Idaho potatoes

My Pandemic Stash has left the building. The beach urchins paid a visit today and one of them took the box and most of its contents. She left olive oil, shelf-stable milk, Old Bay seasoning, and I fergit what else. These are things that I have purchased recently and actually have plans to use, i.e., I am almost out of olive oil. Most of what she took were duplicates or triplicates of stuff I already have.

This box (and it is a beautiful one) has been hanging around for almost THREE YEARS! When covid first forced most of us into isolation, getting grocks was difficult. My grocery worker brought us a couple big loads of grocks, then she got covid. No masks in those days, in fact some stores were PROHIBITING their employees from wearing them. I should qualify my earlier statement: she THOUGHT she had covid. Covid tests were as hard to come by as masks in March 2020. She had very mild symptoms (thank you very much) but obviously couldn’t help me get grocks. Or go to work.

Trying to schedule grocery pickups at the big grocery stores was near impossible back then. You might be able to find a slot a week or so out. (I’m sure I blahgged about this a LOT back then.) Enter some of our small specialty grocery stores which began to offer curbside, masked pickup. Sparrow Meat Market (which also has LOTS of good produce and other stuff) and Monahan’s Seafood down in Kerrytown. The Whine Castle over here on the west side. I could get darn near everything I needed and Sparrow Market is where the box came from. It’s a random box but it did actually include a bag of gorgeous Yukon gold potatoes.

I got back to in-person shopping a long time ago but the box has been actively used for overflow grocks. This fall it gained another function, which was to block Rooooomba from trying to go down the step to the “foyer”. She doesn’t actually try to go down steps. She stops and sings a Sad Song and I have to rescue her. I’ll have to find a new strategy for that. I will probably get the box back but without a whole bunch of heavy grocks in it, it won’t block Rooooomba.

I hope it’s okay to tell about this very early probably-covid case. I have generally not talked about other people’s covid on my blahg but by now just about everybody I know (including me) has had it and it’s really old news. It was so much scarier back then and I remember getting up every morning and (being a mom) anxiously awaiting a text indicating all was well. When she returned to work it was a different place with required masks and other protocols. Can I just say to anyone who cares to listen? When you are shopping and choose not to wear a mask and need to ask for help with something, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t get right up in the employee’s face and breathe on them, especially if you are coughing, etc. That person is somebody’s child/parent/grandparent/spouse/whatever. Don’t get them sick. Thank you!

One Response to “Idaho potatoes”

  1. Margaret Says:

    I remember those days well, thinking like we were living in a “Station Eleven” reality. Some of it (anti-vaxxers and maskers for example) has been worse than expected but I’ve fallen in love with pick up grocery shopping and the lovely people who do it for me. By now they know me so well that they slip me little treats if they have to substitute anything. 🙂