Eat your heart out, Ken Burns
Earlier today, I was joking that we should start doing dramatic readings of our journal entries, Ken Burns documentary style. This was funny to me as a person who saw The Civil War all the way through TWICE before I was sixteen, watched all of the Baseball before I cared at all about modern baseball (that has changed... missing my Dodgers this year). I've seen the ones about Jazz and Prohibition too... and The National Parks is on my "to watch list. So, in that spirit, imagine "Ashokan Farewell" playing in the background... I had fun writing this when I got home from the grocery store.
March 23, 2020
With some supplies running low, I ventured out this morning in search of the essentials. Meat, milk, eggs, vegetables, and s’mores fixings, since we have marshmallows that need to be eaten.
I arrived at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 7:45 and stood in line with the others who, like me, were risking their health in search of food or, going by some carts I saw, liquor. (I don’t say this to judge my neighbors. In our house, we are lucky that our stock of wine, beer, and spirits is set to last us for a while.) The store was allowing elders in first, and I didn’t mind waiting until 8 to be let in. It was a bright morning, with some dark clouds lingering after the rainstorm last night, and the palest of rainbows hovering over the pizza parlor across the street.
All was calm in the store. We are all old hands at this by now, and there were not so many of us as I’ve seen in photographs from other cities, or from Costco (a place I plan to avoid unless there is dire need). If one could ignore the empty shelves where toilet paper should have been, or the thin selection of pasta, or the fact that the frozen potatoes section looked like it have been picked clean by a swarm of locusts, one could almost imagine things were normal.
I was fortunate enough to find almost all of my hoped for items. No yellow squash, but that’s not in season, so I’m not surprised. No flour, which worries me more, though we have enough in the pantry to make cornbread several times. No frozen mashed potatoes, which will force me to make them from scratch when next I make my shepherd’s pie recipe. It’s a blessing that I’ll have the time.
I don’t know when I’ll leave the house again. There’s talk of finding a thermometer, as ours is broken, but I doubt there’s a store in fifty miles that has one in stock to sell me. For now, we must be content with what he have.
It’s getting on to that time when I need to get the soup for dinner into the pot, so I must say farewell for now. As always, I wish for your continued happiness, dear friends, even though we are apart.
March 23, 2020
With some supplies running low, I ventured out this morning in search of the essentials. Meat, milk, eggs, vegetables, and s’mores fixings, since we have marshmallows that need to be eaten.
I arrived at the Stater Bros. parking lot at 7:45 and stood in line with the others who, like me, were risking their health in search of food or, going by some carts I saw, liquor. (I don’t say this to judge my neighbors. In our house, we are lucky that our stock of wine, beer, and spirits is set to last us for a while.) The store was allowing elders in first, and I didn’t mind waiting until 8 to be let in. It was a bright morning, with some dark clouds lingering after the rainstorm last night, and the palest of rainbows hovering over the pizza parlor across the street.
All was calm in the store. We are all old hands at this by now, and there were not so many of us as I’ve seen in photographs from other cities, or from Costco (a place I plan to avoid unless there is dire need). If one could ignore the empty shelves where toilet paper should have been, or the thin selection of pasta, or the fact that the frozen potatoes section looked like it have been picked clean by a swarm of locusts, one could almost imagine things were normal.
I was fortunate enough to find almost all of my hoped for items. No yellow squash, but that’s not in season, so I’m not surprised. No flour, which worries me more, though we have enough in the pantry to make cornbread several times. No frozen mashed potatoes, which will force me to make them from scratch when next I make my shepherd’s pie recipe. It’s a blessing that I’ll have the time.
I don’t know when I’ll leave the house again. There’s talk of finding a thermometer, as ours is broken, but I doubt there’s a store in fifty miles that has one in stock to sell me. For now, we must be content with what he have.
It’s getting on to that time when I need to get the soup for dinner into the pot, so I must say farewell for now. As always, I wish for your continued happiness, dear friends, even though we are apart.