CORONA-CATION DAY 18: Shopping in the Time of Pandemic

No it is not, Love in the Time of Cholera, but it is damn close.

Sue came back from a walk with our neighbors Tania and Dana yesterday and said “I am worried about Tania and Dana.  Neither of them have any toilet paper.”  This concerned me too, for the obvious reason of where this failure to provide for their own families could lead.  “I would give the some of our,” she said “but what if we need it!”  I told Sue that I had noticed several boxes of Kleenex in the grocery when I was there, and I should have snagged them some. Sue could not believe that I had passed up Kleenex boxes. I had to promise that I would never make such a mistake again. Truly Sue would give the toilet paper off her….roll to her friends if they needed it.

The next day, I saw Dana getting packages out of her car on my morning walk with Cali, and she excitedly told me that she had been to CostCo and found all that she needed.  She pronounced it “A good day!”

This foraging behavior is a fascination to me.  Things that we would not have given a passing glance to finding a month ago, now are praised upon our return from hunting like we have just snagged meat to feed the tribe for the entire winter.  I walked in from the grocery last Sunday, began unpacking and Sue said “Ohhh! You found egg noodles!” and I did a small dance around the kitchen island singing “Tuna – Noodle – Casserole – ugh! Tuna – Noodle – Casserole – ugh!” with a twist of the hip to accentuate my excitement. Life was good. I felt like Laura Ingalls Wilder, when Pa returned with wood for the fire so they could survive another winter in Plum Creek, Minnesota!  God. 

Sue had to run in to Home Depot (which is next to the WalMart in Evergreen).  I stayed in the car, apparently she has decided that I am the old and weak of the family and, like my Grandmother, I am encouraged now to “just stay in the car, I will run in”.  Anyway, I am sitting there and I see a woman come running down the paved embankment with a WalMart shopping cart full to the brim, including a large package of Kirkland, Big Roll, two-ply.

She was apparently afraid that someone would mug her for it, so she was movin’!  She crosses paths with another woman with a Home Depot cart going the opposite direction, who gasps and says, in my best English accent “Where on Earth did you find that toilet paper?!?!” To which the first woman, eyes the English Lady warily and says “It is on the shelf at the WalMart, but you better hurry.  There is very little left!!”  The English Lady then cranks her cart up in to fourth gear and runs up the paved embankment to try and score some Kirkland TP’.  Wow.  Has it really come to this degree of pitifulness?

 

We finished our walk yesterday and on the way up the hill, Cali chased a rabbit, which pretty much left her in the dust.  “Oh well, no dinner tonight”, I said and we walked dejectedly up to the house,…but there is always Tuna Noodle Casserole.

Mountain Pig....out.