We’re living in a crazy world. One I barely recognize anymore.
I awoke before the birds this morning (not that that’s anything unusual around here) and headed out to Wegmans around 6:45 a.m. (to get there for the store’s 7 a.m. opening). No cars were on the road because they were all in Wegmans’ parking lot. And the line to get into the store wrapped allllllllllll the way around the shopping center. There was no turning back now, though, so I pulled on my face mask (!!), doubled up on my gloves (!!), and waited. And waited. And waited. And then I waited some more. I stood in that line for about 45 minutes before I was permitted to enter the store, but not before dousing my gloves with hand sanitizer.
Inside it was business as usual—other than the masks, the yellow signs indicating customer limits on certain supplies, and the heavy police/security detail. Seriously, I can’t believe this is the world in which we are living. Any other day I would take my time strolling through the aisles, checking items off my typically long grocery list, and enjoying my time outside the house and away from the kiddos. Not today, though. Today I was focused and all about getting out of there as quickly as possible. Every time someone coughed my shoulders tensed, a pit formed in my stomach, and all I could think was “what the hell am I doing hereeeeeee?!” I filled up my cart in record time, boy. It was so full (top and bottom) I couldn’t even fit one more single brick of cheese. I must have looked like a lunatic because I could barely even turn or push the thing. And no one can help because everyone’s afraid to go near everyone else!
I have to give it to Wegmans: Their safety precautions made me feel a lot better. They managed the number of people in the store at the same time, they closed off every entrance except one (hence the long line to get in), they had hand-sanitizer stations right at the entrance (you couldn’t even take a cart without cleaning your hands—even if you were wearing gloves), they put up window shields and social distancing barriers between cashiers and customers at all registers, cashiers wiped down the conveyor belt after every single customer, and they had a security guard in place at the sole exit to ensure everything ran smoothly. Plus, their shelves were surprisingly stocked full. I’m not sure there’s much else the store can do, honestly. And customers are clearly following “orders” and taking the situation seriously because almost everyone was wearing a mask and gloves. That’s a huge difference from my last trip to Wegmans two-and-a-half weeks ago, when only a few people wore a mask.
Regardless, I still didn’t breathe a sigh of relief until I got back to my car. I peeled off my first pair of gloves, loaded everything into my trunk, and hightailed it out of there. Door to door took me two hours and 15 minutes, and I only live 10 minutes from Wegmans. It took me and my husband another 30 minutes to unload because we do it from the garage. We refuse to even bring the bags into the house. Paranoid? Oh yeah, for sure. But better safe than sorry, in my humble opinion. I’m so terrified of sickness that immediately after unloading I stripped down, threw my clothes into the washer, and ran upstairs to take a shower before I even looked at my kids. I bet you’re laughing at me right now. That’s OK, I’m laughing at my lunacy too. But I bet I’m not the only one who feels this way. I’m just the only one admitting it in public, LOL.
Seriously, though, I cannot believe it has come to this. On the one hand, we’re all going stir-crazy being stuck at home under quarantine, while on the other we’re scared to leave the house! Even to go to the grocery store for essential supplies, for goodness sake! And now the powers that be are telling us not to even do that for the next few weeks. Pure lunacy. They don’t have to tell me twice, though. I have no intention of venturing back out for a while. I’ll just be sitting here hoping and praying that I didn’t bring anything home (of course I’ll be anxious about that for the next 14 days) and that the groceries I bought will last for a month. 🤞 🤞 🤞
What a sad state of affairs for our beautiful world. I wonder if we’ll ever be able to go back to normal. 😢 I guess for now all we can do is pray for one another and be thankful for the things we do have: faith, love, family and friends, food and water, a warm home, a hot shower, music, Netflix, coffee, wine, baked goods, Zoom, toilet paper, I could go on forever. At the very least I hope we all learn something from this terrifying experience. And I hope we’re given another chance soon to make this world great again.
Have a lovely and a peaceful Palm Sunday, everyone. Stay safe, healthy, and sane out there.