Journal from the Edge of Survival – My First SOLO EHA

I had to do my first solo EHA (ExtraHomular Activity) today.

Poor Charlie has been the brave venturer for each trip up to now. This has made my life super easy.

It’s amazing how much I have worked my life out to be super easy. I’m realizing this was a failure to prepare for survival. I think if the zombies were actually to emerge from this fiasco, any survival party would take one look at me, throw me in the back of the group, and run. I guess I might bear that gracefully. It’s the price you pay for years of pampered princessing. Nasty ending, but what a lovely story up until then.

So… Charlie survived the layoffs at work. He also survived the unpaid furlough group. He is now in the group that is working triple the hours for 3/4ths of the pay. And we’re grateful for that. Like, super grateful. Like, after all that happened we hugged each other and got drunk and partied like it was 1999…

I don’t think the world can ever again party like it was 1999. In 1999 there had never been a 9/11. There had never been a coronavirus. There had never been a Nov 2016. And Prince was still the soundtrack of our lives. I think the dance party might be pretty much over at this point. Maybe we can work up a half-hearted boogie or some limp jazz hands when this is over, but that might be the extent of it.

…but the next day he realized he was a slave to our dining table pretty much from the butt-crack of dawn until the last panicked boss stopped firing off emails for the day (probably around the time that person’s spouse slipped some valium into their water). That means that I have to take on the role of doing the EHAs and brave this strange new version of the grocery store we seem to have created.

I dutifully donned my post-apocalyptic Mad Max EHA gear and headed out. I realized if I had dressed like this two months ago I probably would have been arrested. Not for any particular crime, but just for looking like a serial killer out of a bad Blumhaus movie. You now, on principle. Today, however, at least in the eerily quiet store I didn’t look so strange. We all wore a variety of mask/glove/other protective gear, and we carefully walked around with our carts acting as our barrier shields with which we could bulldoze an errant COVID-19 molecule charging us from the front.

Because I was raised as a woman and taught never to make anyone uncomfortable, I kept finding myself smiling at everyone so I would look a little bit less like an escaped lunatic, but with the mask blocking the important feature required for this soothing tactic, I probably just looked even more like a whackadoodle, staring at everyone and crinkling my eyes at them. Didn’t matter, though. Most shoppers weren’t really looking at each other. They either looked dazed or exhausted or just anxious to grab and go. My weird squinting probably didn’t even register with anyone.

There was, however, one woman shopping like it was 1999, leaving her cart around willy nilly, reaching around people with her ungloved hands to grab things she wanted. It was so egregious the store ended up making an announcement reminding everyone to practice social distancing and to keep our carts with us. I’m sure the woman either paid no attention or assumed that the announcement, like coronavirus, didn’t apply to her. I was tempted to rip off my mask and cough on her face but I stopped myself when it occurred to me there was a real possibility that someone might whip out a gun and shoot me for this. Some people have no sense of humor. Or justice.

The toilet paper section was a vast wasteland of empty shelving. They might as well have blocked it off with a velvet rope and charged museum admission prices to go see the ancient place where butt-wiping products used to be sold. I have heard rumors that some stores get restocked with such items every morning, but not my stores.  Apparently we don’t qualify. Maybe because everyone in Southern California thinks their… um… deposits.. don’t stink and Kimberly Clark just left us out of the rotation accordingly. You may think that’s an odd reason, but if they don’t explain these things, I have to invent my own reasons, and I think that makes as much sense as anything else.

We still have a few rolls of the precious product left here at home, but they are reserved for “aft” actions, only. For the full frontal assaults, we have cut up squares of paper towels which can just go into the trash bin by the toilet. Because we are mature adults, we call these “peepee paper” and “poopie paper.” Looks like we’re going to have to stick with this method until we luck into some toilet paper. Who knows, maybe there is some
roaming in the wild, like the billions of rabbits who have decided to infest my neighborhood. I could set out some sort of wild-toilet-paper trap and hope to snare some. Other than that, I’m not sure how we’re going to get any more. Right about now I would sell my soul for one of those $10K Japanese toilets that gently washes and dries you and powders your ass and then sings it a lullaby.

The checkout lady was amazingly friendly, chatty, and kind, making sure my groceries weren’t bagged too heavy and asking how I was doing and how everyone in my family was doing. Good thing there was a big plexiglass wall dividing us, because I might have actually leapt over the counter and hugged her. It was the best social interaction I’d had in over a month.

When this is over I’m going to run around hugging every stranger I see. Just because I can. I have a feeling some of them might not mind it, or even find it all that strange. I’ll bet at least half hug me right back.

When I got home, Saint Charlie donned gloves and rushed to my side to carry the groceries up to the house and into the kitchen.

So at least a little bit of my inner spoiled princess survives.

PS – if the Smithsonian decides to do a memorial display for COVID-19 sometime in the future, all they need is a small, spot-lit podium containing two items:

1. A package of toilet paper
2. A hand-made facemask fashioned from a paisley bandana and a pantyliner.

Kinda says it all.

 

 

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