I did a monster Costco shop on March 17th, and I hadn’t been back to the store since. I guess I didn’t really have to go today. We have beans and rice and frozen vegetables. But I was out of such staples as popcorn and breakfast and fresh fruit.
Costco was weird. Of course it was. I won’t go into that, because everybody knows by now.
What really became stark for me is what a struggle it is to determine what is rational. I wore an old dust mask with a cloth mask over it, figuring I could wash the cloth mask and use it to keep the dust mask clean. I sanitized my car door handle. I wore gloves and sanitized my phone when I got in the car, since I had been handling it in the store. I felt paranoid. I felt phobic. I felt absurd. I felt vulnerable.
We’re on day thirty-seven now of Operation Save My Mom, and we can’t stay isolated forever. If nothing else, when my county opens up again, I will have to get a haircut. I’m starting to get desperate enough to try cutting it myself again, and that never ends well.
I would feel a lot more confident if my Mom wasn’t already struggling with a sinus infection that is dragging on and on and on. She’s triply vulnerable right now. She’s 81, asthmatic, and her immune system is tied up with something else. I got a Costco of EmergenC to dose her with.
I made the unnerving decision to forgo wiping the groceries down. Was that sensible and rational, or have I doomed Mom? If you wipe down the groceries, though, where does it end? Can I just sanitize the bag that the sweet potatoes are in, or do I have to use dish soap and water on each individual sweet potato? After all, I don’t know when these were packed.
How careful is too careful? How careful is responsible? How careful is insane? How careful is dysfunctional? I feel like we won’t have answers to these questions for a long time. I worry that, as this drags on, we will all let our guard down and wind up overwhelming the hospitals again.
I’m making decisions that actually, factually, literally might be life or death, within an insane dearth of information. So are we all.
Signing off. Take Care, and Take Care of one another.
