Unique Aspects of Days – October 2022

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Unique aspects of October….

Border crossing (US to Canada). This was not the only time I crossed the boarder from the US to Canada…but the first time in more than  decade…so rare enough to be unique for me. It was the first day of their new policy to no longer require documentation of COVID-19 vaccination….probabay made it a little faster than it would have been the day before.

Buying a baby present in Canada. Two aspects of uniqueness of this one: deciding that having a baby in my exended family is unique enough to buy an ad hoc present and enjoying shopping during vacation …wanting to buy something (and not always something for me).

Discovering that the fireplace vent was leaking cold air into my office and the hearth room upstairs. There was cold air from the bottom of our gas fireplace doors (the vent area) during our first cold weather of the season. The magnetic strip I ordered from Amazon has fixed the problem…and I am glad I noticed the problem so quickly.

Dry Cleaners. I hadn’t been to a dry cleaners in years. I probably could have taken the jackets I had been wearing for a couple of years several years ago…but then the pandemic stopped our being out and about. I aired the jackets and continued to wear them occasionally. When I went to a dry cleaners near our new house, I was the only customer…and the racks didn’t look very full either.

Exploding broccoli. I was pleased to find a cup of carrots, cherry tomatoes, and broccoli in one of the places we stopped on our way back from Canada. I had not anticated that the lid would be so hard to get off. As my daughter was pulling us out of the parking lot, I was working on the packaging…finding it a bit of a challenge…when the lid suddenly came off and broccoli flew out into my lap and onto the center console! I ate it anyway…and the other veggies too!

Hail. We had quarter sized hail at our house for a brief time. I’m glad our cars were in the garage. In Maryland we never got hail above pea sized (and it was slushy). This hail bouced and stayed around on the ground longer!

Peppermint honey. I bought some peppermine infused honey in Canada…and it is yummy!

Sitting in a sunny window like a cat. A very nice place on a cold morning while I was in Canada.

Tator tots. I hadn’t had tater tots in a lot time….and they were a big disappointment…so the event will probably be unique.

Went to the doctor’s office but the doctor had called in sick. I was signing in for a doctor’s appointment when the nurse came from the back and informed the front desk that the doctor had called in sick! I ended up making an appointment with another doctor since she was so fully booked it would be more than a month before I could be worked into her schedule!

Joys of Grocery Shopping

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During my career – I generally left my house between 6 and 6:30 for my morning commute. Now I only leave the house at that time for grocery shopping; prior to the pandemic, I didn’t head out until about 9. I am realizing, after several months of the early grocery runs, that the 6 to 6:30 AM timing seems ‘natural’ to me – perhaps because of the long-standing routine established during my career. I never stopped waking up by 5:30 anyway.

These days it is dark when I leave the house…dark when I get to the covered parking lot of the grocery store. A few weeks ago, I was seeing the sunrise – always a good start to the day. There are few people in the store and the items I need are generally well stocked. I like that the store has an app where I can scan my items with my phone as I shop and place them in my own bags. It makes it possible to use my own bags for produce too avoiding almost all single use plastic bags. I check out at one of the self-checkouts by simply scanning the barcode on the screen to retrieve my order and touching my credit card to another screen to pay for it.  

I’ve started buying flowers again. Recently I bought ‘red sunflowers’ – which looked great in the store. I didn’t realize until I got the home and was trimming the stems before putting them into a vase that the ‘red’ was from dye in their water! What a mess…I even have red splotches on my hands that will have to wear off! I cut some day lily leaves from my front flower bed to put around the flowers in the vase...planning to enjoy the flower as much as possible even though I will not buy them again. I’ll have to think about whether I should put them in the compost once they droop.

Overall – there is a lot of joy in the grocery shopping experience right now…it’s probably the only kind of shopping I look forward to!


The New Normal - Shopping

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Continuing the blog post series prompted by COVID-19….

The New Normal – Shopping

From the later part of March to the end of May, we didn’t go into a store at all. We had groceries delivered to our house, picked up orders a curbside at Target and Pet Smart, and items from Amazon and other vendors delivered to our porch. The single most expensive item was a new desktop computer for my husband – shipped from Dell. Grocery type items were the most numerous…mostly coming from the grocery store delivery but soft drinks and cat food were sometimes obtained from Target or Pet Smart when we couldn’t get it from the grocery. We had enough problems getting tomato soup and my husband’s favorite brand of canned tamales that we ordered them from Amazon. And we got masks from Amazon.

We are shifting now to in-person grocery shopping…which is one of the major changes that marks ‘phase 2’ of our coronavirus strategy. I can a good first experience this week – going first thing in the morning, wearing a mask, using hand sanitizer frequently…and then handwashing after I had put the perishables away, disinfecting surfaces touched inside the house as I brought groceries in. Prior to the pandemic I always shopped once a week, but I am shifting now to every 2 weeks to reduce risk.

I’ll pick up my Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) share every week once it starts (hopefully next week) so fresh veggies will come in every week. The less frequent shopping might become a habit that will continue after the pandemic is over. It takes more time to shop in one week…but nets a reduced shopping time since there is only one trip to the store every two weeks.

Pre-pandemic there were a lot of products that we were already buying online; that shift is more pronounced now. Something that is a variation in that trend is new: ordering online from a local store and then picking it up at curb side just outside the store. We are thinking about buying an electric lawn mower…and that is probably how we would buy it.

What about things that we like to examine before we buy? Aside from food there is not much. I suppose there are some types of clothes I would want to try on….but I don’t need any new clothes at the moment. If I think back, I’ve been ordering clothes all my life….starting with the Sears or Wards catalogs! Shoes are an item I like to try on before I buy…but I don’t envision needing any new shoes in the near future. Now that the weather is warm – I am going barefoot around the house and wearing sandals or flip flops when I am out…an old pair of hiking boots when I mow the grass.

We aren’t in the market for a car. In the past we have always taken a test drive of the car we bought. I’m not so sure we will do that for the next round although I’m not sure the pandemic has that shift (it was already the trend). My current car is a plug-in hybrid and the next one will probably be all-electric. My husband’s next car might be a plug-in hybrid…or maybe an all-electric (it depends on the infrastructure available for road trips).

Related to shopping --- it’s not just how we shop…it is what we are shopping for. Three thoughts:

I am buying more things locally and buying some items I want to have in the future that I didn’t buy frequently in the past. Cut flowers is something I am buying more frequently; once I discovered how much I enjoyed having the irises in my office, I decided to buy a bouquet every time I go to the grocery store (when I don’t have something blooming in my garden to bring indoors). I want the vendors to stay in business. As far as buying locally – I’ve gotten produce from my nearby CSA for the past few years and will continue to do so. I’ll also be more likely to buy items from local stores that I can pickup curbside rather than having larger items sent through the mail…to reduce transportation costs.

There are somethings I am more likely to not buy at all. I’ve become more intentional about my buying during the ‘retreat’ at home. I am more likely to think harder about whether something I am purchasing is a need…or a want. If it’s a want…I want to understand clearly why I want it. Once I do that, it is often an easy decision to not make the purchase.

Buy ‘green’ whenever possible. An example is replacing an aging lawn mower with an electric version. It’s good for my lungs…and for the planet! I am keen to avoid plastic – particularly single use plastic; I’m thrilled that going back to doing my own grocery shopping means that I can avoid plastic grocery and produce bags.

In a few days, I’ll share my thoughts about the new normal…interactions with people.

Unique activities for yesterday:

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Enjoying flowers in my office. I bought a bouquet of cut flowers at the grocery store yesterday – the least expensive they had at $4. It’s a little splurge but worth the positive vibe it adds to my office; it puts the room over the top just a bit more than it already is as my favorite room in the whole house.

Writing most of the blog post sitting outdoors in the morning before it got hot. I typed on my laptop for about an hour before 8 AM. I heard some neighbors out enjoying the morning too…on the other side of some pines along the property line. The temperature forecast was over 90 degrees for the afternoon. It was good to get an hour-long nature fix while the temperature was still in the low 70s. Being about a story off the ground and having the greens of cedars, maples, tulip poplars and pines filling my field of view everywhere my laptop screen was not….it was a great start to the day.

A Zentangle Prompt

Three patterns to combine in a tile today: FAUX WEAVE, FEATHER FALL, and MEER. We already made MEER Feathers back on May 24th…this time try a more traditional use of the MEER pattern.

Here is a tile I made yesterday for the tangler’s choice day.

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Links to my previous “filling a day of social distance” posts  here.

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The Zentangle® Method is an easy-to-learn, relaxing, and fun way to create beautiful images by drawing structured patterns. It was created by Rick Roberts and Maria Thomas. "Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Learn more at zentangle.com.