Online grocery shopping

     Today I reflected on all of the new ways my day works and what I conquered! Ordering on line for me used to be limited to Amazon, flowers for out of state family, airline tickets, etc. Now I can proudly shout that I can order groceries online.  For some reasons, I am willing to admit my errors, the errors of the store, a new system for all and misinformation, yet I have ordered and picked up groceries. More on that below.

     Then the whole takeout routine. I have done okay with that way of life. Ordered and picked up food, or used one of the food delivery services successfully, even one day getting breakfast. Yes, we were tired of our own eggs!  With each new site, new apps, new passwords, new ways to pay. We even have started playing cars online with friends.

   Back to groceries though. As a young child, I remember going to one grocery store with my mother on Mondays and Thursday’s. Never did we go on a Tuesday. She had some coupons, and then there were the S&H stamps that we licked, or wetted down, put in books, and redeemed for some good items. Perhaps what I am saying, it was the routine. Now I don’t even go in the store.  I have friends my age who are still shopping. We each have to decide our own comfort levels and our own levels of risk. I am tempted to go the stores that don’t have online shopping,  yet I am not ready to be with so many people.

   So, what have you learned how to do? What is your level of risk to obtain food? Will you continue to be an online shopper when you can? What’s it like to have someone shop for you?

     
             
               

By: Kirsten Hartman

Time for some limericks

 April 16 and it’s snowing like a banshee!  After a lame attempt at shovelling the heavy wet stuff, I returned to my new occupation—making masks.  My trusty Bernina sewing machine gave up the ghost and spent a few days in the sewing machine hospital before returning as good as new.  I have been given so many scraps of material that I will never be able to use them all. The donors seemed so happy to be rid of their scraps that I may have to find some new uses for these leftovers.

I have permission from my grandkids, now hanging out with their parents in Fort Collins, to share a bit of their at home recent creativity.

Abby is 26 and will attend graduate school at Columbia University to study Latin American language and culture this fall.

There once was a girl very fine

Who said, the future – it’s mine!

She applied to grad school

And felt quite the fool

It seems it will all be online!

Henry is 24 and coming down the home stretch majoring in oceanography and GIS at the University of Colorado in Boulder. He’s a food lover and made us a great dinner the other night.

There once was a man from the West

Who put his body to the test

He ate a whole pot of chili

Then felt rather silly

And decided he’d best get some rest. 

Mason is 22 and a junior at Middlebury College in Vermont majoring in Spanish and economics. He spent a semester in Chile and had planned to be in Cuba for spring but….

There was once was a young Matey-Moo

Who thought, one year abroad, I’ll make it through! 

In Chile he found 

He was mostly house-bound

And that is his current fate too. 

 There was an old lady who thought

 This virus may have been brought

To offer a lesson or two

About the best thing to do

When all of the world's so distraught.

Well I can't complete with these kids!

Here they are -photos from quite a while ago. Top to bottom: Mason, Abby , Henry

By: Libby James

A friend sent me this. It so completely expressed my own hopes for this current challenge that I had to share it.

Here's a poem by Irish poet Kathleen O'Meara, poet laureate of the pandemic:

And people stayed home
and read books and listened
and rested and exercised
and made art and played
and learned new ways of being
and stopped
and listened deeper
someone meditated
someone prayed
someone danced
someone met their shadow
and people began to think differently
and people healed
and in the absence of people who lived in ignorant ways,
dangerous, meaningless and heartless,
even the earth began to heal
and when the danger ended
and people found each other
grieved for the dead people
and they made new choices
and dreamed of new visions
and created new ways of life
and healed the earth completely
just as they were healed themselves.

By: Bonnie Shetler