one. And it is only at this moment I realize I didn’t even notice/check the price. Just snapped it right up.
Another change: the store had signs up saying that, per city ordinance, face coverings were required for everyone entering the store. This made me so happy. There were still plenty of people with their noses hanging out, and plenty of people pulling the mask down to talk, but still: an improvement. One woman in line was complaining LOUDLY about how RIDICULOUS it all was, but she was wearing a mask and she was complaining to a fellow customer rather than to the poor employees, so we will take it as a partial success.
However, as if to shift the scales back to a universal balance favoring unhappiness, there were THREE SEPARATE TIMES when a male customer stood or walked closer to me than would have been considered appropriate/considerate even if we were NOT in a pandemic. SIRS. GET YOURSELVES TOGETHER. OR I AM GOING TO START CASUALLY BAPPING A PADDLEBALL AT BALL-HEIGHT.
General inventory is definitely getting more normal. There were LOTS of kinds of soup—still not up to full variety/capacity, but so much better than when it was just some Healthy Choice 99% Fat-Free Cream of Onion. There were no restrictions on meats, and they had ground beef in the larger (like, 1.75-2.00 pound) packets again, instead of just 1.00-1.25 pound. They had a LOT of flour, though still very little flour VARIETY (two brands of white), and still a limit of two per customer; sugar products seemed to be stocked normally but were also limited to two per customer. They had the little three-individual-servings strips of yeast, one strip per customer; no jars of yeast; plenty of baking powder and baking soda. Still no crunchy taco shells, but plenty of soft tortillas. Chicken nuggets still plentiful in quantity but extremely limited in variety. Frozen fruit was a lot better than the last few trips, but vegetarian meat substitutes (the fake chicken nuggets, fake chicken patties, etc.) were low—or rather, the case was stuffed full, but almost entirely with fake burgers. They had hand soap, not at all up to usual quantities/selection but pretty okay; they had rubbing alcohol and hydrogen peroxide. Still no Lysol spray or sanitizing wipes.
When I was in the check-out line, I realized the toilet paper I’d added to the cart was gone. When I was relating this story to Paul, he immediately suspected Cart Bandits but, first of all, there was plenty of toilet paper in the paper products aisle, so no one would have any motivation to steal mine; and also, the thing is, when I was at the store several trips ago, I put a pack of paper towels on the bottom shelf of the cart, and it fell off in the produce section, and I don’t know how I didn’t notice it falling off (wouldn’t the cart have run into it?) but I DIDN’T notice until I looped BACK to a previous aisle, saw some paper towels on the floor, thought “Huh, why are there paper towels on the floor?,” and then noticed MY paper towels (the same kind as the ones on the floor) were mysteriously GONE. So I think the same thing must have happened this time, but without me looping back around to discover it. And when it was the paper towels, it happened in the produce section, which makes it a little less mysterious: the produce section is BUSY and FRAUGHT and there are NO ONE-WAY MARKERS, and there are people TOUCHING EVERY SINGLE LEMON and so on. So that may explain the distractedness. I’ll bet it happened again today.
Anyway, I noticed the missing toilet paper very early on in the cart-unloading process, because I also had a big heavy thing on the bottom shelf, and wanted to unload that onto the belt early on, and so that’s when I thought “Hey, but where is…?” So I had the rest of the unloading time to fret and stress about what I was going to do. First I decided I would just skip it. Then I felt very sad and stressy about that, and about going at least another week before having another chance to buy more. Then I looked around to see if by any chance there was a toilet paper display nearby: there WAS one of paper towels, so this was not an unreasonable thing to wonder. But while I was looking around, I noticed I was not at all far from the toilet paper aisle. So I said to the clerk, not knowing how well she could hear me through the mask, “I forgot toilet paper, I am going to ZOOM OVER and get some, I will be RIGHT BACK,” and I zoomed, and I was back WELL before she’d finished unloading the belt, so I consider that a 100% victory, and I felt so relieved to have the toilet paper. For the rest of our lives, I think some of us will feel relieved every time we purchase toilet paper.
Your comment about going back for toilet paper makes me think about my most recent trip to the Big Grocery Store (and typically, we go to the local Mom & Pop, curbside only but now we can go inside if we like).
They had soda and sparkling water 4/$12, which to me means that it’s $3 each and you don’t have to buy FOUR to get the deal. AM I WRONG? When I got to the checkout (which I had to wait patiently in socially-discanced line to get to), the friendly cashier said, “You should go back and get two more because you already paid $14 for those two packages and if you get two more it will only be $12.” Ohhhh kay, so I broke through the carefully constructed barrier and got another DIet Coke and another sparkling water and when I got back to the register it turned out it was four for ELEVEN dollars, not TWELVE because I gave my phone number which is apparently tied to some kind of a coupon program, this is not a store I usually shop at. (But they are WAY better at masks etc. than the store I used to shop at, so now this is where I shop when I need stuff that I cannot get at the Mom & Pop.)
It’s always a treat when store has something that I didn’t expect they would have, and I am inordinately pleased when I can get the thing that I didn’t think I could have any more.
Full disclosure: I had to make a trip to the Big Grocery because I was invited to a socially distanced birthday party (five people; still a little scary but I guess I have to go on with my life) and I had to buy special gluten free cake mix.
I am so glad for you that you’ve got a city ordinance in place for masks. And I mean that sincerely.
My county just announced that they are ending their “masks in public” requirement because too many people complained about it. I mean, they said it ABSOLUTELY WASN’T because too many people complained about it, it was because something something evaluated all the evidence something something masks would still be STRONGLY RECOMMENDED, but considering that they forced the official who originally mandated mask wearing to resign after getting a bunch of complaints from the idiot residents of my idiot county, I am skeptical. I do believe that when this all began, my city itself ALSO passed an ordinance mandating mask wearing in public indoor spaces, so I hope that’s still in effect, and I hope that even if it ISN’T, my favorite stores will continue to mandate masks because otherwise, I’m really going to struggle with grocery shopping. Cases are going up in my county, and while they still aren’t statistically all that high, I suspect cases will not be on a downward trajectory. I hate this all so much.
We had our air conditioning replaced this week and there was no mask wearing – also there was bathroom using. I am working from home and spent the day in a panic. Also our cases are skyrocketing and our Chamber of Commerce is working against the health department. I’m feeling such despair.
It may or may not help to know something that you may already know: a chamber of commerce is a business organization, NOT a government department! In my opinion, they deliberately court this confusion to further their interests. Business interests, not necessarily public good.
We had 2 things we knew we needed to get done and we had 2 unexpected things. We had the sprinkler company come out and get our sprinkler system opened up for the summer. Unfortunately the cut off for the outside water is in our basement and you have to walk through 2 rooms to get to it. The guys wore masks while they were indoors and while we talked (and stayed an appropriated distance away). Fortunately it doesn’t take any time at all so they were in and out and only needed to touch the door to the room where the water stuff is. We also replaced our pool liner. My husband handled that. I’m sure the guys didn’t wear masks while they worked but they were outside in the sunshine. The roof leak and the flat tire were surprises. The roofer wore a mask and stayed 6ft away when we talked. I doubt he had his mask on for the actual repair but, again, outside in the sunshine and not near anyone. The flat tire was annoying. Fortunately the tire went flat while it was sitting in the garage. Unfortunately, we could not get the tire off to put on the spare. The AAA guy did not wear a mask but did stand away from me. The harder part was taking the car to get new tires (I realized these tires were well over their recommended mileage and were pretty worn). The tire place does disinfect the car before they drive it into the bays. I hope they disinfect it again when they are done. I brought disinfecting wipes when I picked it up. Wiped every thing down and drove with the windows down.
As for groceries … the toile paper aisle was pretty well stocked. It was mostly the cheaper brands and with larger packages. But they did have 3 different kinds of premium brands. So I picked up our usual brand even though right now we don’t really need toilet paper. I didn’t check out the baking aisle. We’ve had flour for a few weeks now — mostly white but I think I’ve seen other kinds. I’m not sure if we’ve gotten yeast back in. Or if we have, it still gets scooped up quickly. I wanted to get some pasta and while there were several brands, there wasn’t much variety in the kinds of pasta. The thing that is vexing me right now is Rice a Roni. Their rice pilaf is one of the few foods that my autistic son will eat. The last month or so it’s been difficult to find. So I check every grocery store I go to and grab a couple (or 4) boxes when they have it. Sometimes there will be dozens of boxes of rice pilaf and other times none. It annoys me that it is not consistent.
One last thing. I was shopping in a store that I don’t go to much. All of the stores have signs requesting people wear masks. Our governor has not eased that requirement. The stores are requiring their employees to wear masks. I see employees and shoppers with masks below their noses or on their chins. I have my mask on and some older guy shopper with out a mask starts in about the transmission rate or the death rate of Covid19. I told him I didn’t care and walked away. I wish I had asked him if he was an epidemiologist or an infectious disease expert before I told him I didn’t care. I saw him later spouting off to a young woman store employee who was trying to fill an online grocery order. I wish I had stopped and told him to leave her alone too. Not too surprising that old dude with all the answers didn’t engage the big burly guy employee who was stocking shelves.
thanks for listening
I am very glad your plumber was so prepared and respectful. The thought of having someone in our house stresses me right out.
Also this made me giggle: “SIRS. GET YOURSELVES TOGETHER. OR I AM GOING TO START CASUALLY BAPPING A PADDLEBALL AT BALL-HEIGHT.”
I was going to make this exact comment.
We had about four separate house things that needed to be fixed in the early days of the pandemic (between the third week of March and the second week of April).
It was the plumber who was the least respectful in terms of mask-wearing, personal space. No mask or booties or anything. The repair didn’t take long, though. On the other hand, our HVAC company went over in detail with me what precautions the technician would be taking (which turned out to be him wearing an N95 mask, booties in the house, and carefully standing at least 6 feet away from me at all times)
We also had a tree cut down – no one had to come in the house, but they were standing fairly close to me outside. And critter control had to come fix a gap in the eaves where starlings were making a nest; that tech had a fabric mask on while meeting me outside.
My mom is moving and we are inheriting her piano, which is being moved into our house Wednesday. I texted the mover and asked if he would mind wearing a mask in the house and he said “no problem.” I agree, asking in advance is easier. I need to text the tuner and ask the same thing.
I so relate to the idea of a Justification Log. Also, I have no idea how you shop for SEVEN people once a week. Even in Past Times that sounds like a challange. Mad respect, Swistle.
Yes, justification log is great :) My stressful advance situation is: my book club is having a socially distant discussion in a week and we’ve chosen the park across the street from where I live. Good for me but there are 2 individuals who do not live in the neighbourhood and I’m scared they will need the bathroom and ask to come into my place. Should I bring this up ahead of time and how could I do it tactfully?
I’m guessing there’s some online message place that you all check in on? Personally I would make a statement ahead of time. Something like ” I have missed you gals so much, I am glad that we have figured out this neutral meeting place, because I, for one, am not comfortable with going into anyone’s home or having non family members in my home. ”
I live alone and have somehow acquired an obsession for growing iris. This spring they bloomed beautifully, and I invited a few – 4 – friends to enjoy them with me. I told them that I would not serve them anything, I would not let them into my house, but they would be welcome in my yard. (Sounds welcoming, right?) They came individually, so I had lovely one on one visits outside.
None of them were offended, my house “rules” were known upfront, and they could choose to come or not.
Good luck, and do not beat yourself up for protecting the health of your family. We all have choices to make, and we need to respect each other. Be kind – with clarity!
Thank you, some very good, kind sounding wording!
This sentence gave me a nice hearty laugh: “LAST time I went ELEVEN days between trips but THIS time it was EIGHT days because LAST time I only filled ONE cart whereas THIS….”
Thank you for writing Swistle – you brighten so many people’s days.
I know exactly what you mean about all the settler literature and the perspective it gives you. Sometimes I wonder if I have separately told my husband about every single scene in the Little House books. But they are so relevant!
The other literature that comes in handy to think about these days is the post-apocalyptic/survival type, but it is perhaps slightly less comforting.
I listened to Station Eleven on audiobook over Christmas and that timing turned out to be a Big Mistake. It’s literally about a flu that kills 99.9% of the world’s population, and jumps back and forth between the event happening and the societal fallout years later.
I have it on hold at my library and keep vacillating between “Read it! It’s fiction and I enjoy apocalyptic books” and “It will be Too Stressful to read under the current circumstances”.
Ooh that one is great in a less relevant situation, though.
My book club did “Blindness” last month and it honestly made me feel better about our current situation. At least we haven’t descended to that certain chaos and inhumanity. Not sure I recommend it now if you haven’t read it before, though- we read it in high school so I knew what I was getting in to.
I went to my local-ish big grocery store Friday morning and was dismayed at how ravaged the shelves were. It looked like the EARLY DAYS. Not sure what the heck was going on because I had been there 2 weeks ago and everything was fine inventory-wise. I shall be pondering this until my next visit.
Hand sanitizer is definitely back (and I have to remember to get some more!) but like you, still no Lysol spray or wipes.
Swistle, have you finished Rodham yet? Has anyone else in Swistle-land read it?
I’ve finished it! I hardly know what to think! It brought up a lot of bad 2016 feelings, and also left me wanting to research a bunch of the events I didn’t recognize to see if/how they differed from real-life events. Also it was…er…racier than I expected!
YES! I feel like we need a book club post to discuss this, since I know no one else who has read this yet. I liked but did not LOVE it, and despite all of the ups and downs I teared up at the end because I was having all of the feelings I thought I was going to have in 2016 (history, suffrage, etc.). Also yes with being way racier than expected. This keeps happening in books I’m reading, and while I do not mind so much for myself (do not mind at all, actually), it makes it impossible for me to share certain books with my 14yo daughter even if they would otherwise be so well suited. I have a line and this is apparently it.
Swistle, do you have Pretty Masks? Do you want to do a roundup of Pretty Masks? Bonus points for black-owned businesses and ones that won’t fog up my glasses.
I love this idea!
As a glasses wearer who spends a few hours at a time outside, I like the Sanctuary masks. They are the only ones I have tried though other than my mom’s handmade masks. The nose wire is crucial.
Also, my kingdom for a mask that will stay on a 3-year old’s sweet little face.
We bought some from the Etsy shop SharedJoy run by Jen and they stay on small faces, but have to loop around the ponytail instead of the ears.
When I make kids’ masks I make the elastic around the back of the head like a superhero mask instead of around the ears.
These fail both bonus-point categories, but I bought some pretty ones from Old Navy: https://oldnavy.gap.com/browse/category.do?cid=1157699
(Be careful when choosing: I kept getting drawn to super cute ones and then noticing they were for kids.)
Our basement had a sewer line clog and I hesitated to call the cleaners and that was a MISTAKE as we had had a massive amount of rain which somehow usually magically drains through that same pipe. Anyway we have had to have many people tromping through the basement. Only one person didn’t wear a mask (he was on the cleanup crew after the basement ended up with 2 inches of storm drainage/sewer back up). I was down there doing something else and noticed that someone left behind a mask. Now I’m wondering if it was that dude.
All of this makes me nervous because our area got hit with many floods which means that big companies all trucked people in from all over to help with the work. Turns out the company contracted to clean the flooded HOSPITAL had two workers test positive while they were here. One had been symptomatic when they arrived. Masks below the nose I kind of understand as mask wearing is relatively new for the us, but going to work sick?? This is really how capitalism is going to kill us.
My husband has been the grocery person in our house, and he has been bothered by the lack of distancing with some people in the line ups. He has started to just say “I work in a health care setting. You might want to give yourself some more space from me.” He actually does work in a clinic, and he says this is very effective.