Grocery shopping, week two

It was somewhat different at the store today than it was last week. (I could have gotten up early and gone in during the special hours for the old folks. But, it's crazy to bunch up with old people just so you won't be exposed to bunching up with everyone.)

The store wasn't as crowded today as last week, though I overheard them saying the senior-hour was crazy. There were more spaces available in the parking lot. Last week there was no bread at all, but I could get tortillas. This morning there were absolutely no tortillas, but you could get bread, though it ought to be abundantly clear that the kinds bread that were left on the shelves today are nobody's favorites, and when this is crisis over they ought to rethink what they usually order. There was lots of bread, but kinds nobody buys unless that's all there is.

Generally there was less on the shelves this morning than last week. But unlike last week, I easily got everything on my list including cat treats. Somethings I would have like to have gotten were missing, but nothing I felt I needed.

There were more kids in the store today which I think is a bad sign. Don't ask me what moms are supposed to do if Hubby is still doing his 'necessary work' and the kids are home. But kids are going to be a lot more careless about what they touch, and do other things important to avoid these days.

In normal times I go to a cashier and avoid the self-checkout to help save jobs. But for the duration, I'm doing self-checkout to avoid the long lines at the cashier. A lady came over and asked if I needed help with operating the check-out... Can't blame her. As I said earlier this morning they had a rush for seniors-only-hour. But I'm not that far gone yet.

Some people are still hording. I saw a lady with her kid who had about six boxes of frozen waffles (you probably know the brand) in her cart. There was plenty of cereal, hot and cold, of all kinds in the store, plenty of eggs even some bacon. If you insisted on crap, there were plenty of kinds of Pop-Tarts and chocolate covered 'healthy' energy bars. You don't need to buy a six weeks supply of third-rate waffles right now. I didn't look to see if there was pancake mix or Bisquick in the store, so if her doctor has put her family on a strict diet of waffles every day maybe she had an excuse. I still have to put her intelligence above that of the Phoenix area resident who made the national news when he decided to use President Trump's suggestion for a miracle virus cure, as a preventative. He swallowed what he had in the house that happened to have the magic ingredient. The product was fish tank cleaner and it killed him.

Making history

I had an interesting exchange of emails with a woman who works for the town museum in the place where my mother grew up. I presume she got my email address from my niece who has put up considerable family history at the Mormon, Family Search site.

The lady asked me if I had pictures of my great-great-grand father and mother who were early settlers. I did, and she thanked me when I quickly sent them. In turn she sent me pictures of a quilt, a recent prized acquisition of the museum, which had the stitched-in signatures of many of the townsfolk of a hundred years ago including some of my direct ancestors. I thanked her especially because my mother had know about about that quilt and had mentioned it once in awhile when the subject of family history came up. Despite clearly being a community project the quilt disappeared for many many years. My mother was mistaken about what information was on the quilt. But there was no mistake this was the quilt she had spoken about. The museum lady was flabbergasted, because apparently they'd exhausted their resources and other than the actual names on the quilt no one in town now had heard of it let alone had been able to tell them anything about it. The museum got it after a women found the quilt at a Goodwill (a charitable second-hand store that gets its stock through local donations) halfway across the country. She saw the town name on the quilt and generously decided it ought to go back where it was made.

We exchanged drabs of other information. I wanted to keep a little mystery about exactly who I was and why I knew things about their town history long after my great-great-grandfather's day. It got to the point where I thought it would be safe to tell the lady who my mother's father was and that he lived in a particular nearby town after leaving their community. Later that evening, she wrote back excitedly including an attachment, saying I'd be interested in seeing this page from that second community's centennial-celebration commemorative book. I burst out laughing, and quickly replied to her that I owned a copy of that book, and that the page she sent indeed had a picture not only of my grandfather, but a picture of my mother and her siblings in their fifties! The text even spelled out where I grew up! So much for staying semi-anonymous.