Week almost done

 I am surprised at how much I am looking forward to my little planned jaunt Saturday - a quick (masked) trip to the JoAnn Fabrics, and then a run to Kroger's. I wrote out a list for Kroger's so I don't forget any of the things that they carry and Pruett's doesn't - the Ghirardelli chocolate chips I use in my oatmeal in the morning, and the swirled rye bread, and the red cabbage in a jar that I eat a lot....most of these are things I COULD get from Wal-mart, but as I said, they seem to attract the most difficult people here and I am not big right now on being out in public with difficult people. And I kind of have grown to loathe their "make an order online and if we have what you ordered in stock, you can get it at the curb, or we will substitute our own house brand if we don't happen to have that item or just cancel part of your order" and it feels very....like you don't have control over it.

Oh, I'll do it if I get exposed and have to quarantine and NEED groceries - that's the only way I could get them short of asking someone from church to do it and leave it on my doorstep, and that feels like a level of effort I don't want to make others go to if they're not being paid for it. (And yeah, the wal-mart people are probably not paid WELL to do it, but whatever). 

 

I hope I don't get exposed. I am trying not to be. I admit I wonder how wise the JoAnn's trip is, the local news is still warning people in their PSAs to 'do no unnecessary shopping!" and as I tend to be a black-and-white thinker, I see "anything that is not groceries or medication or things like light bulbs" as "unnecessary shopping" (in that: I COULD do some of it via mail order). I don't know. I have a hard time with this kind of thing. Like, "Limit sugary drinks" to me means "you can only have a soda maybe once every six weeks" (and even then - well, I haven't really been drinking soda at all, lately, because if I get restaurant food, it's carry out, and I drink water or milk at home....)

But also - for me, getting out into the world a little is necessary. Being able to teach in person means I feel less desperately sad and valueless than I did before the semester and I am very much keeping my fingers crossed that we can keep this up until Thanksgiving (after which, we will be online). Barring a miracle, I will be here for Thanksgiving and Christmas - I will not travel on public transportation until R values are lower nationwide, and probably not until I've been vaxxed. (I MIGHT - if this drags into next summer - once the weather gets good and the days get long - drive up to see my mother after carefully quarantining for two weeks here first)

But yes. This is very tiresome and I am very tired of it, and I long for it to be over. Oh, it'll perhaps never be OVER over, in the sense of us being able to go blithely out and do what we did in the before times, but I would like to feel more comfortable going out and shopping, or going to a museum, or traveling. (I may never eat indoors in a restaurant again. It depends on what happens)

I did order myself a couple of "you will be stuck here alone for the holidays, so here are some consolation prizes: I joined the Simply Sock Yarn dyer's club for the last three months of the year - it is a National Parks theme (the yarn will be dyed inspired by three different Parks, and there's other goodies that come). And I ordered the Schleich advent calendar (the Horse Club one, and yes, I know, toy horses have nothing to do with Jesus' birth but I also never got one of those toy-or-chocolate Advent calendars as a child and I feel like one thing you can do as a sad old adult with a salary is maybe indulge in some of the things you wanted but didn't get as a child....I may also order my Christmas dinner from SeaBear or somewhere and just figure I don't care about the cost for once. 

That said - another part of being a sad old adult is that sometimes you have to spend money on things that aren't fun but are necessary. My garage-door motor died - the guy came today. I hoped it was a matter of the chain being broken, but it wasn't. He commented that it was very old (yes, it was here when I bought the place and that was nearly 20 years ago now). So he's coming Monday (I guess he works Labor Day?) to replace it. It's not gonna be cheap but if I have to I can dip into savings; my savings account is for emergencies and this is an emergency. He did disconnect the door (well, I could have done that myself) so I can manually open and close it but you know? When it's 35 degrees and horizontal rain I am not going to want to do that, or some late evening (once all this....other stuff....is over and I go out to evening meetings again) when I get home I'm not going to want to; I will just want to push a button and have it open and close. (I suppose this means resetting my remote? Or maybe the new motor will come with a new remote?)

But yeah, in a house there's always something that either just got fixed or that just broke...