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.

As this country continues to re-open during a pandemic despite not having taken any of the steps necessary for safely doing so, I am noticing huge confusion between “permitted” and “safe.” It’s understandable. It’s what we’re used to, to a certain extent: unsafe things are illegal or regulated. We have speed limits, licenses, seatbelt requirements; we’re not allowed to drive in certain reckless ways. We’re not allowed to buy cocaine. Smoking and drinking are allowed only after a certain age, and even after that age there are rules about when and where we’re allowed to do them, and what we are and aren’t allowed to do at the same time. We have to get official permits for certain activities such as lighting fires or doing construction.

And in countries where the officials care about the health and safety of their citizens as well as about the economy and profit, we are seeing a certain correlation between permitted and safe: the officials listen to scientists and medical experts, take steps needed to fight against the pandemic; and then, as those steps take effect, they carefully and slowly and advisedly re-open: the people are kept as safe as possible, the economy is preserved as much as possible. The United States, which has a current administration that ignores scientists, ignores medical experts, and thinks that bluster is the same as actually knowing what it’s doing, seems to think they can follow the same pattern of closing/re-opening WITHOUT doing all the things necessary to deal with the little issue of the disease. And so, since we have been very good and have stayed in our rooms for the entire time-out, it MUST be time for us to come out again, just like those other countries!

Some people have no choice. The companies they work for are re-opening, and if they don’t go back to work, they can’t pay their bills or buy food. I’m not talking about those situations. Those deserve our pity.

I am not talking about outings to acquire necessary items: food, prescriptions, urgent medical care. Those are not safe, but there is not much choice there, either: our country is not doing what it needs to do to make it safe, so we must do certain necessary activities unsafely. Other countries pity us.

I am not talking about the protests. Some things are morally necessary even when they are unsafe.

I am talking about things we don’t need to do, but that, because they are gradually permitted again, or because the words “socially distanced!” are used, are being mistaken for safe. Or restrictions, such as “No more than 10 people in a gathering,” making people think 9 or fewer must therefore be safe. It is making my throat tight to think of all the people who think that because something is allowed, it must be okay. We are going to lose so many more people we didn’t need to lose.

[Edited to add: The comments section is showing me I need to make a further clarification. I am not talking about people who CHOOSE to do unsafe things, knowing those things are unsafe. I am talking about people who are starting to do things because they THINK THOSE THINGS ARE NOW SAFE, because those things are once again permitted—when in fact those things are not safe.]

Our water heater broke, and someone came out to fix it, and he was not wearing a mask, and he shook Paul’s hand, and he stood at a normal distance to talk, and it was like having a visitor from another dimension. I’ve marked it on the calendar.

It was especially odd because it seems like all the service ads on the radio are hurrying to reassure us that they are taking ALL necessary Covid-19 precautions. One ad for a charity mentions that if you want to put your donation items on your lawn, they will pick them up and they “won’t even come to your door.” A kitchen design company mentions that the consultations can take place over video call. A plumbing company says not to worry: their plumbers wear masks, use hand sanitizer before entering your home, and will fully disinfect their work area before leaving—and you can pay over the phone. And then Mr. Water Heater Repairman just goes from house to house as if nothing special is happening. My good sir have you managed to catch the news lately by any chance.

I am pleased to hear that I am not the only one who does not get sick of grocery store reports. And Paul has gotten noticeably less interested as the weeks go by: at first he was very nearly as interested in listening as I was in reporting, and would come eagerly to hear of triumphs and failures; after my most recent trip, he came to the kitchen only when I’d already put half of the things away, and then after a few minutes actually CHANGED THE SUBJECT. So perhaps this can be our place to discuss it with others who share the interest.

There was no line to get into the grocery store; this is the second time in a row with no line. I don’t know if I happened to pick good times to go or if they’ve increased the number of people allowed in the store. The meat supplies were still somewhat lower than usual, but all the signs limiting two packages per customer were gone. I still only bought two packs. I had this same problem last time with toilet paper: it was no longer limited to one package, but I still FELT as if I could only buy one, or as if maybe I was missing a posted sign the way I once missed a one-way floor sign, and would be embarrassingly rebuked at the register.

There were TWO kinds of white flour AND one kind of whole-wheat flour! I haven’t seen whole-wheat flour since this began! Still a limit of two flours per customer. Sugar was limited to two per customer again, after not being limited on my previous trip. Chicken nugget variety continued to be very reduced, but they still had the dinos.

Frozen fruit was the lowest I’ve ever seen it, though they had a good supply of the much more expensive kinds, which was soothing even though I didn’t buy any (“I MAY have frozen strawberries, I am just CHOOSING not to pay so much for them”). They had Ramen soup, the kind where it’s 12 packs of noodle bricks for $2.50! I got a pack of those right before lockdown and hadn’t seen them since! And they had store-brand grated parmesan again, and still had tons of pasta options. No brown rice, but plenty of white. Only canned pizza sauce, nothing in jars; this is starting to seem like it must be on purpose. But pasta sauce is still available in jars, so perhaps not.

There was one single bottle of Clorox Clean-up, the spray cleaner with bleach I like to use in the kitchen after doing anything with raw meat, and I examined it all over wondering what was wrong with it that it had been passed over, and could find nothing wrong at all, but continued eyeing it suspiciously as it rode in the cart. My old bottle was on its very last weak half-spritzes, so this felt providential.

I did not notice ANYONE not wearing a mask. But there were still several Older Men wandering around with their hands in their pockets, blocking the aisles while their wives did the shopping. One gentleman stood just sort of admiring the salsas, and he stood there so long (even with me standing right there, getting increasingly obvious in my body/cart language), I gave up and looped around to the next aisle. You know, if our husbands need fresh air and exercise, perhaps they could be put out into the yard instead of taken along to the grocery store where they get in the way.

Henry’s orthodontist office called and made him an appointment for next week. He hasn’t been in months: he had an appointment in mid January, and then his next appointment was supposed to be at the end of March, but that was canceled. I am a little skittish about this, but I am also skittish about having something go wrong with his braces/teeth, so he’s going. It sounds like they have things pretty well set up, with a one-way path through the office, and patients waiting in their cars until the office calls, and parents not going in, and no toothbrushing station, and all staff wearing face shields, and a hand-washing/sanitizing station they make the patients use on their way out.

I got the calendar down to look up when his last appointment was, and it was odd to see how different it looked. Coffee with a friend! Many, many orthodontist/dentist/doctor/allergy/eye appointments! Elizabeth was canvassing—remember when the election was the main thing in the news? Kid extracurriculars, kid friend get-togethers, housecleaners, shopping trips with my mom. An art show, with CROWDS. A Galentine’s Day party with friends! who came to my house! and we ate out of communal dishes! and hugged hello and goodbye!

I went grocery-shopping on Sunday and they had flour! And for the first time since this started, they had YEAST: just those little strips of three envelopes, and a limit of one little strip per customer, but they HAD them! Sugar products no longer had a purchasing limit of two per customer. Meat was still limited; they’d filled in the big empty spaces with other things so it looked less alarming, but they were bringing out just one tray of ground beef at a time. They were out of a whole bunch of the frozen chicken-nugget/strip type products, and almost the whole case was filled with the few kinds they did have (I was sentimentally glad to see they had plenty of dino-nuggets, which I would have been VERY RELIEVED TO SEE when my kids were younger). Still no hand sanitizer or sanitizing wipes, and they were out of rubbing alcohol completely again. Much better selection of pasta, but rice was low again. Almost zero crunchy taco shells (two boxes that looked smashed, that’s it), but plenty of tortillas and tortilla chips. They had SOME Ramen, but mostly the less common flavors (lime chili shrimp, soy sauce); I did get four individual packs of Roasted Chicken flavor.

A few times, I noticed my eye had been fooled by other things filling in for what should have been there. For example, in the microwave popcorn section, among a limited supply of red boxes of popcorn, the store had stocked a bunch of red boxes of Cheez-its, so the shelves looked full if you were just walking past, even though there was apparently not much of that kind of popcorn. It’s interesting to think of stores figuring out the whole psychology of keeping customers calm. I DID feel a surge of panic last time, when there was a giant empty white meat case; I DID feel somewhat less panic this time, even though I could see the space was filled in with things that wouldn’t usually be there.

Henry’s birthday is next week, and this will be our first family birthday in quarantine. I was glad to be able to get all the ingredients for the cake he wants, but also got two cake mixes Just In Case.

I am feeling more relaxed about grocery shopping, now that I’ve gotten more used to the new ways. It also helped that this time I didn’t see ANYONE not wearing a mask. (I did see two people with their masks below their noses, but progress! Progress!) I still have trouble thinking clearly or making any kind of quick decision, especially if I feel the pressure of other customers waiting; but I’ve got my main coping mechanism in place, and having a system helps considerably: I continue up the aisle, then loop around the previous aisle and come back for another chance.

I had two thinking failures on the most recent trip. One was that I saw the packets of yeast and rejoiced to see them, and I was stuck for a couple of minutes behind another customer so I had time to realize that I personally had enough yeast and did not need to buy any, and I decided not to buy any. It wasn’t until I got home that I found I had put a packet into my cart anyway, and in fact when I saw it I remembered thinking as I passed the yeast “Oh!! Waiting for that other customer almost made me forget to get a packet of that!!”

The other failure was in the toilet paper aisle. The supply has been non-existent or very low, as you know, and limited to one package per customer, and often the shelves will be filled with just one option, so I’ve become accustomed to thinking that I should get a packet of WHATEVER they have, don’t agitate about brand/size, just take one package of whatever it is. But this time they had quite a few different brands and quite a few different package sizes, and only individual rolls of our usual kind, and there were no signs up about limits but there WERE signs that said “Due to shortages, this item is out of stock,” in front of shelves that had product on them, and my brain just got completely shorted out by that whole situation, and couldn’t come up with a good plan even after I looped back around. I ended up buying two individual rolls of our usual kind, which is better than nothing, but was a weird decision. It’s like I applied “there’s still a limit even though it no longer says so” with “there are lots of choices so I can get my usual brand.”

Are you finding you’re measuring quarantine time in shopping-related ways? and/or noticing things you last bought Before Lockdown, now that you’re having to buy them again? For example, the last time I went to Target before lockdown, when school hadn’t even closed yet and we weren’t sure when it would, I bought two boxes of omeprazole, a medication I take daily; the boxes have 42 pills each, and I still had part of a box at home, so it seemed like 84 extra pills was being a LITTLE silly. BUT NO. I have opened the last box.

Or: I take evening primrose oil each night before bed. There are 75 in a bottle, and I was nearly out when I went to Target the last time, but then the Target store was also out of them. I ordered a bottle from Target online as part of my very first order, and now THAT bottle is almost gone, so I have just ordered another. We have had one bottle of evening primrose oil’s worth of lockdown.

Last night I dreamed I was close friends with Dan Levy. He was like a modern Laurie-from-Little-Women: being all lovey and goofy; stealing my phone and making funny little voice recordings for me to hear later; lying on the couch with his legs over my lap bothering me while I was trying to work; etc. It was such a pleasant dream! Which I then ruined by confessing a little crush (whomst among us does not have a little crush on Dan Levy), to which he was like ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh uh. It seems like IN OUR DREAMS we should not get embarrassingly rejected.

Maybe you are already doing this, but if you have a wall calendar or day-planner currently hanging around being almost empty, I suggest using it for potential future Covid-19 contact-tracing. You’d think that with literally two outings in my life (grocery shopping and taking Edward for his Remicade infusions) I’d be able to remember when I went, but I find I forget almost immediately. We’re also writing down whenever Paul has to go in to the office, and any other times we go anywhere or have any contact with other people that we might easily forget, like when Paul when to the hardware store to get a replacement part for a leaking sink. The information may never be needed, but if it WERE needed I would be so grateful to have it already collected. (If you don’t have a wall calendar, a notebook or scratch pad would work fine. It’s just nice to have a use for my poor calendar.)

I am going to recommend a product I feel silly recommending, because it is sold at a TREMENDOUS mark-up when you get a piercing, and it is just salt-water! But after submitting to the pressure to pay $6 for a tiny (an ounce or maybe an ounce and a half) can of it when I got my cartilage piercing, I tried substituting the saline sold for people who have contact lenses, and I tried mixing salt and water myself, and I can say that at least for my own ears, nothing works remotely as well. I can’t explain it, I won’t even TRY to explain it, I don’t even totally believe it could be true—but I will keep spending $12 per four-ounce can of this stuff for as long as I have my piercings. I use it whenever my piercings start feeling itchy and warm and like they might be working up to an infection, and I also use it just periodically to clean the piercings and prevent them from even STARTING to get itchy and warm.

It’s called H2Ocean, and I used to buy it on Amazon, but I’m reducing how much I buy from them, which led me to discover I could buy it directly from the maker. The shipping for one canister was pretty high, but they have free shipping over $25, and they also had a deal where if you bought three canisters they were only $10 each, so since I KNOW I like this stuff I bought three canisters, saved $6, and got free shipping too, which was nice. They also have tattoo-care products, so you might be able to get to free shipping without having to buy multiple cans. Or here’s the Amazon link, where it’s the same price for the can but free prime shipping, because if this were my first can I know I wouldn’t want to pay the shipping or buy three cans of it.

A note: I have found that if I use a canister for a few days (like to fight off some swelling/irritation) and then go a long time without using it again, something breaks and it won’t work anymore. The first time, I assumed it was a fluke—but the second time I’d spent TWELVE DOLLARS for SALT-WATER and then COULDN’T USE IT, I started making sure I was using it at least once a week or so to keep it working. The most recent can I had, I used it at least once a week, and nothing broke, and I was able to use it until it was empty.