For four weeks now (or is it five?), my only car rides have been to the
grocery store. Our shopping list gets longer each week, and each week
we seem to manage to eat most of whatever we've bought.
The Canadian stores, like ones in the USA
and elsewhere, have been short on toilet paper (which we only notice
with a researcher's disinterest, as we are still working off our usual
Costco stock) and yeast (this one was becoming a problem - then a friend dropped off sourdough starter and we're working on our first loaf for right after Passover) and flour (I
got the last bag of unbleached in the entire store on the last trip).
The line-up-and-wait-to-go-in that we'd seen in photos from the USA have
arrived. One visit to our usual grocery store had store employees wiping down shopping
carts before handing them off to individual shoppers, another time at
the same store the carts were just sitting out with no attendance. Tape
marked off at six-foot distances for the line to check out is universal, and cause the lines to snake through a full half of the store's perimeter sometimes. Store hours are universally shortened, 8am-8pm with 7-8am opened for seniors and others who need more social distancing. The last trip to the store I wasn't allowed to bring my own bags into the store. It's running 7-10 days to get a pickup spot. We waffle between whether it is better to go ourselves or do the pickup option. We finally decided the employee is in the store anyway, taking our bodies out of the store should be one less possible vector of infection so we have an order placed and ready to pick up ... a week from now. In anticipation of this we got 2 weeks' worth of groceries, although of course we're getting low on fresh produce.
We're waiting
for the day the kinds of severe restrictions on mobility we see in some
other countries come here - requiring papers to be outside your home or only 3 hours a day to be outside. Alberta''s spike is expected to start in a couple of weeks, so we expect the harsher measures then. In the meantime we have been building our stores of leftovers and, while not hoarding, trying to have a bit of an extra stockpile. Terry has been joking about scurvy and it is annoyingly sinking in. For those who are also wondering, it takes a month of no vitamin C for scurvy to really start showing symptoms. You're welcome.