Christmas Cheer

 As soon as I finish writing this, I’m going to start setting up Christmas decorations. Nothing too fancy, just a tree, some spherical ornaments, and the presents that have come in so far. There aren’t going to be any exterior decorations to my knowledge, but other people certainly have put theirs up. A part of me does wonder why, especially with fewer people (supposed to be) out and about this year, there certainly won’t be as many eyeballs on light shows.

I mean, the rest of me -- the less cynical part -- gets it. They’re traditions, and better still, they’re traditions that don’t involve more people showing up and being in close proximity to each other. Maybe they are a bit silly, but they can provide stability, right? Thinking about it like that also led me down this path of separating them entirely from the reason they were started, though. Like, if this one is one we can do in the middle of a pandemic, and this one isn’t, that’s two separate qualities. That means traditions can be ranked.

I mean, that seems against the point of traditions like this also. The way it was taught to me, at least by modern media consumption, traditions are just something you do. I know that means you’re not supposed to think about them, but in that way, they do feel kind of secular, now completely divorced from the thing they celebrate. “We put lights up for Christmas because that’s what we do every Christmas” creates its own circular loop.

Again, I’m not trying to bash these things. Like I said, I’m about to do some of my own. Besides, maybe just wanting to do these things is enough. Completing a task like this, even if it is odd to think about, still provides the same sort of happiness.

-F

Cooking

 Cooking new things is fun. You don't really know what things are going to taste like until it's finished. I mean, you can guess, and I'm sure as one gets better as a cook the guessing gets better, but until then it's a mystery. I imagine that's part of the joy of it, the not knowing, I mean.

But at the same time, right now? Right now I'm all about sameness. I like being able to know exactly what something's about, something I can control because the rest of the world surely isn't giving it to me.

-F

Decisions Other People Have To Make

 It's weird watching things close down again. Not that I'm saying they shouldn't -- they absolutely should -- but I am commenting on the speed at which it is happening. I got an email the other day from the local theatre that they'd be shutting down again, and yet other places who updated me before have not. It was these same places that were really big on sending me reopening emails or new policy emails in the first place, that's why it's worth noting.

I imagine the reason there's a lot of feet-dragging here is that the optics of reopening for, like, a month or two and then immediately shutting down again are incredibly bad. So there's a fine line to walk between all these factors, they might say, even if one of them is keeping people safe. What surprises me more, then, is that few people I'm aware of seems to question the systems that encourage these sorts of decision matrices.

That is to say, I wonder why there's a tough decision to be made at all, instead of wondering why it's taking so long to make.

-F

See You At The Movies(?)

I wrote a little bit about this a month ago, about how, yeah, I missed movies and going to the theatre to see them and all that, but also, like, I understood why places were closed and I was content with being patient, with even perhaps a bit of moralizing judgment towards people who wanted them open. Circumstances have changed now, and I’d like to revise my stance a little bit.

The biggest change was my preferred theatre reopening. It’s a lot easier to make decisions when the riskiest option is inherently off the table, after all. I can understand the impetus to reopen, by the way. I’m not blaming anyone involved in that particular decision-making process. It’s near a pretty big college campus, one that’s welcoming back students right now, so of course they would want to be there for that. And the precautions look reasonable in terms of trying to keep people safe.

So I should want to go now that it’s open? Well, I guess I’m still hesitant about going out into the world for anything I would deem unnecessary. Things like groceries are fine, maybe even going to a cousin’s first communion, but movies? I won’t say every outing I’ve done has been strictly necessary, but it still feels like a wide gap. But at the same time, the fact that the option is there feels like a temptation. It means I can sympathize more with people who do feel like they have to do these things, at the very least. A casual want (“I can’t wait until I can go see a movie.”) has become an active consideration (“I can’t wait until I’m comfortable seeing a movie.”)

It’s weird, that’s all. Like a lot of these blog posts, I don’t have a solution or anything. Maybe I will slip a mask on and sit two rows away from anyone else. It’s a closer possibility than I realized, but it still feels like so many things are holding me back.

-F

Christ In A Cup

I haven’t been attending church for, well, a lot of reasons, but I did end up going to an outdoor service over the weekend and while I could probably talk all about it the same way I talk about grocery stores and their procedures, I’m more interested in talking specifically about one specific aspect: the sacrament of communion. It was the first thing on my mind when I decided to attend, and I was interested to see how the inherently physical act of passing out wafers and wine was translated.

The answer came in the form of this little plastic container of grape juice. The peel-off lid for it came with an extra pocket containing the wafer, so it was all prepackaged and ready to go. If you’ve seen, like, a kids yogurt cup that comes with a spoon, it was kind of like that but smaller. Now, fortunately, this was a denomination of Christianity that believes more in the symbolic nature of the act rather than literal transubstantiation -- we didn’t have to watch the Holy Spirit seep through the plastic and into the juice or anything like that -- but it still is a wholly different act peeling off a wrapper and slipping it under your mask.

Communion glasses feel like shot glasses. I mean, I guess they always were like that but it also feels supremely odd to take off a facemask to down a slug of grape juice. There’s a feeling of immediacy. You don’t want a mask down for longer than you need to. There’s no ceremony at all.

At the same time, I wouldn’t expect any churches to do any differently. I don’t think people would rather have no communion at all when these are an option. But for me, personally, sitting there toying with the cup while waiting for permission to partake, I still couldn’t help but wonder if maybe there was a better way to be blessed.

Maybe we could all be spritzed with holy water or something.

-F

The Grocery (Part Four)

Am I going to do one of these every time I make a grocery run? Probably. I mean, it’s as good a marker as any for how things are going in a general sense. I’m not being scientific about this at all, though. I don’t visit at the same time, I don’t have, like, a set routine where I look for the same things, and, perhaps most importantly, I don’t really want it to be. These are purely anecdotes I just pick up while pushing my cart around.

The most obvious point of interest is that masks are pretty much universal now. I imagine some of that might be to do with the two people that could possibly be greeters who could bar people from entry should they not be wearing one, but it’s a nice change of pace from a few weeks ago. By the same token, however, keeping one’s distance is less of a thing now, which is weird when the cart is such a handy measurement device. You’d think just being a cart-length or two away from other people would be easy for everyone but I still got people trying to pass me getting rather close for comfort.

Some of this I still blame the store for. One-way aisles have been more respected, but the intention behind them -- reducing clogging in these narrow areas -- perhaps less so. The architecture of your standard grocery doesn’t seem to support a pandemic, though I’m sure they only thought about that in retrospect.

-F

The Grocery (Part Three)

It seems like the store has gotten used to operating as it has been these last couple weeks. I went in late at night and it almost felt normal. Of course, there are still signs that direct you which way to go down which aisle and all the staff wear masks (the same cannot be said for the customers, unfortunately), but it’s a month later. It’s different now. The feeling is different. I mean, I still wouldn’t go in there unless I had to. As I alluded to in that parenthetical, I only saw three people (not including myself) wearing a mask, and I’m not sure one of those wasn’t just a duplicate. And now that I realize it, the direction markings aren’t conspicuous enough if I can accidentally go the wrong way down one and not realize until halfway through.

Some of this might also be, well, because it was late at night and, therefore, much less crowded than the store’s maximum, which is almost five-hundred. One-way aisles work much better, I am sure, when there isn’t just one person in them ever. The mask thing is less excusable, and it almost makes me want to see if another store nearby does have a mask policy. They already have an employee wiping the handles of the carts, and they already have a security officer, it stands to reason one could inform the other on certain matters of civil protection.

In fact, as I was checking out, I overheard a conversation between someone and this security, talking about this very thing. But I don’t think this is the time where friendly conversation is going to get anything done. We’re seeing that in other arenas of the country already.

-F

The Grocery (Part Two)

I noticed a few things on my most recent grocery trip. I figured I could write about them.

The biggest one is in the signage. Multiple signs now indicate that aisles are one-way only, though I also noticed that with all the management at the front of the store, there wasn’t much enforcement going on. I think I counted three times I saw someone going the wrong way? The signage is such that it’s hard to miss.

The mask policy is still the same, as in, there hasn’t been one. Most of the shoppers still do, as do all the staff, but I also noticed more people going without than last time. It could be that I wasn’t looking, though.

Lastly, there was a moment while I was bagging everything when someone else came up to the self-checkout station and started scanning, but was stopped and told to wait as I finished. I imagine this was in place before, but on previous trips, instead of being able to find out, a staff member came up and started bagging items after I had already scanned as I was still checking out, so I can’t say for certain.

I guess we’re surviving? So far, at least, yeah, we’re surviving.

-F

The Grocery

The grocery store just down the street from me by and large uses self-checkout stations. Presumably, this is to keep labor hours down, but also, in this period of pandemic, it helps minimize contact between employees and shoppers. If you ring up a large number of items, a manager will still step in and help out, but they’ll ask you to step back as they bag things for you. All this makes sense, and I appreciate it.

One thing that did throw me off, though, when I went earlier last week, was their policy on reusable bags. I’d brought a stack of paper bags with me because I was expecting to use a large amount of plastic otherwise, and got stopped at the door and told I couldn’t use them.

I get the idea. It’s a potential point of contact, a variable that the store can’t control. These things have to be minimized. I had already thought of this; if someone was going to ask to help with my bags, I was going to decline. They didn’t know that, of course, and outwardly, I looked like a young’un with no mask and some headphones on. I probably looked like I absolutely didn’t care.

It did get me thinking, though, as I went through the store, what other precautions were they taking? There was a maximum occupancy notice on the outside, for example (though I don’t know how they were keeping track), and there were stickers on the floor so you could stand a safe distance away from the deli counters, but also, policies I’ve seen other stores implement didn’t seem to be in effect here. Restricting aisles to one-way lines, for example, would help keep customers at a distance from each other. I didn’t see any of that, and there certainly were a lot of times it would have helped.

Or the most basic of cautions: If I had an item in my cart and changed my mind, what happens to the item I stuck back on the shelf? The freezer door handles, were those disinfected?

Obviously, I can’t expect any sort of public business to be absolutely safe, but I also know that this sort of business will do the bare minimum of safety if it thinks it can get away with it. I don’t really watch TV, but I assume they’re the type of business to praise the hard-working nature of their low-level staff in their advertisements without acting in their interest.

I don’t have a fix for this, or I didn’t in the moment, at least. It wasn’t like I was going to start an argument or try and run past with my paper bags. And I certainly don’t begrudge the effort that’s already been put in, nor do I want it to stop any time soon. If anything, I’d want more things like this. The thought of an essential service just keeping up appearances worries me, though, and that’s what I wanted to write about.

-F